About the Episode
What if the most effective thing you could do as a leader, or as a human, had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with how you show up?
In this episode of Whole by Design, Dr. Julie Lopez sits down with Daniel Lieberman, founder and CEO of Valuable Leadership, to explore his model of “humanship” and the Beacon Effect, a six-part framework for cutting through uncertainty, building genuine trust, and protecting the dignity of everyone around you.
Together, they explore how the way we regulate ourselves shapes every relationship and interaction we’re part of, at work, at home, and everywhere in between.
You’ll leave with a deeper understanding of how to build trust in any room you walk into, how to stay anchored when circumstances shift, and how to use three simple steps before any hard conversation to access more clarity, presence, and dignity-preserving action.
This episode is for anyone who leads a team, a family, or simply themselves and wants to show up in a way people can truly trust.
Episode Guest
Daniel Lieberman is an executive leadership coach whose work blends lived experience, applied behavioral science, neuroscience, and a deep sensitivity to human perception. After a challenging childhood and enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard, he worked his way from barista to CEO in under a decade.
He holds a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Sciences (coaching) and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, and was trained as a photographer—shaping how he notices presence, patterns, and what’s unsaid. Daniel is the creator of the BEACON Effect™, a whole-human framework for composure, trust, and resilience in moments that test us.
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Episode Transcript:
Humanship: The New Leadership
Dr. Julie Lopez: Hi, everybody. My name is Dr. Julie Lopez, and I am your host for Whole by Design.
On this month’s episode, we will be diving into the important area of leadership, garnering trust, and creating dignity among individuals, teams, and organizations for better, more effective, and efficient ways of relating, communicating, and overall getting things done.
Stay until the end, when you’ll hear about the three-step process to up-level your authenticity.
And who doesn’t want that, where people feel and can connect in with being safe and trusted in your presence?
Today, I’d like to welcome Daniel Lieberman, who is the founder and CEO of Valuable Leadership. And he’s here to tell us more about the topic of garnering trust, building authenticity, and ultimately being most effective in the workforce.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Daniel.
Daniel Lieberman: Oh, thanks for having me, Julie. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Awesome. So tell me a little bit… I know you have a model that you use in your work. And I just want to say, this work is so important, right? Because it’s not just about the end result, which is better organizations, more effective leadership, and better communication.
But I think when we learn a little bit more about your model, it’s about showing up authentically in a grounded, innately authentic way with people in your lives. So I actually think this has applications for everyone who might be listening. But tell us about your model.
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah. And I’ll just say it fits under a larger umbrella of my model called humanship, which is sort of the new leadership. And I think because good leadership really is about being a good human, and these practices fit any part of life.
What Is The BEACON Effect ™?
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love that. Good humanship. I love that.
Daniel Lieberman: And so the model is called the Beacon Effect. And originally I developed it as this idea of this beacon that cuts through fog to give leaders clarity in uncertain times, where there’s pressure, stress, other things, where their thinking is not as online as it is in other times under stress and duress, like all of us.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Well, I was going to say, who doesn’t need clarity?
Daniel Lieberman: Right.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Right? I mean, life has all kinds of twists and turns and opportunities for us to be completely overwhelmed or foggy or uncertain. So clarity, to me, seems like an amazing outcome that someone might be very invested in.
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah. And so that’s the idea. Part of why I got the name B.E.A.C.O.N., which stands for Balance, Engage, Adapt, Commune, Orient, and Navigate.
And one of the reasons is it works powerfully because it’s really not this human upgrade or performance system, but it’s actually a return to how we work well under pressure.
So when we are more balanced, most people know this, we actually think better. We do better under pressure when we can maintain our balance and equilibrium.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love that.
Upgrading Your Nervous System
I’m going to jump in with my nerdiness, right? My big thing is about the nervous system. And if you have the right inputs for your nervous system, your whole body is going to be in a better position to focus, to have clarity, to be able to follow through, even to do very hard things, right? If we look at those movies with Jason Bourne or, you know, well, I forgot who it was, 007. Who was that? James Bond, right? They have all these things coming at them, like life couldn’t be more chaotic, but they are level-headed.
They are so cool, they are so trained and adapted to see 20 things at once and know how to position in exactly the right way to dodge the bullet and save the girl and do the thing, right? And that’s, you know, the way our nervous system can work for us when we’ve maximized its potential.
Daniel Lieberman: Totally.
And, you know, in fact, I won’t geek out because it will take too much time, but in short, you know, the folks like Green Berets, Navy Seals, Special Forces, the folks who make it through those, really do. And now we can map; it’s been mapped on fMRIs. They actually do have a way in their body of managing stress.
