Welcome to the Corvus Effect, where we take you behind the scenes to explore integrated self leadership and help ambitious family men build lasting legacies for themselves, their tribe, and their community. I'm Scott Raven, and together we'll discover how successful leaders master the delicate balance of career advancement, personal health, financial growth, and meaningful relationships.

Get ready to soar. And hello everybody. Thank you so much for coming to another episode of the Corvus effect. Today, we got a real treat. We are joined by Sharlee Lyons, a leadership development expert and best selling author who's mastered the art of transforming average performers into all stars from the vision one athlete to mentoring emerging leaders across corporate nonprofit and educational sectors.

Sharlee knows what it takes to start strong and go further. She has numerous certifications and expertise such as a master consultant with growing leaders, certified Gallup strengths coach, a fascinate certified advisor. Accredited coach by the ICF and she and her husband Todd live in Indiana with their two teenagers, Noah and Sarah, which serve as the test market for all of her training content.

So this is going to be a great discussion. I love sports. My son is big into baseball, which is a common bond between the two of us. So, Sharlee, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Scott, it's such a pleasure to be here with you and with your audience. Well, we appreciate having you on, and let's just get straight to it, because we start with you and your athletic prowess.

Because there are very few people in this world, and I am not one of them, right, that can claim That they were a division one athlete. I want to know from you that focus and discipline that allowed you to achieve that level and to be able to have that enrichment in college of going and going after school and being able to support your school.

Thank you. That's a great question. And boom, way to start it right off the bat. I think I try, you know, we don't mess around around here. I love it. I love it. Well, I would say probably the 2 things that really launched me into that division. 1 career was 1st of all, setting goals. You know, I am obviously a volleyball player, so I'm fairly tall, and you have to imagine me as a freshman in high school.

I looked a lot like Olive Oil from the cartoon Popeye. As a matter of fact, that's what my dad called me quite often. It was Olive Oil, so I was very tall and lanky, not real great coordinated as a freshman in high school, and I remember setting the goal. That I wanted to play division one college volleyball, and I'm sure people looked at me and thought there's no way that has ever been the other thing.

So setting goals is really important, but for me, the mindset piece was really important as well. Right. Some of it was, I've made up my mind that I'm going to do that. I'm going to, there's a lot of work, hard work that went into it. A lot of family sacrifices, as you know, Scott, with anyone that aspires to that level, you've got kids that play travel baseball, you know, and early.

I, that was really early in club ball for volleyball days. And so those were kind of the two things I think that really helped, well, three things, family support that really helped me aspire to that all star level. And I'm so grateful that I did and learned a lot in that process. Yes, yes. And you know, the support system and obviously the mental fortitude when the times get tough and we'll get into how that culminated into your book average to all star equipping young leaders to start strong and go further faster.

But before we get into the book, what I'd like to understand is in that initial transition. Away from sports and towards leadership. What did you find the most applicable lessons that you learned in sports that immediately translated into leadership? Immediately what comes to mind is, is mindset, really.

I think that all star mindset can translate from sports into leadership, into many different areas in your life. So mindset's a huge one, and you'll probably hear that mindset theme as we go through our time together today. One of the other ones was learning to win with humility and to lose with grace.

Both with dignity, right? I think that's life, right? You got to know how to win with humility and lose with grace and to do both of them with dignity. And I would say probably the third thing was how to be a strong woman in moving, you know, women's athletics, you know, I remember as a kid. Women's athletics and title nine starting and women's athletics really coming on the forefront.

And then as I got into high school, really having some wonderful opportunities. And then over just the course of my life watching what has happened for women's athletics, the case, gosh, how blessed I've been to see that. And so I love that because now we have strong women. That are teaching young women how to be a strong woman.

But for me growing up, some of that was a little bit of trial and error. And I learned a lot through that process. Right. You know, it's phenomenal to, uh, see all the way back towards Brady Chastain and to present day with Kaitlin Clark and just the progression of how prevalent women's sports has become.

And I wanted to hone a little bit deeper on one of the elements that you mentioned, which was always. Doing with dignity, right? And whether you're winning or losing in the arena of competition to always bring dignity to the forefront. And I'd love for you to elaborate with our audience. Why do you feel that's so important?

