Meet Terry Warren

We recently connected with Terry Warren and have shared our conversation below.

Terry, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

It is both a gift from God and my parents and their parents before them.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I grew up in a small town in Tennessee where most people worked hard to make ends meet. I was blessed to be part of a loving family with strong values, but we struggled financially. My parents went to school through the fifth grade, and my father passed away when I was fourteen.

I have played many roles in my business career, including strategic planning, sales, CEO, and more. Looking back, I realized that what I enjoyed, regardless of the role or title, was positively impacting people. Early in my career, I discovered that making art was the one thing that helped me escape the day-to-day pressures of business. For the remainder of my corporate career, I kept my two passions—business and art—separate. When I decided to retire from the corporate world, I knew I was not a retiring type, so I had to discover what would be next for me, and I knew I wanted to put more emphasis on my work as an artist.

After much research, I chose executive coaching as my path. Coaching has proven to be the best business role I have ever played because it is fun to watch people achieve things they never thought possible. I also discovered I could combine my passions—coaching and art—by allowing each to inform the other. My book The Art of Choice was the turning point in my realization.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

– Building trusting relationships quickly.
– Problem-solving.
– Continually learning.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

Many years ago, I participated in an exercise I call “the fence posts.” In this exercise, I looked at my life with many twists and turns. I put a fence post at every significant point in my life which I felt was a significant turning point or change of direction. I then put a name over the post of the person who had the most influence in getting me to the point of going in a new direction. The result was exciting. A few examples best illustrate this:

1. My parents taught me faith, values, and hard work.
2. The dean of my engineering major who taught me how to relate to people at all levels of society.
3. My wonderful boss for many years.
4. Jesus was, of course, the most significant impact.
5. Others who encouraged me.

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