We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ivanna Casado. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ivanna below.

Ivanna , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

What Does America get this wrong in your industry, too?

The metrics we use to define personal success and worth in the workplace.

There’s this tendency in “Corporate America” to overvalue and reward behaviors like workaholism, busyness, over-achieving, multitasking, and people pleasing.

Unfortunately, these traits are valued above cementing the seed for long term and sustainable success, which is how companies end up causing effects that lead to things like the great resignation and burnout.

One thing we have learned after the pandemic is that we need to redefine the concept of personal success and how we measure it at work. The current metrics in place to define personal success are leading to feelings of failure, exhaustion and disconnection to the overall mission of the organization.

In my opinion,personal success should be defined by intention, purpose, effort, grit, openness and kindness.

Organizational leaders need to ask questions that can help employees find direction for achieving personal success in the workplace.

Questions such as:
Are you clear about what your role is here?
Do you know why you are here and work here?
Are you willing to be present and give your all (whatever “your all” means to you) today?
Are you staying consistent with the plan regardless of the outcome you might be experiencing now?
Are you being kind to yourself and others as we try to achieve our mission?
Are you committed to getting this right instead of being right?
Are you taking care of yourself?

And I think you can define a successful person as one who:

Pursues their true desires
Has their heart in their mission
Seeks the truth instead of validation
Honors their talents for the greater good
Stays loyal to the mission regardless of gratification
Knows what they are doing and why they are doing it
And treats themselves kindly in the process of achieving success.

Success is not an external process–it’s not the tip of the iceberg.

Success begins from within and is the result of mastering your own process every day. This is what leads to more profitable, happy and healthy organizations.

Personal Success is meaningless if you have to climb all the way to tip to the iceberg to win an achievement that doesn’t feel like YOURS and comes at the cost of your own well-being.

Let’s stop defining Personal Success by medals, promotions, awards or trophies of achievements.
If you approach your work with intention, effort, grit, openness and kindness you are achieving personal success

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Ivanna Casado is a Miami-based Executive Coach, Organizational Effectiveness Facilitator and Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Writer, Content Creator, and Mindfulness at Work Trainer with a passion for helping high-performance executives and organizations achieve sustainable success in environments of uncertainty, change, and disruption.

Her mission is simple: Minimize stress and burnout, maximize happiness and performance, and create sustained success in the workplace.

Growing up in Venezuela, Ivanna’s interests gravitated toward neuroscience, human behavior, and human potential – subjects that fascinate her to this day. Her passion and commitment to success led her to a career in media / sales, where she would quickly climb the ladder at Fortune 500 companies like Sony Pictures, FOX, and Comcast NBCUniversal.

It was in the midst of her “success” when she experienced burnout for the first time. She hired an executive coach to deal with the exhaustion, which opened her mind to exploring self-discovery,self-love, and self-mastery. Reconnecting with her authentic values sparked a passion for service and contribution, eventually kindling into her calling today.

Ivanna has been privileged to learn from some of the brightest minds in coaching, mindfulness, and thought leadership such as David Rock, Sarah McLean, and Daniel Goldman. She spent part of her coaching journey working with the Tony Robbins Coaching and Business Team, serving top executives and entrepreneurs across the world’s largest industries. She has also had the honor of empowering TED speakers with skills to boost their presentations and public speaking.

Now, Ivanna dedicates her life to creating uniquely curated and proprietary executive coaching and corporate training programs – Mind Mastery ™ Executive Program , Happiness at Work Program ™ , and Mindful Mondays – on the topics of burn-out prevention , mindfulness at work, emotional intelligence, and neuro-leadership.

She has implemented these with large-scale organizations including HBO, New York Life, and HSBC, as well as with individual clients and large groups. Ivanna’s expertise extends beyond her programs as a keynote speaker,seminar presenter, and lunch-and-learn workshop leader. She also creates content and contributes articles to Insight Timer, among many other publications.

Ivanna’s Credentials
Certified Executive Coach, University of Miami
Certified in Organizational Wellness and Employee Wellbeing, Stanford University.
Meditation and Mindfulness Certified Instructor, McLean Meditation Institute
Mindfulness at Work Certified Trainer, McLean Meditation Institute (Now MMI Mindful)
Mindfulness Based-Stress Reduction (MBSR) Certified, University of Miami
Master Speaker Certified Trainer, Moxie Institute
Certified trainer in behavioral and personality tests, such as DISC and Driving Forces
Certified in Brain-Based coaching, Neuroleadership Institute

My mission : “To help high performing professionals develop new conditions and tools to become more emotionally and mentally agile so they can achieve sustainable success in their professional careers.”

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I needed to unlearn a deep-seated need for full control over my life and recognize that it’s not healthy to always be “on” and in charge.
I’ve always been a very driven individual. And, admittedly, I usually see this as more of a positive trait than a negative one.

However, I can think of many times in my life when the outcome I was pursuing didn’t match my efforts. This has led to a lot of frustration and even suffering at times.

What I had to unlearn is to stop obsessing so much about the results and outcome of my dreams and instead place my attention on intentions, effort, and purpose to get there.

I used to overvalue achievements. Now, I value the present moment and the experience of manifesting my intentions. As long as I feel what I’m doing is in alignment with my intentions and I show up every day as my best self, I’m happy.

I’ve learned how to let go of what I can’t control and place my resources in what I can control and what gives me joy.

Often, we feel we fail because we didn’t achieve what we were after despite our efforts. This frustration steals the joy and the credit we deserve for the hard work and grit we put into the outcome. What really matters is that we stay present in the moment and put effort into those things that are most valuable to us.

I’ve shifted my focus from being in constant need of control to achieving self-mastery in whatever I deem worthy of my time and effort.

Understanding that it’s impossible to retain full control of my life was a hard pill to swallow. But relearning the way I live and experiencing more present moments, as a result, has been truly transformational.

Any advice for managing a team?

As managers, we have an influential role in the lives of the people we work with. But we often underestimate the impact of our intentions, behaviors, and actions.

People learn by example and look to us for guidance on how to bring their best selves to work. Managers need to offer that guidance by modeling behaviors that encourage employees to explore their full potential while also taking care of themselves.

We – human beings – need inspiration. Having a manager who demonstrates a balance between stress and self-care can be both inspirational and aspirational.

I believe creating safe spaces that enable employee engagement and social connection is important. Now that remote work has become the norm, organizations and leaders have an opportunity to rethink the way we create meaningful connections at work.

Conducting meetings and team-building activities that are fun, safe, and inclusive is a good formula that can lead to candid discussions and employee retention. After all, collaboration is a key ingredient for making progress, exercising empathy, and finding purpose.

Creating spaces to connect with employees is also an excellent platform to acknowledge progress and reward values such as kindness, growth mindset, self-discipline, self-care, and personal effectiveness. People have a need to be seen and valued. And, now more than ever, we need to make work an attractive space for people to reconnect and engage with a sense of belonging.

People need people as much as they need food and water.

We’re looking at the perfect opportunity to design workplaces that foster those meaningful social connections and create a sense of belonging and purpose to the mission of the company.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.yourgotocoach.com
• Instagram: yourgotocoach
• Facebook: yourgotocoach
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivannacasado/
• Twitter: yourgo2coach
• Other: https://linktr.ee/yourgotocoach

Image Credits
Alejandra Escalante