I think that's important for all of us, not just women. First of all, let me say that. I think along with dignity comes kindness and I think we need to spread more kindness. Mm-hmm . I think there absolutely, there is a humility that comes with that, and the whole idea of humility in athletics and in leadership is really an interesting concept.

You don't wanna be too humble, but you don't wanna be too egotistical either, you know? And I have learned that for me is speaking facts. Right. Not necessarily elevating myself or bragging on myself, but really continually going back to facts that helps you, helps you do that. So, yeah, I think dignity is so, so important, whether you're winning or whether you're losing or whether you're cheering for your team.

You know, I do a lot of cheering now. I get to sit in the bleachers. Yep, as do I, and you live with that, you live with your kids now. Yeah, I don't have to be a critic. I don't have to yell at the officials. All I have to do is to be there in support. Not only my child, but the other kids on the team and the coach and the official and the people that are putting on the tournament or the game.

And that's what I love to do now. That's one of my greatest joys in life right now. You know, I love high school sports. I love all sports, but especially high school sports and because when I go to high school sports First of all, I think it is the best ticket in town Nowhere else in indiana. It's like six dollars to get into a sporting event and I can't go see a movie for that And I you know, I get to see some really great levels of play I get to see cheerleaders that are at their best.

I get to see the dance team that's performing at halftime You know, I just get to see young people who are really working on Becoming their very best and there's not a better ticket in town and I would encourage listeners. Go see your high school sports I have an eighth grader, so I am right at the cusp of that, and I'm gonna love every minute of him not living in the moment, but also me living a little bit vicariously through him, and that's a great segue to your book, and Average to all star because you've obviously not only been an all star yourself, you have raised all stars and you have helped young leaders become all stars in their lives.

And just to really define it, what is that gap between average and all star? What is it? I really think the key with that gap is the difference between average and all star really starts with passion. Right? Some of it is that passion. Once you can find someone's passion, then that becomes a relentless drive.

Right. People tend to lean back to things that they're passionate about, and that becomes kind of a relentless drive towards excellence. I was thinking about this the other day. My daughter is a baton twirler and, um, spend many, many hours at baton competitions, sitting in the bleachers and just observing and watching.

And there's some really good twirlers, right? And there, and I would say there's some average twirlers, right? I say there's average, and then there's really good ones. Good and average, maybe fall in the same category. But then there are ones that are all star twirlers, right? The ones that you just can't take your eyes off of when they're performing.

And I think, and I've seen that with Sarah's coach, who is a wonderful young woman. She was the Grand National Twirling Champion a couple of years ago. And a great person to learn from. Absolutely. Right. And just. One of those that we couldn't take our eyes off of and watching. And really it started with that passion that really became a relentless drive for her.

And I believe that champions or all stars in anything, it doesn't matter if it's Vitton, it doesn't matter if it's data analytics, it doesn't matter what it is. All stars in anything that they do have an extra gear that they can kick in. When it's called for, right. And you can just see it in them. And that all, like I said, starts with that passion piece and that relentless drives towards excellence.

And then they just know how. My son calls it your clutch trait. Do you have a clutch trait? Can you deliver when it counts? I like the clutch clutch trade. There you go. You got an extra gear, right? Exactly. It's an extra gear. So. I would say that most people, particularly the people listening to this podcast, aspire to be an all star.

Nobody aspires for ordinary, for lack of a better term. But, not everybody achieves it. What are the barriers that hold them back? I think probably one of the most common barriers is that good is the thief of great. Yes, I would rephrase that as average is the thief of all star, right? Average is good. You know, if you think about the average American, they're overweight, they're in debt, they don't do any professional development.

They spend so many hours on their screens, you know, think about average. And do we really want to be average, but average is comfortable. A lot of times we get stuck. I will admit I do the same thing, right? With some things that get stuck in that average and average is comfortable. It doesn't require us to get outside of our comfort zone.

And so I think that's some of it, just complacency and that we get comfortable with average. Right. And we've got to let go of the average. In order to get good, that then takes us to all star, right? Right. There's a lot of, they're just comfortable and we like being comfortable, especially as Americans like being comfortable.

