Carla Harris - Leading to Win

so one of the things I was really curious about what did your parents do for a living and how did that shape some of the decisions that you made in your life in your career sure my mother was an educator and she started off as a physical education teacher and then moved into Administration where she ended her career as the assistant principal of schools on a middle school and my father was the captain of a commercial fishing vessel and both of them were leaders because my mother was an athlete and so she was often captain of her team when she was coming up through high school as well as college and then obviously being in a leadership position in a school as well and then my father being a captain of a commercial fishing vessel every season because he worked six months in the Gulf six months he was at home every season he had to go and assemble his crew and lead and motivate his crew I would say that I grew up in a house of leaders but I'll tell you most importantly they always made me feel like I was supposed to do my best and supposed to excel no matter what I was doing and my mother certainly took leadership especially leader of a team as a special role which is why I quoted the great Billie Jean King in my book pressure is a privilege because when you get to the leadership seat it's no question you have pressure but don't forget it's a privilege to be able to direct and develop and Inspire on behalf of other people I love that wow that's pretty cool for your parents to be in in those types of roles I imagine a lot of that has just you've unconsciously picked up that's exactly right okay did you have when I think about your education did you have ivy league aspirations absolutely not I'll have to tell you that my aspiration was to go to college and I think my parents certainly did push me to college and they certainly thought that I would go to college and have a scholarship because I was always strong academically and at that time when I got in Harvard Harvard wasn't given the kinds of scholarships they give today the financial consideration was a real one but I was determined to go anyway but let me tell you it wasn't an aspiration it didn't really click my aspiration was to go to UCLA and why because my favorite aunt lived in Los Angeles all right so that was really the method to the magic if you will but I went to a great High School Bishop Kennedy High School in Jacksonville Florida and I was in honors classes and interestingly enough my classmates were talking among themselves not to me they were talking among themselves oh did you get your University of Pennsylvania application in did you get your Cornell oh I'm thinking about applying to Harvard I'm thinking about applying the Cornell or Prince instant and that's when I became aware that there was this other group of schools that the people who were sitting around me were aspiring to and then some of those schools were actually coming to Bishop Kennedy to recruit and so I raised my hand to go to the I'll never forget the Cornell recruiter was the first recruiter I went to and then I started hearing more and more of my colleagues start to talk about Harvard but I'll tell you what really pushed me to apply was I had a guidance counselor at the time God bless him and I went to him and I said so talk to me about these Ivy League schools and he said listen don't bother about applying there you will get into a great College just applied it to the Florida schools you'll be fine you'll go to college don't worry and I said yeah not those he said because it's really hard to get in they take in one out of ten kids so don't worry about that just apply to these schools and I've always been negatively motivated that I think I got for my mother so you tell me I can't do something I'm all over it like a bad smell so the fact that he was saying don't apply to these schools when I heard my colleagues talking about it every day made it even more attractive so I decided I was going to apply to Harvard I decided I was going to apply to Princeton I decided I was going to apply to Cornell and I got into them all and as well as as I did what he told me to do I applied to all the Florida schools Florida a m FSU University of Florida I got into all of those schools and in most cases with scholarships so I could have gone free ride but by then I'd figured out that I might want to think about this Harvard thing so when I got the acceptance I said to my mother who at the time because my father had already gone to the go for his season and I said Mom I'm going to Harvard and she goes how are we going to pay for this I said I don't know but I'm going and that was all she wrote and I will tell you I had three jobs while I was there I was on financial aid and I tell kids it can't be done I graduated magna laude undergrad with three jobs right but it absolutely can't be done so that's where it clicked was being very self-aware and being aware of my surroundings and learning and this is one of the things I talk about in the book as a leader you have to be willing to have an open ear and listen to those who are around you and to check yourself because if I hadn't done done both I would never have made that call wow that's an amazing story that's gotta rank obviously you were young then but like when you think about the decisions of like when someone told you not to do something that's I love that someone told me not to start a podcast you're a close friend of mine years ago and I said you know what there's got to be something where I can invest in myself it's not going to pay off tomorrow maybe at some point but I've just got to do it believe in it prep like crazy and hopefully it'll make it worthwhile and so I love that advice that just makes me think of that when you said that that's amazing absolutely especially when you could have gone for free other schools I mean it makes it even sweeter okay one of the places I love to start in your book is actually in the acknowledgments and you mentioned Somebody by the name of Carla Sutton and you thanked her for believing in your work and for giving you the best compliment ever I'm curious what was that compliment from Carla Carla said sorry about that Caroline Sutton yes now there we go Caroline happens to be the editor at penguin random house and she happens to have been a classmate of mine so I've known Caroline for I'm not going to say the decades because I don't want to date either of us she told me when I turned and she has been involved in all three of my books and she when I sent this one in she said you know what this was the book you were born to write and that was the best compliment ever because I have to tell you I had not thought of writing a leadership book because for a long time my perception of those who wrote leadership books were people who had CEO behind their name but I will tell you what motivated me was that I was getting so many calls from so many different CEOs once we went into the shelter and placed protocol with questions like how do I lead in this moment how do I motivate and Inspire my people to deliver we still got a quarter to deliver and we're not in the same place how do I help people navigate the personal and the professional when it's all happening in the personal context how do we speak about those things meaning the terrible murder of George Floyd in May of 2020. how do we speak about those things that we've never spoken about what do I do when someone tells me that I don't know what white privilege is I had leaders asking me these kinds of basic authentic questions and I also realized that one of the things that I gleaned from some of those conversations was a bit of a fear because and I unpacked that and I said getting to the leadership seat in the 80s 90s and 2000s if you were on your career Journey at that point there was a prescription and if you follow the prescription you got to the top so you never really had to be or bring your authentic self into that environment as a requirement now the Band-Aid has been ripped off everything is raw it's there there's two shifts that happened in covet the amplification of voice and choice and the change of the employer employee contract so now authenticity was required in order to engage let alone motivate and inspire people and there are people who are sitting in the leadership seat that know don't know how to be their their authentic selves and so that was one issue the other issue was understanding the power of diversity in this moment from a commercial perspective because it's a critical ingredient to innovate but how do you harness that how do you create an environment where people see you as inclusive because now on the other side of the pandemic when we're struggling with to work or not to work in the office or not in the office hybrid or no hybrid when we're struggling with all these issues having a measure of courage to recreate and sometimes having a requirement to redefine cultures is going to is going to require a measure of authenticity transparency building trust things that you may not have been preoccupied with or that were requirements if you were a leader before March 2020. so I realized that I had something to say about these things and I could help leaders who were sitting in the leadership seat leaders who were creating their own companies and leaders who were aspiring to get there I love that and you mentioned the word trust and as part of what I do is just to try to coach people when they're navigating their careers typically early on or mid and working for someone that you can try you can unpack this in many layers this could be our conversation about trust maybe you've never met them before but in this new world do you want to work for someone that maybe you don't trust or you can't see yourself trusting maybe because they just you can see through them right and one of the one of the things I liked about your book is that I almost felt like it was Modern Cliff Notes guide to leadership you can pick this up you've got it right okay I wanna like she mentioned this thing I got this new job what is it to be a transformational leader let me go back to that section or how do I even address diversity equity and inclusion it's a big thing people are talking about it some companies are just talking they're talking out walking the walk but like what were some of the stories that she shared in that section and so it's one way I look at it is it's a it's just like a field guide for the modern day leader to pick and pull from my second biggest compliment thank you very much because that's exactly what I was trying to do is to put the playbook out there expect to win my first book was a Playbook on how do you maximize your success no matter where you are in your career here's some pearls that can help you the second book was all about how do you get to that job and then when you get there what are some other things that you need to do to be successful and this one was all about okay you're choosing to wear the leadership Jersey all right how do you need to comport yourself now in order to be as impactful and Powerful as you can be in this context because it's different right so you're exactly and all of those books are prescriptive that's why I call them the pearls but I never Define a problem without giving you the prescription of how to deal with it makes sense so let's say that you started actually the book off with this section but let's say somebody's reading it and they are thinking about man it's just called managing people yeah and they've never done that before they're the individual contributor that you outlined in that first chapter what do you and I'm sure you've had this conversation millions of times with people when they ask you like should I is this something I should get into leading people managing people what is the piece of advice that you give them to help them maybe think about it I'm sure you don't tell them what to do but what is that advice that you give people to think about if they're going to take that Journey yeah I said do you think you're going to like investing in people do you think you're going to like dealing with some of the challenges and struggles and obstacles that people have as they are evolving themselves are you prepared to make that your primary thing in addition to executing okay so you still are responsible for revenues you still are responsible for a shareholder value but a big portion of your job is really going to be about making decisions of putting the right people in the right seats at the right time and what's going to be your mechanism for being able to identify those leaders and these are the things you're going to have to be concerned with are you prepared to deal with the unknown no leader has all the answers if you wait until you get all the answers you're going to be competitively behind in an environment where Innovation is the dominant competitive parameter and things are shifting and moving every 12 months not every five years or every 10 years the way it used to be are you prepared for all of that if so then perhaps you're ready to have that leadership seat if your joy comes from purely executing and you don't want to have to deal with all of those things then you can continue to be an outstanding executor get paid a lot of money maybe get some other opportunities and respond things that you're responsible for but you don't want to be the person that's leading people or leading an organization because that's real in terms of the amount of time that it takes if you're going to do it well those are great prompts and things to think about I think it's someone it's something that often people struggle with or did I make the right decision so I love how you Illustrated that so you got this part in the book it's called knowing how you want to lead and what again being a little bit prescriptive here you give people questions to reflect and to think about and it really made me think about someone something that I heard recently and so I'll give it I'll give an example here so uh one of the themes that you had a body of questions was how do you want others to describe you if they talk about you that one really resonated right they could be peers it could be the CEO could be whoever but tell me about that because I think like that is so underlooked I believe that whenever someone is standing in front of you and especially if you have the leadership Jersey on they are consuming you so the question is how do I want to be consumed how do I want this person to feel when they leave my presence what do I want them to think and if you just take some time to be intentional about that that will govern your behavior as you go into that interaction and I believe that you have the few seconds to spare in order to think about that before you just stand in front of somebody and not think about that because if people don't consume you in the right way or they're not getting the right things from you when they're in front of you or they don't feel like they're getting the right direction or they don't feel like you're listening to them all of that could impact the deliverable the outcome their experience and now with the last two and a half years has taught us is that people are thinking critically about their experiences while they work we all have been talking about oh Millennials don't value things the way Boomers do they value experiences well that includes work they value experiences so what experience are they having when they're do they feel like they're learning do they feel like they're challenged do they feel like they're valued do they feel like you care about their contributions you got to be thoughtful about that as a leader today and if you were a leader in the 80s or the 90s or the 2000s what was on your report card was Revenue profitability market share total shareholder returns those things are still on the report card but in this environment of ESG where the S is becoming the D and your shareholders are asking what does your boardroom look like in terms of diversity how many women do you have in leadership positions what does the pipeline look like now they're starting to create another slot on the CEO report card and that is about people are you a magnet for great human Talent especially if you are in an environment where your assets do go up and down on the elevator every day are you a king maker are you a queen maker that is quickly evolving if you listen to the conversations that shareholders are having around this every time a company discloses a quarter so that's quickly becoming on the CEO's report card and that's going to be something leaders have to care about now it blows my mind how many this is one of the things I like is you talk about like you can learn so much from the bad leaders right because if you ask me how many managers I've ever worked for that I put in this Echelon there's only two right for me most people are there it's just not as impactful and then there's a couple bad ones and I've learned I feel like I've learned so much from the bad ones and you said something in the book that you just iterated is if you think about let's just say two leaders one of them their team the people around them are like revolving doors and that reputation will get heard about and the other one invests in their people and does those things that you mentioned earlier and they are this magnet but some companies actually measure them the same which is to me crazy but I'm sure that will change in some point it absolutely will change and listen it's already starting to change because back in the day when I first started my career there were lots of people who just chewed up Talent everybody knew it everybody knew that person was a bad manager don't even use the word leader but everyone knew that person was a bad manager and would just chew up talent and there would be a reputation but let's talk about the evolution of Technology it might have taken two or three people getting chewed up before you would actually have somebody said I'm not working for her I'm not working for Don I'm just not doing it right but now with social media one analyst is talking to another blank hole blah blah blah blah and a person gets a reputation pretty quickly and Millennials are much more willing to go tell it in a way that Boomers and older experts were not so willing to complain about it but these guys will not stand for it which is one of the things I love because Millennials azirs have no tolerance for things that make absolutely no sense and having a poor leader that's chewing up Talent makes no sense they're a liability in today's environment in an organization right so as a leader you can't afford to have a lot of those personalities but those personalities were commonplace in the 80s and the 90s especially in the rough and tough tumble of Wall Street but no more so I think we're quickly getting to the place where one leader who is a great magnet for great talent and a great developer of talent so every time somebody works for you they can go run this they can go over there they can go over there because you're just developing great leaders amplifying the impact of the organization through your king making and queen making and you have another leader that is a great Revenue generator it used to be in the past this person was clearly more valued because they probably got paid more money because there was more money next to their name with respect to generation but I think we're quickly coming to an environment where you're going to have to value that talent that great developer of people the same way you value that person who's cranking out the revenue because one is highly dependent on another and I believe now there's growing realization of that that's it sounds spot on it takes me to my next question when you think about being that leader and maybe there there's another people manager leader above that person and they don't know that because they're not hearing it right they're just having their one-on-ones they're not reading Glassdoor or other apps like blind where you can read Anonymous sources right but how do you surround yourself with people you trust what are one or two pieces of advice that you would give a new leader yes I have a whole chapter as you in the book where I give a leader 15 questions that they can ask when they're interviewing if they have no experience in interviewing and choosing great people so the first thing I say is here are a few questions that you can ask and pay attention to how people answer them homemade tell me a little bit about yourself um you know tell me what motivates you how do you describe yourself in as a leader in three words so tell me the toughest thing that you've ever dealt with because you have to think about your context and maybe you're running a company where they're going to be a lot of Knowles can't that person's ego take a no do they use and do they take a no and take it as a not yet and they keep trying and come up with a different way way so you got to think about your context what's needed you know where your gaps are in your organization when you are an early stage leader and what I mean by that is somebody who maybe have just formed their company or even somebody who's just gotten into the seat your temptation is to say I need another me if I could get somebody who has a hustle Gene like mine and is willing to go with the punches and do everything I'll be fine I need three of me right but that's not what you need you need somebody to fill in the gaps but the first thing is you need to figure out what is your best and highest use you may be ambidextrous around all the things that you need to do to get the company started but what's your best and highest use are you the best person to tell the story so you're the chief fundraiser are you the best person to actually gets sales you're the chief customer officer or are you a Mr inside or Miss inside where you can keep the trains running that's your thing and you need to get somebody else to tell the story one of the most important decisions you can make as an entrepreneur is your best and highest use and then hire people to fill in those gaps and be thoughtful about the kind of culture you want as you build along the way that's great and the one of the 15 questions I was thinking about you said what are two biggest ranks and one thing that you know you need to continue to work on and I'm sure that will help you understand someone's ego real quick by very fast that's right yeah one other leadership gem that I think is really interesting to highlight you said the best leaders are active listeners tell me about that yes one of the most important things you need to do as a leader is to demonstrate that you are listening to your people and there are a couple of ways that you can demonstrate that one you can repeat what they said which amplifies it in your own mind around what they said and it says to them you were listening and you were paying attention and everybody values being heard the other thing it gives you an opportunity to figure out what they mean versus what they're saying because a lot of people have a hard time speaking truth to power and you get a chance to unpack that when you walk away and say okay I heard him say this but what did he really mean and where is that coming from and maybe it means I need to pick up the phone and call him and ask him directly or maybe he gave me enough cues that I realized what he really is saying but you know what and when I find that happening when somebody's not giving it to me straight no chaser but they're giving me enough cues and body language that they mean something else even though they said something different then I go back to them to encourage them let me tell you what I heard you say but let me tell you what I think you mean and next time I want you to give it to me straight no chaser I can take it I'm a big girl and I don't want you to waste your time trying to figure out how to say something to me when you can just come straight out I'm I am going to be constructive in my response so don't worry about that because it takes you can't begin to tell you how many hours I burned trying to construct a narrative trying to say something in the right way knowing that person couldn't take the truth but feeling choked with it and I had to say it anyway so I had to spend hours figuring out how I could say it instead of blah and I was so grateful when I finally got to a boss where I could just say can we have an adult conversation an adult conversation meant straight no chaser I'm not gonna make it politically correct I'm not going to pretty it up I'm just going to go blah and I was so grateful when I finally got there in my career because it saved so much time wow one of the other things I was thinking about is to be a great leader and you met you mentioned this you touched on it and this really resonated with me it's just being very thoughtful and proactive about motivating your team I feel like this is one of those sort of lost arts right because sometimes I'm sure you've seen it firsthand it comes off as inauthentic and it's it doesn't resonate with everybody what advice do you give a new leader when it comes to really thinking proactively and being thoughtful about motivating their people yeah here's where transparency is your best tool most powerful tool that's when you say listen we have to get this done here's what we are responsible for I can't do it by myself and you can't do it by yourself and everybody on this team has a role so here's what we are going to do together that transparency is one of the most critical and Powerful tools that you could use because by putting that out there up front now you they feel like you are you understand what they need and most people need transparency they need that why as to why they're doing what they're doing and that's pretty powerful and the more you use the we pronoun instead of the I and the you 2 the we pronoun is very powerful right and again it's a recognition that I am only as good as you and while you may be executing my job is to promote as the leader my job is to go out and tell everybody how fabulous my team is my job is to get you in front of the right people that need to vote on your candidacy to get to the next level my job is to make sure that you're getting the external exposure you need to amplify how great the talent is within the firm blah blah blah so everybody has a role to play and being transparent about that is powerful okay I totally agree I love how you articulated that it leads me to the section where you talk about and you trade the story about people fearing success and how so it also makes me think there's this Harvard trained psychologist I spoke to and he said humans are mastered to humans are wired to master disappointment right he talks about like the baby throwing his like doll out of the crib or something like that but I never really thought about it in the professional context do you really feel like some people are afraid of success in a way yes absolutely and I'm going to give you a prime example you hear this phrase all the time the Imposter syndrome and every time I get that question and I'm speaking my heart just sinks because people are still struggling with it and that was the hot button word when I walked out of Harvard Business School 35 years ago so how is it that we're still talking about it and so I think that sometimes when you haven't had a measure of success the question that comes in your mind is oh man am I going to be able to sustain it am I going to get there really haven't had any big failures I'm not going to get there is this going to be the one if I am successful am I going to still be accepted and embraced by my peers or my family especially if you're the first one that's getting to this space or if I get there who am I going to talk to because I don't know anybody else that I can talk to about this oh if I am that successful will I be able to handle it I don't know what that looks like and I realize that people don't fear change they fear uncertainty and because you haven't seen it before you're uncertain about what it's going to be so unfortunately some people sabotage themselves because they question whether or not they're ready they question whether or not somebody's setting them up and giving them this opportunity just to see them fail they question what it'll be like if they fall from that seat and they sabotage themselves either by saying oh I'm not ready or no I think I'm going to stay here and do this oh I really love what I'm doing I don't want to go to this next thing and when they instead of unpacking it and realizing that there's a fear that right there in the middle of it because I feel strongly that when we don't move forward it's not a lack of appetite or desire to move forward or to move up if you peel the onion fears right in the middle of it that's why I have talked about it in every single book do you feel like there's a level of humility to have not being overconfident or what's the balance you think yeah so here's the thing I confidence is a great thing but don't trip over into arrogance arrogance will take you down and people say to me all the time how do you stay grounded I'm like I don't drink my own Kool-Aid all right let me be clear about that the accolades the headlines are all wonderful but they're wonderful because I can use them to motivate other people I can say hey I did this so can you and let me tell you why I know you can do it so for me that's really the value of the accolades and the headlines and everything that I've been blessed to be able to accomplish but don't get lost in that right don't think for one minute that's the end-all be-all that makes you better than anybody else I don't believe that I'm better than anybody else I may be in a different circumstance because I made different choices but that doesn't mean I'm better yeah I love that one of the things that you talk about and you have this chapter on being it a intentional leader and I love that you list these eight things again getting back to that prescription some of them are authenticity and trust and having Clarity one of the things that you said that I love is that courage is the Strand that holds all the pearls of intentional leadership together it's not even this is my second favorite line okay this is so we'll get to my favorite a second but one more time courage is the Strand that holds all the pearls of intentional leadership together tell me about why it's important for leaders to call a thing a thing yes that is the pearl of voice it is important to call a thing because if you fail to do that then you impair your efforts towards authenticity you undermine the critical trust that you need in order to lead your teams into unknown territories and we're all going into unknown territories because none of us have ever lived on the other side of a global pandemic none of us in our recent Lifetime except maybe if you're 70 or 80 has seen the kind of social unrest that we've seen over the last couple of years especially on the mer because of the murder of George Floyd and certain other atrocities that have happened in the country you have to be willing to call a thing because as I said you need the authenticity and you need the trust and when you fail to do that you impair all of that and we all have been in situations where we have failed to call a thing how many times have you been in a room over the course of your career sitting in a room team meeting client meeting and you knew something should have been said and nobody said it how many times have you been in a room where a decision was being made about somebody's promotion or somebody's pay or bringing or giving somebody an offer and there was an amorphous reason why somebody didn't get it and nobody said anything because of who was speaking so we all have been in a room where we knew something should have been said and we just looked down at our shoes that's why you need courage to call it a thing I say you need courage to be an inclusive leader and to engage enough with your team to invite them into the solution making process and oh by the way to admit that you don't have all the answers it takes courage to teach people how to fail especially Millennials and zeers who are deathly afraid of failing if you're a boomer an older exer you grew up in a competitive environment where there was a first place second place or third place but Millennials and serious have grown up in an environment where everybody gets surprised to play so I would argue they haven't had a chance to develop that muscle of resilience of failing and getting up failing and getting up and winning but you if you're going to be the leader you got to teach that you have to be you have to have courage to be intentional around diversity because it's easy to say I'm just going to keep a lid on this and make sure nothing happens under my watch but I'm going to focus on the revenues and the market share when in fact the lid popped off in 2020 so you got to think about it and here's the selfish reason as a leader you owe it to yourself to get the best talent in the marketplace and we all know that Talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is not so you got to push through that natural bias and make sure you're seeing the best people and hiring the best people that takes courage to do that when you have other things to focus on takes courage to create Clarity when you can't see and you know you don't know it takes care courage to create other leaders especially if you are insecure about your own career trajectory to spend that power on somebody else it takes courage to engage to build trust and it takes courage to bring your authentic self into any environment which is why so many people have had a hard time doing it over the last few decades that's why I say the Strand is courage I love it I love it you got so much energy you mentioned some you know you're welcome you mentioned something and this is my favorite quote so it's leadership Pearl number nine everyone has a blind spot identify yours and make it a priority to eliminate it this to me is the hardest thing how can we identify what it is to me that's the biggest challenge yes here's the thing know where you keep making footfalls to use a tennis analogy says we just finished with the US Open note where you keep making an error is it around people is it around failing to innovate fast enough is it around not making a decision fast enough that little thing that you keep saying this up you got to get better at that why did you do that again so you already have a sense of where some of those blind spots are here's the other way you can find out if you have a really good friend a good confidence somebody who I like to call a peer mentor somebody who's going to give it to you straight no chaser and they have your best interests at heart you can ask them say look you've seen me for 30 years where do I have some blind spots I'm not sure I see them they've been watching you they've been with you on the journey they have a perspective ask the question you might ask the people who are working with you who are junior to you everybody has a blind spot where do you think I have one I just really I'm thinking about that I'm consumed with that right now I'd love to hear your thoughts on that I bet you they have a perspective if they've been working with you longer than a year but these are places where you can get data some may be right some may be wrong but you need the data to evaluate that and to jump start your thinking about your blind spots that takes courage too right it's being able to be vulnerable to ask the question I love it but you want you you want to do that because you want to be the best leader you can be you know what I like about that too though is that you don't need this 360 report done right that's like third party interviewing people around you so formal and sometimes maybe it's the informal ask that gets you the direct response that you're looking for but those tools can help too and I don't mean to suggest that they wouldn't because they could be very helpful but not every organization will give every professional access to that so if you don't