Align Your Energy, Advance Your Career: Silencing the Ego in 2025 – Predict 2025

Hey there, I'm Jennifer Gio and I am very happy to be here today presenting on Textron Predict. Um, I am the Chief Strategy officer of W2 Communications and a longtime friend of the Textron, uh, family, so to speak. Um, and I'm really excited to speak with you guys today.

Uh, when Alan Shimel first asked me to speak, my first thought was, what am I going to talk about for this audience? It's a largely technical conference, and he said, anything you want, which, uh, he should have known better with me than to do that. But I got excited to talk about something that we don't hear a whole lot about at conferences, which is really the importance of self-energy and authenticity and so on.

Um, and how we operate as leaders, as colleagues, and even how that extends into our personal lives. Um, and then, you know, just to help us, uh, think beyond ourselves and how to benefit, uh, each other in that regard. Um, you know, I joked in the abstract that it's a little bit witchy.

Woo, woowoo. Uh, it's not really, there's a lot of science to back this up, but I'm, I'm, I'm really excited. So with that, um, I'll get started.

Um, so moving into it, why, why should you listen to me? Well, you don't have to, but you're here, so you might as well. Um, I've been in this industry for, in the cybersecurity industry for 25 years.

Um, more than half of its been a VP role or above. And I don't mean that in a fancy, ego driven kind of, uh, yay, yay me been a vp. Just that means I've made a lot of mistakes and I've also learned, learned a lot of good lessons.

Um, and I'm happily, readily willing to admit the mistakes that I've made to you along this line. Um, if it helps you, uh, if you're interested in this topic, um, I've spent a lot of time the last two and a half years or so, really focusing on both, working on myself in terms of achieving higher self and getting into self-energy from, honestly, from getting sober to doing deep intensive trauma therapy, to doing holistic work, to doing a spiritual work, to doing classes and certifications, even things like tarot and divination, which scares some people. That's still what you will apart.

Um, and so, you know, I wanna share what I've learned, and a lot of what I've learned, quite frankly, is through my wonderful therapist who focuses on something called Internal Family Systems, which is a lot of where self-energy comes from that concept or words talked about. Um, and so I want to share that with as many people as I can, noting that I am not a clinician, um, and I hope to eventually start a side NGO, where I'm helping people do this for folks, especially underrepresented groups that don't have access to traditional, um, mental health care. So that's me, why I'm here talking about this topic.

And so I will get actually into the topic now, 'cause that's what you wanna hear about. So what is self energy? Um, and pauses, if someone was going to answer, then, if we look at the strict definition of it, of self-energy, um, it's, it's really about operating from authenticity and inner alignment.

And what I mean by that is that every part of you, your mind, body, spirit, it's a state of consciousness that includes your feelings and every element within you. If we're familiar with different parts, we talk about our inner child, we talk about, you know, certain parts of our, our psyches, we talk about different things that, that motivate us. All of those need to be in alignment of those things are in alignment, and they're rooted in our values and our integrity.

We were operating outta self-energy. And if you go look at the IFS model that I was talking about before, and it's also, um, defined this way in other places, there's, there are eight Cs, which I did right in front of me so I didn't forget. So I don't wanna get confused.

That come with energy, compassion, curiosity, clarity, creativity, calm, confidence, courage and connectedness. What do all of those things have together have to do with each other? They relate to things outside of us.

They relate to people outside of us, even though it's self energy. They are critical when it comes to the interactions with others. Um, and why does this all matter?

Why do we even need to get to this whole, like, like, you know, you know, self energy piece, it builds trust, resilience, and influence, um, because people will trust you if you're true to yourself and you know yourself. And no one's perfect with this. I don't know anyone that's perfect with this.

Um, but it helps to make people, for people first, excuse me, decisions instead of I first decisions. So, in contrast, um, you know, ego driven versus self-energy driven behavior, um, sadly, a lot of people operate out of ego. Um, even healthy ego, quote unquote, um, which doesn't scale for extreme peace within, uh, within us that can lend itself to the outside to create trust and growth with others.

Um, and that's really important. And go, just going back really quickly to the trust and resilience and influence part. Um, you know, that's really important whether you're a leader in an organization, um, a you know, uh, a a critical peer to someone, a partner, a friend, what have you.

Um, and it's not, you know, we talk about influence. We're not talking about the state of like being influencers. It's like people want to listen to you because they know what you're saying is authentic and it, they trust that it's for the goodness of everyone around versus just you.

