122: From Operator to Visionary - The Leadership Shift Nobody Prepares You For w/ Sonya Weigle

What happens when the skills that built your success are no longer the skills your next level requires?

In this episode of the No Limit Leadership Podcast, Sean Patton sits down with biotech advisor and executive coach Sonya Weigel to unpack the identity shift leaders face as they grow from subject matter experts into transformational CEOs.

Drawing from years of experience in biotech leadership, M&A integration, and executive coaching, Sonya explains why most organizational failures are actually people and culture failures — not strategy failures. Together, Sean and Sonya explore what it takes to scale leadership, let go of old identities, build high-performance cultures, and lead through uncertainty without burning out.

This conversation goes far beyond biotech. Whether you’re a founder, executive, entrepreneur, or rising leader, this episode is packed with insights on leadership growth, decision-making, company culture, strategic thinking, intuition, and personal transformation.

In This Episode, We Cover:

•  Why most mergers and acquisitions fail 
•  The transition from operator to visionary leader 
•  How founders can scale themselves as their company grows 
•  The mindset shift required to become a CEO 
•  Why strategic thinking requires white space and reflection 
•  The importance of coaching for high-level leaders 
•  Building company culture intentionally during growth 
•  How intuition impacts executive decision-making 
•  Preventing burnout while scaling your career 
•  The leadership lessons women executives face in their next chapter 
•  Why your next level requires becoming someone new 

Key Takeaways

•  What got you here won’t get you there 
•  Great leaders stop doing everything themselves 
•  Scaling a company requires scaling your identity 
•  Leadership is less about control and more about trust 
•  Intuition becomes a competitive advantage at high levels 
•  Sustainable success starts with alignment and self-awareness 

About Sonya Weigel

Sonya Weigel is a biotech advisor, executive coach, and founder focused on helping life sciences leaders become decisive, high-impact CEOs. With a background in executive biotech leadership and organizational transformation, she now works with founders and senior women executives navigating pivotal transitions in leadership and life.

Connect With Sonya Weigel

www.sonyaweigle.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonya-wilford-weigle/ | https://www.instagram.com/sonyawilfordweigle/

🎙️ If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the No Limit Leadership Podcast, leave a review, and share this episode with someone navigating growth and leadership transformation.

📩 Subscribe

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
What happens when the person who built the business realizes they've outgrown the way they lead? In this episode, biotech advisor, Sonia Weigel breaks down the identity shift from expert to CEO, how great leaders make decisions under pressure and why your next level requires becoming someone new.

Sean Patton (00:30)
Welcome to the No Limit Leadership podcast. am your host, Sean Patton, and I'm very excited to be joined today by Sonia Weigel. She's a biotech advisor and founder who helps life sciences leaders grow into decisive high impact CEOs. With a background in executive biotech leadership, she now works with founders and senior women executives to navigate pivotal transitions, blending strategic thinking with intuitive decision-making. Sonia is passionate about helping leaders not just succeed in their roles, but design careers and lives that fully align with who they.

So thanks for being on today.

Sonya Weigle W (00:59)
Sean, thanks for having me. Super excited.

Sean Patton (01:02)
Yeah, I'm very excited too. it's, ⁓ every once in a while I have a pre-interview, where, know, I feel like we're kind of like old friends and I like we should have recorded the pre-interview because we just, I, last time we just chatty cat in a way the whole time. and there was so much gold in it. So I'm very excited to have you on today.

Sonya Weigle W (01:17)
Yeah, no, likewise, likewise.

Sean Patton (01:19)
So let's walk us through a bit your, you know, your career as an operational leader in the biotech space and how that led you to your role now as advisor and coach.

Sonya Weigle W (01:30)
Sure. So I started my career in global consulting, most often in the life sciences spaces. But at the time, way back then, was big pharma, essentially. But over time, it evolved into ⁓ smaller pharma and then eventually biotech. And I came to discover that I really, really love the biotech space. It's very different. It's that startup.

innovative culture, but it's also the development of things that have never been discovered before. And, you know, it turns out I'm fiercely committed to the idea of developing new drugs for untreated diseases. And I am in no way a scientist, terribly bad at math as an example, could never have been. I would never have gotten to that path except through the idea of supporting and building

Sean Patton (02:13)
Yeah.

