May 23, 2024 • 43 mins
Leadership is one of the most popular, challenging, important and essential elements for working professionals and their organizations. Are leaders born or taught? Can we create systems to teach and foster leadership? Do most companies have well developed leadership? Are there lessons we can draw from the military to apply to organizations and leadership? Tune in to Professor Harvard Business School Professor Hise Gibson and Samhita Jayanti as they discuss these important questions.
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Subscribe to ideamix - Coaching, Performance, and Wellness, and stay tuned for new episodes every other Thursday. On ideamix podcasts, we speak with innovators and coaches to help you build the life, business, and career you want. ideamix is the go-to destination for individuals to find their ideal coach. Check out our website at www.theideamix.com. For comments, questions, podcast guest ideas, or sponsorship inquiries, please email info@theideamix.com.
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(00:03):
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(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Welcome today. We're excited to
have Professor Heis Gibson join us onthe show. Heiss is a senior lecturer
of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He's a West Point graduate and Army
aviator, retired US Army colonel,having served with distinction for over twenty five
(01:32):
years, earning the Legion of Meritand Bronze Star, among other accolades.
Heiss's research interest is in leadership,technology and crisis management. His first,
thank you for your service, andwelcome to idea. Max. Oh,
thank you for the invitation. Reallyappreciate it. So I wanted to start
with some really quick questions. Sothey're going to be five quick short answers.
(01:57):
Here we go, Our leader isborn or maye both? Okay?
Is it possible to develop a systemof leadership? Absolutely? Do you think
most companies have a well functioning systemof leadership or not not at all?
Is it possible to draw some lessonson leadership from the military to apply in
(02:22):
a corporate context. Yes. Andif you had to pick a piece of
sports equipment to be what would thatbe? Wow, that's a good one.
Was it top of mine right now? Is it lacrostic. Okay,
that was not the answer I wasexpecting, but we'll come back to that.
(02:45):
So leadership, technology, crisis management. It's perhaps the single most important
triad of topics right that every businessand every leader needs to confront when they
ask questions like how do I createsustainable leadership in the organization? How will
technology affect my customers and business modeland people? How resilient is the organization?
(03:10):
And can of withstand crises? Right? Which aries on a more than
regular basis. Nowadays, you spentthe first part of your working life in
the military, and I imagine youaren't surrounded by people who are ex military
at Harvard Business School? So whatis it that made you want to become
(03:30):
an academic thinking about these issues?First, I think that I really appreciate
the question around the reason why Iwanted to become academic. I think is
because of the flexibility and the opportunityto continue the arc of service. So
(03:53):
if you think about just my background, the thread that goes through it that's
not really at present is the wordservice. And I think taking all that
I've learned in an academic space bystudying and researching, even when I was
in the military and all the actualpractical lessons that I've learned through serving Iraq
(04:19):
and Afghanistan and leading large, largehelicopter organizations. I think there's an opportunity
to marry those things and they putit out into the world. And what
better place to put tangible, realactionable information out into the world than at
(04:40):
the Harvard Business School. Yeah,I agree with you there. I think
that intersection of the experience you havehaving been in the military, having run
teams, but also having done thestep back through your academic work in the
military and just thinking about teams,operations, leadership is fascinating, right,
(05:03):
because not a lot of academics havethat experience to sort of bring to the
table in the corporate context. Ithink absolutely, and I believe that there's
a unique opportunity, especially when youhave a chance to sit back, reflect
(05:24):
on what you've done and realize thatthere's been amazing academics who've studied the theory
behind it and have had conversations withfolks across many industries, many senior leaders,
and realize that the same challenges thatI faced as an army officer are
(05:46):
very similar to challenges that most CEOsin any industry face every single day,
and I think there's a space andnecessary space for individuals who can go deep
and try to really unpack the mechanismsbehind things, versus many leaders believing it's
(06:08):
just your serendipity. I just knowhow to do this right. Well,
actually, you just don't know howto do it. You don't remember when
you were like seven years old andyou fell off a bike and you learn
something there that translates to how youengage with your employees today. That might
be a stretch, but there's aconnection that but it's a system basically.