Their nervous systems are a little more advanced than, sort of us, normal people. And what we also know, and what science has shown, is that we can all learn to develop and upgrade our nervous system regulation. And that’s one of the things that the Beacon Effect is very helpful for.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. Tell me about it. You shared the six words, but I’d love to hear what it means in practice.
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah. So I was thinking as getting ready for your show about this whole idea, your idea of whole by design. And I landed, so the Beacon Effect, these six lenses of balance, engage, adapt, commune, orient, and navigate, really can be applied to almost any problem I continue to find as I continue to work on this with this and with different people and so forth.
And one way to think about it is if we look at trust, which is a fundamental thing that we want in life as humans, we want to trust people, and we want to be trusted by people. Oh, yeah. And so then we put a sentence on each one of those things.
Now, balance, the sentence I think about is regulate your body before you regulate the situation. That may be true for other situations beyond just trying to develop trust. But if I’m not regulated, then it’s hard for somebody else to trust what I’m saying.
So that’s the first step. And then engage around trust is to be present in a way that people can feel, feel your presence, that they know that you’re there. They feel it in their bodies to some sense.
How to Use The BEACON Framework
Dr. Julie Lopez: OK, so wait, just even before we go through each of the six. So we’re using trust as an example, but we’re looking at it that way. If that’s the thing you want to build, you can use the BEACON model to establish that.
So I think it would help with each one, maybe to give an example.
B For Balance
Dr. Julie Lopez: I know we’re using trust, but B was for balance, right?
Daniel Lieberman: Right
Dr. Julie Lopez: So what, and I know it’s probably many different ways you could balance, but give me an example. If I’m sitting here and I’m like, oh, I’m about to have a big pitch, and I want to establish trust in the room, how am I going to do that?
Like, what am I going to do to be balanced or to balance so that I can leverage this model for the outcome that I want?
Daniel Lieberman: Great question. So look, I’ll just bring it right down to the moment.
So, you know, being on a podcast brings up a little bit of anxiety for me and imbalance. And so one of the things I am doing presently in this moment is my feet are squarely planted on the floor, and I’m actually tuned into the sensations of what it feels like. So I know that I’m in my body, balanced firmly on the earth and able to connect with you and hopefully your audience as well.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love it. So you’re doing something physical that gives you the sensation of being balanced, and it draws your attention to your physical body.
Daniel Lieberman: Correct. Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Love it.
Daniel Lieberman: It may balance… and often because leadership is nervous system work, maybe life is nervous system work, being human.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love that you’re saying that because my main program is all about resetting your nervous system.
Daniel Lieberman: Well, you’re helping build leaders and at least leaders of themselves, you know, at very least and certainly probably more. So that there is often that self peace, some physicality, breathing, slowing breathing down.
And I’ve… there are more techniques to bring one’s nervous system into balance that I’m aware of. And we don’t have enough time for me to name all the techniques that I’m aware of.
E for Engage
Dr. Julie Lopez: Just give us the next one. E.
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah. So E is about engaging. And so it’s being present.
So if I’m balanced, then I can be present and connected in a way that people can feel.
So, you know, specific behaviors, eye contact, listening, paraphrasing, active listening, know what that term means, and embodying that.
And so that when we’re engaged, if you think where that term gets most used in our society is with couples to be married.
You know, they’re all in. Right. You know, so but we use it in other words, you know, workplace engagement, you know, well, yeah, it is about being all in.
So when in that moment, can you be present with yourself and with the person or people that you’re with and the situation, the circumstances as well?
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love that. And you rattled off a whole bunch of very practical things that help you and people you’re connecting to feel your engagement and welcome them to engage as well.
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah.
And I would say, some of these may be a little challenging to get really granularly practical with. But that is the point.
Dr. Julie Lopez: We can do it together, Daniel. We’ll just do it together.
Daniel Lieberman: We will. But that is the point, that these are practices more than a model.
These are ways to shift thinking, feeling, and behaving. And those are practical matters. We can go on when you’re ready.
A for Adapt
Dr. Julie Lopez: Let’s go on. I’m ready.
Daniel Lieberman: OK, so the next one is adapt, which is about changing course in real time without losing our center.
So, again, “Balance” and “Engage” are really fundamentals to good adaptation, adapting well, because we need to know where we are and who we are and where the circumstances, not only the people who are around us, what’s the situation? Are we engaged with that situation? And then we can begin to think of alternatives. What changing course can we do in real time, but not lose the center that’s important?
So that may if it’s a business, that may be the mission of the business or the revenue.
If it’s a family situation, it may be the cohesion of the family.
But what’s the adapt? How can we change course without losing what’s most important here?
