Reflection Questions
What are your most pressing leadership challenges? Do you share these with other leaders? With your team?
How comfortable are you in reaching out to members of your team for feedback on your leadership? What would you do with their feedback?
How do you set and clarify goals with teams that you lead? What measures do you use to determine how well you are meeting these goals? In light of your performance in meeting goals, do you ever revisit or reevaluate them? How do you determine if it’s time to abandon some goals and set new ones?
How would you honestly evaluate the correspondence between your intentions and your actions? Is the correspondence different between your personal and professional lives? Why might this be?
Notes
1. Peter Fuda, www.peterfuda.com, founder and principal of The Alignment Partnership (TAP), also an adjunct professor of management at the MGSM.
2. Tasha Eurich, Insight: Why We’re Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life (New York: Crown Business, 2017).
3. Jim Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, A Leader’s Legacy (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006).
4. Irwin Federman, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, revised and updated ed. (New York: Harper Business, 2017).
5. Liz Wiseman, Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work (New York: Harper Business, 2004).
7
In Search of Obsession
Susan Scott
Susan Scott is the CEO and Founder of Fierce Inc., and the author of Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life – One Conversation at a Time and Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst “Best” Practices of Business Today.
Known for her bold yet practical approach to executive coaching and leadership development, Susan Scott has been challenging people to say the things that are hard to say for over two decades. Susan founded Fierce in 2001 after 13 years leading CEO think tanks, more than 10,000 hours of conversations with senior executives, and one epiphany: While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a career, a business, a marriage, or a life – any single conversation can. Susan continues to share her expertise with clients through her keynote presentations, best-selling books, and her company, Fierce, Inc.
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Eighteen years ago, as I read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises beside a crackling fire, snoring dogs at my feet, I became obsessed with an idea. The implications hinted at my raison d’etre. Obsession with a second idea a few months later kicked the first into motion and brought me to where I am today. More about the ideas in a bit. First, let’s talk about obsession. Dictionaries would have you believe that obsession is a problem akin to stalking:
“A persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often-unreasonable idea or feeling”
“Compulsive preoccupation with an idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety”
I prefer this definition:
“Something or someone that you think about all the time.”
My obsession wasn’t unwanted or unreasonable and created no anxiety in me; rather it inspired a compulsion to share it with others. To do that on a large scale required people who were, if not obsessed, at least as taken with the ideas as I was. A tribe, a company. Of course, I had to figure out if there were people – individuals, organizations – who saw the implications of my ideas and wanted what I wanted enough to pay for it. But it was my obsession that provided the emotional and intellectual velocity required to make it so, because I knew that the success I hoped for would not be handed to me by an investor or a partner. It was something I had to find and nurture on my own.
Most companies were launched by an idea – Amazon, Google, Facebook, GoPro, WhatsApp, HomeAdviser, Airbnb, GoFundMe, Uber, Miracle Mop, Stitch Fix. All of their founders had a desire they imagined others shared, and their obsessions fueled the energy to build a company, which is no walk in the park. You gotta really want it and love it, and your idea must have a clear and compelling why behind it. In fact, without that why and your obsession about it, it’s possible to spin your wheels and considerable bucks on the what and how and end up frustrated and possibly broke, which explains why so many ideas never get off the ground.
The ideas that led me to found Fierce, Inc., were like kaleidoscopic pieces that, when they shifted, changed my view of the world, of myself in the world, and therefore, what was required of me. They were the whys with which I remain obsessed.
Idea #1
In The Sun Also Rises, a character is asked, “How did you go bankrupt?” He responds, “Two ways. Gradually, and then suddenly.” At the time I read this, I had been running think tanks for chief executives for 13 years and had had more than 10,000 hours of conversations with industry leaders worldwide. I thought back over important events in the lives of my clients. A piece within my internal kaleidoscope dropped.
Our careers, our companies, our relationships, and indeed our very lives succeed or fail, gradually and then suddenly, one conversation at a time.
On the failing side, sometimes the questions were: How did we manage to lose our biggest customer – the one that counted for 20 percent of our net profit? How did I lose my most valued employee, for whom I had great plans? How did I lose the cohesiveness of my team? Why are we experiencing turnover, turf wars, rumors, departments not cooperating with one another, unengaged employees, long overdue reports and projects, strategic plans that still aren’t off the ground, and lots of very good reasons and excuses why things can’t be any different or better?
And on a personal note: How did I lose an 18-year marriage that I was not prepared to lose? How did I lose my job? How is it that I find myself in a company, a role, a relationship, a life from which I’ve absented my spirit? How did I lose my way? How did I get here?
