Ego Free Leadership

by Brandon Black

  My second meeting was with Dave, and I was committed to expressing my observations and helping him learn and grow.

  “The company is at a pivotal juncture right now,” I said simply, “and I’m worried that you won’t be successful without making significant improvement. My goal for our conversation today is to collectively create a plan that addresses these issues.”

  I spent a few minutes going through my observations. I was simultaneously more direct and less irreverent, but Dave wasn’t hearing any of it. “Why wasn’t I told this before?” he protested. “Some of the developmental challenges you listed are strengths of mine. They got me here, and you’ve told me in the past that you appreciated these strengths. Plus, the two examples you gave were totally out of context.”

  My first reaction was to tell him he was an idiot and end the conversation. I took a deep breath and recognized the tension rising in my chest.

  Before responding, I thought about how our difficult conversations in Sausalito had brought us closer together. I don’t want him to fail, I thought, because I haven’t been straight with him. And I don’t want to break off the connection. I refocused on being “in it together” with him.

  Thinking about his comments, I realized he was right. I hadn’t said these things and had previously given him positive feedback about areas similar to what I was now criticizing.

  “I agree that some of this might come as a surprise,” I said. “I avoided having this discussion because I was afraid it might go poorly. These conversations are hard for me, and I apologize. Despite that, I want to help you and I really need you to hear me on these issues.”

  Dave paused and then asked me to go back and clarify a few points. We began talking instead of arguing. By the end, we understood each other better and started defining a path forward.

  SHAYNE

  Brandon’s feedback discussions with his executives illustrate the trap most of us fall into when trying to make personal change. We focus on the “right” behavior, which we typically think of as the opposite of our usual reaction. If we avoid conflict, we think we “just need to say what we think.” If we get angry, we “just need to control ourselves.” If we procrastinate, we “just need to do it.” Brandon’s fears of rejection and separation had caused him to delay these conversations. When he finally willed himself to have them, however, these and other anxieties made him more tense and “amped up.” He got some things off his chest, but his accumulated frustration and judgments made him harsh. Unless we address the underlying anxiety, pushing ourselves to do the opposite or “right” behavior is usually just hindering progress in another way. The leverage to move beyond our dysfunctions lies rather in stepping out of the reactive state of mind that triggers them. This shift comes in stages.

  First, Brandon had to acknowledge his dysfunction without hedging: He avoided difficult discussions. Then he recognized the emotional blocks that prevented him from behaving as he wanted to. Tying these fears back to his childhood allowed him to understand why they were so potent for him.

  Next, instead of telling himself he “should” do the opposite, Brandon clarified his goal. He connected with the deeper intentions motivating him to have these uncomfortable conversations. What was at stake? Why did he care? What were his intentions for Dave? His goals gave him emotional clarity—a profound sense that he wanted to take the risk to share his perspective to support Dave and see him grow.

  This is the essence of shifting from at the mercy to at the source, and sustainable, natural behavior change occurs in this moment. For Brandon, his decision to be “in it together” with his team was his first inspiring step to prioritize creating authentic, stable relationships over protecting his ego.

  We need to proactively search for this emotional clarity; only rarely does it surface on its own. If I were to ask whether your true goals or your egosystem-driven fears were most important, you would of course say the former. Intellectually it’s easy to decide that learning, growing, or creating authentic relationships is more important than not appearing incompetent, failing, or being hurt. Unfortunately, this is not how we feel at a visceral level, or we wouldn’t be continually repeating these dysfunctional behaviors. Transformation comes when we consciously connect with goals not tied to our self-worth and use this emotional clarity to inspire action in the present moment.

  We can tell what types of goals are guiding us by paying attention to how we feel. When we feel at the mercy, it’s a sign that the self-worth concerns of our egosystem are engaged. When we are grounded in our deeper intentions or desires, we feel at the source: calmer, more inspired, more connected to a sense of meaning or purpose. For many of us, the stress of feeling at the mercy is so quasi-permanent that we’ve forgotten what inspiration feels like.

  Our strengths and skills can be either a lethal weapon for our ego-system or a productive tool for our goals. Among Brandon’s greatest strengths were his intelligence and ability to articulate his thoughts. Hijacked by his egosystem, these natural talents helped him win debates, triumph over people, and convincingly explain why he shouldn’t bother having certain developmental conversations. When used in the service of his goal to mentor his team and create deeper relationships, however, these same talents allowed him to identify and express keen observations for his executive team. His assessments became insightful instead of judgmental. When Dave reacted negatively, Brandon’s talents helped him move the conversation forward instead of shutting Dave down.

  GOALS THAT HELP US TO BE “AT THE SOURCE”

  When our goals stem from what really matters to us, we naturally feel the inspiration of being “at the source.” On the contrary, self-worth goals invariably trigger “at the mercy” feelings. Here are a few examples of non-self-worth goals. Feel free to use these questions when getting ready for any situation.

  •Learning goals: How is this situation an opportunity for me to grow, to expand my perspective, or to develop new skills?

