How To Avoid The Ivory Tower Effect And Become The True Leader You Are - With Reem Borrows

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Reem Borrows

Reem Borrows is a Human Performance Specialist from Dreem Coaching & Consulting

For over 20 years, Reem Borrows worked in the Pharmaceutical Industry and in Senior Leadership Roles, leading and developing effective teams and individuals across the areas of Sales, Marketing and Training, before launching her own business with Dreem Coaching and Consulting. Reem’s authenticity as a leader, her business acumen, mindset development strategies, and her dedication to achieving results set the foundation of her work with individuals and teams, as well as both small and large corporations in helping them to realise their full potential to achieve greater success. Reem wholeheartedly believes that, regardless of your past or present circumstances, each one of us has an unlimited potential with the opportunity to elevate the quality of our life and achieve all that we desire, through Dreem’s holistic Health, Head and Heart leadership model.

As a highly sought-after coach, Reem cultivates the principles, strategies, and fundamentals of a winning mindset within her mentorship of individuals, teams, and businesses, and specifically in educating people on how to find their true calling and unleash their complete potential with Balance, Focus, and Flow. Reem fervently believes that “beautiful things happen, and amazing results unfold, when you bring a group of people together and work with them to become the best at what they do”.

Resources / Links
https://www.facebook.com/groups/320657335388771/
https://www.dreem.com.au

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Transcript 

Tom Bailey  00:07

Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking. The place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results. Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'll be getting to know rim Burrows, who is a human performance specialist, and founder of dream coaching and consulting. So hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode. 

Reem Borrows  00:38

Oh, hello, say lovely to be here too much having me on? 

Tom Bailey  00:42

Absolutely. And for those people that don't know whereabouts in the world are you right now? 

Reem Borrows  00:46

in sunny Sydney, Australia. 

Tom Bailey  00:49

Lovely world. Yeah, it absolutely is. And thanks for sharing that. And I'll share a little bit more about you before we get started. So rrim worked in the pharmaceutical industry and as a senior leader in senior leadership roles for over 20 years, before launching her own business with dream coaching and consulting. Now, rim wholeheartedly believes that each and every one of us has unlimited potential, with the opportunity to elevate the quality of our lives and achieve all that we desire. Through dreams, holistic health, head and heart leadership model. The title of today's episode is how to avoid the ivory tower effect and become the true leader you are. And room's gonna show us how to do that in just seven minutes. The question of once day is Who are your ideal clients? 

Reem Borrows  01:38

So my ideal clients are executive sales leaders, business owners, aspiring leaders. And really, the most important part about it is anyone who knows that there's more. Yes, and anyone that knows that. There's always better ways of doing things. So it's a continuous cycle. So you can never reach that, you know, the glass ceiling, or whatever you got, you call it? Yeah, 

Tom Bailey  02:02

I got it completely. So when the people who have you know, they're aspiring leaders, they've got unlimited potential. And what do you say, typically the biggest challenge that they face? 

Reem Borrows  02:13

So look, we'll go to the ones who are already in great leadership roles. Either they're entrepreneurs, or they've got their own businesses, or they work for large global organisations. And it gets really lonely at the top. Yeah, it really does. And what happens is that a lot of people can become successful. So even for yourself, you think about all the successes you've had in your life. And then what happens, we reach a point where you have to change, because in order to get more and more, there's a necessity to change. And it becomes a self leadership challenge. And there's a love this, it's one sentence only, you know, what got you here may not get you there. Yes. And so I find that as especially in leadership roles, because it gets so lonely at the top, you need someone who can actually can help you to get to that next level. 

Tom Bailey  03:00

Yeah, yeah, it makes complete sense. And I guess that loneliness is so important. And what would you say is the impact that that loneliness can have on either the leader or the business that they're working? 

Reem Borrows  03:13

Well, I mean, the mines are very, very interesting thing, it doesn't matter how successful you are I we've always got that 60 to 90,000 thoughts per day off those that 60 to 90,000 thoughts per day 95% of the repeated, and then if you're not careful, 80% of them can be negative. So it doesn't really matter where you are in your career. If you're not consciously aware of the sort of thoughts that you're having, it can start having a negative impact on you. And if you're in a lonely space, it can start having a negative impact on you in terms of the pressures that were under what the company needs of you what your own business needs of your what your family needs of you. And you start to allow that to control you rather than going within and doing the work on yourself to say, Well, what, what is my goal? What do I actually want. So we start to that, and again, it doesn't matter who it is, no one is immune to this, if you're not consciously aware of it, or if you're not working with someone who can make you're consciously aware of it, you can start to spiral downwards. And you start seeing you stop seeing things away that you could be seeing them from a potential perspective. Now you start only seeing problems 

Tom Bailey  04:16

that really highlights the importance of mindset, like you said, self leadership, and it's so important to keep that continuous success going forward.

Reem Borrows  04:25

Absolutely. mindsets, everything. And if you the second you start to believe that you've gotten there, it's all over Red Rover. 

Tom Bailey  04:31

Yeah, of course. And, and anybody that is listening to this thinking, I get it, I'm in a leadership role. I'm starting to feel these, you know, feelings of loneliness, Sam, what's the one piece of advice that you might give them to help them really move forward and solve this problem? 