Sonya Weigle W (02:20)
culture and leadership and skill sets and human resource strategy and organization structure design, and doing the kinds of things initially in a merger and acquisition integration standpoint where, you know, working with venture or working with companies that we're looking to acquire to do, you know, ideally the due diligence on the front end to see not only if financially and strategically this would be a good integration or match, but

In terms of people, culture, ways of working, is there a match there as well? 80 % of these things go sideways because after the transaction is done, can't integrate the people, you can't integrate the processes, you can't integrate the ways of working or the culture. And you often have to decide, you've got one culture that's very innovative, nimble, quick moving, you've got another culture that is successful because of their ability to bring consensus to every situation.

How do you bring those two together? And isn't it better to contemplate that on the front end? Very often that does not happen. And I'm asked to come in afterwards to say, know, company A and company B, they, you know, they don't work together. How do we, how do we fix that? We've got two CFOs, which one do we pick? So that sort of evolved into executive leadership opportunities on, on the inside. And it really, biotech really gives me the ability to combine my love for that.

fast-paced startup environment with my passion and commitment to new drug discovery and then kind of wrap it all up into leadership.

Sean Patton (03:49)
I'm so, I'm so glad you're bringing this up because this is an area I'm interested in. I've had a little experience and, also sort of periphery, you know, friends and colleagues in this space. And, you know, you mentioned how 80 % go sideways and it's usually a people problem. And yet what I have found, uh, generally is when you try to have this discussion with the people making the decisions, IE, whether it's a P firm or a VC firm, it's like not.

it's if it's considered at all, it's the footnote at the end of the meeting. But yet it's probably, you know, the most critical part of success afterward. And so I guess the first question would be why? And then we can maybe talk about how to address it or how do we change that conversation? like

Sonya Weigle W (04:21)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (04:38)
You're in though you've been in those rooms more than I have. So what does that look like? Is there assessing maybe two, three companies when it comes to an and A activity? And what is the conversation like when it comes to people and culture?

Sonya Weigle W (04:49)
So, you know, if I get invited to the conversation at all, it's usually because somebody on the board has had experience where they've seen it go sideways and they felt the pain, they felt the burn of what happened when they didn't. So, you know, I'm often invited in almost, you know, anecdotally to say, hey, listen, this really hurt the last time. Let's find somebody that can help us think about these things on the front end.

You know, but there is the occasion where I've got a really enlightened CEO who says, look, before I even contemplate any of this, tell me, you know, do my leaders have the skill sets? You we know we have the skills, but do they have the mindsets, the behavioral competencies? Do we have the culture to integrate another organization or, you know, to bring in a commercial organization into what's been historically an R &D organization and bringing those two things together? So.

It often comes from very experienced executives who have seen it go sideways and are really interested in not having that happen, if it's at all possible. But if that's not the case, it is ⁓ very often very much a last thought or even a non-thought. And so I feel like it's almost an experiential journey that executives have to go through where they feel it the first time and then the next time will never forget it.

Sean Patton (06:04)
Where should this conversation be happening earlier? Like how do we, know, collectively, how do you start getting this at the forefront and maybe shift a bit of that culture inside M &A to show the data of why the culture and people side is so critical? Like how should that look?

Sonya Weigle W (06:28)
It should really be at the very, very beginning as you're doing formal due diligence, you know, as you're thinking about, okay, this company is ready to acquire another, and this is what our acquisition strategy looks like. Part of that strategy should be, you know, planning with the end in mind, planning with the future in mind, planning with success in mind. You know, what got you here is not often, very rarely, what's going to get you here. So...

even assessing the initial company, the portfolio company to say, all right, so this is what our leadership team looks like and this is what our strategy looks like. What makes us ready to acquire or be acquired? What makes us ready to go public? What makes us ready to do any of these monumental shifts? Where are our current gaps? given where we know we wanna go,

How do we fill those gaps? And let's make sure that we identify a target that fills those gaps or at least opens up the opportunity to do so. So it really is at the very beginning. And it's not just, it's a people discussion and a skills discussion, it's also an organization structured discussion. When I work with early stage biotechs that are scaling, they're moving from one meaningful inflection point to another. So they've had a successful phase one trial as an example. Now they're gonna...

