With respect to creating a healthy and uplifting work culture, I believe that leaders need to set good examples for their teams. When employees are given clear guidelines on what is expected of them and leaders set the example, it communicates clear objectives for everyone.
As a part of my series about leaders who integrate mindfulness and spiritual practices into their work culture, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dagmar Bryant, Business Coach and Motivational Speaker.
She empowers and inspires women in a unique way — having gone through similar experiences that many women have. She encourages women to pursue their dreams and desires. She herself has fought against real-world obstacles:
- A super-controlling father who always wanted her to do things his way;
- A (ex-) husband who continually held her back.
She has achieved results by breaking free of limitations:
- A determined young mother wanting something “better” for herself and her kids;
- A resourceful woman who found a novel way to pursue a law degree and successful corporate career;
- Someone who uprooted her life in Australia to take a chance on a new one in America and then in the UK;
- A woman with an entrepreneurial spirit who built a successful coaching business to help others.
Her powerful blend of world-class intuition AND real-world experience gives her a message that deeply “speaks” to audiences of her events.
Attendees come away with both a PRACTICAL outline for reaching their dreams… and a touch of INSPIRATION that offers newfound insights.
Simply put, Dagmar Bryant is an uplifting, thought-provoking speaker who combines both heart and head and inspiration to help women unleash their “best selves”!
Connect with Dagmar Bryant here: https://dagmarbryant.com
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you please share your “backstory” with us?
My background is in corporate, specifically in Administration, Customer Service and Law.
I didn’t actually get to study law until I was in my 30’s and that was something that I had always been deeply passionate about. I loved it. I guess you could say that I was particularly motivated, because justice has been one of my core values for as long as I can remember.
At the time, I was working in a firm of Patent and Trademark Attorneys and I discovered that the law was far from just and it made me realize that I couldn’t make a difference in the way that I had wanted to.
I was also at a point in my studies where I was no longer motivated and it all became a bit of a snowball effect. Law had lost its lustre and within a short period of time I quit my job at the law firm and my law studies.
The funny thing was, that while I was studying law, I was also becoming more spiritual and there was a part of me that was passionate about meditation, Reiki, tarot and developing my intuition. It was that part of me that was pushing me forward.
What I came to discover about myself was that I really wanted to make a positive impact and help transform people’s lives. The best way for me to do that was to go into business for myself and so I studied Health Counseling, Hypnotherapy and Coaching, while going to back to work part time to build up a client base.
It is now 18 years later and I haven’t looked back.
What role did mindfulness or spiritual practice play in your life growing up? Do you have a funny or touching story about that?
I guess I have always been highly intuitive. There has been many a time when I have just ‘known’ things.
The story that had the most impact on me was when I was in my early 20s when I was involved in a car accident. I was a pedestrian crossing a 4-lane highway.
My mother had dropped me off at my friend’s house where a group of us were to meet up for our Saturday night out. I knocked on the door. No one answered. So, I thought I would look for a telephone booth (this was in the late 80s before everyone had a mobile phone).
I went to the end of the street and came to a major divided road. I knew there were shops nearby and for that I need to cross the road. So, I did my look right, look left, look right again. All clear. Half way across, or so I thought.
It was when I stepped onto the next section of road that a car hit me while it was traveling at about 70kms per hour. I hadn’t seen the car.
You see what had happened is that I had crossed the first section of road, not realizing that this was a new section of road that was not yet open to traffic. When I crossed the second section of road, I had looked in the wrong direction, not expecting a car to come from my right.
I was thrown into the air, literally, and somersaulted on my way down, landing on the side of the road.
There were 2 nurses and a doctor on the scene almost immediately, as they had just happened to be passing by, and saw what had happened. They checked me over. No broken bones, no broken anything.
My parents were called and my father arrived to pick me up and take me home. He spoke to the driver of the car who was astounded at what had happened. The amazing thing was that there was no damage to his car, but for a small mark, that could have come from the ring on my hand.
It could have been so much worse. I came away with some pretty purple bruises, a sore body and a slight dint in my right leg. I know that I was looked after by angels on that day.
In many ways that was the start of my own journey into the realm of the spiritual.
How do your mindfulness or spiritual practices affect your business and personal life today?
I incorporate mindfulness into my daily routine. My day starts with a meditation or yoga (or both) and I like to go for a walk, usually listening to a motivational podcast. These practices set me up for my day and help me to be more productive.
I’m also a big believer in being mindful about the words and language that we use. Our language has an impact on the way we feel and subsequently behave. If we are always looking at things from a negative perspective and saying things like, “I can’t, I’m not good enough, everything is against me,” then you will probably have those experiences.