(06:29):
Yeah. And do you feel thatobviously missions are so different right between the
military and a corporation, And Ithink increasingly we have a set of generations
or a set of people across generationswho are quite skeptical, like the trust
(06:50):
in corporations has really eroded over thislast kind of fifteen to twenty year period
that trust hasn't eroded in a militarycon text. Tell us a little bit
about your thoughts on alignment around missionand the contrast you see between organizations and
the military. The most important thingin order for any organization to accomplish its
(07:15):
desired mission or desired end state,as I'll say, is to figure out
a way to communicate some leader's awesomegoal, which is around what is that
your value set? And from thatvalue set, well the operationalize that you
need to have some kind of missionor something tangible, in which we do.
(07:38):
Unfortunately a lot of times in corporatesettings it kind of stops there at
that here's our values, here's ourmission, but there's a lack of communicating
how that mission is operationalized. Sowhen you get down to the brass tax,
the individuals in the organization who aregetting the work done, especially in
(08:01):
the current day, people want toknow where does my contribution matter in the
larger organization. So it's sort oflike those so what like what happened with
my contribution and how did it makean impact? And I would say because
of what you highlight of the generationaldifferences that we think about organizations having about
(08:22):
five generations ish now, which meansthose who are older really don't need that
right, don't really care as much. I'm just going to get it done,
whereas uh, our colleagues who maybe on the on a young who
have just entered the workforce, reallydo want to know what their value is
and needs to be communicated, whichfor the leaders kind of exhausting. Now,
(08:45):
if I jump to a military context, this alignment around mission is just
a part of the culture. Sothe culture requires us to communicate here's our
mission, and this is how you'regoing to do this mission, and this
is where your contribution sub organization exists. And then the leaders are trained and
(09:09):
developed in such a way to beable to translate that without saying something like
my boss said. So they're ableto take it, understand it, and
then figure out how to morph itinto the relevance for what they have to
do and where they fit, whichis communicated all the way down, which
creates the alignment necessary to accomplish amission, which is why you can drop
(09:35):
any US military organization group anywhere onthe planet and something will get done and
they'll align around that mission. YEAmakes total sense. I want to show
our listeners a short clip from apresentation that you made which talks about what's
(09:56):
required of leaders. So let's takea quick look and listen. But the
most important part about leadership is actuallythe twelve benches between our ears. Because
leadership is really easy, really simple. I got to do is a few
things in order to be a decentleader. Just these six things, that's
(10:16):
all no problem. So you needto understand what's going on. Then you
need to be to visualize what youjust understood, describe it in a way
that everyone understands in order for youto direct resources, then assess their resources
you direct, and then while iyou're leading, So why is an?
Why is an everyone doing it?And why are there over a thousand books
(10:37):
on Amazon right now that have leadershipin the title. But if you're able
to do these sort of okay,then it's very infectious. You're going to
be able to power down to yourteam in a way in which to develop
them, which it gives you thetrade space necessary in order to manage risk
(11:00):
and do the things only you cando. Because when you're a leader,
I'll say, at the top ofthe pyramids, so to speak, there's
a handful of things only you cando, and you have fantastic teammates that
you can leverage that can help yoube a better person, enable your organization,
and then power all the way downand create the flat organization we all
(11:24):
wish we had. But it's challengingto maintain and manage as you highlight.