Reem Borrows  04:45

Any any way to start so any piece of advice I ever give is always start from the end in mind. Yes. What do you really, really want them build that vision, we spent far too much time in problems and as you know, the more you The more you stay in a problem, the more you create the problem. So the problem just gets bigger and bigger. So I start from the end of mine, it's like project management what I want, and then work backwards, breaking everything down to the lowest common denominator and start, then you start looking at the tactical priorities. But before you go to the end, if you don't do the end in mind, how do you know what you're going to want to achieve? So we start to create, so you don't want to be creating things that are not necessary. Yeah, that makes sense. 

Tom Bailey  05:30

It makes complete sense. It's having that North Star that's always guiding you towards that destination. And it helps you move past those, I guess, obstacles that inevitably come up along the way. 

Reem Borrows  05:40

And it's amazing how many times we actually have to be reminded this and every single instance I see. And when people get used to me to go, I know exactly what you can ask us a break, then you're self leading now because it's what do you want, you'll never ever get into your car and say to Siri, or the nav man, take me West. Because if you say that you know where you're going, don't you it's going to keep going west for the rest of your life exactly, actually have to be really, really focused and clear on exactly what it is that you want. 

Tom Bailey  06:06

I love that great advice and a great metaphor as well from the Sat Nav. And the what is one, or a number of valuable resources that you can share with people today to help them develop in this particular space.

Reem Borrows  06:21

Okay, in terms of the resources, you can go to dream.com.au. On my website, there's a there's things that you can download workbooks that you can download, there's a lot of resources there in a couple of weeks time also you'll you'll get notification for a new podcast that I'm it's a leaders, leaders leading leaders podcast.  And then also there's a Facebook group closed Facebook group called dream beyond borders. And it's all about the mindset growth, where you really get a lot of free resources, a lot of thought process. And I have to start thinking because dream beyond borders, because we we just limit ourselves, we put so visible borders in our mind that stop us from really achieving what it is that we want to achieve.  

Tom Bailey  07:05

I love that I love that thought of dreaming beyond our borders. And so yeah, anybody who wants to find out more, go to dream.com.au. And you can find all those resources there. And what I'll do is I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So you can just click on that and dive right in. 

Reem Borrows  07:19

Thank you. 

Tom Bailey  07:20

So clearly a long career in leadership and now in entrepreneurship. So over that time, what would you say is one of your greatest either learnings or mistakes or failures that you've made? And what did you learn from it? 

Reem Borrows  07:34

I love that question. I can't even begin to tell you how many mistakes. I always heard just a little bit right. I'm gonna give you one example. But they have been I have had that many failures in my life. But the one thing I do know about these failures is that they've catapulted me to the next biggest thing. And I'm so grateful for them. So my one of my biggest failures to begin with, and this was something I really wanted to was my first promotion into sales leadership. And I put my heart and soul into it, I thought I was definitely the person to be like there was I couldn't have done anything more. And I'd reached the final stage interview, five stage interview, and there was only one other candidate. And unfortunately at the time, well not unfortunately, but at the time, I thought was unfortunately he got the role. And here's the best part, you're gonna love this. he happened to be my partner as well. Now it's really interesting. But one of the things I realised from that point is that it's not the actual thing that happens to you. Not the activity itself. That's important. It's how do you respond to it or react to it? That's important. Because the way that I ended up responding to it was so beneficial to me. I didn't realise it at the time, there were tears, private tears. But I went back into the workplace. And I said, Okay, back into it. I'm just going to keep doing the best job I possibly can. And six months later, I was given a promotion that I hadn't even dreamt about, and that catapulted my career. There was no tomorrow. It was amazing. And that keeps happening time and time and time again, throughout my entire life. So now every time there's something that I fail at I go, there must be something fantastic coming. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

Tom Bailey  09:30

Yeah. But that role was never meant for you. The first one. So it allows you to then have the opportunity to go to the second one. And that's another great mindset to have. And

Reem Borrows  09:39

it was the best poll I could have ever, ever have dreamt off. Yeah. Perfect. 

Tom Bailey  09:45

all worked out for it for a good reason. And the last question I've got for you today is what is the one question that I should have asked you today that will also bring some great value to our audience.

Reem Borrows  09:58

Liquid that's a really good one. Question. So many, but I guess you could ask me why did I start doing coaching and consulting? I had such a successful career. And you know, when you work for large global organisations, opportunities are plentiful. And when you reach a certain point, you can do so much more. So maybe that's a good question to be asking,

Tom Bailey  10:16

I'd love to find out why you did that.

Reem Borrows  10:19

You know, after I started my self exploration and sort of goal setting journey at 10, the rate of 27 for me, because I realised after university and I realised that I had a lot of potential, but I wasn't doing anything, everything that I was doing, I was doing so much in achieving nothing, and I was going, this is not working. So clearly, I need to find a different way. And I started setting goals. And I started experimenting, and I got myself a coach and I did all this stuff. And over the years, my passion has always been working with people and helping people grow. And I would do that with large teams and organisations until I got to a point where I thought I want to share as much of this with as many people as possible in as many countries as possible. Because, you know, you can you can actually design your life in exactly the way you want it if you choose. Right, you need to know what are the resources who can help me and what is that I really, really want. And so I quit my job. And I started doing coaching and consulting and the rest is history as they say,

Tom Bailey  11:23

and never looked back. Fantastic. I love that. It's so exciting. And also, you know, aspirational for other people looking to make that step into entrepreneurship as well. So, bream. Thank you again so much for your time today and for sharing such great value with our audience. 

Reem Borrows  11:39

Thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure.