Rocky Garza doesn’t measure success by titles or achievements. For him, success is about understanding who you actually are. The Dallas-based management coach and keynote speaker has spent over a decade serving to people and organizations uncover the distinctive intersections of non-public conviction {and professional} ambition.
“I’ve by no means met an individual [who] didn’t need to be seen, identified and understood,” says Garza, who makes a speciality of serving to folks achieve readability about their identification. This straightforward but profound perception kinds the muse of Garza’s strategy to management improvement and private progress.
Shifting priorities
Garza’s journey to changing into a sought-after management coach wasn’t precisely typical. After eight years in ministry, he and his spouse Sarah launched a profitable marriage ceremony pictures enterprise, touring the world to shoot round 40 weddings annually.
“She stop her job in ’09. I stop my job in 2010, and our mother and father thought we had been loopy,” he recollects of the enterprise’ early days. “This was pre-Pinterest, pre-Instagram. These issues all happened whereas we had been within the throes of marriage ceremony pictures.”
The turning level got here when the couple discovered they had been anticipating their first baby. “Private conviction mentioned, ‘I don’t need to journey 40 instances a 12 months and have a child. I don’t need to be gone each Saturday and have youngsters. That’s not the type of father that I need to be,’” Garza explains.
“If I may do something, I’d need to assist folks know who they’re,” he continues. “I’ve spent my entire life making an attempt to determine what which means, and it’s solely been recognized by the position I play personally or the title I carry professionally. And absolutely there must be extra to who I’m than how I’m going to be recognized at a networking occasion.”
Private conviction led to skilled reinvention. Garza started serving to artistic entrepreneurs construct companies that aligned with their values—a service that finally expanded to incorporate staff teaching and keynote talking.
Discovering your true self
On the coronary heart of Garza’s methodology is a course of known as “identification mapping”—a four-hour journey of self-discovery for people and an eight-hour workshop for groups of 15 or fewer. In contrast to normal character assessments, identification mapping doesn’t let you know who you might be based mostly on another person’s rubric. As a substitute, it helps you extract and articulate what you already find out about your self however could lack the language to specific.
“I consider each individual is aware of who they’re; we simply lack the language to explain it such that it’s comprehensible to anyone else,” Garza explains. “I believe we wrestle with the correct questions and the correct curiosity and the correct surroundings to get that out in order that we are able to have a look at it after which we are able to perceive it.”
The method helps individuals determine three key components: their core values (why they do what they do), their strengths (how they do what they do) and their identifiers (phrases like “strategizer,” “analyzer” or “caregiver”).
Creating significant collisions
Garza says there’s a vital distinction between being a contributor on a staff and being what he calls an “influence participant.” Whereas everybody contributes one thing, influence gamers strategy life and work proactively moderately than reactively.
“Impression, which means that I’m totally conscious of what occurs when my life, my world, who I’m, collides with any person else,” he says. “The very best gamers are proactive. They get up within the morning and so they say, ‘I do know precisely what I’m going to do as we speak. I’m gonna management what I can management.’”
This shift from reactive contributor to proactive influence participant kinds the premise of Garza’s management improvement program, The Path. This 24-step course of contains identification mapping, the arrogance technique (addressing concern, doubt and impostor syndrome), the affect appraisal (growing the self-awareness to steer with most influence) and techniques for creating lasting habits.
With a rising following throughout platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok, Garza makes use of social media to create what he calls “important disruption.”
“I like speaking about issues on LinkedIn that go in opposition to typical enterprise data,” he says. “Not as a result of typical enterprise data is dangerous, however I simply need to break the monotony. And never as a result of I need to be proper. I simply need to be sure that what you suppose is what you suppose.”
His content material goals to assist folks acknowledge their uniqueness, obtain affirmation for that uniqueness and consider they’ll use it for good on the earth. This stands in distinction to the standard skilled world, the place worth is usually diminished to titles and duties.
“The explanation so many people professionally really feel drained and burned out and whipped and distraught is as a result of we now have taken that… uniqueness… and we now have diluted it right down to the title and roles and duties,” he explains.
Residing his values
Garza practices what he preaches. When introducing himself firstly of our interview, he started not along with his skilled achievements however by speaking about what issues most in his life, his household: his spouse of 16 years and their two youngsters.
“I made a dedication to myself a pair years in the past when talking began selecting up once more, and I used to be on levels in entrance of 1000’s of individuals,” he says. “I can’t get on that stage and let you know to pursue who it’s that you just need to be and be sure to don’t sacrifice who you might be whereas sacrificing who I’m.”
By means of his teaching, talking and media presence, Garza continues to problem leaders to seek out their very own path to influence—one which honors each their private conviction {and professional} ambitions. In doing so, he’s serving to reshape how we take into consideration success, management and the significant life all of us search to create.
This text initially appeared within the September/October 2025 concern of SUCCESS® journal. Photograph by ©Afritina Coker/courtesy of Rocky Garza.