Leadership is something both leaders and organizationsreally struggle with, and here we are
discussing leadership because of that existential struggle. You laid out this idea of these
(11:48):
are the things that a leader needsto do. Tell us a little bit
more about how you develop that framework. Well, I would take complete,
you know, I will take it'sall of my It's all mine. I
did all of this, but Ican't do that. I learned it from
being in the military because it's partof how we generally communicate what is required
(12:13):
of leaders. So leaders have tobe able to lead. That's pretty basic,
right, But they also have tobe able to understand what they need
to do. And once they understandwhat they need to do, they have
to be able to describe this,describe what they need to do to others,
because it's not really what they aredoing, it is how do they
translate what's required to someone else.Then they have to do solid assessments,
(12:37):
not only of people, but assessmentsof missions and what can we do what
can we not do in order tounderstand where to ask for help. Then
they have to be able to directresources. And I think as we as
leaders become more senior. Sometimes it'sforgotten that the higher you elevate in an
(12:58):
organization, the more you become aresource manager where you have to allocate things,
which means you're actually giving your poweraway, right because you've been elevated
to such a level to where youneed to focus on, like you know,
strategy and looking forward and engagement shareholdersand boards. Not the day to
(13:18):
day, but what many people do. And we're all we all have done
this. Once we get promoted inthe next job, what do we care
about, Well, we were reallygood at what we were just doing,
and so we impeded our our teammateswho have our job because we do it
better. And so those are likesome of those those elements that are needed
(13:43):
in order for you to be agood leader. And if you can do
all of them well and I'm missinga couple, you're you're you're going to
be a good leader. The challengeis it's hard to do all of those
well, and depending on what seasonyou're in as a leader, will really
dictate which one of these you're strongor weak at. It's hard to be
(14:05):
strong at all. At the sametime, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, in our business,we come across this a lot,
right, It's this idea of theskills that got you here to this whatever
level you're now at, are notthe skills that you need to hone to
take you forward. And you know, people get stuck very often working in
(14:33):
the business and now they're being expectedto work on the business and managed teams,
and a lot of the coaching workthat we do revolves around this topic.
You said leaders have different seasons.Talk a little bit more about that.
Well, when we think about thearc of our leadership journeys, there's
(14:56):
like early stage, mid stage,and late stage. And in our early
stages, we're pretty vigorous, wejust want to get it done. We
really think we know what we're doing. But if we're honest, we're just
gaining tools. We're getting tactical talents, skills, we're understanding that, you
(15:16):
know, we need to be reallygood at doing Excel, building models or
some other very tactical thing, whichis really really important. And then at
some point as we move from thattactical state to that middle state into management
more than like two people. Managingtwo people is important, but when you
get about ten or fifteen or avery large p and L where you manage
(15:41):
a budget profit and loss. Andyou managed a budget, then you need
a little bit different skills and you'repracticing there and you start to realize the
importance of relationships, that business andleadership is still a deeply human endeavor.
(16:03):
And can you become massively rich onnot being relational. Sure we have examples
of that, but at the endin a later season, that's when you
realize how important your life is asa leader by the relationships you still have
(16:25):
over that time. Because I thinkwhat I learned in the military from one
of my bosses, he said,you'll never know how good you are while
you're sitting in the seat, theseat of leadership, whatever that that is.
You'll only know how well you didafter you leave. And what will
show you that is when someone causeyou sends you a note ask you for
(16:52):
help. You realize at that momentyou had an impact. But while you're
in the seat, you're just tryingto get things done. And the same
thing happens to leaders in a corporatesetting. They're trying to get things done,
but they'd never really know how wellthey're doing, because even though there's
feedback and there's performance reviews, youknow it, you're not really getting the
(17:15):
direct feedback on how are you doingunless you're probably in a private equity firm
or VC firm where you're much smallerand tighter, and you're probably getting far
more direct feedback from your peers thanyou would in a standard large fortune one
hundred company. Makes sense, Iwant to shift gears a little bit.
One of the other things that youtalk a lot about in your research is
(17:37):
this concept of T shaped leadership,big tea leaders, little tea leaders.
Would you explain that for our listeners? Uh, no problem a, I
think, Uh again, I'll I'llget full credit where credit is due.
Uh. The idea of a Tshaped leader is about a thirty year old
concept. But what caused me toreally wanna dig into it, uh was
(18:03):
a talk I had with our ourformer Deannora, who wrote about T shape
leadership uh in around two thousand andsix. UH, and I shared with
him that this sounds interesting. Youknow, you have folks who are deep,
and that's when you're early in er, in your early stage as a
leader, you're deep at some thing, and then your placing an organization,
(18:26):
and then you you gain a bunchof experiences and then you broaden your perspective.
