IAM367- Psychotherapist Teaches Organizations to Optimize Strengths of Employees

Erica N. Reed is a Psychotherapist and Corporate Trainer and her focus is on Leading from Within to Create Success in All Areas of Life. As a psychotherapist, Erica works with her clients to develop healthy mindsets and behaviors, resulting in higher levels of confidence, loving relationships and an overall feeling of personal fulfillment.

Since the workplace has a huge impact on our overall mental health, Erica also provides corporate training to teach organizations how to focus on the human side of the business. Her training and keynote presentations focus on optimizing the personal and professional strengths of employees, resulting in high performing and collaborative teams. Taking her clinical and training expertise to the classroom, Erica is an Adjunct Professor at Bowie State University and Catholic University of America.

• CEO Hack: Writing everything down
• CEO Nugget: Identify yourself as a business self
• CEO Defined: Creating impact

Website: https://www.ericanreed.com/

Free Offer – http://bit.ly/managestressatwork

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericanreedlcswc/
Facebook Group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/SelfCareforSuperwomen/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Erica N. Reed of ericanreed.com.

Erica, it's awesome to have you on the show today.

Erica Reed 0:40

Thank you so much for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

No problem super excited to have you on and what I want to do was read a little bit more about Erica so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Erica N. Reed is a Psychotherapist and Corporate Trainer and her focus is on Leading From Within to Create Success in All Areas of Life. As a psychotherapist, Erica works with her clients to develop healthy mindsets and behaviors, resulting in higher levels of confidence, loving relationships, and an overall feeling of personal fulfillment.

Since the workplace has a huge impact on our overall mental health, Erica also provides corporate training to teach organizations how to focus on the human side of the business. Her training and keynote presentations focus on optimizing the personal and professional strengths of employees, resulting in high-performing and collaborative teams.

Taking her clinical and training expertise to the classroom, Erica is an Adjunct Professor at Bowie State University and the Catholic University of America.

Erica, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Erica Reed 1:43

Yes, I am

Gresham Harkless 1:47

Awesome. So to kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Erica Reed 1:57

Well, it's actually been a long journey. After graduating from graduate school, I started working with an agency as a therapist and really enjoyed the work. But it got to the point that the work environment was driving me crazy. It was not healthy. There were a lot of policies and infighting issues. It got to the point that every day, as I turned the corner to pull into the parking lot of my office, I got this feeling in my stomach, it was that discomfort feeling that let me know something was not right. And you just can't keep going on like this. So after a while, I just decided I couldn't do this anymore.

Like most therapists, when you leave corporate or you leave an agency, you start your private practice. So essentially, that's what I did about 15 years ago at this point. But interestingly enough, when I started my private practice, I don't think I really identified it as my business. I called it my practice, if there was a checkbox on a form I had to fill out, it said self-employed, but I never really saw it as a business and identified myself as a CEO, and it worked. For me, it was a lucrative practice, I got contracts, I worked with the court, and I worked in different agencies doing their corporate training for them. It really wasn't until about five years ago that I had a shift, I had a mindset shift that really changed my life.

It's created this new business for me, to the point that I identified myself as a business owner, as a CEO. And I'm excited to show others how to do that as well. But more so on the focus, you have to understand that your employees are important, you have to understand that how well they feel about themselves and their work will be directly impactful for the organization. So the private practice continues working with clients on their wellness individually. But it's also a deliberate effort to work with organizations to increase their employee wellness as well.

Gresham Harkless 4:19

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate you for doing that and appreciate you even more, I think there might be people even listening to this that have that same sinking feeling when they're driving into wherever they're doing or whatever they're doing. Whether it be their own business sometimes, but I appreciate the fact because you saw that, didn't just say that and just you know, stick with it. You actually decided to make a change. So that's just a great reminder for anybody that might be less than that you're able to do that.

I appreciate you for helping in reaching out to people to make their organizations better as a whole. I know you touched on it a little bit. Can you drill a little bit deeper? Tell us a little bit more about what you're doing with these organizations and how you're creating a better work environment?

Erica Reed 5:00

Definitely. So it's interesting because I've worked in corporate as far as conducting training for them. Throughout these past 15 years or more recently, my focus has been on teaching organizations and teaching the leaders in the organization how important their role is in the success of the organization, yes, as far as numbers, but as far as the employee's satisfaction, you get those employee satisfaction surveys. I don't really think they pay too much attention to them, because it's very clear that employees need more, they need to feel valued, they need to feel appreciated, and then maybe they'll be more productive, and they will stay at the organization as opposed to being on LinkedIn looking for a new job.

So my work is really about helping leaders, specifically, but also the employees within the organization how to lead from within, because you have to start with if you are an unhealthy person, if you don't know how to communicate if you avoid those difficult conversations, if you don't understand how to respect the differences of others in the workplace, that creates a toxic environment that no one does well. So it's really about leading from within and understanding what it means to be a strong leader, not just because you have the skills to get the job, but you have the ability to lead people.

That's really the human element is not just because you have a skill set, that's more so the life experience, the graduate degree, the high IQ, we're more on the emotional intelligence side of things where humans matter. That's really what my work focuses on, leading from within peace.

Gresham Harkless 7:05

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And it's funny because I always usually say that whenever you look at any business organization, no matter how big or how small, a lot of times when you peel back the onion, you forget that they're made up of people, and they're made up of people that have goals, aspirations, have good days, bad days, all those things.

I think a lot of times, we lose sight of that, sometimes as leaders, but also as people who are supporting certain businesses or organizations, I think we sometimes forget that these are not things that aren't human. They're made up of people that live and breathe just like we do.

Erica Reed 7:41

Definitely, yeah, no androids here yet. I know that AI is on the way. But as of right now, we're still humans.

Gresham Harkless 7:48

Exactly. That makes perfect sense. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be what you feel kind of distinguishes you or your organization. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart?

Erica Reed 8:01

I love this question. I love this question because I had to dig deep into like, Hey, what is my unique selling proposition? After thinking about it, it came very quickly to me, because I realized, uniquely, I get to see both sides of the desk, and I see the clients that come into my office and people come to therapy for various reasons. But more often than not, we end up talking about work, either because work has created a problem in their life with the toxic environment, the unhealthy leadership styles, the workload stress, or the challenges the employee is facing that sitting on my sofa in therapy is affecting them at work.

So I get that side of it but also get the leadership side of speaking with organizational leaders and owners and the C suite. I hear their frustrations with their employees because they're sitting on my sofa, everyone is sitting on my sofa. So I get to hear these perspectives in these frustrations and these desires that are not actually being communicated. In the workplace, everyone is holding it close to their chest and they don't know how to bring it together. So that's actually what makes what I'm able to offer so unique is the training programs and the coaching programs that I put together have that aspect of being able to identify not only what the organization's goals are and who they're hiring me, so they're very clear.

But actually, what does that HR professional feel and think, what are their frustrations? What is that the leader is trying to figure out how to get their employees to show up on time? How are they feeling? Are you feeling who can't seem to get to work on time, because of everything else going on in her life? So that's what makes me unique, I get to see it all from photographs of the desk.

Gresham Harkless 9:48

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And it's kind of like a whole holistic view of everything and what's happening because I think sometimes and often we get so kind of drill down and look from our perspective, we don't necessarily have or tap into that empathy, where we're able to understand what somebody else is doing.

So it's great sometimes we can tap into that ourselves to be able to lean on somebody like yourself to be able to see the other side of the coin to see how somebody else might be looking at whatever situation, because at the end of the day, we're all a team, and we're trying to move forward towards a common goal. So to make sure that we're on the same page in terms of doing that.

Erica Reed 10:48

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 10:49

Definitely. Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Erica Reed 11:04

Well, this is one, I was slow to accept, and I was pushing back against for a while. But now that I've embraced it, I can't do business without it. And it's something really, really simple, that's just to write everything down.

Gresham Harkless 11:19

Nice, I definitely appreciate that hack, and especially the simplicity of it. I too, was very resistant against that as well and try to remember everything in my head. I think that now I have this mentality that I'm going to forget everything. So because of that, I made sure to write everything down. So it kind of leaves or alleviates that burden. It helps me to focus on other things. Sometimes we forget that even if you think that it's something small that you have to remember, that takes up space where something else can't be in that particular space. So it's important to just write things down, and it gets it off your plate and off your back.

Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you could hop into be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Erica Reed 11:57

Oh, my younger business self would identify herself as a business self.

Gresham Harkless 12:14

Absolutely, I think might be Martin Luther King, the quote says, you know, faith is being able to take the next step without seeing the entire staircase. And a lot of times getting out of your comfort zone, you have to be able to do that. It's a great reminder.

Now, I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question. I know, we touched on this a little bit as well, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote and quote CEOs on this show.

So Erica, what does being a CEO mean to you,

Erica Reed 12:39

Being a CEO to me is really about creating impact. I know that so many of us are focused on the numbers. And yes, we have to live, we have to pay the bills, we want to have a quality of life. We want to be profitable. I think that goes without saying.

But to me, being a CEO is not only that aspect of it, but creating an impact in my life, feeling proud of what I'm doing, the difference that I'm making in the lives of others, knowing that I'm being true to my gifts and my abilities, and I'm not hiding them, the impact that it creates for my family, there's a certain measure of flexibility that comes with being a CEO.

With that flexibility, I've been able to be present for my children.

Gresham Harkless 13:31

So I definitely appreciate that definition, appreciate you even more for the impact you had today, and the impact you have in your business and everything that you're doing. I think sometimes we forget how much of an impact that we have just by telling our story and by going out and getting it out of our own comfort zones that we empower others to be able to do it and much of the same way.

So Erica, I truly appreciate your time. I wanted to pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get ahold of you.

Erica Reed 14:03

Well, thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of this experience with you. It's truly been exciting and amazing. And I guess one final thought I would have for your listeners is to pause, you know, as CEOs, as business owners, as entrepreneurs as parallel printers, you're busy, you have a lot on your plate whether because of your personal commitments or your professional commitments. And so often we could just stay busy.

So I would encourage people to pause and reflect on where they are right now, what they need, and how they feel, and then make sure that they are setting time in their schedule to get those needs met. So I would love for you to reach out to me. I am all over at LinkedIn, Facebook, and my website. My website is ericanreed.com. On Facebook and LinkedIn, it's Erica Reed LCSW-C. Those are my handles for LinkedIn and Facebook.

Gresham Harkless 15:10

Nice. We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes as well just so that anybody can follow up with you. But definitely appreciate that reminder to just pause. Because a lot of times we miss things especially since you and I are both in the DMV area, as hot as it is and how many are running around and happening and sometimes we have to just take that pause to hear those small voices that are pointing us into the right directions or listening to our calling and our gifts.

So I appreciate you for doing that. I appreciate you even more for reminding us to do that. And I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Erica Reed 15:40

Thank you, same to you.

Outro 15:42

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating. Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co.

This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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