So let's talk about ego a little bit and why it's a barrier. Um, now if you've ever taken a psych 1 0 1 class, you know, an ego isn't awesome. Um, but in this particular instance, I want to talk a little bit about like what a good ego can provide it.

It can provide a healthy sense of self-confidence, allowing you to believe in yourself, pursue your goals, face challenges. Um, it can act as a positive motivator driving your personal growth, your achievement. Um, and it stops short of becoming self-centered or arrogant because that's when you get egotistical and nobody really wants to be around you.

But if you go back to everything I just described, they're all very me oriented. And the ego is kind of a divide between your true self and the, um, and what you present to the world. And if you, it's a sheen, for lack of a better term.

That's what I was kind of calling it to myself this morning when I was thinking about what I was going to say. Um, 'cause making decisions even from that quote unquote good ego can lead to self-centered decisions that have limited outcomes for others. So, for instance, if, um, you know, I made the decision to do this tough today.

'cause Alan asked me if I would wanna talk. And of course they said yes 'cause I wanted to help my friend, and I love tech strong and I wanted to do all this. Um, you know, but there might have been some ego going there of like, oh, it'd be great to, you know, speak about this topic.

I wanna talk about that topic that's not coming from the place. That's my place of self energy. So none of this is, is is perfect, right?

It's, it's all something that we strive for. None of us are gonna be from the Dalai Lama here. Um, but you know, even with a healthy ego, one becomes consumed by behaviors, the actions, and the thoughts of others.

So going back to the ego like I know, and a healthy ego, like I think I'm good at my job. I think my friends like me, I think I'm a good cat mom. I think the industry respects me, but they're all predicated on opinions of other people.

And those things should not matter. We become consumed by the behaviors and actions and thoughts of the others around others, or excuse me, apparently it doesn't teach us how to talk others around us. And it blocks the true self.

It's the enemy of growth. Ego is the enemy of growth and progress. Self-energy is how you get to growth and progress and trust in all the things I described before.

So this next slide, I hate text, fold slides, but I'm making you suffer through this anyway because I wanna make some points on here. Um, emphasizing ego-driven versus people first slash self-energy approaches. Um, people first approaches foster trust.

They build stronger relationships, they create environments where everyone feels, feels valued and motivated. And again, going back to the ego, you might think, well, I have an ego about good things I do about, you know, that are about me. It doesn't affect others, but it's still me led thinking.

So just picking on a couple of these things around, um, you know, decision making and the contrast there. Are you making a decision in a bubble or are you getting diverse input when you're doing recognition? Are you like, I did this.

I'm really proud of this. I'm doing this. Like my first rule of thumb as a manager is if something goes wrong, it's my fault.

If it's a win, it's the team. Now that doesn't mean I'm not going out giving around ation trophies and the team's not like, Hey, we can, this is how we can do this better, but everybody should be really proud about this win, right? And this is how we are gonna work together to make things better next time.

Um, conflict resolution and work ethic. They're the, the, the contrast between those two things and how you address issues with people and make them feel safe. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that safety moving, moving on, and I'll get you off of this very text heavy slide here in a second.

But there's just very nuanced changes in how we operate when you get to that self-energy piece. And so let me talk about the science of self-energy, because it's not all witchy. Wooo.

There are science behind all of this. Again, a lot of this is predicated through, um, you know, clinician education that I've received or work that I've done. So there's a neuroscience behind authenticity.

Um, brain studies, uh, have shown that operating authentically reduces your cognitive dis, I can never say this. Cognitive dissonance means you do what you say, you say what you do, which means you're promoting cl mental clarity and reducing stress. Because if you don't say what you do or do what you say and all the things in between, you're gonna get stressed out because you're not being authentic with people and you're not telling the truth to people.

And of course, that's going to stress you out. Um, trust in oxytocin, authentic behaviors do stimulate the release of oxytocin. And I know many people have heard that term in different types of conversations, but really at its core, oxytocin is a hormone is associated with trust, planning and cooperation.

So you can have that even in, um, you know, in just person to person conversations if you can achieve that level of trust and people can feel good about themselves. Um, the impact on resilience from a scientific perspective, um, there are research studies that have linked self-awareness and inner alignment, which I was talking about before, the mind, body, spirit, all of that, um, to enhanced resilience, allowing people to recover more effectively from setbacks. We all have setbacks, um, you know, but do you let them keep you down?