Therefore, I work hard at being positive, or at least finding an upside in a situation.
Do you find that you are more successful or less successful because of your integration of spiritual and mindful practices? Can you share an example or story about that with us?
I feel that I am more successful because of the integration of spiritual and mindful practices.
One of the things that I love to do is create a vision board and put goals in place to achieve the vision of the future me.
I believe that if we steer our lives into a particular direction and go after what we want with all our heart, while actively taking steps to make those things happen, they will happen.
I remember when my husband and I were applying for our USA business visa. It was a long-drawn-out process, but in my heart, I knew that we could achieve that goal. To that end, I started clearing out our house in Australia, selling and donating our goods to charity already 6 months before we were ready to submit the final visa application.
When we were granted our visa on 22nd November 2017, it meant that all we had to do was book our flights and less than 2 weeks later on 6th December, we arrived in Los Angeles to start our new life there.
What would you say is the foundational principle for one to “lead a good life”? Can you share a story that illustrates that?
I would say the foundational principle for one to ‘lead a good life’ is to do no harm.
When I heard a doctor say that, many years ago, and that it is the underlying rule of medicine, it made sense to me in the context of the people that I am working with.
Working with clients has given me the opportunity to help people when they are feeling lost and vulnerable and I believe that a clinician should never use their position to exploit people, least of all when someone is in their care.
I have heard horror stories of things that clients have told me that have been said to them by a practitioner, and it has made me cringe because it puts a sad blight on the industry as a whole.
For me, it’s made me want to redouble my efforts and always work authentically and from the heart.
Can you share a story about one of the most impactful moments in your spiritual/mindful life?
One of the most impactful moments of my spiritual life has been when I met my husband, Glenn. We met when I was visiting England from Australia and we were both at a course together.
The moment when he introduced himself to me, I felt the most intense pull of a spiritual connection to him. I had never had that feeling before but it was if I knew him on a soul level.
We met up the following week for a date and the rest, as they say, is history. Even though we lived in different countries, Skype became our new best friend and we visited each other many times over the following months before we agreed that he would come and live in Australia.
The funny this is, he told me many months later, that the feeling of our first meeting was exactly the same for him.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I can think of many people who have helped me along the way, some of whom have shown me what to do and others who have shown me what not to do. Both have been valuable lessons.
Right now, my biggest supporter is my husband, Glenn, who is very understanding of who I am and really allows me to be me.
When I first broached the subject of moving from Australia to California, he was the first to say, “Yes, let’s go for it.”
Can you share 3 or 4 pieces of advice about how leaders can create a very “healthy and uplifting” work culture?
Our work environment has changed, what with working from home and hybrid work environments becoming more normal. The good thing is that there is a greater amount of attention being given to mental health, so leaders are utilizing health and well-being programs more in the workplace.
With respect to creating a healthy and uplifting work culture, I believe that leaders need to set good examples for their teams. When employees are given clear guidelines on what is expected of them and leaders set the example, it communicates clear objectives for everyone.
Secondly, people want to have flexibility in their working lives. Giving people the opportunity to work their home lives around work, e.g., picking kids up from school or taking them to the dentist, allows for a more harmonious work/life balance which encourages employee retention.
Thirdly, give employees the opportunity to make suggestions to improve workplace practices. Just because a practice has been in place for a long time, doesn’t make it the best practice for today’s environment. Encourage employees to present new ideas that leaders can consider and implement, where they are useful and practical. People will feel as if they are contributing to the work culture and when people feel respected and heard, it builds a strong team culture.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would love people to be more accepting of each other. Having worked on three continents and helping people with their obstacles has shown me that, at the core, we all care about the same kind of things.
Most people love their family and their kids and they only want good things for them. People are concerned about their work, their love life, their relationships and their happiness.
They want to know that they are going to be okay.
When we each can understand that we all essentially want the same things, and that in some way we are all universally connected, I believe that the movement should be about being more understanding of each other.
How can people follow you and find out more about you?
During the first lockdown, I created videos on mindset on YouTube, entitled, Mindset 2 Success, to help people through that difficult time: https://bit.ly/37yHSde
Check out my Linktree for access to pdf downloads on 5 Tips to your Happy (Success Secrets) and 5 Tips to Starting Your own Business cheat sheet: https://linktr.ee/dagmarbryant
I use LinkedIn as my primary social media platform. Connect with me here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dagmar-bryant/
Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.
Dagmar Bryant On How Leaders Can Create A Very Healthy And Uplifting Work Culture was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.