IAM612- Educator Harnesses Teams’ Collective Strengths

Asmâa Methqal is a master communicator, an esteemed educator, and an advocate of Appreciative Leadership. She is passionate about building on strengths to inspire leaders and businesses to move towards positive change, innovation, and sustainable growth using the life-giving principles of Appreciative Inquiry.

Asmâa is in high demand, known for her authenticity, passion, and engaging experiential learning style. She enjoys sparking conversations that matter to enable leaders and entrepreneurs to harness the collective strengths of their teams to create thriving and flourishing organizations of the future.

• CEO Hack: Gratitude, flip it to something positive

• CEO Nugget: Find and unlock your zone of genius/strength
• CEO Definition: Chief connection officer/ Chief movement officer

Website: https://www.maestrahub.com/appreciative-facilitation/

Special link/Email Course: https://www.maestrahub.com/iamceo

Instagram: @_iamasmaa_ and @maestrahub
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/AsmaaMethqal
Twitter: @AsmaaMethqal

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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, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Asmâa Methqal of Maestra Hub. Asmâa, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Asmâa Methqal 0:40

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

No problem super excited to have you on. What I want to do, is read a little bit more about Asmâa so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Asmâa Methqal is a master communicator, an esteemed educator, and an advocate of Appreciative Leadership. She is passionate about building on strengths to inspire leaders and businesses to move towards positive change, innovation, and sustainable growth using the life-giving principles of Appreciative Inquiry.

Asmâa is in high demand, known for her authenticity, passion, and engaging experiential learning style. She enjoys sparking conversations that matter to enable leaders and entrepreneurs to harness the collective strengths of their teams to create thriving and flourishing organizations of the future.

Asmâa are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Asmâa Methqal 1:23 

Definitely. I'm so ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:25

Awesome. Let's do it. So, to kick everything off, I guess I wanted to start in the beginning to hear a little bit more on your CEO story, what led you to get started with your business?

Asmâa Methqal 1:34

About my business and my story yeah, for sure. I have been in the business of marketing and strategies for over 15-20 years, right now. While I was doing that I really enjoyed connecting brands with their customers all around the world, and really refining their message and their vision and their purpose. I really loved doing that. I was working for different not-for-profit organizations, I worked for multimillion-dollar companies and so I had this amazing career in marketing and business that I really loved and enjoyed. At some point, I realized that I was building my business from my zone of strength. When I discovered the philosophy of appreciative inquiry, the power of that methodology, and how we can help harness groups and businesses into having this incredible conversation that allowed them to get to the next level faster, and innovate faster, I just got super excited about that.

I decided to move from just being a business strategist, which I'd love to do to also becoming a facilitator. The role ended up being to facilitate conversations within communities and within companies to showcase their strengths. It is so interesting that the name of my business is called Maestra, which is the feminine of Maestro, which is like conducting conversations. It's just that I had the name way before I changed slowly where I'm headed, with comebacks and conversations for people. So that's what I do now. I still love to do marketing and business but I also love to bring new people and create those conversations that will allow them to harness the strengths of their own companies.

Gresham Harkless 3:31

Awesome. I truly love that. I truly love how you broke down about the name. A lot of times I've heard it, when people say like, whatever be careful what you name your son or your daughter or whatever, because sometimes they leave that out. It's so funny that with your business, which is what I truly love so much is that a lot of times, we may not know or be crystal clear on exactly how we want to do it. But it might evolve and sometimes when it evolves, it becomes even closer to what we had the vision before we even knew exactly how we were going to do it.

Asmâa Methqal 3:58

Exactly. Yeah. No, it was very interesting that I always loved elements that had to do with music and dancing. So when people were asking me before, I'd be like, yeah, I conduct symphonies within companies, so that way, everybody is in tune, and everybody in the business has everything and is in the same wave, everyone is doing the same thing. Because sometimes people come to me asking me, can you help me with my marketing needs to launch this product and always go back and say marketing is just one small element, you still need to have sales and customer service and product management everything connected and have the synchrony between everything. So I loved saying that before, which was great.