Or do you have the confidence and the, the anchor in your true self to get back to balance very quickly when something goes wrong? And then back to leadership again since was this is what the majority of the talk is about. Um, it's also been studied that authentic leadership models demonstrate self-energy, fosters employee engagement, loyalty, Andover, and overall team performance, higher overall team performance.

None of this we are a family stuff. Um, you know, you don't wanna have en measurement in your work environment, but you know, you, I know I personally, if I, uh, if I respect my manager or someone that I look up to or a mentor or even colleagues, I'm gonna work that much more aggressively to get what needs to be done, done for them. And much to the opposite, if I feel the other way or I might leave that job, right?

So as a leader, I mean this, this is different. You hear, everybody's heard the term, they just a boss and a leader. Anyone can get promoted into boss.

Anybody can found a company and poof, become the CEO. That doesn't mean that they're a leader, it just means they have the title. These are the elements that get you to become a leader and help to foster more healthy environments.

So, so we're getting into the self-energy wins and what are the types of wins that come with self-energy? Um, you know, trust and authenticity. I'm not gonna go through, you are going to be like, wow, she's so repetitive about trust and authenticity and resilience and leadership, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

Um, because it's really critical. Um, and it, the, um, uh, it, there, there's really no way around it. Leaders who prioritize self-energy are more resilient and influential.

And when you get to start self-energy, you can even start to read other people's energy very easily, which helps you in a leadership perspective. I'm not saying you who are lead mind reader, but you can get a sense very quickly if someone's uncomfortable, if you need to do something to help 'em, if you need to offer them maybe a break if they're burnout or so on and so forth. And I have a very good friend, um, Dr.

Stacy Thayer, if you know her, who is an absolute expert on that. So look up on some of her work on that. I won't even try to repeat it.

Um, but you know, the trust and authenticity, the improved resilience, the enhanced leadership, you're like, wait, leadership now you're talking about enhanced leadership. You know, this is where you are more perceived as trustworthy and influential, resulting in the higher team performance and satisfaction. And I always tie this to some very important lessons I learned as a leader and as an employee.

No one is more trustworthy than someone who says they need help. No one is more trustworthy than someone that says, I don't know. And no one is more trustworthy than someone that says I was wrong.

'cause that shows they've got significant confidence and they know who they are. I don't trust people that don't do that. That's just me.

But that's, those are the leaders that you're like, okay, that person's gonna say I was wrong, or I need help or this or that makes you feel more valued. And it shows you that they're willing to be authentic with you. So I think that's a really important part to point to make positive emotional regulation.

Emotional regulation is something that's often misunderstood. And quite frankly, it wasn't until recently until I really understood it. Um, it's really having a, an emotional response that is conducive to what is happening in the moment.

It doesn't mean being a robot or being completely numb to the world because then you're not growing, you're not living, you're not experiencing, right? It's, you know, something goes wrong at work. Somebody messes up something that they're supposed to deliver, whether it's code, whether it's a paper, whether it's a talk, what have you, and you freak out on them.

That is not emotional regulation. That is not gonna win you friends versus I'm gonna give you some constructive feedback, let's work with this together. Or on a more personal note, I did this this morning, couldn't find my glasses.

I was like, ah, was it really that big of a deal? Do I not have 12 more laying around my house? Of course I do.

So that was not very emotional regulated, um, of me. So, so that's a really important part of self-leadership, uh, self-energy and where it plays into leadership and where that's important. And then of course, higher wellbeing.

Again, I said this before, none of us are gonna become the Dalai Lama here, but operate from self energy aligns with just being positive psychologically, right? We're happier, we have more purpose, we're more fulfilled. Can I say that I'm always happy, purpose driven and fulfilled?

Absolutely not. But I strive for and I'm honest with myself when I'm not. Um, and you know, and I try to learn from those moments of like, how did I get here and how do I not get here again?

And how can I be better? Because if I'm not in a wellbeing state, I can't be helpful to others, which is what this is all about. No, I did also say in my abstract that I would talk about personal brand, um, whether you speak at a conference, whether you're on Mastodon, x, blue sky, you're doing blogging, what happened, what have you, you are marketing and I know a lot of people don't like that, but it's what you're doing and that is part of brand.

Um, and so what is your personal brand? Who are you to the world? You want your brand to be authentic.

So you're trusted, um, and you want your brand to be authentic because you want to be authentic. More importantly, your values and your actions align and people can see it. You're authentic and that creates credibility.