have access to that the things that we just talked about are things you can deploy okay makes sense so one of the other sort of prescriptive pages and sections is around being a transformational leader and you said they're both thoughtful tenacious and Transcendent and transparent I should add so that's right when you think about a transformational leader I'm wondering in your career in your experience who comes to mind that you think about as a transformational leader yes I won't say in a name so I can protect the innocent but there is certainly a leader who followed another authoritarian leader my way of the highway type leader very intimidating personally intimidating when you were in their presence if I look back I would say that he probably had a goal of making making you sick in your boots when you were in front of him but the next leader was very thoughtful Innovative creative super smart person and I watched him subtly change the culture and the environment of one to be far more collegial and one where people could exhale when they walked in and but yet he created an environment where you stay on your toes because he used to ask all the time what's going on what's going on what you working on what you doing so you got to the point you developed a muscle that if you even saw him hit the floor you were thinking about but what am I doing what's creative how am I moving the ball forward what am I doing that's different than the last time he asked me even if he asked me 30 minutes ago but you it made you know for me it made me become a much more forward-thinking leader and and being consumed with moving the ball forward and that was a transformation in the culture because the culture before was one of fear one where you just your check the box was to make sure you were doing what that guy told you to do as opposed to Thinking Beyond it was very powerful and I learned a lot from it and there was another leader before him who I learned a very valuable lesson from and that was how to be collaborative how to be inclusive and this was before we were using the word inclusive because I was this person's right hand and we would often talk about what he wanted to accomplish in this internal meeting but he would go in knowing that might have been his goal but opening it up enough to get everybody to contribute and that's why you hear me talk about putting everybody's fingerprints on the blueprint because the style in which he did that was very effective so that by the end of the conversation sometimes we were exactly where he wanted to go sometimes we were different but more importantly everybody owned it at the end of that conversation that was powerful wow it's such an art and science but it sounds amazing and I'm sure you've you've been around some opposite leaders it sounds leading with fear and I imagine it outweighs the good ones yes yeah and you know what actually I'm going to tell you I I didn't take score but I probably learned As Much from the poor leaders as I did from the strong leaders but the strong leaders are the ones that over time stand out even more in my mind while I'm cognizant of the lessons I got from the others they're fading in my memory fast relative to the ones who were powerful okay this last question for you if you were to give someone that was early on in their career they want to make an impact in this world what are a couple pieces of General Life or career advice you would impart on them yes approach any interaction with someone with how can I help you you'll be surprised how much you learn and how much you gain in thinking about how you can be of service to somebody else how can you use your intellect your experience your network on behalf of somebody else and not only will you learn something not only about yourself but about the person about the thing that they're trying to be helpful with but you're going to grow because that those are the early seeds of you're becoming a servant leader which is very powerful is approaching clients colleague with the what can I do to be helpful that demeanor makes a big difference especially if you want to lead in a service economy I love it is there anything that we missed you feel like we should point out just about the new book now you were terrific and I do I do want to thank you for saying that it's a Playbook a crib sheet for people who are either leading or who desire to lead because I tried to write it in a way that it could be prescriptive you didn't have to hear a lofty a lofty Pearl and not know how to deploy it this is a very practical book about how to do it now one of the most valuable things that I'm trying to get better at and I feel like maybe gets a bad rap is reflection whether it's journaling asking yourself some good questions before a meeting before your day starts and I think that's one of the things that will resonate with a lot of people it's asking yourself the question of how do I want people around me to talk what are they going to say when I'm running the room about me like there's not enough of that and keeping it modern you're right like nowadays and knowing that there's this hybrid world how do you build trust if you've never even met your boss in some cases in person right and so I think it's a whole new set of challenges anyone says who they figured it out is usually lying and so that that's what I like about this is like hey here are some things that you should really think about if you want to be the best version of yourself if you want to serve people the way you intended to so I appreciate you putting a lot of thought into these responses and I really hope this launch goes great thank you very much and it works for virtual even if you haven't met your boss in person or even in person so I tried to be thoughtful about that as well so thank you for the hearing and for the exposure I appreciate it all right great meeting you Carla thanks

Channel: Omaid Homayun

Views: 3,670

Keywords: Descript

Id: TJY-3PNnWkc

Length: 39min 29sec (2369 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2022