Meet Yvette Bethel- A global thought leader who is helping organizations across the world with scalable strategies that help them build cultures that support their brand values.
As a cultural transformation expert, author, speaker, and advanced emotional intelligence practitioner, Yvette Bethel was recognized in 2020 and 2021 as one of the top 88 global thought leaders in trust by Trust Across America, Trust Around the World. She works with CEOs and Boards to help leaders understand their organizations as ecosystems, equipping them with fresh strategic approaches to traditional cultural challenges that impact profitability.
She understands the complexities of organizational ecosystems and how to effectively bring the corporate vision to life. From 2020 to 2022, she was recognized by Thinkers360 as the number one global thought leader in ecosystems and a top-five thought leader in culture. She uses her deep insight into organizational ecosystems and transparent communication style to support her clients using the proprietary Interconnectivity, Flow, and Balance (IFB) methodology. According to Thinkers360, she is one of the Top 150 Women Thought Leaders to Watch in 2022.
She is a Preferred Partner with Six Seconds, the largest global emotional intelligence network. She is an advanced emotional intelligence practitioner, trust expert, and co-author of the validated trust instrument the Trust Style InventoryTM. Bethel is also the author of two award-winning emotional intelligence books: E.Q. Librium and Getting to E.Q. Librium and the multiple award-winning and Amazon Best Selling book, Interconnectivity, Flow and Balance (IFB) introduces the proprietary IFB methodology which is the foundation of her work.
Her entrepreneurial path started in high school when she joined Junior Achievement. “Our very first product was a clothespin bag where the pins could be stored until needed for hanging out the clothes. At the time I was the V.P. of Finance for our company and when we wrapped up our company at the end of the school year, our investors received more than they invested. That was my first experience as an entrepreneur, and I remained in Junior Achievement for multiple years afterwards. I didn’t realize it then, but those experiences awakened the entrepreneur within me,” she says.
Yvette started her career as an employee at a Fortune 500 company and after completing her tertiary degrees and moving up the corporate ladder with responsibility for HR and Learning in eight countries, she decided to walk away from it all and start her own venture. There are two things she had to learn in the beginning. One was that she spent so many years as an employee, she didn’t realize until it was too late that she had to balance her time in a way that allowed her to get the work done for her clients and spend time on marketing her business. One of her clients describes it as attaining a balance between working on the business and working in the business.
“I have to admit that in the early years, I thought I would be running a traditional business, using a traditional business model with employees. Today, my business model is not even close to what I envisioned back then. This is because I was not familiar with innovative business models and the more thought leadership work I completed, the more I realized that I can create any business model I wanted and the one I chose is centered on my third book- Interconnectivity, Flow, and Balance- which introduces leaders to companies as systems that are part of larger systems,” she says.
Today, Yvette is constantly experimenting, seeking new ways to apply the proprietary IFB® Model. In addition to implementing it in organizations, she is also in the second year of using the IFB Model in a beta, creating an ecosystem that will eventually have its own economy, culture, learning opportunities and more. One value that makes this ecosystem different is that it challenges the status quo. She aims to create ways of being and doing within a paradigm of mutual support, innovation, purpose and trade where we can build a system that is free yet interdependent with other systems in ways that serve the greater good, not only a few people.
The hardest lesson in her start-up journey was her miscalculation regarding the time it takes to build the brand of a company. While she already had a brand as an individual, it took time to clarify the brand of her business but once she did this, she conscientiously built it.
“In retrospect, I should have crafted my brand in a way that would have allowed the company to evolve without having to continuously rebrand. I realize this is not always possible because our worldview, experience, and purpose-awareness may not be developed enough in the beginning. One approach that served me as my business evolved is that I made sure everything is connected, building on offerings of the past,” she says.
The underlying purpose behind her work is to create an ecosystem that is interdependent with and different from existing systems that operate globally. This means she is seeking to partner with people who are committed to realizing their potential and who are the right fit. According to her, too many people are burnt out and unhappy because someone influential guided them away from their purpose, because they don’t know what their purpose is, or because the current system doesn’t allow their purpose to emerge and shine.
She believes an important lesson for new entrepreneurs is that even though they don’t always know exactly what their purpose is, they should continually seek it. By doing this, their business will evolve, teaching them important lessons that they can build on for the next phase. She adds-
“When your business is purpose-driven, you can maintain the motivation you need to take you through the peaks and valleys associated with running a business. With a clear vision and purpose, you will sense when you are moving away from your core business and values. While moving away may be appropriate in some instances, you will be able to detect aspects of the change that are not aligned with the big picture as you build your self-understanding.”
LinkedIn Profile: Yvette Bethel