They've raised a series A, they're coming out of seed. And now they've got the capital to become, quote unquote, a proper company, It's something more than founder plus plus. So, all right, let's go hire a bunch of people. Okay, okay, let's just not hire a bunch of people. Let's think about our clinical milestones. Let's think about the milestones that came with that financing. Let's align our hiring plan with those milestones.

So we're not hiring too fast or too slow. We're not hiring the wrong people in the wrong places. We're really thinking about, upon this milestone, we're gonna need a clinical development team that can do this. Once they accomplish this, we need this. we're ready to go commercial. How long out? What does that look like? Well, that's another 50 people. How are we gonna do that? To really be very strategic about it from the very beginning.

so that you can be confident with all of your stakeholders that you're doing this the right way.

Sean Patton (08:42)
you for those of you maybe who are listening, who are like, this isn't my world. I'm never going to do this. Like what, you know, uh, whether we're talking about, know, the V the VA or, or, or P or like an M and a space in general, guess. Um, or even, you know, the series of rounds of funding and that transition. What I think what I'm hearing from you too, is that like where this comes into play is like internal restructure.

Sonya Weigle W (09:07)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (09:08)
Or, or moving from leading at one level to leading another and, looking at how the companies can have to morph and change. so, you know, I'm, working with several clients right now on that exact thing where to your point's like, okay, we've operated this way up to this level. The next level is we have to operate differently as a company. have to unsilo. We have to have more shared services. We have the vision's bigger. Like what's that look like? So I, what I'm hearing here is.

I I know, it's so great to have some like depth in, in this in biotech and in an &A. But man, the things you're talking about, like this, this framework is really about transformation and managing transformation to get to have to have success in that. So is there, and it's okay if it's not, but is there like

some key parts that all those things I talked about this transformation piece, internal, external, as you go through that as a leader, what are some commonalities or non-negotiables of the way we need to think about things so we don't fall into the pit or a blind spot we don't see.

Sonya Weigle W (10:08)
Yeah, you know, and it's industry agnostic, right? I mean, it's every, if you're doing a great job, your business is growing and it's evolving. And, you know, one of the analogies that I absolutely love is that as a leader, you know, in a smaller environment, as you're growing the company, you need to learn to go from being first chair clarinet to being the conductor of the orchestra.

And a lot of times, particularly in technology, in biotech, in high tech industries, what got you to the level of success you're at is because you are a specialist. You were super, super talented in that lane. But as you move up in leadership, even if the company isn't going through some big acquisition, as you grow in your career,

You've got to learn to let go of the day-to-day transaction and being really good at that transaction to more of a transformational leader. And a lot of times, I'll hear leaders say, if I give that up and I bring other people to do those transactions and underneath, what's left for me to do? That is a very common question. yeah, it's like, well, wait, that's what I'm really good at. That's what I'm successful at. If I give that up, what's left?

And so it's the mind shifts that shift that comes. And I think the analogy of the orchestra is a really good one in that, you know, that conductor is still going to be a phenomenal clarinet player, but now they can move the whole orchestra. that's the kind of mindset that needs to change, whether you're the individual or really even the organization. You know, we need to go from siloed work streams to

connected and cohesive work streams. The work streams remain, but now there's got to be collaboration across them in different ways. You may come into an organization that is on the precipice of growth and change, but they're small. You've got one person that's doing 50 things, and I like doing this and this and this and this, and I like being in all these meetings, and I like being responsible for all these things. And then as you grow, you're bringing in experts that have deep expertise in all of those things, and they start to break away. And that's hard for people too.

