Meet narrative leadership coach, consultant, and author Carol Metz Murray. Mindset, determination, and resilience are her methods to unleash a self-image adjustment to help you embrace the power of naked leadership.
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Embracing Naked Leadership With Carol Metz Murray
Good beautiful day, you beautiful, beautiful souls. This is Charla Anderson, host of The Charla Anderson Show, collector and connector of fascinating people, and every one is fascinating, especially YOU! We’re grateful you’re here. You are going to have two old ladies talking about naked leadership. We’re going to have so much fun. We’re on the same page about what’s going on in our world. We’re going to talk a little bit about that.
First, we’re going to take a 22-second mini vacation to get a little grounded. We’re going to breathe in calm for 7 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, and breathe out gratitude for 11 seconds. Are you ready? Let’s go. Breathe in some calm. Hold, relax, release. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope that helps you as it does me.
Choosing Courage
Carol Metz Murray is my guest. We’ve had ten minutes of crazy tech stuff going on. Now we’re getting ready to introduce you. While I’m working on all this, I want to ask you to please share who you are in this world, and then we’ll talk a bit about what you do.
Thank you, Charla, for having me on your show. I’m Carol Metz Murray. I am the founder of the Naked Leadership Institute. The qualifier for you, me, and everyone tuning in is that you get to keep your clothes on because this is an inside job. I am a coach, a consultant, and also a public speaker, and I enjoy sharing my gifts with the world. I have recently launched the Naked Leadership Institute. My life has been in leadership since I was little.
It was my dad who said, “Carol, you need to learn about leadership.” That started at the age of five with a herd of horses. It progressed throughout my whole life and my career. I’m also a mother of four and a grandmother of eleven. I am so blessed with the family that I have. My life has been built on all of my experiences, some not-so-good, some wonderful, and they make me who I am today. I am so blessed because of all of those experiences. That’s me in a nutshell so to speak.
I noticed that you talk a lot about courage. I named my program, Your Courageous Coach, Charla’s amazing courageous life mentoring system. I was held up at gunpoint seven years ago. I had a gun to my head. I named it that a week beforehand. I always thought I was courageous. I looked on your website and I looked through your stuff a little bit and found out that you had had a gun to your head a couple of times, only it was by a family member, I believe. You’ve survived some incredible things. I will talk about that. How do you find the courage to have guns to your head?
Having a gun to your head, either you will respond in fear or you will respond in courage. You won’t even realize that it is courage that is helping you to move forward.
Courage is a choice. When I had a gun in my head, I had zero fear. Who I say I am is bold faith and no fear. I’d said it for so long that when they had the moment, I had no fear. Shaken, of course. It’s all a choice and we get to choose. We get to speak about who we are and who we want to be.
We get to choose. It is all about our free will. It is all about choice and courage to me too in those times of having a gun at my head. It was courage and I knew that I needed to deal with it right there and then. I was able to talk myself out of what was sitting or poking at me and stop that. That took tremendous courage. As Matt Damon said in the movie, I Bought a Zoo, “All it takes is 20 seconds of insane courage for you to make a decision to act.” Truly, that courage that you have inside of you is like a muscle. It’s there to be worked, used, and built. It’s like building a courage app. We all have it. All of you in the audience and the world have courage. It’s a matter of bringing it forward and using it in all circumstances in all that you are.
It is a muscle we can learn. You didn’t have courage for a while. It sounds like you raised your four kids in a very violent environment that you were afraid to leave until you had one day or built up enough courage to do something about it. I feel like that’s a major part of your story to be fearless.
That is a major part of my story in that time of living in a violence-filled marriage. It takes courage. It’s like building up the courage to leave. There are many reasons why people stay in relationships that are violent and incredibly unhealthy. It’s for a variety of reasons. Not believing that you can make it on your own or what will happen to the children, etc. Yet all of those experiences earlier on have helped to shape me. I will share it with you something that I do share not all that often.
