Rocky Garza doesn’t measure success by titles or achievements. For him, success is about understanding who you really 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, recognized and understood,” says Garza, who focuses on serving to folks achieve readability about their identification. This easy but profound perception types the inspiration of Garza’s strategy to management growth and private development.
Shifting priorities
Garza’s journey to turning into a sought-after management coach wasn’t precisely standard. 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 give up her job in ’09. I give up my job in 2010, and our mother and father thought we had been loopy,” he remembers of the enterprise’ early days. “This was pre-Pinterest, pre-Instagram. These issues all took place whereas we had been within the throes of marriage ceremony pictures.”
The turning level got here when the couple realized they had been anticipating their first little one. “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 kids. That’s not the sort of father that I need to be,’” Garza explains.
“If I might 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 function I play personally or the title I carry professionally. And certainly 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 customary persona assessments, identification mapping doesn’t let you know who you’re based mostly on another person’s rubric. As an alternative, it helps you extract and articulate what you already learn about your self however could lack the language to precise.
“I imagine 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 setting to get that out in order that we are able to take a look at it after which we are able to perceive it.”
The method helps individuals establish 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 crucial distinction between being a contributor on a staff and being what he calls an “affect participant.” Whereas everybody contributes one thing, affect gamers strategy life and work proactively fairly than reactively.
“Affect, that means that I’m absolutely conscious of what occurs when my life, my world, who I’m, collides with someone else,” he says. “One of the best gamers are proactive. They get up within the morning and so they say, ‘I do know precisely what I’m going to do right now. I’m gonna management what I can management.’”
This shift from reactive contributor to proactive affect participant types the premise of Garza’s management growth program, The Path. This 24-step course of consists of identification mapping, the arrogance technique (addressing worry, doubt and impostor syndrome), the affect appraisal (creating the self-awareness to steer with most affect) 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 “vital disruption.”
“I really like speaking about issues on LinkedIn that go in opposition to typical enterprise information,” he says. “Not as a result of typical enterprise information is unhealthy, 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 imagine they’ll use it for good on the earth. This stands in distinction to the standard skilled world, the place worth is usually decreased to titles and duties.
“The rationale so many people professionally really feel drained and burned out and whipped and distraught is as a result of now we have taken that… uniqueness… and now we have diluted it right down to the title and roles and duties,” he explains.
Dwelling his values
Garza practices what he preaches. When introducing himself in the beginning of our interview, he started not together with his skilled achievements however by speaking about what issues most in his life, his household: his spouse of 16 years and their two kids.
“I made a dedication to myself a pair years in the past when talking began choosing up once more, and I used to be on phases 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 ensure you don’t sacrifice who you’re whereas sacrificing who I’m.”
By his teaching, talking and media presence, Garza continues to problem leaders to seek out their very own path to affect—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.