Sean Patton (12:16)
Yeah. which makes sense that there's in this, like most development realms, there's a key piece of self-awareness that has to go into where, where am I in these different areas? What do I, what is sort of my zone of genius? What is my, my future role? And, and also, okay. I mean, I guess my, I having this discussion actually with, a client yesterday around, and it's very few.

what we see, right? Very few founders that stay in like that lead role from initial founding through these different stages because it's, it, ⁓ and the ones that do, and it's possible, right? We see it, but the mentality around that is require such a, a, a growth mindset, such a development mindset, such, you know, not clinging to old identities because

where, because this, you're going to have to become a new identity and that can feel very scary. So I'm wondering if you wouldn't maybe what this conversation, when, especially in this biotech space where someone is maybe a deep expert and they were in the lab and they were the ones actually developing it. And now it's like, business leaders, CEO of, of companies, what's required, how do you work with them on, stripping away or creating and transforming

their own identity and where they get value from.

Sonya Weigle W (13:30)
You know, it's funny, I think where I've seen it be most successful is because there's a certain sort of genotype in a founder, especially in this space, that will take an undiscovered drug or will in license a drug that's not been fully developed and that can take it and make something out of it and take it to a certain level. The most successful ones I've seen are like, OK, now I'm going to let this go and I'm going to do it again.

because their secret sauce, their superpower is in that early stage development. And you're seeing a lot in the industry right now of biotechs being bought up by big pharma. There's a lot of those deals going right now. And it's interesting, there's okay, do we take this drug and do we take it to market ourselves and go all the way through, face through and commercialize it and everything else? Or do we get it to a certain point and have it be acquired by a strategic?

And, you know, I just, there's so many CEOs that I've seen founders that have successfully been able to compartmentalize this thing that they built with such genius. then, you know, they let it go so that, you know, an organization with more resources, more capability, more people, more capital can take it and, know, all the way. So that's where I've seen it be most successful, but, know, it's also.

a very viable path and a very credible path and honorable path to take it all the way through. But at that point, then you have to really lock in on surrounding yourself with deep experts who are extraordinarily good at what they do and who are ready to hit the ground running. And that means, again, you have to not be so deep in the clinical data that you're not able to to talk to potential investors or, you know, and to venture. you can't do both.

So you have to begin to then bifurcate your skill set into people that are really, really good at it. So you have confidence in the executive team that you've built around you because all of that will slow you down. You need to be able to move really quickly, make really quick decisions, you know, and align with what your stakeholders are looking for as a founder, as an executive, which means you've got to have the mindset and the security

in yourself to say, I'm going to let this go and I'm going to trust these people to do what I hired them to do.

Sean Patton (15:39)
let's, zoom in on that, that struggle, because I feel that's one, again, as you move up, from any role, you know, again, maybe you're, you've been in the sales org since you were a, ⁓ appointment setter, right. IPDR. And then you worked your way up from account executive to manager to senior manager to director to, you know, and now you're like VP of sales and

Now you have to consider the other department, the business as a whole, right? You have to pull yourself out of, out of that data. And I have seen that so many times where in this example, like even maybe someone was a great sales manager. And so they were like great at leading other salespeople and now they've been promoted twice and they're still just basically trying to do the same thing, but they're still trying to play like manager of individual salespeople is like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. know, so like,

What does that work look like with that individual to help them in that transition? Maybe what are some of the conversations that you have, maybe some of the hangups, some of the work as we get into the weeds a bit on how to make that transition from subject matter expert to what I'm hearing from you is two leader.

Sonya Weigle W (16:46)
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, first, I've seen it done most successfully when people invest in coach, you need an outside view in you need. I mean, everybody needs coaching. I have coach everybody.

Sean Patton (16:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

⁓ I'm glad you said it on me. mean, from one coach to another, I told you, I've got anywhere between three and five coaches going at one time, depending on what I'm up to, you know.

Sonya Weigle W (17:03)
You're crazy.

because, you know, it's there and, know, and that's, that's certainly part of, you know, our modern or, current business world, I guess, is that, you know, this is available in a way now that it's never been before. And so, I feel like, you're going to be bare knuckling it through. You know, if you're, if you're going to go in without an objective and experience qualified outside perspective, first of all. But, when I'm coaching even internally,

And I'm talking to my leaders, I often talk to them about a 365 view, which is, look all around me. A really good leader is going to be able to see around corners that people don't even know exist yet. And you're thinking three steps ahead and you're looking around 365, who are my stakeholders? This decision impacts who and how.