The day that I got married, I knew that morning that I was making the biggest mistake of my life, and yet I went through with it. I knew that. I felt that intrinsically deep inside of me. As a result of all of that and all of that I endured, I have four beautiful children. What a gift each one of them is. That was part of staying within that. The other part of that too was all of those experiences helped me bring out my courage. They also helped me to walk the path of naked leadership, of who I am right now and who was I then. Using those experiences to be me, be here, and be now with you.
To Be
I noticed you talk about the words be and being. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Landmark Education, but “Who do you be” is a language that I learned in that environment. You might want to mention “Who do you be” and why that is so important to you.
I’m aware of Landmark. I have not attended Landmark. For me, who are you being is part and parcel of the naked leader. It is like, “Who are you right now, Charla? Who are you being right now?” This is you. This is the real you. I could say the authentic you, but this is the real you. Who is in front of me on the Zoom is you. I’m feeling your love. I’m sensing your presence.
That to me is being. The question is, “Who are we being in every present moment?” Whether we’re by ourselves, with ourselves, we’re in a conversation and connection with someone else, we’re in a crowd, or we are sitting and meditating. When I say, “Who are we being,” it is that that heart connection. Into me I see, and into me I will be.
Naked Leadership
Naked leadership, as you said in the beginning, we have to keep our clothes on. At this stage of my life, that’s a good thing. Why did you come up with that term and how did you get involved with a term called Naked Leadership? We had a conversation before. I’m 70 and I know you’re in your senior year. I love it when we can do something that makes people go, “She’s got more to her than meets the eye,” or something like that.
Naked leadership was born on the day that I was completing my last class and my last subject before I was to begin to write my thesis for my Master of Public Administration. I was living in the far north at that time and I traveled from Dawson City to Whitehorse for the university classes, and this was the University of Southeast Alaska.
You live in Canada.
I live in Canada and I have the honor and privilege of doing my Master’s through Southeast Alaska and did that in Whitehorse, Yukon. It was that day when I drove the 500 kilometers, which is a little over 300 miles. For the majority of that trip, I drove being consciously unconscious. Meaning I didn’t know I was driving. When I came out of that stupor, I panicked. I knew something was seriously wrong with me.
When I got to Whitehorse, I called my doctor. Her words to me were, “Carol, you will either do something about this or I’ll make you do something.” She said, “ You are in such high stress and anxiety. Your body is burnt out. You’ve been living this your whole life.” She was right. It was right at that moment when she said, “I’ll make you deal with this if you don’t deal with it,” that I made the decision that I needed to change my life.
I had already started to slide down a very dark rabbit hole because of my past that I had not dealt with, meaning all of the issues coming out of the violence-filled marriage, and going further back into my childhood when I was sexually assaulted over a number of years and nobody would listen to me that this was happening. There was a lot of unresolved trauma.
Build on top of that is somebody who was me and decided the way to deal with that was to become a workaholic. That was one of my coping strategies. There’s only so much that our body can handle before it says, “No more. I will not walk that path with you,” and down the rabbit hole I went. As I slid down that rabbit hole, knowing that I needed to change my life, that was the beginning of naked leadership because I then had to look at, “Who are you, Carol? Who really and truly are you?”
Start stripping away the personas, take off all the masks, melt the glass barriers that are in front of you, and have a look at who you are. Let me tell you, what a journey that has been because I found a Carol that I didn’t know, and it was like falling in love with her again. There were parts of Carol that I let go of. What a journey and what a discovery. For me, that is about getting real, getting into the center of your heart, and being naked.
Start stripping away the personas, take off all the masks, and melt the glass barriers in front of you to take a look at who you are. Share on XI say naked leadership and I put the qualifier on there that you get to keep your clothes on. The reaction I get from people when I say naked leadership is that I watch the walls go up. When I qualify that you get to keep your clothes on, then the walls come down and people are open and receptive. That journey of naked leadership for me is learning to lead yourself first. Be the leader that you would like to follow. For some, if there is no one following you, then you aren’t a leader. However, when you lead your own life, you then can lead others. You then live your dreams because you can lead yourself through your dreams.