Right. And so, um, that average is the thief of all star, I think is one of the things. The other thing that I think too, that really is a barrier is mindset for people. They maybe don't know how to have an all star mindset. Those are the things that we learned through, I learned through athletics and other things in my life.

I think another thing that holds people back is fear, right? Maybe it's fear of being great. Maybe it's fear of being made fun of, maybe it's fear of being different than the rest of the crowd. And then I think there's some people that, my teenagers hear me say this all the time. They don't do better because they don't know how, right?

They've never thought about where they could go. Or aspire to where they could be, and they maybe just need someone to speak into their life, speak that into them, because they don't do it because they've never seen it in themselves, and maybe they don't know how to do it. And so I think those are common barriers.

And that's where having those coaches and mentors can be so important in their development as you state in your book and in your teachings, uh, one of the other big things that you state is. You must have authenticity, and I'd love you to elaborate in terms of why is authenticity a non negotiable? I believe authenticity is the foundation of All Star.

Knowing who you truly are. Your uniqueness, your, I believe many times where your uniqueness can be your superpower and how to live into that, right? Like, okay, I have a superpower now. How do I live into that? And what do I do with it? And not only that, then how do I communicate it? To other people, right? So it's living it and it's also communicating it.

And so I think, like I said, I think authenticity is the foundation of all star. If you're really going to be an all star, you have to know who you are. What are your strengths? What are your, how are you motivated? How does your mind work? What's your tendencies and those kinds of things. And that's a lot of what I do through my coaching with young professionals is really work on getting to their authentic selves, you know, works in higher education for many, many years.

And I had a lot of young leaders that I work with there that would come into my office and we would talk about their career aspirations and where they wanted to go and their leadership development. Yeah. Um, I would see them so many times they didn't know how to answer for themselves and what they really truly wanted.

For themselves was, Oh, I'm pursuing this degree because mom and dad are paying for my education and my dad wants me to work the big corporate job and he can never get it. Right. Or my mom and dad said, follow this certain path. And so there were many, many times that I would ask students who were in my office, what do you want to do?

And they would go on to talk about what other expectations were. And so they talk about asking why the five whys. For me, it was the five, what do you want to do? It's like, it took a while to get to the point of who are you authentically? And what do you really want to do? And I really, I think that authenticity.

When we came out of COVID and we saw the great resignation, I think it was because people had jobs that they didn't like, or that maybe were expected for them and they're like, life's too short to do this. I'm going to do what I want to do. And so I always feel like that was almost a bit of a course correction, right?

We maybe think that as the resignation as a negative thing, I really hope it became a real positive. And that people really understood who they authentically are and what they authentically wanted to do and have landed in a better spot with that. So like I said, authenticity is the foundation of all star and that's the foundation of the work that I do with emerging leaders.

Right. And I know that when you say to the young leaders that you work with, you have to start strong in order to go far in order to be able to start strong. You must have a strong foundation. What are some of the most critical elements that must be in that strong foundation? For them to get those initial early wins, build up their belief, build up their desire to go further.

I believe it starts with values. What are personal values, right? And actually there is a values activity on my website, sharlyeelyons. com. I would encourage folks to go out there. It's a really easy values exercise that helps you narrow it down to what are your two core values. And you know, some people have five, or they have seven, and I think five, I can't even remember.

Five things that, you know, right now. And so I like to narrow it down to two, right? Because I believe that your core values are something they're like little pebbles that you pick up at the beginning of the day, one for each hand and put them in your pocket. And you walk around with those core values all day, and they help you make decisions.

They drive your behavior. And so I think values is one of the very foundational things. Another thing that I love and that you and I have talked about, Scott, is CliftonStrengths. Right? Knowing what your strengths are. Yes. Big fan. Yeah, there's a story actually in my book of I was about 31 years old when I discovered when I took CliftonStrengths and I discovered my strengths and it was so enlightening.

I remember being so, like, loving that session, that personal development session, because I realized, oh, connectedness, that's what that is. I just didn't know what to call it. Right. But then I remember walking back to my office on campus after that session, and I got mad. You know, I went from this really high of, Oh, this is really cool.

