Eight Pearls of Intentional Leadership with Carla Harris

welcome to the global business women's pod hosted by the greater houston women's chamber of commerce i am susan dyson and extremely excited to be your podcast host in my day job i am proud to be the ceo president and founder of the chamber every thursday at 6 pm we will bring you inspiring stories of women who are leading in the advancement of women and girls we will take you with us to our premier events you will meet entrepreneurs executives and philanthropists who will empower and inspire you to succeed so please mark your calendars and join us for the empowering global business women's pod thursday at 6 pm we are thrilled to welcome the powerhouse carla harris as our keynote speaker today carla is the author of expect to win strategize to win in her newest book lead to win that will be on bookshelves september the 13th carla is the vice chairman managing director and senior client advisor at morgan stanley she has degrees from harvard university and numerous honorary doctorates in 2013 she was appointed by president barack obama to chair the national women's business council she was also the chair of the prestigious national or national organization the executive leadership council chair of the board of the morgan stanley foundation and she currently sits on the boards for many other philanthropic organizations she is the recipient of several professional awards and carla has been named to fortunes magazine's list of the 50 most powerful black executives in corporate america essence magazine the 50 women who are shaping the world ebony's list of 15 corporate women at the top and she regularly appears on national television and radio programs and speaks to corporations colleges and universities and at events and conferences like the one today an accomplished gospel singer carla has released four albums and performed to sold out crowds at carnegie hall and the apollo theater in her new book lead to wind powerhouse carla harris examines the journey from individual contributor to leader she targets the essential skills necessary to succeed like the importance of taking risks creating a vision and leveraging assets like relationships and partnerships as she is doing today with the chamber carla i'm going to introduce you now let's give a big round of applause for carla [Applause] well thank you suzanne for that amazing introduction and thank you for the opportunity to spend some time with the chamber family again and to talk about the pearls of intentional leadership i started talking about intentional leadership in the fourth quarter of 2018 because i realized that we were in a very different context than the one that i had grown up in i grew up in the context of my way or the highway type leadership context and i also grew up in an industry that was a producer culture which means that if you are a great producer you are rewarded not only with outsized compensation but also with promotions and titles and seats of authority and leadership and management without any thought as to whether or not you're the kind of person that can motivate and inspire people to deliver beyond that which they thought they could do yet that is the context that we find ourselves in today millennials and zears are quickly becoming the dominant population in the workforce and they demand very different things than those of us who were boomers and older exers they demand as tablespace transparency inclusivity and feedback and let's face it if you are a boomer or an older you certainly did not get a lot of feedback along your career journey you are pretty much told keep your head down work hard if you don't get fired you know you're doing okay but that is not the context that we are in today and now let's layer on the fact that over the last couple of years we have been in a covet 19 pandemic crisis context and we have also found ourselves amidst a a period of social unrest in this country and frankly around the world so that too has created very important shifts shifts that demand a different type of leadership if you are going to be successful and impactful there are two important shifts that have happened over the last couple of years the first is the amplification of voice and choice now employees are exercising their voices they are asking the question about the organization's values its alignment it stands on things like esg the company's stance on equity inclusion diversity transparency around pay and around opportunities this is the voice that is being exercised by employees to employers we also have a situation where employers are trying to figure out how to engage with their constituency even more not just the customers but certainly with the employees what does it take to inspire this group of professionals what does it take to motivate them what type of community do we need to build within our organization to retain them what's the right level of engagement that we need in order to retain and even attract the best best talent the second shift has been the change in the contract between employers and employees it used to be the case as an employer the contract was i pay you for a deliverable and implicit in that contract is i could tell you how to do the job where to do the job in the context of this building when to do the job between nine to five eight to four seven to three and in many cases how to do the job but obviously the covet 19 crisis created an environment where we weren't in the same place so i couldn't tell you where to do it i couldn't tell you how to do it because you were pretty much on your own i could tell you when to deliver it but i couldn't tell you when to execute and oh by the way i had no control over how you showed up to execute because you were in the context of your own home so those shifts have created a situation where we need a different type of leadership and here's the other thing most people lead the way they were led so the boomers and the older exers that are sitting in the leadership seat today were not brought up in an environment where they engaged people where they solicited other people's voices where the idea of people management and diversity and inclusion and equity was on their report cards as ceos or caos or founders or ceos so now the question is what does it take to be a powerful impactful influential leader in today's context now that we've level said where we are i would argue that it takes eight things the pearls of intentional leadership are authenticity building trust creating clarity creating other leaders diversity innovation inclusivity and voice so let's walk through those and then suzanne and i are going to have a conversation where we can entertain some of your questions so i encourage any questions that you might have the first is authenticity when we went into this shelter-in-place environment i had so many ceos across all industries call me and ask questions like how do i lead in this moment how do i motivate and inspire my people when we aren't in the same place how do i help my people divide the personal and the professional when it's all happening in the personal context and i'll tell you what i said to these leaders starting in april 2020 and i continue to say today whenever we are in environments that are marked by the kind of gross uncertainty that we've all been living through people crave stability any type of stability so at a minimum your people must be able to see you you must be visible because people need some stability and even though they can't be in the same place as you if they can see you leveraging a technological medium then that is a substitute that will give them a measure of stability the second thing is that you must be transparent in these types of environments trust is at a premium and the critical ingredient to building trust is transparency you must be transparent about what you know what you don't know and when you know it here's what i know about when we're going to head back into the office here are the three indicators that we're waiting for in order to make that decision here are the jobs that we probably won't need on the other side of the pandemic crisis here are the new roles that will be imperative on the other side of this crisis it is important that you are transparent about what you know and what you don't know because it will give you the opportunity to rebuild the trust that has been interrupted by us not having proximity as a tool to build trust and the third thing that i've said to these these leaders is that you must be empathetic this is not the time to behave as if what we've gone through has not impacted you as a leader there's not a person on the planet that hasn't been impacted by the coven 19 crisis there isn't a person on the planet that hasn't felt some kind of way witnessing the social unrest in this country on the back of racial inequities and frankly around the world now is the time as a leader when you can unlock outsized productivity because let's face it pre-pandemic there were things we didn't talk about in the work context and those things became obstacles those obstacles became impediments and they became enemies to outsize productivity if you are sitting in the leadership seat today you have an opportunity to unlock unlock that productivity by instigating what i like to call the courageous conversations now you can say i'm not sure how i can react to what's going on in the streets in our communities because i'm not sure i've had that experience will you give 15 minutes to me so that i can understand how you're thinking about that because i want to be available as a powerful leader to all of my people and i know that it might feel a little scary to unlock that conversation but trust me if you have the courage to ask the question the person on the other side of the question will have the grace to answer you but now you have a unique opportunity as a leader to unlock that to also understand the other capabilities of the people that are working with you so often as leaders we hire people for one specific role completely ignoring all the other strengths that they can bring to the table we are in an environment now where the rule books have been rewritten we have an opportunity to innovate in a way that we never had before and unlocking some of that intellectual and experiential capital that your people have will give you the opportunity to obtain and retain a leadership position in your industry but authenticity is the key to being able to do that your authenticity is your distinct competitive advantage let's face it if you grew up in the 80s and the 90s in your career there was a prescription of how to get to the top and you could pretty much follow that prescription without ever bringing your authentic self into that environment but when you can only communicate through this medium your authenticity matters it's the thing that will allow people to engage with you through that screen and follow you into unknown territories which brings me to the second pearl building trust we are all going into unknown territories because none of us have ever lived on the other side of a pandemic crisis and if people are going to follow you into unknown territories they must trust you and the way that you build trust is that you simply deliver over and over again as a leader you must engage with your people so that you can not only invite them into the conversation by name but you can also understand what motivates each of your people and once you understand what motivates them and what they value then you simply create opportunities to deliver upon that value proposition here's something that i've learned after 30 years as a customer gal people will always tell you what they value they will always tell you what they value you need only ask the question and create the space where people will define that which they value and then you can strategize on how you deliver on that value proposition but trust is going to be essential as a leader to get your people to follow you not only into unknown territory but to also stand shoulder to shoulder to ideate with you on how to regain the trust of your customers how to re-engage with your customers how to expand your opportunity in the marketplace many of your competitors will not prevail after this period you have an opportunity to capture more market share and to serve more customers than ever before but you will need your teams to trust you in order for them to give you access to their best thinking to their best experience and to allow you into their networks and everybody has a network and as a leader you want access not only to your own intellect experience and network but to those of those people who work with you the next pearl of intentional leadership is creating clarity now we're all as i said working in an environment where innovation is the dominant competitive parameter which means by definition we will go into unknown territories but yet your job as a powerful leader in this context is to create clarity even when you cannot see as a powerful leader it is your job to define what success looks like and oh by the way don't worry about making a mistake if you start on the journey and realize you're on the wrong path you simply take a page out of the technology industry's book you fail fast you extract the lessons and you use those lessons to invest in the next try but it is your job to define what success looks like for your team because when you define what success looks like then i believe everybody is motivated and inspired to deliver beyond that which has already been defined that's how we are wired as humans and so with the information that you have if you cannot see it for the quarter you cannot see it for the month even the week or the day define success for a finite period of time and execute incrementally until you have a vision around the entire opportunity define what success looks like then and your teams will be motivated to deliver outsized productivity which will accrue to your status in that leadership seat the next pearl is creating other leaders if you are choosing to sit in a leadership seat today you must be disproportionately focused on creating other leaders or that is how you amplify your impact as a leader if all roads lead back to you then by definition you're going to cap your success or the organization's success because you are one woman you're a one man so it's your job to be intentional about giving those things that allowed you to cut your leadership teeth giving those things to others so that they can cut and define their own leadership path thus enabling you to capture greater market share serve more customers and create more success for your organization this was a tough pearl for me to acquire because i'm a natural executor and left to my own devices i will execute execute execute but there were two things that helped me on my career journey of my leadership journey i should say the first is that i heard my chairman and ceo say that he focuses on only those things that the ceo can do if there's anything on his list that anybody else on his team can do it should not be on his list translation in my mind was carla just because you can doesn't mean you should leaders just because you can doesn't mean you should the second thing that helped me advance on my leadership journey is i had to invoke a little bit of baseball imagery i said carla the outstanding capital markets banker that has executed hundreds of capital markets transactions for the firm and generated millions of dollars she's standing on first base but carla the powerful impactful influential leader the person that can create a vision off of a blank sheet of paper the person that can create opportunity amidst chaos the person that can motivate and inspire people to deliver beyond that which they thought that they could do she's standing on second base carla you can't get the second base with your foot still on first you must be willing to let it go those things that allowed you to cut your leadership teeth those things that you executed you must be willing to let those things go in order to evolve into a powerful impactful influential leader that creates vision and motivates and inspires people to follow that vision while creating and innovating in their own way being their best selves that's your job as a powerful leader the next pearl of intentional leadership is diversity ladies and gentlemen i tell you it will not just happen you must be intentional when we are competing in highly competitive dynamic environments we will all reach for the familiar we are all vulnerable to unconscious bias i don't care who you are and i'll give you a quick example of my own i created and built the multicultural innovation lab at morgan stanley 18 months into that journey of creating a lab where we brought in early stage companies founded by women and people of color i looked up and my entire team was women all women not an ounce of testosterone to be seen anywhere and i knew immediately that i had a gap in my go to market strategy if you have homogeneous thinking at your decision making table you will have a gap in your go to market strategy and it will expose you unnecessarily to outsize competitive threats so i became very intentional about making sure that the next two hires were men here's another thought for you if you agree with me that innovation is the dominant competitive parameter across all industries then you must agree that you need a lot of ideas in the room in order to get to that one innovative idea that will allow you to obtain and retain a leadership position in your industry because after all innovation is born from ideas well if you need a lot of ideas in the room you need a lot of perspectives in the room because ideas are born from perspectives and if you need a lot of perspectives in the room you need a lot of experiences in the room because perspectives are born from experiences and if you need a lot of experiences in the room you better start with a lot of different people in the room because experiences are born of people so you must start with a lot of different people in the room in order to get to that one innovative idea that will allow you to obtain and retain a leadership position in your industry that's the commercial imperative around diversity the next pearl of intentional leadership is innovation now i know i've said a few times in this conversation that innovation is the dominant competitive parameter across all industries but as a powerful leader in today's context you must teach your teams how to innovate and how do you teach people how to innovate you must teach them how to fail if people are deathly afraid of failing they will never reach far enough to truly innovate which will also expose you to outsize competitive threats and the way that you teach people how to fail is you simply celebrate the failures when somebody on your team has taken a risk and it hasn't worked out then you must be very careful about your response if you have a markedly adverse reaction please know that the person on the other side of that conversation will never take that risk again and those who are witnessing that conversation they won't take that risk and that will now expose you competitively because you will not innovate in order to compete so your response as a powerful leader when somebody on your team takes a risk and it doesn't work out is that you must be constructive and productive in your response constructive and productive oh dan this was a huge mistake and this one may cost us because you must be authentic but let's all give dan a hand because he took those risks we now know the following three things as an organization and we can use this information as we attack the next opportunity the next pearl of intentional leadership is inclusivity if you want to show up every day as an inclusive leader you simply solicit other people's voices solicit other people's voices try this the next four times that you pull your teams together this is the problem that we're trying to solve today i'll get us