We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Gino Haynes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Gino, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
In short my grandmother. My grandmother was the best, most strongest, and enduring leader I have ever known and I’m grateful for what she has instilled in me. It has largely shaped and molded me into who I have become today. She was involved in a serious car accident, before I was born, in which she broke her back in 3 different places and was told that she’d be paralyzed and never walk again. She defied the odds, was able to walk again (with assistance from a walker), and was able to live a pretty independent life throughout the rest of her life. There were complications, lots of pain, surgeries, and hardships that followed that I was able to witness first hand. I think being able to observe that up close everyday and seeing how she dealt with it all, gave me a first class training on what resilience means. Those experiences, her raising me, and my faith have equipped me to be fairly resilient I believe. That legacy is the inspiration for my organization “Legacy in Action”.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a leadership and retention coach and consultant with Legacy in Action, which I founded. I partner with organizations and asset them in cultivating impactful leaders, ensuring their organization not only thrives today but leaves an enduring mark on the future of business success.”
I have been fortunate enough to be able to travel all over the world and serve leaders and organizations in a diversity of contexts and cultures. I’ve had the privilege of having clients across our country as well as in 3 different countries. This last year I was awarded top twenty under forty young professionals in our county. I love coaching and consulting. Working and helping people get the best out of themselves as well as their teams is such a deep passion of mine. Self investment and leadership development is crucial in our current climate and if you’re not investing in your employees someone else will. We have some new client openings for the new year if people are looking to get connected.
I also serve, in strategic capacity, as a community organizer for an Organization named “Canton For All People”. It is a great reward to see your strategy and ideas help to move the needle and help people’s lives and living situations. I’ve helped organize three tenant unions across the city, aided in re-housing folks that were living in deplorable circumstances, and able to begin a Neighborhood Leadership Academy to name a few. The Neighborhood Leadership
Academy is one of my favorite and prized creations. I’m able to take top tier training and resources and give front porch leaders in largely overlooked neighborhoods access to sharpen their leadership and fuel their ideas for the betterment of the community.
I will be starting a new podcast here in the next couple of months as well with my best friend. We’ve been planning this podcast over the last decade and are really excited! Our relationship is so dynamic and has, in a lot of ways, shaped each others leadership in different ways. We’ve had so many unrecorded powerful conversations over the years and felt like it’s time to start recording and sharing what we have come to learn. Our backgrounds, education, faith, different sexual orientations, love for our city, and heart for the development of people, we think, is going to be powerful and a beautiful way to transmit information to folks we believe this will resonate with. So look out for the Midwest City Kidz Podcast coming soon!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Most impactful quality and skills for me would have to be self-awareness, innovation, and creativity. I think that the more self aware I became and leaned into my truest self, I was able to get real clear on what my strengths were and hone in on where those strengths were valuable. Creativity and innovation being at the top of the list of those strengths, I think. That also gave me a strong conviction of what I wasn’t and then I gave myself permission not to be those things and that helped me tremendously.
The advice I’d have for someone who is early in their leadership journey would be; Leadership is a journey up, down, and across a mountain. Its starts with you because you are the mountain that you are climbing. The more you figure yourself out; who you are, who you’re not, and where who you are translates to value, the more clearer the path forward becomes. Find spaces, people, and opportunities that value you and tap into your creativity, innovation, and affirm the value you bring.
How would you describe your ideal client?
At Legacy, we love partnering with organizations that prioritize growth, innovation, and a thriving workplace culture. Our ideal clients are forward-thinking companies that recognize the pivotal role leadership and culture play in achieving long-term success and employee satisfaction. We also have individual clients, both professional and personal, that we love partnering with. Individuals who are committed to their own development and investment to becoming a better leader of themselves and others. We use proven but customized methods, assessments, and tools to bring real time results to unique and dynamic spaces.
Overall we love people and organizations that have a clear commitment to development in themselves/their people, alignment, capacity building, and overall healthy sustainable success. If this is you, your organization, a friend, or an organization you know you of, you should contact me at ghaynes@thelegacyinaction.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thelegacyinaction.com
- Instagram: @ginohaynes @legacyinactionllc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelegacyinaction
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/gino-haynes-2b8b5279