And look, look at what I've discovered. And then I got mad on my way back to my office. And, and the reason I got mad is because I was 31 years old. And I was like, I known this about myself at 21 years old. Like I just waste, I didn't waste 10 years, but you know, in my mind, I'm thinking, Oh, it would have changed.

You wish you would have known that before. Absolutely. It would have changed some of the things I did early in my career. Right. It would have changed how I approached people. It maybe would have changed some of the teams and how I came into that team and how I started. Serve that team. It might've changed some of the different positions that I looked for.

So my early career was not bad. Don't get me wrong, but I wish that I would have known that 10 years earlier. And so that's why I really like to do that. And I think understanding your strengths is one of the keys to your authenticity as well, knowing your true self. So I think values and strengths are very key.

Another one that I think is really great is your motivation. How are you motivated? So those are the kind of the three key pieces that I put into the first part of the coaching that I do with clients is that's where we start with. Got to start with core values. I love all of those. And then one that I add on is when you turn motivation into discipline, such that the habits, actions, routine just become.

Automatic and that you don't even think about it. It just gets done. And you touched on it a little bit in terms of the Clifton strengths, not just reviewing report and saying this was interesting, but having a mentor or a guide to lead you through it or anything to help you get to where you want to get to faster.

And I'd love for you to dig deeper in terms of. Why is it so important to have good mentors on your journey? The one thing that I love about mentorship and about coaching is when you do a CliftonStrengths with me, with a client, or with someone that maybe you're mentoring, I love to see those light bulb moments, right?

That the light bulb comes on for them and they're like, Oh, this is really cool. And I love it because they see how that works for them. But one of my favorite things as a coach and as a mentor. Is to be able to speak into that young person, how I see them embodying those strengths or those values or that discipline, whatever it may be.

I love speaking life into people because when you do that, like there's something about self discovery, which is a wonderful thing, but then when someone sees something in you and they speak it, that's like all star. Right. I mean, when it turns into self belief and somebody's giving you that self belief.

Yes. Self belief. That's, that's a great, great thought there. Yeah. It becomes self belief and not only self belief that, Oh my gosh, you saw that in me and that you believe in me too. Right. That's just pure magic. That's just all star. You know, that is phenomenal. And I'd love to be able to shift this a little bit to let's call it a use case, if you will, which is your family.

And allowing them or having them be the testing ground for a lot of the leadership principles and practices that you have employed to so many. And I'm curious what that dynamic looks like because family wants to be able to support you. And then there are times where families like mom. Really? Really?

Yes. As a matter of fact, little funny story for you, we were at Thanksgiving and I was talking to my nephew who is pursuing his like auto mechanics degree. And he let the cat out of the bag that his real, his big dream is to go into IndyCar and work in IndyCar. And so I was asking him, you know, what kind of discipline is going to require, cause he had mentioned discipline.

So I came back to his word and I said, you know, what kind of discipline is going to get you to that IndyCar dream that you have? And he wanted to revert back and step back into the average or his comfort zone. Right. Oh, I'd like to have a nice piece of property and maybe I'll work remote for something.

And I was kind of like, how do you do mechanics remotely? But anyway, I was really challenging him to walk into that dream of IndyCar. Right. And it was funny because at one point he hesitated. And he kind of looked at me and he said, no, wait, he said, you're trying to get me to read your book, aren't you?

And I said, no, I just want you to, I want to come watch you in IndyCar. You know, like I want you to pursue your dream. And his dad was sitting right there, just smiling. And finally he looked at my nephew, Sam, and he said, if you're smart. You might go with her because you're getting some really, really great free coaching here.

So we had a good laugh about it and, and we kind of tidy things up, but yeah, uh, with my own two children, what Sarah is 17 and Noah is 19. And so balancing that professional expertise for me, they mesh together. Like I don't see them as silos. To me, they are integrated, right? And the one thing that I love that word integrated, like you can't, I can't take one hat off and be something else.