started in this conversation not because i'm the smartest person in the room but i'm the most seasoned person in the room but abby i want you to add on to what i've said bill i want you to add on to what abby has said now chandra i want you to play devil's advocate how would you completely blow up this argument where are the gaps damon i'd like you to add on to what chandra has said what have you done you've done two very powerful things as an impactful influential leader the first is that you said i see you you invited each of them into the conversation by name which means you must engage enough with them to authentically invite them into the solution-making process with you by name and who doesn't value being seen by the boss the second most important thing that you've done is that you said i hear you not only did you invite them into the conversation by name but you invited them specifically to support or refute the argument that was on the floor and guess what everybody values being heard everybody values being heard when you say to anyone i heard you or let me repeat what i think you said you generate immediate currency currency that you can now reinvest back into strengthening that relationship but the most important intended consequence of what you've done you've now put everybody's fingerprints on the blueprint and leaders you know that it doesn't get any better than that than to have everybody on your team equally invested in the success or failure of that endeavor and then the last pearl of intentional leadership is voice if you're going to be a powerful impactful influential leader in today's context you must be willing to call a thing a thing no matter how bad the thing might be and i would argue the worst the thing is the more important it is for you to give voice to it your teams already know there's likely to be a restructuring they already know that there could be a reduction in force but when you fail to give voice to the thing you now undermine the transparency and the trust that you've been working so hard to build and the authenticity that you've been working hard to amplify with your teams it is important that you call a thing of fame and not be afraid to do so remember leaders fear has no place in your success equation anytime you approach anything in your life personally or professionally from a position of fear you will always underpenetrate that opportunity now while i've given you the pearls of intentional leadership i will tell you that the strand that holds these pros together is courage it's courage it takes courage to call a thing a thing we've all been in rooms when we knew something should have been said and we simply looked down at our shoes it takes courage to invite people into a conversation and to show up every day as an inclusive leader it takes courage to teach people how to fail especially when they are deathly afraid of failing as millennials as ears happen to be they have not had the opportunity to develop the muscle of resilience the same way that boomers and older extras had the opportunity to do so it takes courage to be intentional around diversity because we are all vulnerable to unconscious bias it takes courage to create clarity when you cannot see it takes courage to create other leaders especially if you are unsure of your own leadership trajectory it takes courage to engage enough with people to earn and build their trust and it takes courage to bring your authentic self into any environment which is why so many people are challenged to do so if you want to be a powerful impactful influential leader in today's context you must expect and strategize so that you can lead to win i thank you for a few minutes and i am looking forward to the conversation with suzanne well thank you again carla oh my gosh i've been writing down so many pearls here i can't wait to um to make my necklace with them but um and we could listen to you all day and we we love the eight pearls of intentional leadership that you articulate but which of these are the most difficult for women to master and are some of these harder for women than for men and if so why yeah i will tell you i don't think that some of these are harder for women than they are for men but i think the one that um women hesitate on there too actually the authenticity and the voice because when you're going into a large environment especially if things don't go really well right at the outset then it's so tempting to start adopting the behaviors the speech and other things from other people instead of trusting the fact that the buyer knew what they were buying when they bought you and they wanted you the very best of you so it's always tempting to actually uh hide your your real self your authentic self and the second one is voice you know i do think that there are a lot of women who hesitate in exercising their voice because they're worried about what others might say they're worried about the judgment around their delivery so those are the two that i find myself encouraging women on more than some of the other pearls and can you elaborate on or give us examples of types of behavior built trust how to build the behaviors that build trust oh absolutely i'll give you three number one always approaching a client or a colleague with how can i help first when people don't think that you have an agenda or that you're trying to sell them something they are much more apt to give you their authentic selves to tell you what's really on their mind and when they do now you know what you can deliver to create value in the relationship that you have that's number one how can i help approaching it number two and this one is as important as number one suzanne is listening oh my goodness being a good listener is of value people want to express themselves especially in this post covet environment i've found more advisors in my business talking about the fact that they're engaging differently with their clients and with the generations within that family in a way that they never had access to because people want to talk and people will talk when they know that you are listening and then the third is following through the way that you build trust is to do what you said you were going to do that will buy you so much capital because if you have a track record of delivering on whatever people have asked you for or about then when you do have an infraction you will live to fight another day because they know that that's the exception not the rule with you ah i love that and what are the most common types of gaps that have you seen in powerful women leaders that impeded or damage their infectedness absolutely not being conscious of the fact that when you are sitting