People wanna hear what you have to say, they listen. If it's obvious that you were doing promotion out there and self-promotion, and it's clear that you're doing that because you wanna do it because you wanna see your face on the screen, people are gonna stop listening to you after a while. You know?

So build a personal brand that reflects integrity. What I have on this slide is a personal brand wheel. It's a visual.

I just need something to put on this slide. Quite frankly, I'm not a big fan of them, but it's a visual tool that maps out the different elements that make up a personal brand. And a lot of like executive coaches and like B2C marketers and like P two P marketers and things like that, that are helping people figure out their brand use, things like this.

But if you look at the core, there's four things there at the core there, exploring, uh, spirituality, leaving a legacy, and so and so on and so forth. But if you say, well, I wanna be known as a creator, but I wanna leave a legacy, those things don't align. So just again, just making sure that you have alignment and you're showing it in your actions external.

Don't hide who you are, be who you really are, and make sure that aligns with that integrity that you have and that self energy that you have accomplished by being calm and collected. Focusing on those eight Cs, again, the compassion, the curiosity, the clarity, the creativity, the calm, the confidence, the courage, the connectedness. I might have said a calm twice and then I might have forgotten curiosity, but I'm gonna say it just in case.

So just something to think about when you're presenting yourself to the world. So what does this have to do with cybersecurity and tech in general? Jen, why are you even talking about this thing?

I know somebody's thinking that, um, everything we do in this industry, or even if we're not directly working related to cyber in a different technical area, it's high risk. There's a lot of people that rely on us for stability, if not security, from protecting against risk and threat, protecting against insiders, protecting against poor ethics, poor leadership, what have you. Because high stakes environments lead to high stakes behavior if you aren't rooted.

Um, so you've gotta have trust in order to deal. I don't know anybody that it has a more stressful job than an incident responder. So my, my love and respect goes out to you and thank you for all you do if you're on this or if you hear this, but, you know, building trust and, and in terms of cyber, so you know, building trust, making sure that you have trust on your team.

So the more that you operate outta your self energy, um, the more people are gonna trust you. And, and not double, double think, double think. I dunno if that's a thing.

It is now what you have to say. They have confidence in the direction that you're giving 'em. You can make more quick decisions when it comes to a high stake environment.

Very emotional, regulated, quick decisions. So you can help solve the issue at hand. You have better collaboration and teamwork and can move faster as a unit through solving these issues.

You have resilience under stress. I mentioned earlier that anchor that brings you back to yourself. Um, that's very, very important.

And again, we talked about ethics, ethical leadership. Um, you're gonna listen to, and especially in a situation when it deals with cybersecurity and you're dealing with an incident, um, you are looking to your leaders to have an ethical answer to these, to these questions. And sometimes it can get really tricky in cyber.

Um, but that's a really, really important element to this, is setting strong ethical examples or integrity is paramount in general. I even said this at a marketing conference. I gave you a keynote at last, not this past December, but December, 2023, where I basically said, no matter what your job is in cybersecurity, whether you are a marketer or whether you are, you know, on the front lines of tech, if you don't care about the outcome, if you don't care about the ethics, 'cause of ethics of security, plenty of other industries out there for you, we have to care and we have to be rooted in ethics to be effective.

So I'm gonna take a little sidestep here on the self energy piece for a second, which is essentially it's still leadership with self-energy. We're not getting away from that since that's the topic. But this is less about what you do and who you are and where your energy comes from and where those eight C's are rooted.

So here's where I'm gonna get into little what you move for you. Our body is hundreds of chak, uh, chakras, which is any point in the, in this of spiritual power along the body. Most of them are our feet should be told, but there are seven that get the most attention.

Um, the fixture emphasizes the heart chakra due to the topic, um, which is the center of lu passion, which is where important leadership comes from. You also have a crown, which is awareness and intelligence. A third eye intuition and imagination, throat communication, solar plexus, which is right of your upper torso, which is self-esteem and cons, confidence, your pelvic area, you have your sacral, which is pleasure and creativity.

And then your lower spine, your have your root with first stability and groundedness. A lot of people think that they, they do work on their throat or if they do work on their crown that they're gonna be better affected. Business communicators, when it's really working on the heart chakra, that's gonna make you more successful.