How am I gonna scenario plan around each of these things? If you're spending your time having these sort of strategic thoughts and planning and discussions and this is how you are aligning with your peers and up, that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for you to be deep diving into the transactions that the folks that work for you are supposed to be doing. They're relying on you to do all of that. So that the decisions that are made are fully informed.

and fully aligned with the strategy and where the company needs to go. And so your folks can trust that the road that they're marching down that you've set them on is the right road. The other times, when you're not thinking strategically and doing this 365 thinking, you're empowering, enabling, mentoring, guiding the folks that work for you.

and your one-on-ones are less about status updates and more about, hey, what happened since the last time we talked? Give me the good, give me the bad, tell me how I can help. And let's talk about that. How can I help you solve problems? Where do you need air cover? How can I move things out of the way? Those are the discussions that you're having because you're trusting the folks that work for you to do the things that you hired them to do. That leaves virtually no room.

for picking up the mantle again and doing the things that got you there.

Sean Patton (19:14)
And I want to just like double click and highlight everything you just said, because, I couldn't agree more. First of all, with if you're trying to become the best version of yourself and you don't have a coach, like, I don't know what you're doing. Like your, actions to me aren't aligning with what you're telling me. You're like sort of what we would know. We would call it a novice global. My coaching firm, you're out of integrity. if you're telling me I want to be the best leader I'm capable of and you're, and I can look at your calendar and

your, you P and L and there's not money and time being put toward that. Then you're lying to me and yourself, you're out of integrity. so yes. And then, you know, in that company that, that need to be strategic to see around corners to there should be like, and there should be thinking time. It should be, there should be time and, and, and as, as a society, as a culture, and then it's, and reinforcement as you developed.

Sonya Weigle W (19:54)
Yes.

Sean Patton (20:03)
you know, through the ranks was like on the, on the doing the doing, the doing, the doing, the doing. and, I know for me, like, I've had to fight so hard, like to see white space on the calendar and not be like, well, I could be doing this. I could be, you know, I'd just like, no, I'm going to sit and think I'm going to sit and think. and the, and the more time that you are, the bigger that your company gets, or the bigger that faster you're growing, the more time you need to be doing thinking. Cause your point, I think

Sonya Weigle W (20:14)
Yeah

Sean Patton (20:28)
So many leaders feel guilty for that. They feel guilty when they're not quote unquote being productive and doing things. But I loved how you phrased it of your people, your team, like need to trust that you're the one actually doing that. Cause otherwise nobody's flying the plane. Nobody's actually looking ahead.

Sonya Weigle W (20:41)
you

Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's really, that's true. And they need to trust that. know, where I see leadership and mentorship bloom in organizations is when you have leaders that are really sharpened into, how do I empower my folks? You know, and do they trust me? And do we have a mutually beneficial relationship? And it's, you know, the time spent to do that is so valuable. It's not non-productive.

And I think more and more, you know, leaders are, employees are seeing value in that, you know, we're kind of moving it out of that, you know, go, go, go, force, force, force, you know, structure of always on, you know, where there's really, you need that mental space in every area of your life, by the way. I mean, there should always be space for calm and to think and to be regulated.

in how you approach things, know, personally and professionally. You know, I personally, when I'm dealing with people in the professional role, you know, I like to be regulated and I like to know that they're regulated so we can have good and productive and substantive conversation. But, you know, without that, there's just a lot of toxicity that can come in and then that just spirals.

Sean Patton (21:57)
Yeah. So if I had to take all of that goodness and break it down, what I'm hearing from you is maybe three things. like, Tony's looking to get to that level or to lead at that level. It's like focused on strategy and looking out in the head and, and, and planning, developing others, developing self. That's

Sonya Weigle W (22:17)
Mm-hmm, yeah, exactly.

Sean Patton (22:20)
That's where, you know, what probably call 80 % of your time should be in, one of those three areas. Um, I love that. You know, you talk a lot about, um, uh, decision-making and intuition. Can you talk about blending like intuition with like,

logic and decision making, scientific method that everyone you work with is like grew up that way. There's that scientist, right? So like, how do you blend those two and what does it actually mean in practice?