  •Connection goals: What do I want to create in my relationship with this other person or with my team?

  •Contribution goals: What is my intention for the other person or for the larger set of stakeholders? What matters to me beyond my own success?

  •Being goals: How do I want to show up in this situation? What behaviors or state of being will most help me step out of my own dysfunctions and support others to move beyond theirs?

  It goes without saying that no leader, including your boss, purposefully wishes to judge a colleague instead of supporting him or her. But our behavior is always consistent with our most strongly held goal; by default, particularly in moments of stress, our egosystem makes that about self-preservation. When we can connect to other, more essential goals, we change our focus and state of being and gain access to the powerful energy of feeling at the source. As the concerns of our egosystem fall by the wayside, we draw more fully on our strengths and talents, and more productive behaviors follow. We lead with inspiration and awaken the inspiration in those around us.

  Correcting Our Behaviors Before They Happen

  BRANDON

  The performance discussions led to real improvement among most of my direct reports. Even though I was buoyed by their progress, Encore’s business prospects at the beginning of 2007 were still bleak. I couldn’t believe our competitors were generating positive financial returns at the current levels of portfolio pricing, and I had expected things to ease up by now. Most of them spoke glowingly of their financial performance, and it seemed like a new corporation joined the industry every week. We watched as they kept bidding prices ever higher. At some point it had to break, but when? Our stock continued taking a beating, down from $12 in January to $9 by the end of March. Paul and I talked openly with our analysts and shareholders and asked for patience. Instead, their frustration increased. Encore was apparently the only company in the industry with a gloomy outlook.

  While we couldn’t control market pricing for portfolios, we could afford to pay more if we lowered
our operating costs. Unfortunately, our one transformative cost savings opportunity, the call center in India, was going nowhere fast. Eighteen months after the site opened, individual performance was low and attrition was sky high. It took three hires to produce one productive employee, an unsustainable 200 percent turnover rate. Most of my U.S. leadership team wanted to throw in the towel on the experiment. I didn’t, if only because we had no other options.

  I was hoping for any sign of improvement when we held our quarterly India business review in late April. The meeting followed a predictable script, and we quickly found ourselves in the hundredth discussion about why we missed our collection forecast. The Indian team whined about the lack of collectable accounts, and the U.S. team talked openly about the limited international skill set. I stopped listening to the repetition until a senior leader at the India site, Manu Rikhye, forcefully voiced his objections. “These telecom accounts you’ve given us are very low quality—what do you expect us to collect?”

  “Look, Manu,” I jumped in, “I don’t need you to collect on our quality accounts. We can do that profitably in the U.S. I need you and your team to collect on accounts that we can’t afford to work here. That’s the whole point of our operation in India: cost savings.”

  “How can you win a boxing match with one hand tied behind your back?” he insisted.

  I love talking in metaphors, but this one annoyed me. If Manu was making excuses, how would he ever hold his team accountable?

  “I can’t give you better accounts until your turnover is under control and your collections improve.”

  “We’ve tried that formula for eighteen months. Our turnover is high because the accounts are so terrible, people can’t be successful. If you want this to succeed, give us more valuable accounts. I promise we’ll deliver.”

  I shook my head at him through the videoconference. There was no way his team could meet our collection expectations. Giving them quality accounts would be throwing money down the drain. Still … what choice did I have?

  I finally agreed to assign them some accounts identical to those being serviced in the United States. Enough to appease Manu, but not so many that it would hurt us when they weren’t successful.

  The one bright spot in the spring of 2007 was the board’s decision to stop exploring strategic alternatives. After almost a year, they determined nobody was willing to pay a sufficient premium on our current stock price to make it compelling to merge or go private. We would stick to our strategic plan. Paul and I were glad to put the distraction behind us.

  What I didn’t know was that Nelson Peltz was negotiating with a new investor group to sell his remaining investment in the company. In early June, our two largest shareholders sold approximately 40 percent of the company to this new group. As a result, three board members resigned.

  Within a month, we elected four new board members who had no track record with me; instead, they would be watching carefully to ensure I generated a return on their hundred-million-dollar investment. It seemed to happen at the worst possible time. Our strategic initiatives were still struggling, the management team was in flux, and pricing for portfolios kept rising.

  At our first board meeting after the change, one of the new members looked at me and declared, “All companies need to be great at something. As far as I can tell, we aren’t.”

  I glanced at Paul, not sure what to think.

  “You need to quickly figure out what that is and get focused,” he continued. “Without that, we’ll need to make some changes.”

  It wasn’t a threat, but a reality check. These new investors were not going to be satisfied with the status quo. I worried what they’d think when they heard I was attending a leadership seminar in the next thirty days. I thought about postponing, but now, more than ever, I needed to accelerate my development.

  The seminar started slowly for me. I found myself preoccupied and unable to concentrate. Aidan was a year old, the new board wanted results, and Dana and I had just found out that we were expecting a daughter in February 2008. It seemed the only constant was significant change.