Um, leadership and self energy reveal refers to the idea that a leader's personal energy level, including their motivation, enthusiasm, positive mindset, impacts their ability to lead and inspire. If you think several slides ago when I talked about how they had that motivation and enthusiasm for themselves, if they live this for themselves, all that motivation and enthusiasm is for you, for your team, for your company, for your organization, for the industry and beyond leading to better performance and engagement for everyone. Um, listening over, dictating inspiring trust and motivations, long-term impact and organizational success and just happiness, psychological safety, things like that.

And I'll talk about that in a second. So a quick little exercise, which I won't know if you do it or not, but just to give you an example. And if you don't get these notes, my contact info, um, will be at the end of this.

Feel free to reach out. So you're sitting here going, okay, so how do I even start to get to this? I want to know what my authentic self is.

How do I, how do I get to this really quickly? A few steps. Start with a prompt.

Grab a piece of paper, write down one way you can act less out of ego. Think of something you've done recently that you made the decision out of ego. Was it a talk that you gave?

Was it a decision you made at work? Was it a decision you made out of with a, with a friend? Um, you know, and then flip it.

How can you do the opposite? How can you do it where it, you're actually doing it from a state of self energy where you're actually like, all right, I'm calm, I'm connected, I'm clear. What would I do differently in that situation?

Journal about it. Share it with a friend, therapist, spiritual leader, whomever. Meditate if you want to.

I said in the abstract, I'm not gonna make you meditate, I'm not gonna make you meditate. It scares a lot of people. Um, but it can be as simple as just being quiet in the shower and thinking about it.

That's how simple meditation can be. Um, doesn't have to be super complex the way a lot of other folks do it. And then write down steps to change it.

Change your behavior if you wanna change it. Um, I use reminders in my phone of things that I wanna change to get to a happier, more rooted, more, uh, integrity focused looking outward to help the world higher type of self. Um, yeah, sounds kind of funny when you think about it, how old world that is.

But I also have mantras that I have a repeat every day, every day. I repeat that I embrace my whole self, including all of my parts to make sure that I'm doing positive self-talk that's a part of that as well. So that's one example of how you can get there.

Um, I won't get into too much 'cause we're getting close on time here, but, um, practical steps to align your energy outside of that exercise that I just gave you, which you could do for, for many different things. Um, reflect on your core values. Do you know what your values are?

Reflect on that. Are you acting in them? Are you centered in them?

Do you have to try? Do you have to try? What's happening with your ego?

Practice? Mindfulness and self-awareness. I just talked about that.

Um, but you can also go touch, grasp, do something else. Find your thing. Embrace feedback.

This is the difference between making decisions about who you are, based on what other people say, but find out from other people how you're received and think about it. Set goals. How do you want to contribute to the world?

How do you want to contribute to the per to your personal and professional growth in a way to help others stay centered during cha cha challenges? Excuse me, cultivate empathy. I used to not think I was an empath, which is kind of funny 'cause you can't do this if you're not an empath, but cultivate empathy.

And that really means understanding other people's emotions. There are very gifted empaths that can feel the emotion of everyone around them. There are few and far between, but cultivate that empathy and then reevaluate regularly.

If I think about the last year of my life, I've had so many changes that I've had to reevaluate my value system and structure so many times to make sure that I stand aligned. And again, I mess up all the time. So be patient if this is something you wanna achieve, be kind to yourself.

Be kind to others. Be patient with others while you're messing up. Be patient with others while they mess up.

Be transparent. Help other people learn. People might notice something different about you.

Uh, tell them, you know, there's no, you know, nothing wrong, being honest, you could help someone else learn to do it, but it's not about being p perfect all the time. It's about making decisions that are rooted in, oops, excuse me, that are rooted in authenticity. And again, as I close my contact information, my email, Twitter, or I can't call it x I'm sorry, blue sky, my LinkedIn are on here.

This is all about trust and authenticity, resilience, leaving the ego behind. Um, a quick call to action I'd challenge you all with is to start small with change, focus on auth, authenticity, and lead with integrity. It just means start being honest with yourself and start acting in that way.

I'm not saying you don't, but you know, put more emphasis on that. I've seen companies flourish and plummet based on this single simple concept, whether it's been adopted or not. And no, I won't name them.

The last thing I'll leave you with is a thought that I love, which is true. Success comes from who you are, not just what you do. And do you have the courage to be that person?

Be who you are to the world, or do you have to hide behind your ego? You'll be way more successful if you do the former. With that said, I say thank you so much for having me.

Um, you know how to contact me if you want to reach out, and I am grateful for this opportunity. Thank you to all the Textron team for having me.