Sonya Weigle W (22:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's so interesting. And I really started to lean into this personally and have begun to really benefit from it on my own. And so one of the things I'm super passionate about now is kind of sharing that with other people. And the idea is to zoom in on your own value system, it's part of that thinking time as an example, really think about where you are and where you'd like to

be and what does that mean from a value system? What do I personally value? What are my non-negotiables as an individual? Not even as a professional or any other roles that I play, allowing myself, I don't even call it a luxury anymore, it's a non-negotiable now, right? Allowing myself to the gift of my time is important to me. When and where I work is important to me.

know, financial freedom is important to me. know, one of those things, you know, being able to interact with my family the way that I want to is important to me. And, you know, I came to this late in my career, you just a couple of years ago, I really started to purposefully curate a work environment and enabled me to do everything according to what I value and how I define those levels of freedom. And in that, it required

locking into my intuition to really understand what those things were. And then once I understood that for me it was time freedom, it was location freedom, it was freedom to be with my family, these are my non-negotiables. And what that looks like on a day-to-day basis is I don't like to schedule meetings before 10 a.m. if I don't have to. So I have time to settle myself.

regulate myself, meditate, workout, have a nice cup of coffee with my husband on the terrace, whatever it is that I want to do so that I'm coming to the world in a regulated state. That to me is a non-negotiable. So if you line those up informed by your intuition, then every decision you make after that should line back up with that. And if it doesn't, it's a no. It's a no. And you can do that in your professional life.

And so for me, that looks like I've got clients that are in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, because that's where my children live. And that never would have occurred to me if I hadn't used my intuition to really sit and understand what my non-negotiables are and then decide that everything after that is going to be lined up against those non-negotiables and giving yourself the freedom first to do that.

Sean Patton (25:02)
Nice.

Sonya Weigle W (25:18)
And so that's, know, now my intuition guides everything. If it doesn't feel right, because I'm so sure of it now, you know, I I feel it in my body and it's like, that's a no. Or that's a go, or it's a go.

Sean Patton (25:28)
Mmm, yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's so powerful. Cause and also I feel like in at least some circles, so undervalued or so dismissed as being important. And it's so interesting to me that as I've done my own work and development, and then I continue to work with other leaders that it's almost like anyone who does enough work on themselves and develops themselves like

almost comes to that, the conclude a similar conclusion to what you did of like, this is where the real wisdom is. And it's, it's, it's almost like a maturity thing that needs to happen to be able to trust that, that intuition. And, know, think intuition in a lot of areas comes from experience and expertise, but when it comes to decisions about yourself, to your point, how do we become an expert on ourselves and how are we putting in time to become an expert in ourselves and define what matters and doesn't matter. And what is our vision?

allows that intuition to come to the forefront. And that's really powerful how you use that for yourself. What does that look like inside of organizations as a leader?

Sonya Weigle W (26:28)
You know, I think it's, to the extent that you're super clear on what your own value system is, you can test an organization for alignment with that value system before you enter the organization. And what I try to coach organizations to do is to be real clear on what their value system is. So what is the true north for this company? What do we believe? What do we hold fast to? What does success look like here?

You know, how do we manage performance in a way? Like, what are we all locked in on? And then every job posting we have, every job description we have, every interview we conduct, it's the same lens. And so we're evaluating through that lens. So anybody that comes on the other end of that is fully aligned. And it's so remarkable how

It just, works out so beautifully where people come in and they immediately feel at home and as part of the organization, and they see themselves in their peers and otherwise, and this has nothing to do. You could be coming in as an executive assistant, you could be coming in as a chief commercial officer and anything in between. We all have that same, that same piece. And, you know, and so it's important that the organization builds that into part of their talent acquisition process.

and then reinforces it in the onboarding and orientation process. And then what we do is an organization reinforces it all the time. And you build in those structures. almost to go full circle to the beginning of our conversation around what are the things that organizations need to do? What do I see when it works well? It's building a systems and process foundation that allows you to do analysis and evaluation.

internally and externally, you know, along those levels. You've got to build that infrastructure in. And when I work with organizations where they're scaling rapidly, we want to go from, you know, 17 to 60 in a year. We want to hire a new person every week. We've got you know, we've got milestones. You know, when you're moving that fast, you need to build that infrastructure first. Take the time and the investment to do that. The ones that fail don't. They're just shoving people in there and everyone's

When you bring people into an organization, you're bringing a new culture, you're integrating something new every time. It's almost like a mini &A with every person that comes in. But if you take the time to build the foundation and the definition of what success looks like here and what we value and how we roll, then that's built. You're putting the right people through all the time and they're moving fast. They immediately, they're like, this is the company for me.

and it just works well.