Dr. Julie Lopez: So that’s a major skill. And people feel that, and they respond to it. Right.
You’re first balanced, and then you’re engaged, and you’re actively listening. That was one of the examples that you gave around the engagement, that when things change course, because they do when you’re in groups of people or teams of people, things don’t always go the way you preplanned it. Like, everyone isn’t on board with the same thing.
There are things that you couldn’t have even imagined. And if you demonstrate that you’re adaptive and you can roll with that and you can hear what they’re saying while still staying anchored, demonstrating flexibility, that’s an amazing skill.
And of course, that garners trust because it’s like, yeah, you see me, you hear me, but you’re not just waving in the wind, changing with other people.
Like you have a point, there’s stuff you’re trying to communicate, and you’re able to stay tracking with it. I’m not sure if I got all that right, but that’s what I heard when you talk about.
Daniel Lieberman: I’m sorry, you’re on point, and even your use of the word anchored.
We’re at the halfway point with the doubt. We have three more letters to cover quickly.
Again, these six ideas are for me coming from this leadership perspective, and really, a human perspective is that when we anchor in two things, composure and resonance, we can really change a lot for the better.
And so in ourselves and in the worlds that we’re in. And so that’s what this is. What’s that?
Dr. Julie Lopez: Is that the C?
Daniel Lieberman: No, it’s commune.
So, composure and this. All this fits under a larger leadership umbrella of mine about being anchored in composure and resonance. This is a really pragmatic, like those are all lofty words. Well, how do you be composed?
Well, you can use the beacon effect to do both of those things, to have better composure and better resonance, which means better impact on your environment and on yourself and the people, whatever the situation.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love it.
Daniel Lieberman: Thanks. Quick time out. Anyway, thank you.
Dr. Julie Lopez: That’s okay. Because you know what? I’m actively listening and I’m on a mission, but I can change course as we go.
Daniel Lieberman: By Georgia, I think she’s got it.
C for Commune
Dr. Julie Lopez: Okay. So the C, did you say it was community?
Daniel Lieberman: It’s commune, actually.
And this is one, as I’m working with people, well, what’s commune? And I’m like, well, the way commune is used most in modern society, in the U.S. anyway, is maybe in the Catholic church. Some people know about communing with Christ or God through the wafer and so forth. And the other way we talk about it is communing with nature.
And both of those are, again, sort of like I talked about with Engage, but a little different about being all in, that when we are communing with the circumstance, we are not denying anything. We’re just being with to understand better and to support potentially better. So in the trust domain, one of the ways to make that specific is to say the unsayable with compassion and restore shared meaning between people.
So that’s a practical way to commune. Commune is maybe the most challenging one for everybody. How am I going to make that practical in this situation?
Dr. Julie Lopez: But you said, say the unsayable.
Daniel Lieberman: Mm hmm.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. So it’s like you’re observing something or you’re noticing something, or maybe you even know something based on context clues, and you’re daring to show up with what’s right in the room.
Daniel Lieberman: Right. And do it with a compassionate way where people can connect and listen to it.
Because I think in society, people will say it in a divisive way, in a provocative way.
Sometimes that has value. But oftentimes, again, where we’re looking for cohesion in a team or corporate or family setting, provoking doesn’t usually engender better, durable relationships and performance. That’s my experience.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Right. And trust, right? We’re working on trust. So, OK, I know we’re on this beacon thing and we’re at the sea, but I have to ask you, Daniel.
So in all your work, doing this stuff with individuals and teams and organizations, tell me one of your top five examples or the top five moments where you’re like, wow, this person is really communing in the ideal way that I was hoping. I taught this. Here we are working.
So beautiful. Like, yeah, just crystallize it for us with one of your favorites.
Daniel Lieberman: Great, great question.
And a client comes to mind instantly. A fellow I worked with, who he would say when I started, he did say, well, people see me as arrogant and very, very smart, worked in a high-tech company as an individual contributor in a large, well-known tech company, high-pressure job. And we worked to channel his intellect into some more humility and connecting with others.
And so he really began to commune with a lot of people with the situation. One of the most from an interpersonal standpoint, there was one person that he needed to work with on the project. And they started out, they were, before I got involved, they were already kind of arch enemies, as they both described it.
Both the smartest guy in the room didn’t get along. Now they go, by the end of our work, they were going out to lunch together because they really respected each other because my client began to connect with him in a way that really appreciated who this other fellow was. And then he was committed to the project and to the company.
Even though they didn’t get along, it didn’t mean he wasn’t… he didn’t have his own value and dignity. And then the second piece is…
Dr. Julie Lopez: Wait, wait. So tell me, what did he do? Like in that moment, like what was he doing to commune? Like be it something he told you or maybe you witnessed it directly, but make it tangible.