That's exactly what I do and I love to do. It was just when I discovered facilitation through appreciative inquiry. It was that interesting shift that I didn't become just the expert in front of people but all I had to do was to be able to see the space in front of me see the company in front of me and be able to ask them the right questions that will enable them to harm whatever it's already working within them and amplify that to make them even better. So now I conduct conversations, I'm a conductor where before, like I was creating the business symphony, so it's just like, beautiful, how exactly what you said when you have a name like things really start to connect, and then you realize I made the right choice A while back because everything now is still connecting.

Gresham Harkless 5:24

That's when you give yourself a pat on the back because you already knew what to say you're doing some really phenomenal things. At the end of the day is always great, beautiful music, it sounds like for these businesses and organizations.

I know you kind of touched on it a little bit on how you kind of work with clients. I heard you say the word appreciative or the phrase Appreciative Inquiry a couple of times, could you break down a little bit more on what exactly that means, how that works, and how you execute that with organizations?

Asmâa Methqal 5:49

Yeah, for sure. So Appreciative Inquiry is this philosophy that was created almost 30 years ago, and the founder of Appreciative Inquiry is David Cooper Writer. To give a little bit story, David Cooper Writer when he was working on his doctorate, was supposed to go to Cleveland Clinic, and started to analyze how their systems were working or not working so he can give them advice about how they can make them better. But then what he realized is that when he was asking questions about what was working, what not working, what was broken, what was missing, he was feeling like the energy in the room was like, just negative. People were not really creative, nothing was brought up so he started asking them positive questions about what was working, and what had been at their best. He realized the energy was higher and people were more energized and more excited.

So he went back to the university and asked, Hey, is it okay if I can change my thesis instead of focusing on what's broken and not working, can I focus on what's working and what's great and they're like, yeah, go have fun and so he did. He realized that the moment he started asking questions, things started to become better. So one of the first principles of Appreciative Inquiry is that the first question is faithful and that means that the moment I ask a question, your environment already changed before you even ask me the question. So I can say something as simple as like, how are you today, Gresham? Or I can say, hey, Gresham, can you tell me what was your high point moment this weekend? What happened to you this weekend, I was like, mate, you're so excited, and so energized and so happy and glad to be alive.

So just by me asking that different second question, your environment already changed, because I'm already like, allowing you to go somewhere that is more creative, more open, more exciting. That's the start of appreciative inquiry. So when we talk about inquiries about discovery, it's basically me asking you generative questions with authentic curiosity. Like, that's all I'm doing. I'm really authentically curious and asking you this question that I have no answers to, that I want you to elaborate on. So I am in this process of discovery with you while we are building this deep connection. On the other side, we have appreciated and appreciated a lot of people who think that when we say appreciative, it means that we only focus on the positive. But that's not the reality.

The reality is we are choosing to reframe an element into something that we want to appreciate, because while we appreciate appreciation, and so focus on things that are working, it's always okay to talk about challenges like, what is the lesson from that challenge, and then focusing on that, what makes you different. What is the quality that you've built by when you were in like living that challenge at that moment, what change, and so we are focusing on what is appreciative, so that way, we can appreciate more of it. So that is the base of like, Appreciative Inquiry. Because it's existed for 30 years, you have David Cooperrider, who works with the United Nations, he worked with NASA, and Facebook there are a lot of companies right now or all around the world that are using Appreciative Inquiry.

Also the facilitation that I'm doing, it's called the exchange method, where we are able to bring in the best of appreciative inquiry and design thinking positive psychology, and green that choreography of conversation so we can create exponential outcomes for companies just through conversations.

Gresham Harkless 9:22

Nice. I definitely appreciate that and it sounds like that secret sauce that I usually ask about or what kind of conceptual park has the ability to be able to do that to be able to ask those questions to open up different ways and frames that we're able to look at stuff is definitely extremely powerful. So I thank you for sharing that.

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So that could be like an app or book or habit that you have, what's something you feel makes you more effective and efficient?

Asmâa Methqal 9:49

My first hack for myself is gratitude. Like I've always had that gratitude mindset in everything that I do. If I wake up every morning I always mention three things that I'm grateful for So that always helps with like appreciating what's already in existence.

