Spotlight on Dr. Jann Freed

Hello, this is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life? So let's go. Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner finding your purpose TV and today on finding your purpose Spotlight, we're talking to Jann Freed, PhD. Sorry, my apologies to Dr. Jan Freed, Ph.D. She was a college professor of business management and leadership. And after 30 years as a tenured professor and endowment chair, she started an encore career as a leadership development and change management consultant. And she is the author of several books and co-author of a list of five books. And her last book is Leading with Wisdom Sage Advice from One Hundred Experts, which we'll be talking about. And we'll also be talking about her new book. So, Jann, welcome. Welcome. Please just say hello and say hello.

I'm pleased to be here. And it was nice to make a connection with Jane. And thank you very much for inviting me to your show. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Jan, one of the things that I love to talk about with people is finding their purpose. And obviously, you've been doing your purpose for a long time. So but I'd like to talk about your new purpose, which is the Leadership Development and change management consultant and how you got to that journey, because, of course, you previously were in academics. So thank you. How did that happen?

Yeah, well, it's interesting. So I fell into higher education teaching and absolutely loved it, had a lot of different courses. And but I had to drive two hours a day, an hour each way to get to my work and. When my kids graduate from college, my husband said, you know, we can afford to take a risk, you're tired of driving. And I wanted to I was at the stage of my life where I want to give back to the community. And I couldn't give back to the community where I live because I worked out of town and I couldn't give back to where I worked because I lived out of town. So I had to make a change and I have not looked back. Fortunately, I was able to teach a graduate leadership course for a different university for the past 10 years. So I kept my foot into teaching. And as a leadership development person, you know, I do workshops, I do speaking, I do some coaching. And it's really the same skill set that I enjoyed so much when I was teaching full time. So I eliminated grading papers, which is always kind of the hardest part about teaching. So I don't have to do that. And I can still use some of the same skills and I have just loved it. And so that's kind of been my journey taking really kind of taking the same skills that I like to use, but to a different audience.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's great. And I guess you probably started writing books when you were in academics because that's probably one of the requirements. But you're now doing maybe you could tell us when you started your leadership book, Leading with Wisdom and that you're writing a new one. And what what we can claim from that.

I know that's that's good, Jane. I really started the leadership book. I was on sabbatical in two thousand or two thousand five, and my oldest son was graduating from high school and I wanted to be home more with since that was his last year home. But in order to get a sabbatical, I had a research project. So I started this project. And it's kind of interesting. I met Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, and he was speaking at a big presentation, giving a big presentation where I live. And I was able to kind of chat with him afterwards. And in talking with him, he said, give me a call. We'll talk about this, because I asked if I could be an apprentice, if I could come study under him. I said I was going to be on sabbatical and I wanted to learn from him. Would that be possible? And h