You’ve touched on so many important things, but authenticity is the new sexy. I think that word is a little overused these days, but it’s better than fake. I love being real. Who else do you have to be? There’s no reason. This is something I say often. Many people do not love themselves enough to know how to love others. Learn to love yourself enough to step out of that marriage or to step into these healing or whatever.
Surviving A Flight Mishap
Courage catalyst is a word that you have used. Why can you say that? A couple of more things about the courage side of things are you were raped and survived rape, and you survived six car accidents, international conflict, the mafia, and all kinds of stuff. I was a flight attendant for 34 years. You said you survived an airplane that lost both engines. Was it commercial? Was it tiny? Just a quick story about that.
That too was in the far north. It was a small commercial flight. We were flying from Whitehorse to Dawson. When I was living in Dawson, I was the chief administrative officer for the city of Dawson which meant that I was responsible for ensuring that the city operations moved forward. I worked closely with the mayor and elected officials. On this flight, the mayor and I were coming back from a meeting. We were flying into Dawson. I’m sitting on the one side and he’s on the other two seats. I think there were 4, 8, and 12 seats on the plane.
I can see into the cockpit and so can he. I saw one of the engine lights go off and I happened to look over at him and he had seen it as well. He raised his right eye. It was like, “Let’s be calm because we don’t want to get everybody else worried and upset.” A little ways further in, the other engine light went off and I heard that one go clunk. I turned to look at him and he looked at me. The message was, “Carol, let’s stay calm.” I shook my head, “Yes, let’s stay calm.”
The reason is when you’re coming into Dawson City to get onto the runway at the airport, it’s not straight in. You have to fly around a mountain. When the plane was already descending, the question was, “Are we going to get around that mountain or are we going to end up in the mountain?” It was a moment for me to sit quietly and say a great big prayer of “Protect us. Help us land safely.” We did. As we went around the mountain, we were already very low to the ground.
I was also watching the pilot. I knew he was doing everything he could to maintain the plane and keep it moving in the direction that he wanted it to move. It was interesting as I couldn’t see the copilot all that well, but I knew by watching the pilot, I kept sending him energy vibes, “You’re doing okay. You’re doing okay. You’re doing okay.”
When the wheels hit the pavement of the runway, there was a great big shout in the plane and the realization that every passenger knew that something had happened. Everybody was so thankful. When the plane stopped and the pilot had shut down the gauges and all of that, he stood up. He looked at me and he was totally white and scared. What I did was give him a smile and a nod, “You’ve done okay.” That’s as close to a crash as I’d want it.
There’s not a doubt in my mind that what you were sending to him and the lifting of the prayers made a difference and a huge impact. It gets quiet when there’s no engine noise. Good for you for maintaining the calm. I’m telling you that is a huge gift in a crisis situation, to maintain calm. What’s the word when people get upset?
Lose concentration.
It was very, very valuable. I cannot even imagine. We’re very grateful, but I do that. I put the shield of protection around everything. It’s not religion, but Psalm 91, God’s umbrella protection. Every protection is promised in one chapter. I play it over and over if there’s a tornado warning or something here. Jesus said, “We can do what he did and even more.” I wasn’t taught that fundamentally. If we can do what Jesus did and even more, that’s a lot.
I believe if we learn to stand in the authority of that, we have the authority to receive that authority, we can do so much more than we’ve been taught. We’ve been taught quite the opposite that we need to stay small. You and I are on the same page on that. That’s an incredible story. I cannot even imagine. In 34 years, we had several times when things were not good, but oxygen masks never even fell down.
I didn’t even deal with that. I flew a maximum of hours. I commuted to and from different cities to work. I’m very grateful and blessed for that career, but that’s a story. That is in your repertoire of how you stay courageous because it’s a mindset. That is huge. You probably hadn’t even studied a lot of that stuff at that time by then. I don’t know how long ago it was, but you were fairly young.
Yes, I was. You’re right. It was courage. As I’m listening to you, it is a reminder for the audience and for everyone that courage resides within you.