Sean Patton (29:04)
Yeah, that that's, that's so powerful. I was actually, I was, ⁓ I guess he's not on a podcast yesterday and he was talking to me and what came up there. He's asking me a lot of like about my military background and how that translates and that sort of thing. And one of the kind of truths I found in the military that I found to be true in the civilian side and the private side as well is that every mission has an, has an optimal culture.

Sonya Weigle W (29:28)
⁓ yeah.

Sean Patton (29:29)
There's no optimal culture, right? Like, you know, a biotech firm versus a graphic design company versus engine jet engine propulsion lab. Like those should have different cultures. know? And, and so I think that, uh, it's your points. Like we maybe define a mission for our organization. Like we're trying to accomplish this thing. Of course that may shift, right? Like we're, if we're in the early stages, we're like,

Our mission right now is to develop this, this cure or this product or whatever. And now our mission is to go from 17 to 65. Like, so like, you know, whatever, like where our mission is to now grow or to impact in this way. and based on that, that bigger mission, that the step that I think you're talking about is like really clearly defining like, well, what is the ideal culture for that? And, then,

you know, hiring and self and it becomes sort of that self selection process of like, once you get really clear on that, it's so much easier to find people that fit that ideal culture. Cause there's great, powerful, intelligent, kind, caring people who are not right for your organization out there.

Sonya Weigle W (30:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's true. It's true. And it doesn't have to be, you know, it doesn't have to be there. And there are many, many amazing people that you can talk with, but the fit needs to be the fit needs to be the fit because we've got to be aligned. in biotech things move very, very quickly because patients are waiting. And so, you know, there's really very little margin for error.

to get that wrong. where I've seen tremendous success is when founders, boards, capital, leaders, all align on the fact that the people and the culture and the ways of working are so important that we're going to think about that at the front end and build with the best possible end in mind versus it's, well, we'll just.

bring people in or hire people we know or, you know, just really not thinking about the foundation in the system. I like to talk about the employee life cycle, which starts at the point of candidacy. That's their first introduction to the organization, and it should be an authentic and genuine picture of what the organization is as much as it is about the disease state we work within or.

where we're located or any of the other things that you can pick up from the website. It's what do we value? Why are we doing this? What does success look like here? Can I move fast enough? Do I move too fast? Just all of those things that you can pick up on at that point of candidacy.

Sean Patton (32:03)
I love that. And I feel like, you know, a theme that has come out of this conversation is really around, transformation and leadership into and through transformation. And one of the areas that you specialize in is working with senior women, senior leaders on designing sort of the next, the next phase, the next chapter for them. like what, in that context, what does that generally look like?

Sonya Weigle W (32:26)
Yeah. So last summer I started something called the Catalytic Collective. And, you know, it again sort of mirrored my own journey, my own 24 month journey of deciding, okay, you know, the next 30 years, how do I want this to go? you know, I'd had at the time, my youngest was a sophomore in college and was talking with her and, you know, she was just buzzing about.

I need an internship, I need a major, you know, and she just, she's a very buzzy person anyway, but it was just, it was just exciting me to see, you know, she's got her whole life ahead of her and this is just great. And I sat with that for a minute after we hung up and I was like, I got my whole life ahead of me too, as a matter of fact, with the benefit of 30 more years of lived experience. What am I going to do with that? How do I want that to be? And that's where this concept of this next chapter came from.

the term the catalytic collective or the name is very intentional because catalytic is really about those catalytic moments that happen when you say, okay, you what's next? And so for me it was, okay, I do want to define the next 30 years. It's much in the same way I'm advising my daughter to do that.