in a leadership seat people are consuming you so as a leader you always want to ask yourself how do i want people to consume me how do i want people to feel when they walk away from an interaction with me and when you're not conscious about that you can fall vulnerable to the distractions that you've had before you get into that interaction and you're no longer thinking and focusing on that interaction and that person you're bringing everything that has happened before or things that you're anticipating is going to happen later and that could impact that interaction but you've also you know left vulnerable the the the way that person has consumed you and you often talk about concerning fear and taking risk or overcoming fear and taking risks and you have clearly mastered this and how do you develop the courage and strength to do so yes by relying on your own track record suzanne everybody on this call has a track record of successful first you wrote a bicycle for the first time you presented to people for the first time you did something you know for the first time successfully so reminding yourself that if you did it before you'll be able to do it again now let's say this time goes differently doesn't go the way you expect it to go but guess what if you are over 21 on this call you have had a disappointment ooh and you live to talk about it so again if you did it before you'll be able to do it again so whenever i find myself hesitating on something when you know i think fear is creeping up the back of my neck i do two things as you know suzanne you've heard me say this before i say fear is just false evidence of things appearing real really not there what's the worst that can happen here i take the risk and it doesn't work out but failure always brings you a gift that gift is called experience now you know how to do it better now you know how to do it differently now you know how to do it successfully so when i feel myself having that trepidation i remind myself get to the back girl swing hard if nothing else you're going to learn how to swing differently you're going to learn how to keep your eye on that ball you're going to learn something from that experience so you always win once you try because you either get the blessing you get the thing you want it or you get the lesson you know how to do it better and i know there are so many adjectives that would describe carla harris you know from powerhouse to authentic leader but what do you really value the most or are if you had to come up with one strength what one would that be authentic no question i think that has been my a my edge people know whether you knew carla in 1987 or you know carla in 2022 it's the same carla it may be carla that has more experience that might have acquired some other accolades but in the day still carla um and in closing here can you share some of your hardest stages of your journey oh sure it's you know the biggest thing and let's let's key off of the authenticity point is when you know i was having doubts whether or not just carla was good enough right and that's why i made the reference i said earlier about you go into these large organizations and if things don't go really well right at the outset you start thinking well maybe i should present like alan or maybe i should approach this like nancy or maybe i should do this just like sherry and before you know it if you're trying to do things the way other people do them you create a competitive disadvantage because i could never out alan allen i could never out cherry sherry so the trick is always to figure out who's the best of you now you allen may do something that you like sherry may do something that you like and you may say these are tools that i now want to put in my tool chest but they're just tools for you to own and execute in a way that is authentic to you that's how you use things that you acquire and do them in an authentic way and uh i did say that was the last one but i do have one more um question you know we talk about work life balance and i said i think sometimes we need to not even go there but i know you have two small children now and so how in the world do you balance your career with your with your children well and i'm happy to say suzanne that even before i had my girls i used to tell people that the key to making sure that you can have it all and i do believe that as a woman you can have it all is that you need to define what success looks like for you and don't live your life according to somebody else's report card so if you have other people in your life that can help you execute the things that you want to execute leverage them and use them you don't have to touch it in order to influence it um and be present when you are present so i am a nikola about my calendar as you well know and and so i use and squeeze everything out of every waking moment and i don't waste any time and i'm very organized i make those lists and i get those things done and when i have a very busy period in my life if i have a concert that's coming up and i have board work that i'm doing and there's carla the mom and there's carla the morgan stanley senior advisor you know i make sure that i i put all of those things on the list and then it's a matter of prioritizing how i'm going to get them done during the day and again i do leverage i have great babysitters you know i have great folks that look after my kids i have great relationships with the teachers that are at school so i make sure that i leverage my entire network in order for carla the mom to be successful carl the banker to be successful calling the singer to be successful but it's being intentional about it because i don't want to have any compromises i do want to have it all and i do believe you can have your cake and eat it too well i want to compliment you again i mean what inspiration you bring to all of us and and really talking about innovation we can have this now and listen to you every morning if we want to i mean i think it would be a great breakfast for us so thank you again and we hope to see you at the next conference and also we want to talk about the innovation lab sometime with you too as well that you created well i look forward to it thanks for having me again thank you and give the girls a hug for us thank you bye-bye bye-bye thank you for watching the global business women's pod brought to you by the greater houston women's chamber of commerce we cannot wait to see you next thursday at 6 pm and remember you can always find us at ghwcc.org

Channel: ghwcc

Views: 4,677

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Id: URC1S_n1UkI

Length: 36min 0sec (2160 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022