This is just me. It's just how God mixed it all together. And for me, it's my all star. Right. I can't not be that for me though. It was really important for me to realize where I was in the parenting stages, right? There's four stages of parenting. Ages zero to six is discipline. And so I call it just keeping our kids alive.

Like, no, you can't run in the street or no, you can't touch that burner. Right. And then ages five to 12 is really training them. This is how you do this. Let me show you, let me help you. And then you do it yourself. The third phase then is ages 12 to 18, which is coaching, which is, that's my sweet spot. You know, I have, like I said, I'm kind of on the end of the coaching phase and then 18 and above becomes friendship and man, I'm really liking that piece.

Right. But I think a lot of times, a lot of times parents try to be their friend in all of those previous stages. Yeah. And that's not, I don't believe that's what we're called as parents to do. They don't. Right. I think we can like they don't wanna be the heavy Yeah, they don't wanna be the heavy, and my kids will tell you, I will be the very first one to sing their praises and what they did.

Right. And I will be the very first one, right, to tell them, no, you need to do this differently. Or how might you think about doing that differently? And they know mom is not necessarily my friend. My mom is going to tell me that because she has my very best interest in mind. Right. I'm going to tell them things that the other people aren't going to tell them because I love them so deeply.

Now I'm not going to be mean and I'm not going to be rude. about it, but I feel like it's my job to give them that feedback. And I think it's really, really important for young people to understand how to receive constructive criticism and feedback and how to take that then and move it forward. So yeah, I mix the good with the bad and I will just always be truthful with my children.

I'd love to go just one level further on this, because I think that it is something in a integrated life, which is something that I preach and particularly your professional expertise and the multifaceted role that you have as a parent. So as an example, Sarah is out there doing a performance and. She drops the baton on a routine that she hits 99 out of 100 times, right?

And that there's an element that you want to remind her of things that she's learned, but there's also an element of Well, first, I want to meet her at her level because she's disappointed and she needs that empathetic friend first. And I'd love for you to go in a little bit deeper in terms of how you have learned to balance that in an integrated manner.

I start with asking questions. I don't give my opinion right away. You know, in that situation, Scott, with the baton, she'll come off the floor and many times, just by looking at my children, I know how they're feeling, right? But I'll say, how did you feel about that? Not, what do you think went well, what do you think went wrong, but how do you feel about that?

And many times, she is at the point where she, and she's not, I've always told her, don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Right? Tell me what you really thought about that. And there will be times when she'll be like, Did I? Well, that was the best that I could do in this situation. You know, she had a performance just over the weekend and she's been fighting a sore throat and a couple of other things.

And that was just the best that she could do. It wasn't her a hundred, you know, it was the one time out of the 100 when she dropped that silly trick and that's going to happen. And she said, best I could do at that time, mom. And I was like, great. I'm very proud of you. And my kids know that they can push back on me.

We're not going to be rude and we're not going to be mean to each other. It's done in love. And so a lot of it is not starting with my opinions on things, but really asking questions because they've gotten, I'm later in that coaching, um, phase that I talked about in parenting. And so they've matured in that as well.

It just becomes a balance. And there are things that they hold me accountable in as well. Mom, maybe it's dinner or whatever. Right. And so, yeah, as iron sharpens iron, I think they're able to kind of dish it back at me. And there are times when Noah will look at me and his nickname for me is All Star Char.

And so he'll say, Okay, All Star Char, get off the, you know. And so I know to, to maybe tone it down at different times too. So, yeah, it's a wonderful back and forth relationship. So All Star Char, we always close these episodes with a tip of the cap to Randy Posh's, The Last Lecture, wonderful book in terms of the last lecture he gave at Carnegie Mellon.

And he said, my final head fake was that this book was written for my kids. So Noah and Sarah. Are listening to this podcast. Noah is saying, all right, what's all star char going to say? That's I need to hear from this, right? What do you want them to take away? You know, I think about legacy. Cause you, you mentioned legacy a little bit.

And to me, legacy isn't about. You know, I've been watching this series on the entrepreneurs of early America and you know, the Carnegie's and the Rockefellers and all of that. And, you know, kind of legacy that they're talking about. To me, legacy is not about having my name on a building or something named after me.

