May 8, 2019
Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! On this week’s episode, I spoke with CEO and Founder of The Zone Lab LLC, Sheryl Kline. Sheryl is a Mental Toughness and Certified High Performance Coach™ who works with business professionals, world-class athletes, and students. She is also a speaker and best-selling author, and her newest book, ZONED IN: The Mental Toughness Required for a World-Class YOU, came out in February of this year. Today on the show, we’ll be talking about her personal journey to becoming a high performance coach and entrepreneur, and her incredible advice for achieving success.
Sheryl’s work began from a place of curiosity: she wanted to understand how world-class athletes persevered through failure and setbacks. She identifies two key components of mental toughness: the clarity to dream big, and attaining a thorough understanding of your own inner dialogue. Through her work as a coach, she helps her clients develop these components, teaching ordinary people to be extraordinary by mastering their mindset. To do this, she draws on a meticulously curated body of research from the past 4 decades which proves “that we are enough. We are all good enough. [...] We all have something special within us, and we have a limited amount of time to bring it to life.”
In addition to her work with individuals, Sheryl also leads workshops and works with major global corporations such as Google Ventures, VMware, and Microsoft. In her mind, across all the work she does, the true problem is a lack of understanding of how to unleash human potential. This results in less productivity, creativity, and innovation — as well as an annual loss of $550 billion in revenue for US companies. “Having us unleash what we’re capable of and be happy in the workplace is good for us — but it’s good for business, too.”
Sheryl also shared some advice for anyone looking to get ahead, and to develop their own resilience. She recommends creating a support group of people who are genuinely interested and invested in your success and growth, and to be able to speak up when something isn’t working out. When it comes to career setbacks, she has this to say: “We must embrace failure, welcome it, take it head on. [...] Our emotions demand to be acknowledged and validated. So when we experience a setback, we have to honor that emotion and give ourselves the space to acknowledge that we’re hurting. Then, you can take control and make the decision to move forwards.”
Sheryl, thank you so much for coming onto the show to give our listeners this fascinating glimpse into the work that you do. If any of our listeners would like to learn more, simply visit sherylkline.com/tf for 1 month free in her mental toughness community! I’d also like to thank everyone out there listening, sharing, and reviewing the show. See you next week!
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