Then my hack that I am doing right now and I am trying to build that so it can become my own muscle to whatever situation that I am in, I like to flip it. So if it's going from a negative, I want to flip it into something positive. One thing, one skill I want to build for myself, and I think it's an amazing skill for every leader and CEO to build is how to ask powerful positive questions. It starts with that reframing, it's thought about naming what is the problem, then after that, flipping it into what is like its opposite positive, and then from there, framing it into what will be the desired outcome, and then mentioning what that is.

Gresham Harkless 10:48

Absolutely, when you can definitely look at things in a different way, it helps out so much.

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or something you might tell a client or even a younger business self.

Asmâa Methqal 11:00

Yeah, I think my wisdom for CEOs will be and for every entrepreneur, too, is like, identify what is your zone of strength. But if you can find and unlock your zone of genius, I think that's when the magic happens. I think that was for me, because when I was doing business strategies and marketing strategies, I was definitely in my zone of strength, I was really good at it. I enjoyed doing it. I love doing it. But the moment that I switched to doing more facilitation work and more training, I really felt that it was finally in my zone of genius, and everything became just easier, everything became more fun. Everything was just natural and incredible.

A lot of us like to work our whole life from our zone of strengths, something that we're good at, or something that we had to build skills on by going to the university and our life experience. But there are things that we can do so naturally, that we were like this counted it like, oh, that's nothing. Well, for other people that's an incredible skill to have. I love doing that and I call it like unlocking your superpowers. I love doing that exercise with some of my clients. I will go to their sales team or the leadership team and we'll define like what are like their natural superpowers and even give them a name. That becomes something incredible.

So if each person can take the time to just like ask people all around you what am I really good at? What is that one thing that I do better than everybody else? Like, can you just tell me what that is? Just like get people to answer that question for you. I think a lot of people will be very surprised by their answer. If you can be able to include that in your day-to-day job or like switch your role a little bit to do more of what you are. That's your zone of genius. I think a lot of amazing things will happen.

Gresham Harkless 13:02

Absolutely. No, I appreciate you for sharing that with us. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favourite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show. So Asma, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Asmâa Methqal 13:11

See, it's funny, I have two, chief connection officers, but also achieve movement officer, I guess because I use a lot of movement and dancing for some of my facilitation. But movement for me comes from moving people and moving companies. So moving people from one place to the other because as a leader, we are like moving people to become their best version of themselves. But we're also moving our business to new heights, and we're moving our customers and our clients to a new way of doing at the same time.

The reason why I said shift connection officer is all about connecting truly with the people all around you. Having that safe space that you can create as a CEO, for your team members and other people to feel safe to share anything that they want to share. So they can be vulnerable and open and also to create that connection and that inclusion between each other.

Gresham Harkless 14:12

I appreciate your time and all the awesome things you're doing. What I wanted to do was just hear a little bit more about some of the things that are keeping you going and getting you moving and of course how best people can get a hold of you.

Asmâa Methqal 14:40

What I'm mostly super excited about right now is I was able to take all my marketing, design thinking movement, Appreciative Inquiry, positive psychology and mindset, and all of that and I started creating this other company on the side called Fire and Flow and it's about helping women leaders to step into their feminine power. So that's like one key thing that I started to become very passionate about because I'm realising that the world is imbalanced and one way to do that is to help women to remember to be the feminine power that is within themselves, but also for organizations and companies to start adding feminine leadership traits into the way they are running their business.

So everything I talked about today from connection and asking the right questions and creating that inclusion, and that psychological safety, and that trust, and creativity, all of those are feminine traits. So a lot of companies are missing those and once we have those, everything included, that will create that amazing balance. That's what I'm super excited about. Thank you so much for asking me that question.

For people to get ahold of me definitely I am very active on Instagram. So it's @ _iamasmaa_. Also, I'm available on LinkedIn at Asmâa Methqal on Facebook as well and my website is maestrahub.com.

Gresham Harkless 16:00

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again Asmâa. We will definitely have the link information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you and super excited about the new kind of side business that you're working on as well too and how it has everything organically flowing. So I'm sure there's information as well for everybody in the show notes about that to find out more information but again, appreciate your time. Appreciate all the awesome things you're doing.

I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 16:22

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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