UH. To me, that cameacross as if all t's are the
same MM. And an example ofthat is that UH in the US Army,
UH, we send UH officers andpeople around the world to do a
(18:47):
lot of different things. Yeah.And at the time that I'm at the
Harvard Business School getting my doctorate,I that's my job. I'm an Army
lieutenant colonel getting a doctorate, bebopping around Cambridge with a backpack as a
very old graduate student. Whereas Ihave another colleague who's camping in Louisiana,
(19:07):
are doing extreme things in California,but there also are not in a unit.
But it's as if we're getting thesame experience, but we're not.
And so when I did the research, I realized that not all experiences are
the same. They can contribute toour broadening, but there's only certain experiences
(19:30):
that really extend you, and thenothers takes you really good at your current
job. And that's where the littleT versus big T came into play.
Not to say that little is worsethan bigent they're just different. And it's
the acknowledgement of the difference and thatorganizations don't just through the good of their
(19:51):
heart provide opportunities to their employees.I'm going to give you an experience that
either A I want to take advantageof right now in near term, or
B I'm going to make a strategicinvestment in you as a person in order
to leverage that experience that I gaveyou three to five years from now if
(20:11):
I keep you. And so thoseexperiences are more the big TA level versus
those tactical experiences or the little T. And then we can't forget the eye.
You need to have eyes if wethink about a factor, eyes are
just I need you to push thered button. It needs you to come
to work, provide value by doinga very singular thing. And there's many
(20:34):
organizations that have a lot of eyes. I have a little brother who's works
like a chemical plant, and youneed a lot of eyes. And a
chemical plant. The only tea youneed is like the guy running the plant.
Everyone else are groups of eyes doinga very specific function to create a
process to make your product that isextremely valuable, different than a McKenzie consult
(21:00):
firm or ben or BCG or anyconsulting firm. You need a lot of
big t's because you're expecting people todo cognitive gymnastics, to go from this
industry to that industry of this industryand be able to tie how they can
add value and make them better quickly. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
I like that. I like thelittle eyes. You've talked in some
(21:26):
of your work about how uncertainty isa given right and probably every generation feels
this, but it certainly feels likea time in the world where uncertainty is
on the increase rather than rather thanthe decrease. It's a framework that you've
called VUKA, which I want youto explain to our audience and then talk
(21:49):
a little bit about the link betweenthat framework of VUCA and the all that
coaching plays in helping leaders navigate theuncertainties. That's a great question, and
(22:11):
I appreciate it because in the inthe military, generally, we assume that
the world is volatile, uncertain,complex, and ambiguous. That's the going
in assumption. By having that goingin assumption, that means when you go
(22:33):
into an ambiguous situation, not doinganything is not an option. You have
to do something. You have tomove forward because sitting still could be detrimental,
and so that going in idea allowsfor constant movement and even certainty in
(22:57):
ambiguity and be able to create anopportunity to be comfortable operating in the gray.
Many might believe that, well amilitarist organization. In a militarist organization,
people will just do what they're told. There's absolutely no innovation. People
(23:18):
will just run into a wall,maybe in a movie. But because the
military is a people center organization.People are people. Yes, there are
rules, but you'll have to bemotivated to get things done. And so
they expect their leaders to be ableto bring order to chaos. And by
(23:42):
having this going in assumption around volatile, being volatile in certain complex ambiguous,
Okay, we put that on thetable, got it. We have no
idea what we're doing, but we'retold we have to do something. We
have a mission, and we haveother works to help us bring order to
(24:02):
chaos to move forward. And Ithink that's where coaching helps leaders manage their
anxiety during uncertain times. The challengetoday is that the uncertainty is like all
the time, those thousand year floods, similarly to the military in a way
(24:26):
every day, and so I thinkleaders unfortunately haven't had enough reps in bad
times. So if we really startto unpack it, we think about two
thousand and nine. We need topick dates, So two thousand and nine,
two thousand and two, those aremoments between two thousand and nine and
(24:48):
twenty twenty. It is pretty good, at least in the US generally for
markets and business innovation, really good. So you have a whole crop of
leaders who've grown up in really goodtimes. Yeah. And you have some