I could care less about that. How about a street named after me? People are just going to drag on it anyway. Right. But to me, my legacy, it's about the impact on other's lives. And my kids know everything that's in that book. It's, it's been done on them. Right. And that's what Noah told me. He said, I don't need to read it.

I've lived it, which I thought was really pretty funny, but what I hope Noah and Sarah and other young professionals really will take from it is that aspiring to be all star and working towards that. But then having an impact in others lives that will ripple into multiple generations, right? I'm hoping that my kids will carry it to their children and their grandchildren and so on and so forth.

And not just within my family, but how do we ripple that out into, you know, I mentioned my nephew, I mentioned clients. How do we create this huge ripple effect? I hope that Average to All Star is just one little pebble. into the pond that then goes from the pond into the ocean and creates a ripple effect.

That's really what I, what I want my legacy to be. And when I think about legacy, it's not just mine, but other people that help create that in other people, it becomes their legacy too. Right. And so that's what I hope. And actually the very last chapter of my book talks about the ripple effect. And that's really the whole goal in it all.

Our future leaders. Need us to speak into them and to help them go from average to all stars so that they can start strong and go further faster. Right. I want them to be better than I was, right? My grandkids better than I was. Right. And so let's put that line in the sand and give them the skills that they can start strong and go further faster and just keep it rolling.

My son is notorious for letting me know the areas that already in his young life that he was better than I am. I'm like, good. I want more. I want you to kick my ass in terms of what you accomplish in life. So you keep going, right. And you know, my daughter. That's the same in her own way. And, you know, you're talking about these pebbles that you have so many pebbles that you've already put out there.

We'll put it in the show links in terms of, you know, your website, the values test, the book average all star. And you also have a online offering, which is coming down the pike. Is that right? It is. There's a toolkit on my website as well for average to all star, which is a great place for people to start.

But thanks for mentioning. Yeah, I have some, um, mini courses, what I call kind of light courses that I'm going to be, um, spinning out into the world or throwing into the pond for the ripple effect, um, as we get into the new year. And they're really kind of just small little 30 to 45 minute, um, courses, especially for emerging leaders.

The first one is how to skyrocket your career in 2025. I mentioned mindset several times a year. There's going to be one on mindset. There's going to be one on overcoming imposter syndrome, because that's a real pain right now for emerging leaders. And then there's going to be one on confidence as well.

And I hope to just create, continue creating these small little mini courses that are little snippets for people just to speak life into them and help them in certain areas. And of course, in 2025, I'll be doing my signature course as well. Average to all star. That follows through the book and the toolkit that I mentioned that's online.

But yeah, those mini courses are coming as we get into 2025. So thanks for letting me talk those here, Scott. I appreciate it. No worries. No worries. We'll obviously, in addition to all of those mentions and links, right? When your course is ready, we'll have that up there as well. So everybody should be able to access this off of the show page.

Sharlee, any final comments before we close down this episode? I just wanna encourage people to be intentional, whether you are a mentor. Mm-hmm . Whether you're a emerging leader or a young professional. I just think we all have to be very intentional. Where can we spend goodness into this world? Where can we speak life into each other?

Where do we need to ask for help? Right? This is an area where I need help. Maybe it's a question of who do you know that I need to know that is good at this? Just be intentional with connecting with others. I think that's a, something that we've lost is connecting well with others. And I believe all of that starts with a smile.

Right. Smile is a great gateway into connecting with others and just continue to spin good out into the world and just be really intentional about how you can do that. I would say be intentional with that at least once a day and hopefully that becomes really easy to do and it just becomes a habit that we have is being intentional with being kind.

It would make every day a good day, at least at one point in the day. And Sharlee, this was definitely a good part of my day in order to be chat with you and have you drop a lot of wisdom on my listening audience. Thank you so much for all that you provided us to my listening audience. Thank you so much for.

Taking the time and like Sharlee said, now go apply it. Now go be intentional about what you do as a result to listening to this episode. So I hope you do that. And I look forward to having you all listen on the next podcast. Take care guys. Thank you for joining me on the Corvus effect to access today's show notes, resources, and links mentioned in this episode, visit.

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