Daniel Lieberman: It was repeated contact, a campaign over a year of contact with this other fellow, where he used active listening and inquiry and demonstrated respect in the moment.
We, you know, we laid out some behavioral ways to demonstrate it, but it was really being present with this other fellow, being curious about what his point of view was and responding to it in real time in a real, authentic way.
And so that helped him really commune and move the relationship in a very different way.
Dr. Julie Lopez: So that to me sounds like engagement. When you described communing, I heard something different that was like a little bit more-
Daniel Lieberman: It is deeper. It is deeper.
And it’s, so how I’d articulated is a really open heart. Engagement is a lean in with your body, not necessarily an open heart that, you know, there is some strategy and calculation. Commune is really opening your heart and letting go of strategy to connect for this idea of restoring shared meaning.
Dr. Julie Lopez: And do you think this particular person with this particular example used that action of naming something that wasn’t named?
Daniel Lieberman: I think he did it a couple of times, and I’ll tell you one of the specifics. I wasn’t there. This was a story he related to me.
So the fellow, his arch enemy, so to speak, had owned a part of what needed to go into this and was inflexible on how he would connect to my client’s larger project. When my client said that, I don’t know how he said it, but basically, this is old technology. We’re moving into the future with AI.
Your technology can’t keep up with it. That was the unsayable thing. They switched and actually went to a vendor and got the latest technology for this capacity rather than the in-house one.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Ah, okay. So he had been tiptoeing around this obvious truth, and he dared to say it kind of directly.
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Cool. Well, thanks for the example and being-
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah, thanks for getting me there to that very specific conversation that they-
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love it. I think it just helps crystallize it.
What are we talking about here? Because I think there’s something I do in my business owners forum when we open up a meeting, and it’s called Words for the Good, and the idea is that you share whatever within this group of business owners that will help move the group forward in a positive way. And that’s not always a positive thing.
Yes, it might be gratitude for something, but often it’s really important to say, ” Hey, this kind of annoyed me”, or “this was a thing”, or “actually, you keep bringing up this tech, but it’s old”.
We’re not going to move forward with this in the right way. And no one’s been willing to say it. It’s like the elephant in the room.
But really, those words and their truth, and taking the risk to engage authentically in that way, creates a better cohesion among the group.
Daniel Lieberman: 100%. You get it.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.
Daniel Lieberman: And you’re going to think, oh, that bleeds a little bit into orient, which is.
Dr. Julie Lopez: OK, yeah.
O for Orient
Dr. Julie Lopez: What’s O? What’s O?
Daniel Lieberman: So orient, it is like the word, you know, like what is our orientation? You know, where am I in the broader sense? But when I thought about it in this sort of trust, developing trust as the problem or the project, I really thought about three things that are important in orientation. One is clarify what’s true. So this is it does bleed into what you’re talking about with commune, but it is a pragmatic clarify what’s true, clarify what’s uncertain, and clarify what won’t change.
And so these are, you know, I go back to my Coast Guard days where the beacon effect was sort of inspired by. And what does the water look like? OK, there’s a rock there. It’s not going to change.
And there’s hard surf here that we’ve got to maneuver around. That’s not going to change. But we don’t know what the best path out is, you know.
So that’s how we may orient ourselves. And so, in terms of orienting for trust is to clarify what’s true because we skirt the truth, like it was in that situation I just gave that example, they didn’t have to talk exactly about what’s uncertain, a little bit, but what won’t change, they did.
So there was a little orientation in all of that as well.
Dr. Julie Lopez: So the orientation is actually dealing with life on its own terms, right? It is what it is. We wish this person were more eloquent.
They’re not. They’re on the team. This is what’s happening.
“How do we orient to that?”
“How do we move the things we can?”
“How do we accurately assess what’s going on?”
Am I getting that right?
Daniel Lieberman: A hundred percent.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes. OK, cool.
N for Navigate
Dr. Julie Lopez: OK, and you’re making it there. We are there.
Daniel Lieberman: So navigate is and so in this trust domain, you navigate as we’re moving from what’s the next clean move is really essentially what I’m focused on and navigate.
You know, there may be a big North Star, a five-year plan. Those are important things. But I also think when we’re under pressure and ambiguity is high, and those things are uncertain, we just need the next clean move.
And we need to go back to my small boat Coast Guard days and search and rescue. We just need to get past this wave. Once we get past this wave, we’ll deal with the next one.
But this is the one that’s here now.