  On the fourth day, a seemingly trivial moment caused my experience to take a major detour. We were working through an exercise when Noah Nuer, the CEO of LaL, told the group we had thirty minutes until lunch. It was a beautiful day and I was looking forward to taking a walk along the bay to get some fresh air and gather my thoughts. Five minutes before the break, Noah told us if we weren’t finished with the exercise, we could complete it during lunch. They were moving on to a new topic in the afternoon.

  I was pissed. He hadn’t mentioned this in his previous announcement, and now I had to change my plans. I skipped the walk and finished the exercise, but I fumed for the rest of the day. Was Noah terrible at managing time, or had he purposefully misled us? Either way, I wasn’t going to stand for it.

  I was still annoyed later that night in my hotel when I realized I’d had a “pinch,” LaL’s term for an emotional reaction. A presentation the previous day had outlined the distinction between reality, perceptions, and thoughts. One of the key conclusions was “Facts don’t make us mad; it’s our thoughts about those facts that do.” It seemed overly simplistic, and I thought they made too big a deal of it. But twenty-four hours later, I jumped straight into the trap.

  So Noah changed the schedule—why did I have so much emotion about it? With everything I was dealing with at work, who cared about such a tiny detail? After some journaling, it dawned on me that behind my resentment at missing my walk was a judgment I’d had of myself: Everybody else was getting their work done, but I was lagging behind. The other participants would surely see me sitting alone at the table while they were able to go to lunch; I was the dunce CEO of the seminar.

  Over the next few days, I developed important connections between my past and my reaction to Noah. I realized that during my childhood, I’d felt a constant competition to be number one. I was the oldest kid in my family, and my grandfather always told me I was his favorite grandson. While I received positive reinforcement, my brother, Keith, was ridiculed. He never seemed to measure up and faced harsh judgments for many of his life decisions. I had added to that pile of criticisms, always deeming him lazy and unmotivated. Only now did I see how much better I felt when he was judged to be less than me. I felt sad and ashamed about how he was treated and wished I had acted differently.

  This need to be the best helped explain my antipathy toward Noah. He was the only other person in the seminar with the same title as me. Since only one of us could be the “best” CEO, we were in a competition—except he didn’t know it. My mind was constantly searching for his flaws and trying to discredit him. Just like with my own team, I realized, I need everybody to know I’m the true leader in the room.

  This theme had played out time after time in my life. The most troubling example was my departure from my prior employer, Capital One. For the first decade after college, I was a rising star, leading thousands of employees and reporting directly to the president. When the company recruited at college campuses, my story was the example they touted as what was possible. I was influencing critical decisions and had tremendous access to the CEO. The sky was the limit—until I threw it all away in 1997.

  Given its tremendous growth, Capital One decided to bring in a series of more experienced leaders, and I vehemently argued that these new hires were destroying the culture. As more outsiders took senior leadership positions, the conflict escalated until I finally resigned. These people couldn’t possibly know what we stood for.

  Upon reflection at the seminar, I realized it wasn’t about that at all. I hadn’t been able to admit that I was afraid these new leaders would outperform me. Once the president and the CEO realized I couldn’t measure up, they would reject or demote me. I couldn’t let that happen, so I quit! It seemed ridiculous now, but I had been blinded by the need to protect my status as the chosen one.

  That was an extreme example, but the pattern was at play even toda
y at Encore. I hired talented people, but nobody good enough to replace me. My constant judging of others ensured that I always came out on top, at least in my mind. I was dumbstruck by how many times I unwittingly fought to be number one or left the situation when I couldn’t be. So many wasted learning opportunities.

  SHAYNE

  Our reactions are completely within our power to influence and change. Learning to notice when our egosystem is triggered, accepting these feelings with empathy, and then reconnecting to our deepest goals and intentions brings us back to a more centered state of being. We move from being at the mercy to being at the source, from being reactive to proactive and creative. With practice, we can become aware enough of our underlying ego threats to consistently preempt our reactions before they happen. Let me present a concrete tool that will allow you, just as Brandon did, to make this shift.

  The first priority is to be attuned to when and how we feel at the mercy, and it turns out these feelings start at precise moments. Brandon was diligently working on an exercise in the seminar, and his attention was focused on how he wanted to grow as a leader. And then, in an instant, he was angry with Noah. There was a before and an after. We call the experience of this transition a “pinch.” Like a physical pinch on our arm, an emotional pinch is our body reacting physiologically to an unwanted threat or circumstance.

  When we experience a pinch, we have familiar sensations or symptomatic reactions that we can learn to recognize. For some people, their ears get hot, or they blush, or their stomachs knot. Brandon felt anger and resentment, and he became judgmental and critical. I typically feel a jolt of adrenalin in my chest and find myself talking faster and louder. For others, however, noticing a pinch can be more difficult. People who are even-keeled don’t always have obvious physiological or behavioral symptoms. It doesn’t mean they don’t have pinches, but more than likely their egosystems respond by minimizing or numbing the threat.