I believe I have angels protecting me because there have been three separate occasions where I could see the whites of their eyes when I was in the next lane, but my car was in the next lane with no adrenaline. I claim the shield of protection. I claim thank you for that. It’s all gratitude. Thank you for the protection and the angels. My angels had moved my car three separate times that I would have been in a pretty bad wreck, and you were in six.
Three Cs Of Courage
What I do believe is that if we don’t give up and we keep punching to the end, there will often be a miraculous adjustment in your situation or your circumstance. Everybody, go to CarolMetzMurray.com and read some of her stories. Go on Facebook and LinkedIn and find Carol Metz Murray. I was mesmerized by some of your stories and it wasn’t a lot. I didn’t read a lot, but I picked out some very powerful things. Going back to courage, you said there are three Cs in courage, mastering the three Cs of courage, which are Curiosity, Capabilities, and Connection. What do those mean to you?
Be curious. I’ve always been curious from the time I was a little girl with lots of questions about why this, why that, and what’s happening now. As we live our lives, be curious about what you see because the more curious you are, the more real you are. It’s that whole presence of curiosity. Each and every one of us can be curious.
Like a child, I want to learn and I want to absorb every single thing I can. One of my books is Split-Second Transformation: Change Your Words, Change Your Life: 31 Daily Practices. One of those 31 days talks about a word that we can use in conversation so that we can have discourse rather than division. It’s like, “Isn’t that interesting? Tell me more. How did you come to that opinion? You must have a different source of information than I do.”
Our world is so set on being divided and fear and confusion. When you have that sense of curiosity, you can go, “I’ve never even heard that before, that’s very interesting.” Instead of getting this offended and “I’m right, you’re wrong,” or what I call the Jerry Springer mentality if you remember that. We have that curiosity to agree to disagree, shake hands, or whatever. We don’t have to hurt each other or fight each other over an opinion because no one has all the answers.
In this day and age, this year, if somebody has a difference of opinion, I’m in the United States. We have big things going on next month. There’s a lot of discord but we have different sources of information. What I believe and what you believe don’t line up, but that doesn’t mean we cannot like each other.
If we use that as a dividing line, then we will stay divided. It’s very okay for different opinions. From my perspective, what we are being called to do and to be is to be open to those differing opinions. That is where capabilities come in. It is to listen to them. I don’t necessarily have to agree with you, but we can listen to them and we can rise above them, still liking each other, but having different opinions.
We are all unique. We are all connected, but we are unique. We are all a wee bit different. Let’s stop this whole thing about division, and let’s build on unity and harmony, and create a world of love. That to me is connection because we are all connected. We’re connected here on Zoom. One of the gifts that has come out of the last number of years is that the world is now connected.
If we’re connected, then what has us divided? Let’s stand back and think for ourselves versus allowing someone else to think for us. We can have some wonderful conversations. As the book behind you says the change. Be the change you want to see. Open up that lane that you’re walking in and begin to explore. Be curious. Get connected because you’re very capable of all of that. Every one of us is.
I’ve been on a path for many years and I believe there have been some agendas. There are some less than stellar people in our history for many years that have an agenda to keep us in fear and divided and small. We can turn off our devices or turn off that black box on the wall, have a conversation, be still, know, and listen to that still small voice, be aware of who we are, that naked leader inside of us leading ourselves.
It’s truly bringing it back to that. I do believe that box has been an agenda box and it’s driving fear, division, and confusion. The more we keep on it and keep scrolling, the more we can never be united. I’m grateful for this conversation. I feel like we have a lot of the same philosophies around all that.
The tools and technology are wonderful. However, as you have said, they create disconnection. They create separation and disconnection. When we disconnect from others, we’re also disconnecting from who we are. When we disconnect from who we are, then we slide down rabbit holes, such as what I did. That journey then is of reconnecting to who you are and to that curiosity to, connect and be connected to yourself, which comes back to being the naked leader. Whether you are a mom, a CEO, a doctor, a tradesperson, or whatever, first and foremost, be connected to who you are. That is leading yourself, then lead others and live your dreams. That is so important in my eyes.