of the l h more seas seasonedleaders in the organizations who remember right the
(25:10):
nineties, the two thousand some eventhe eighties. Yeah, so we've been
here before yeah uh, and areless anxious, right, and they have
they have the scabs to remember andand they have pattern recognition R. Whereas
the leaders who have come up posttwo thousand nine to now don't, which
means their anxiety is really really high. Yeah, which causes the need for
(25:36):
coaching to be really important. Therewas a time where coaching was looked at
as a bad thing. Oh,what's wrong with you? Right, as
you had there's a problem, right, Whereas I think every leader I know
has an amazing coach to help themthink about how to maneuver and how to
manage not only themselves, provide theman outlet to really reflect or how to
(26:03):
manage their organizations, and without thatoutlet, they might be in a very
different state. Yeah. No,that totally makes sense. I mean,
we couldn't have said it better.I it's I you know, leaders are
a lot like high performance athletes,right, and most high performance athletes don't
not have a coach y for areason. It it's made me think about
(26:26):
what you just said, has mademe think about the culture of organizations,
and this idea of whether culturally organizationsare equipped to deal with uncertainty or not
equipped to deal with uncertainty. Inthe military, clearly the whole organization and
the ethos of it is equipped todeal with uncertainty. I you know,
(26:49):
in my experience, I spent sometime working at what I'll call old economy
companies and then I spend some timeworking at a Silicon Valley company, and
the cultures of those two sets oforganizations are deeply, deeply different. Right,
the old economy companies, the culturegenerally is one of risk aversion and
(27:12):
the sort of overall messaging is don'tscrew it up, right, And in
the Valley the culture is of riskfriendliness. It's like, make mistakes,
you know, it's fine, we'llfigure it out. And no mistake is
sort of insurmountable. And those aretwo really different perspectives to come at the
(27:34):
world from. Tell me about yourobservations with respect to culture and how sort
of culture enables or hampers an organizationfrom confronting uncertainty and navigating it. Well,
(27:55):
that's a big one around culture.And so I think if I'll use
a recent example, if we overover the good years that we've established twenty
nine and twenty twenty. Some maysay that depend on who you are or
where you sit will determine determine yourlevel of goodness. But if we think
about companies that grew really fast,they grew with a culture of we're a
(28:22):
family, We're going to support eachother. You know, come as you
are, do what you want,no big deal. But then those organizations
grew and grew and grew, andthen post pandemic, there's a recalibration that's
(28:44):
happened. So those organizations that werefamilies had to I mean, there's an
old analogy. You can't like fireyour family. You can't you know you
you know you don't pick yourself.You don't at your family, which means
you can't fire your family, youknow, period, But in corporations you
(29:04):
can. You can let people go. So are you a family and so
so just those actions completely cut atthe culture of the organization and causes employees
to be concerned. But if asyou highlighted old economy old economy companies,
(29:32):
that wasn't a big deal. Thatwas just part of how the corporation.
The corporation operated, And so Ithink many organizations now are grappling with what
their culture is going to be,How are their cultures going to operate,
and how do they really want todefine it to ensure that they highlight their
(29:53):
values, higher talent that is alignedwith their values, but also can do
what they need to do for theshareholders, which are very opposing things,
because the most expensive part of anyorganization are going to be the people.
So I think double clicking on cultureis going to be far more important today
(30:21):
and in the future than it hasever been, not because of anything the
leader's doing. It's because of whatthe employees are come to the workforce expect,
and that expectation is that you,as a leader, care about me
you as an organization will support meor I will leave. And if we
(30:45):
look at the highly talented technical field, that's where that's more present, far
less present that idea in other organizationswhere you're just kind of getting things done
or even but we're starting to bleedover and even into manufacturing. People still
want to feel valued. So Ithink organizations will continue to do fight around
(31:14):
what is our culture? Are realignedand how we communicate it in a way
to at least hit the middle.Yeah, I mean that communication piece is
so important in my view. Alot of times, you know, the
organizations that we work with, wefind that what you'll call the big tea
(31:37):
leaders are thinking about and are preoccupiedabout what is the culture that we're creating
in the organization? How do Ichange it? How do I evolve it?