And so I decided I really wanted to work with other women who have at least 20 years of experience who are in that C suite or executive level suite who are thinking about, I'm looking at an empty nest or I'm in an empty nest. I'm parenting adult kids, I've got aging parents, and all of the life things that are happening while we're sitting in these executive levels. But now we have all of this experience and knowledge and a set of collective.

catalytic events that we can stitch together into a story to create that value system and that set of non-negotiables and that definition of freedom to say, want to very purposefully curate my next chapter, whatever that's going to be. And for some women, it's, I love the job I'm in. I'm sitting in this sea-sweet role and I love it, but it depletes me. How do I do this in a way that it serves me? And that's what we work through. For some women, it's...

You know, I've always wanted to be a travel blogger. How do I get that done? You know, or I'm ready to finally write that book or, you know, stand on stages and, you know, give those speeches or, know, whatever that is. But the point is that we are centering ourselves in that journey and we are defining those in an unnegotiables. And we're already used to doing really hard things, right? We know how to do that. But if we plan the next phase,

But in the way that we did all the others, we're just going end up where we were before. Depleted, overwhelmed, overstretched, and everything else. So it's really locking into what our personal value systems are and planning the next chapter through that lens. And that's what that's about.

Sean Patton (35:07)
I recently did a, Topic growth and development. We'd had a spring retreat for the firm Novus global. And I was there last three days, or Monday through Wednesday this week. And you know, we're an organization that we coach each other. So we, were at a larger organization. They brought in their leaders and one of us would do a coaching session. And then we had two other coaches observe and then give feedback on to the coach, not the client, uh, on how they did. And, uh,

as soon as you start talking, what came to me is there was a, a, a leader there, sort of a middle level leader inside this large nonprofit faith organization. And her verbiage was your first daughter. She's like, well, you know, I'm a 55 year old woman. Like, what's this mean? You could like, and there was this emotion you could sense almost immediately of like, I don't know what I want right now. And I'm not necessarily fulfilled and I'm

Sonya Weigle W (35:55)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (35:59)
filling my time with just doing more and giving and giving and giving with the hope that this organization is going to give me back value and enough appreciation or value, whatever like that will lead to a sense of contentment and fulfillment. And it just wasn't happening. And you could tell that this next stage of her life as she looked ahead, kind of you're talking about is like, she was terrified.

Sonya Weigle W (36:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean Patton (36:21)
She was terrified

and was looking for the answers externally.

Sonya Weigle W (36:27)
Right, which is what we're conditioned and trained to do. And I find women in particular, we give and serve and exhort and do all of these things as wives, as mothers, as leaders. And at some point, it's just not sustainable. You can only give so much. And at some point, you've got to rediscover her.

Who is she? For me, it was a journey back to my childhood and thinking about little me and saying, what did she want back in the day? And if you were to show little me what Big Nii is doing now, how would she feel about that? And it wasn't great when I started down this journey. was, wait, what happened to the joy? What happened to you used love to this and that and

I've done enough of hard things that I feel like it's time for myself now. And that doesn't mean I let go of those other things, but now I'm doing all of these things through a lens of joy and peace and ease and flow. And I couldn't be happier and I'm busier than I ever was. But it's in a different space. It's just not a space of overwhelm anymore. And I think when you're looking outside for that validation,

That's your first clue that it's like, okay, wait, let's go inward and do the work to understand, you know, what the inner you wants. And, you know, that is, as you said earlier, often dismissed, but I think it's a really powerful gift to yourself to be able to do.

Sean Patton (37:54)
Amen. I'm with you, Sonia. That is amazing. I appreciate that. I appreciate the work you're doing. I appreciate the journey that you went through and that part of that journey came to the conclusion that you can empower and inspire others to help them through their own. And that's just admirable. And that is true leadership. So thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for coming on today.

Sonya Weigle W (38:16)
Thank you so much for having me as expected. Awesome conversation, Sean.

Sean Patton (38:20)
This is going to be great. Hopefully it's not the last time we chat. See ya.

Sonya Weigle W (38:22)
I hope not, I hope not.

Thanks, bye.