When we disconnect from who we are, we slide down rabbit holes. Share on XRadical Presence And Listening
You have the tools. You have the credentials, You list the credentials out the gazoo and a whole list of things and testimonies about how you help people. You’re a coach. I saw over and over and you listen. You can hear and see things that maybe we don’t even see about ourselves in your clients. I’m like, “I need you.” That’s a gift. Part of it is a learned gift, but our experiences create who we are. That’s as high a testimony as you can get. It is when people are like, “She saw right through me or she could see things I didn’t even know about myself.”
That’s one of the gifts that I’m able to share with clients. It is my radical presence and radical listening. I get to see the real you. My role is to champion you to bring out the real you. As you read some of my testimonials, one client who has come back and said to me several different times, “You believed in me. You saw in me what I wasn’t seeing, and you helped me to move beyond fear and took the courage to step forward to create my business.”
That’s such an incredible gift, the gift of presence, the gift of being, the gift of hearing, the gift of listening, learning, and hearing. Years and years ago, I just wanted to be heard in regard to a marriage. I was like, “I just want to be heard,” I want to be heard for what I’m saying and probably what I’m not saying. A lot of times, we’re not saying because a lot of times, we don’t know. I would like that. I love a partner to be like, “Tell me more about that. Let’s talk through this or whatever that happens to be.” That’s a huge blessing and gift for the people that are in your circle to have that.
I feel so blessed and truly as I watch someone blossom. That is such a gift to me because it’s like watching a rose, a peony, a tulip, a daisy, or whatever it might be, watching that flower open and stepping into who they are. I will share a story of one client who came to me and there were a lot of tears. As I said to the client, that is a way of beginning to clear out what you have been holding. It was on the third visit and the tears again, which was like a river. Because I am who I am, out of my mouth came the words, “When are you going to stop running?”
I scanned her body as she was sitting in a chair in front of me, and she was wearing running shoes. When I said that, the tears immediately stopped. She looked at me and she said, “I always wear running shoes. She was very defiant. I looked at her and I said, “Maybe you want to change the type of shoes that you’re wearing.” That’s all I said. She looked at me. She stood up and she turned and looked at me again. She walked out. I thought, “This is interesting.” I just sat with that.
About five weeks later, she came back. She called and said, “I’d like to come and see you.” I said, “Absolutely.” When I saw her, she lifted her right leg and said, “I’m now wearing walking shoes.” I looked at her and said, “Yay.” She said, “I want you to know, from the day that I walked out when we last met, I have found my own apartment and I’m moving in at the end of the month. I have registered to go back to school to upgrade my skills. I’ve also gone to the court and filed documentation to get back joint custody of my child.”
I looked at her and I said, “You are amazing. Isn’t that amazing what has happened when you put on walking shoes?” She said, “Yes. I no longer wear the running shoes.” For her, the running shoes were a metaphor for her life. Whatever her life was, and there was lots of trauma in her earlier life, but she got to that point of getting out of the running shoes. There was the letting go of the shame, letting go of the pain, letting go of the guilt, and beginning to step into who she is and to claim who she is. She has moved forward and rebuilt her life. It’s amazing.
It sounds like I’m attracting a lot of what is called intuitive healers or intuitive. You have that gift. You’re an NLP practitioner, a master. Intuition is a huge gift in your world. We all have it, but you’ve honed it. That’s precious in that story. Sometimes tears are just cleansing. You’re a coach and coaching is helping us move forward, whereas therapy is looking back. Our childhood was like, “You did this and poor thing,” and you continue to wallow in the past.
How can you step into your future if you have your eyes on the rearview mirror instead? I feel like you have that gift to where let’s move. Who would have ever thought that her shoes had anything to do with anything? They did, especially when she got triggered by it. Whatever that is, that’s what you want to look at, whatever that thing is. That is a direct umbilical cord attached to you whenever you say, “I’ll never be like my mom.” That means you will.