Dr. Julie Lopez: So does part of this also have to do with prioritizing or deciding kind of what needs to be focused on first?
Daniel Lieberman: Yes. And so what a great setup, because this is a little bit of a fuzzy one.
And I think you’ll ask. But for trust, what I thought about… It’s about protecting dignity while moving forward. That’s how to navigate maintaining and enhancing trust, is to continue to protect dignity.
And so you can ask me some questions. I’ll talk about some specifics we can get more granular on that as well.
The Power of Preserving Dignity
Dr. Julie Lopez: I do.
I want to know when you say maintaining dignity, what does that mean?
I mean, I think of integrity. So or…
Daniel Lieberman: I think dignity, I think in terms of dignity as a person’s feeling of self. And especially in a leadership position.
People can often define part of their self-worth by the leader, their belief of the leader’s impression. And so being careful, you know, to maintain and enhance that dignity rather than erroneously or on purpose destroying it. I think, you know, you know, so that’s, you know.
The question that comes to mind is, you know, how if I’m going to move forward, how do I do it and continue to maintain and enhance the dignity of whoever, if it’s a team I’m working with, I’m making change. If I’m a manager, I’m laying off someone. How do I protect their dignity and move forward? And how do I protect everyone else’s dignity?
You know, both the person who’s getting cut and the survivors.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, and so that falls into the experience of navigating because you’re also tracking the impact on dignity as you make decisions or as you negotiate outcomes, that kind of a thing.
Daniel Lieberman: Correct, correct.
The Origins of The BEACON Framework
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.
So tell me where you’ve been using this. Tell me how it ends up unfolding for you.
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah, I will say the funny thing is how I kind of uncovered, discovered, or created this is I realized I was using this in my own life.
I realized that certain things were coming up in conversations with leaders and teams and organizations that, you know, and that this seemed like a pattern, these six things that sometimes I wasn’t using one or more of them sufficiently for my own life. Sometimes clients weren’t using one or more of them in a certain way.
So there’s so like in my coaching and in my work, we work around those kinds of ideas because when a leader and a team are present to all six of those ideas and using them in a natural way, again, it’s not thinking about, oh, I have to use the model, but it’s something I have to think about.
Where am I, and where’s my team? That’s Orient. OK, great. You’re thinking about the orientation.
Where are we going? That’s Navigate. Great. Are you balanced? You know, which is which is a big one for people today.
You know, things are it was probably 20 years ago that the term VUCC or VUCCA kind of came out and was popular. It things are so much more chaotic now than they were 20 years ago.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, that is totally true.
3 Steps to Increase Clarity
Dr. Julie Lopez: Well, you’re not going to believe this, but we are at that time where people are ready to hear about your three steps to increase clarity.
Daniel Lieberman: Yeah, excellent. So there are three simple steps that you can do before any hard conversation to increase your clarity, which is one, just slow your exhale, then drop your shoulders.
And maybe turn inside and ask, what would preserve dignity here? And see what an experiment with that for a little while. See what comes up.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love that.
So the three steps are the exhale, slowing your breath down. The second one is to relax your shoulders and turn inward, and then ask yourself. And I love this pause, the whole pause of it.
What would preserve dignity here?
Daniel Lieberman: You got it.
Dr. Julie Lopez: And so what have you seen happen when people do that? What kinds of outcomes are you seeing?
Daniel Lieberman: Amazing stuff. And the one little case I gave you.
So this fellow, that was two years ago. He was an individual contributor in a Fortune 50 tech company. He is now a chief executive in a multinational corporation.
And when he took me out to lunch, he’s like, oh, this is all because of the work we did together. And I’m like, well, you bring a lot that they wanted to hire. It really freed him up to be himself more.
He’s so smart, but his arrogance was getting in the way. Now he comes across as a human being that people want to be around, want to learn from, and want to engage with.
And he’s got the best job in his life, and he’s in his 60s.
Dr. Julie Lopez: That’s amazing. I love that story. What a wonderful story.
This person who was really unconsciously pushing people away. He already had the smarts, the gifted package, and the accomplishment package. But now you greatly up-leveled his relational skills to be able to connect with people and to have them be authentic with him in return.
I love that story, Daniel.
Daniel Lieberman: I think he would say the same, as that really – I allowed him to return to the best parts of himself.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love that too. I always love it when it’s about people just optimizing what their potential might be.
Daniel, thank you so much for being here today on Whole by Design.
And thank you for joining me on this episode. I hope it left you feeling inspired to toss out labels, embrace new perspectives, and take one step closer to the joy and clarity that is waiting. As always, visit www.vivapartnership.com to access our free and low-cost resources that will empower you and your loved ones on health and wellbeing.
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