How to Get Unblocked, with Pam Manfredo Curtis

**Dave Stachowiak** (0:00)
All of us get blocked, and when we do, our tendency is to set aside or sometimes even run away from our emotions. Today's guest invites us to do the exact opposite, so we can actually tap into our leadership power. In this episode, how to learn more about yourself and use that insight for good. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 798

**Pam Manfredo Curtis** (0:25)
Produced by Innovate Learning. Maximizing Human Potential.

**Dave Stachowiak** (0:34)
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps leaders thrive at key inflection points.
And when we get to the inflection points in leadership and of course, in our lives, a lot of the times we come up on obstacles, come up on blocks. And oftentimes those blocks aren't just what's going on today.
They're also informed and sometimes even put in place by what has happened to us long ago, our own personal stories. Today, a conversation that'll help us to look at the bigger picture, how we show up as people, our experiences, how that informs us as leaders and how we can do a better job at being able to tap into our power as leaders through understanding and appreciation of that. I am so pleased to welcome Pam Manfredo Curtis to the show. She's an executive coach and founder and president of Manfredo Curtis Associates. Her coaching approach involves mining the hearts and souls and childhoods of her CEO clients, so they can reach their full potential to lead authentically, to achieve extraordinary results, and to forge deep emotional connections, both professionally and personally. She hosted SiriusXM's Corner Office Confidential and is the author of The Origin of a Leader, Transforming Family Patterns into Leadership Power. Pam, hello. So nice to have you on.

**Pam Manfredo Curtis** (2:05)
Oh, I'm thrilled to be here, Dave. Thanks so much for having me.

**Dave Stachowiak** (2:08)
I have enjoyed getting into your work so much and all of the insights that it's brought up. And thinking about the work that all of us do is helping ourselves as leaders get better, but also just thinking about it from a personal level and a selfish level too, which we're going to get into in this conversation. And I think that leads into a quote that I highlighted very early in the book. You write, In all my research and decades of coaching high level CEOs, I've discovered that the most significant predictor of how you show up in your interpersonal interactions as a leader and as a human is your childhood.
What is it that's so significant about our childhoods? Yeah.

**Pam Manfredo Curtis** (2:52)
Thank you so much for asking, Dave. And thank you, by the way, for drawing what we'll call later an emotional timeline before this call. That will be fun to talk about.

**Dave Stachowiak** (3:01)
Yeah.

**Pam Manfredo Curtis** (3:02)
So first of all, the first system that we are raised in is our childhood home.
And in that home, we observe our parents, our grandparents, our siblings, and how they have conversations with us, with each other, how they invite or don't invite people into the home, whether they encourage us to share what we believe, what we think, or they tell us that we should keep our thoughts to ourselves, our thoughts and our feelings. It is the first world that we therefore observe and attempt to role model as we grow up. And think about it, we're in that environment in most cases for about 18 years.
And so, there are patterns that evolve over time by what we have witnessed. And some are beautiful, encouraging, stable homes. Some are more challenging mentally. And then there are some that where trauma exists. And so, even how the trauma was handled, if there was trauma, matters for how we deal with conflict or give feedback and all those things as we get older. So, it is the first system that we are raised in. And I always say that, and this is a little provocative, but 80% of the reasons why we show up the way we are as leaders, as adults who influence in other systems are due to that childhood home.

**Dave Stachowiak** (4:36)
You mentioned a few moments ago an emotional timeline tool. And we're going to talk about that here in a bit and actually get into mine a bit. And you say on the emotion piece, we've already said the word emotion a bunch in this conversation, that not to run away from your emotions and that fine is not a feeling.
Tell me more about that. Where does that show up for leaders?