Once the members of my CEO groups reflected on the path that led them to a disappointing or difficult point or place in time, they remembered, often in vivid detail, the conversations that set things in motion, ensuring that they would end up exactly where they found themselves. They lost that customer, that employee, the cohesiveness of their team, their marriage, their joy – one failed or one missing conversation at a time.
On the positive side, here was a pretty amazing place when a company finally landed that huge customer, the one their competition would kill for. Or successfully recruited a valuable new employee. Or a leader discovered that her team was committed to her at a deep level. Or a team blew their goals out of the water. And personally, celebrating another happy year of marriage.
My CEOs got to these good places in their lives, these amazing achievements, these satisfying career paths, these terrific relationships, gradually, then suddenly, one successful conversation at a time. And they were determined to ensure the quality of their ongoing conversations with the people central to their success and happiness.
Imagine you are standing on a game board – the game of life. Your life. How did you arrive at this square on the board, with all of your current results – professional and personal – spread out in front of you, some you like and some you don’t? You arrived here one conversation at a time. And when you project yourself into an ideal future, how will you get from here to there? Same way you got here. One conversation at a time.
Idea #2
Shortly after the gift of Hemingway, I heard Yorkshire-born poet and author, David Whyte, speak at a conference about a young man, newly married, who is often frustrated, even a little irritated, that his lovely spouse, to whom he has pledged his troth and with whom he hopes to spend the rest of his life, wants to talk – yet again – about the same topic they just talked about last night, and last weekend. The topic? The quality of their relationship. He wonders, “Why are we talking about this again? I thought we settled this. Could we just have one huge conversation about our relationship and then coast for a year or two?
” Apparently not, because here she is again.
Around age 42, if he’s been paying attention, David suggested, it dawns on him. David smiled. He was 42 and married. “This ongoing conversation I have been having with my wife is not about the relationship. The conversation is the relationship.”
The conversation is the relationship.
To say this landed with me would be an understatement. The idea was simple, even obvious, but I had missed the formula. Conversation = relationship.
As the idea dropped, my internal kaleidoscope shifted. I had just left a long-term marriage and was deeply sad. I felt David was talking just to me and learned later that all 400 people in the room felt the same way. We all had a strong desire to run out into the parking lot and phone home.
If you recognize that there may be something to this, that the conversation is the relationship, then you must know that if the conversation stops, all of the possibilities for the relationship become smaller. All of the possibilities for the individuals in the relationship become smaller as well, until one day we overhear ourselves in midsentence, making ourselves quite small, behaving as if we’re just the space around our shoes, engaged in yet another three-minute conversation so empty of meaning it crackles.
For me, this is a seriously big deal. Our most valuable currency is not money, nor intelligence, attractiveness, fluency in three-letter acronyms, the ability to write code, or analyze a P&O statement. Our so-called pedigree doesn’t get us as far as we might hope. Our most valuable currency is relationship, emotional capital, without which we have nothing, and accomplish nothing. Superficial relationships – the “How are you? I’m fine” variety – are not gonna cut it. It is the depth of our relationships that determines the meaning of our lives, and the depth of our relationships is created gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time. Each conversation we have, each phone call, each email or text enriches a relationship, flatlines it, or takes it down. In other words, we are building relationships that thrill or disappoint us one conversation at a time. I founded Fierce, Inc., due to my obsession with these two ideas, having become hyper-tuned to how conversations profoundly impact our lives. In this world of asynchronous communication, where we are face down in our screens trying not to be distracted by what’s happening around us, it seems that when we speak, we skim along the surface of a topic and/or withhold what we’re really thinking and feeling, so that we say nothing of interest, really. And we say it over and over. Even when we recognize our prejudices as prejudices, we continue to feud. Consequently, nothing of value emerges and today is a lot like yesterday.
Sad to say, most people mistake talking for conversation. The usual chitchat doesn’t get us much. A cacophony of voices attempting to peddle self-serving agendas does not advance us. We want to be ourselves, to be heard, yet growth is the process of extending our views, seeking to understand the views of others, and abandoning views that no longer serve us, so we can embrace the possibilities no single person—except a few great minds such as Einstein—could have grasped. I am not an Einstein. I need input and if you’ve got a clear and compelling case, I’m not that hard to persuade, especially if you’re obsessed with your idea.