There’s an attachment there.
Don’t use those always and never words.
It was such a wonderful gift to be able to witness her transformation of moving forward.
Faith-Based Community
What a blessing and a gift and a great story. You have it for the rest of your life because you did it and it’s impactful. It touched me. Nobody gets through here, to here, through life without a story. We all have them. Nobody is unscathed. We can let that go and shame things. We met at BRI Talks through Terilee.
I talk about her almost every week because she has this beautiful speakers group and is masterful at pulling this together. It’s only a couple of months old. She has a great thing. I’ve met several amazing people like you and many others who are also being guests on my show. I’m honored. BRI Talks or LetsTalkBRI.com. BRI is bold, real, and impactful. It’s a faith-based speakers group.
I encourage individuals, if you want a faith-based community, tribe, or however you refer to it, reach out to BRI.com, reach out to Tarilee Harrison. She is a wonderful, beautiful human being.
She lives near me and I met her at my house on March 1st at an event. Since that time, she had not even started on March 1st, 2024. She had not even started BRI Talks and it has grown global now. It’s a great place to be. I think it’s called LetsTalkBri.com. She has a website, but reach out. We’ll put you in there with her. She’s helping us as speakers. It’s not a religious thing at all, but people who want to speak about their faith. It’s a safe place to learn about gifting from whatever level you are from or wherever you happen to be.
It’s learning to share your message in a safe environment. Terilee is there to guide and help you grow. You may also know Elian Haan.
Elian is a show host on Win Win Women. She’s the one who brought Terilee into my house. We had a Win Win Women event on International Women’s Day. I had a little gathering and it was almost spirit-filled. It was extraordinary. It wasn’t me how it came together.
It was spirit bringing everyone together.
Episode Wrap-up
It sure was. It’s been beautiful. We’re at the top of the hour. I know we started late, but we still need to end at the top of the hour. CarolMetzMurray.com and it’s a beautiful site. It’s worth finding you. I want people to find you and I know your LinkedIn is a big one as well.
What I was also going to say is on my website there is also a free gift, and that is Debunking Courage. I encourage your audience to go to my website and download that free gift. It has been such a pleasure to spend time with you. I feel so good.
We love each other. When my message is unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness, not unconditional boundaries. There’s that. You’ve been a huge blessing to me and I love you so much. I appreciate you spending your hour with me. I like to say at the end of my time here to always remember to choose joy.
Yes.
Important Links
- https://www.CarolMetzMurray.com
- https://www.LinkedIn.com/In/CarolMetzMurray – LinkedIn
- https://www.Facebook.Com/CarolMetzMurray – Facebook
- https://www.Instagram.Com/CarolMetz2718 – Instagram
- https://www.Twitter.Com/Carol_Metz – Twitter
About Carol Metz Murray
C
arol Metz Murray is a narrative leadership coach, consultant, professional speaker and author. She lives the mindset, determination and resilience unleashed on her Soul leadership journey through acute stress, high anxiety and burnout to authentically discover her intrinsic Naked Leader.
She is a mesmerizing communicator who walks her talk using radical presence and radical listening to create breakthroughs for clients. She collaborates with women and men to stand up, speak up and step into the possibilities of a Self Image Adjustment to unleash their leader within.
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I’m Charla Anderson, host of The Charla Anderson Show, Collector & Connector of Fascinating People (and EVERYONE is Fascinating!) on live TV, streaming and podcasts. As a Ziglar Legacy Certified Trainer, a retired award-winning flight attendant, Olympic Torch bearer, personal development junkie, Inspired Speaker, Published Author and Your Courageous Coach, I want to share my passion of living life full-out, saying YES to intriguing opportunities, and encouraging YOU to do the same. Let’s jump on a discovery call and get to know each other. Find all things Charla at CharlaAnderson.com/links.
On The Charla Anderson Show, We discuss Mindset, How much Your WORDS matter, Princess to Queen energy, mantras, HOPE, Faith, Miracles, Overcoming, and much, much more, including learning from amazing guests.
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