I am always interested to know if people have something in their lives they love beyond all reason. A person, a place, a product, an activity – cooking, painting, hiking, traveling. Or an idea. The problem is that our ideas, our obsessions, are often degraded by our rational minds. We talk ourselves out of our ideas, which leaves the field open for others to capitalize on them. Don’t let this happen to you. And don’t listen to naysayers. A relative, who supposedly had my best interests at heart, advised me not to write a book, as no one would publish it. A business colleague suggested I would never join the C-Suite because I wanted it too much. Wrong and wrong. Ha! If you’re obsessed with an idea, if you have a passion for something that has been calling to you all of your life, if you hunger for something different, something more, then obey your instincts and do something about it. Otherwise, you are starving a little every day.
Where to begin? A fierce conversation with yourself. Where am I going? Why am I going there? Who is going with me? How will I get there?
Reflection Questions
What thought or idea has been your most frequent companion?
Is there a compelling why connected to your idea?
If someone else has created a business around your idea, is there a missing piece? Is there room to improve and enhance such a business? Or room to implement your idea and improve things right where you are?
What are you waiting for?
PART II
To Serve Is to Live
“You and I do not retire. You and I are called to serve, and we will serve until the pine box lid is closed upon us.” This quote from Frances Hesselbein is about being dedicated to our purpose. For those of us who serve, we embrace a life and attitude of being of service that goes beyond our current condition or place of employment. As Frances would say, We are called to serve.
In this section of our book, our contributors explore their calls to service, what they are, how they heard the call, and what it means to heed the call. We begin with Jim Yong Kim, 12th president of the World Bank, who describes his leadership journey, on which he often reminds himself and others, “No matter how holy you think your mission might be, it does not make you immune from bad leadership.” Margaret Heffernan recounts her painful decision as a CEO to request that her CFO shut down their company rather than allow it to suffer and die a “death from a thousand cuts” during the dot.com bust and 2008–2009 economic recession. In describing the surprisingly positive outcomes of her decision, she demonstrates the importance of honesty and integrity for leaders. Eric Schurenberg offers historical lessons about leadership from George Washington as he led his troops in the battle for American independence during the Revolutionary War. He outlines ways that contemporary leaders can similarly motivate and inspire others. Mark C. Thompson reflects on some critical lessons that he learned about leadership from these two inspirational men, particularly about the importance of having a mission, learning from failure, admitting that you don’t know all the answers, not succumbing to distractions, and letting go of perfectionism. Stephanie Pace Marshall recounts lessons learned among the Pitjantjatjara Aborigines of Australia to demonstrate the critical importance of story, map, and landscape to any organization. She discusses implications for leadership and suggests ways to enhance your role as a storyteller and mapmaker in your organization. Mel Spiese draws on his personal experiences as a proud United States Marine to disavow the notion that his organization has any problem with “workplace disengagement” among contemporary recruits who are Millennials and members of Generation Z. He identifies characteristics of this new demographic of Marines that make them particularly prone to success in the Corps—or in any other organization or workplace. And wrapping up this section is Jack Zenger, who cites an incredibly painful personal experience – his son’s death from a rare form of cancer – to reveal the importance of honesty and integrity for leaders. He also identifies five behavioral indices that correlate with these key leadership skills.
8
A Call to Create Positive Change on a Global Scale
Jim Yong Kim
Jim Yong Kim, MD, PhD, is the 12th president of the World Bank Group. Soon after he assumed his position in July 2012, the organization established two goals to guide its work: to end extreme poverty by 2030; and to boost shared prosperity, focusing on the bottom 40% of the population in developing countries. In September 2016, the World Bank Group Board unanimously reappointed Kim to a second five-year term as president.
Kim’s career has revolved around health, education, and improving the lives of the poor. Before joining the World Bank Group, Kim, a physician and anthropologist, served as the president of Dartmouth College and held professorships at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. From 2003 to 2005, as director of the World Heal
th Organization’s HIV/AIDS department, he led the “3 by 5” initiative, the first-ever global goal for AIDS treatment, which helped to greatly expand access to antiretroviral medication in developing countries. In 1987, Kim cofounded Partners in Health, a nonprofit medical organization that now works in poor communities on four continents.
Kim has received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, was recognized as one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report, and was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Kim was named the world’s 50th most powerful person by Forbes magazine’s List of The World’s Most Powerful People in 2013.
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At the time of this writing,1 Jim Yong Kim is serving as the 12th president of the World Bank Group. Trained as a physician and anthropologist, he was born in 1959, in The Republic of Korea at a time when it was one of the poorest countries in the world. To Kim, the great irony of this is that when he was born, the World Bank refused to give loans to Korea because it thought Korea would never be able to pay back even the lowest interest loans. It wasn’t until Kim was about four years old that Korea got its first loan from the World Bank Group.
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