But many times the thinking about culturewhen it stops there but doesn't go
the next step, which is okay, having thought about the culture that I
(31:57):
want to have as a leader,how am I going to push that through
the organization. It's going to beby ensuring that those little tea leaders become
the carriers of that culture so thatit filters down top to bottom, right,
and that requires time and investment andcoaching, among other things. But
(32:20):
so often companies don't focus on this, and so that culture sort of is
there at the few top levels,but then never actually gets down into the
organization, and then you see allthe problems around retention and this kind of
constant revolving door of recruitment that thenultimately turns into a very high cost model
(32:42):
for the company. And I thinkthe reason why that it stops at the
top is because if we think aboutthose who made it to the top,
they're really really good. Yeah,but they may not have had any actual
development or been forced to really driveideas all the way down. They were
(33:08):
just they moved up it's great,or they replaced in a position that's amazing.
But basic things like leveraging what I'vetalked about leader's intent. Where as
a leader you communicate the why,what are we trying to do, and
how you want to end. That'sa very basic framing that, if done
(33:34):
well, can then be translated fromthe top to the middle to the bottom.
And what that does is provides accountabilityon both sides. The end state.
Telling you how I wanted to endas a leader makes that leader accountable.
So it's almost like a pack thatjust made with my team. But
(33:54):
in doing it making that pack,I also told the team why are we
doing something and what needs to happen, which means I just set the expectations.
So it almost kind of gets awayfrom all the fluff around, you
know, you know, choose yourown adventure and get back to the brass
tacks of why are we here,what are we trying to add value?
(34:19):
Or how are we're trying to addvalue to our customers, to our shareholders
into ourselves in a very strict way, that's a very basic framework, but
there's a lot of long emails,company statements that are made that don't even
do those things, which continues howwe began the idea of well, what's
(34:44):
my role? How do I dothings? Because it's never truly communicated at
a tactical level. Yeah, makesa lot of sense. So as we
wrap up here, what role hascoaching p in your life? Who have
been the individuals that you consider mostinfluential who have mentored you coached you through
(35:08):
the years. I've had a lotof coaches. I have too, so
I'm happy to hear you say that, And so when I think about it,
I was told this when I wasa young officer, that all of
us are someone's mentee, mentor,and if we hit a certain level,
(35:35):
somebody sponsor at every level. Andso when I think about amazing coaches,
I think about guys like Brigadar GeneralBernie Banks, who retired long ago in
his Director of Leadership Center at RICE. I think about a guy named Steve
Dwyer Westpoint class at eighty. Hewas my first aviation battalion commander, and
(35:59):
I taught us on mathematics at WestPoint. I think of Lieutenant General Ron
Clark, who's the current senior militaryaide to the Secretary of Defense. I
think about guys like Kevin Lofton,the former CEO of Common Spirit Healthcare.
Or I think of folks like FrancisFrye, my amazing colleague at the Harvard
(36:22):
Business School, or Sadela Neely,another amazing colleague, or notth Rahman.
I can go down a whole listof faculty. So and what the what
those different coaches do is really helphelp me navigate seasons at certain points in
my life. How do I howdo I get past this? What do
(36:45):
I need to do? What Ineed to think? About and you need
someone who's not going to tell youit's it's going to be okay. You
need someone to tell you, well, these are your options. This is
what I would recommend, but it'sreally up to you. The best coach
I have had and still have,this guy named Major General Price. He
(37:07):
was he was an HR leader inthe Army for all the Forces command when
he retired, which is a wholelot of people, and now as an
executive. But he's known me sinceI was a sophomore in college and has
walked with me through my base ofmy entire life, and he would always
(37:30):
give me advice. He's a greatcoach, and most times I would always
balk at his advice, like allthe time, but he still talked to
me. So that's also something thatas a mentor or a coach, you
can give your best advice, butdon't get upset when someone does the pull
(37:54):
ops at what you just said.And so that's also like being a parent
and supporting people through things. SoI think for me, because I have
a lot of coaches, all thepeople I named I actually still talked to,
but I've known them or came incontent with them at very specific points
(38:19):
and they've been thought partners to you, objective thought partners right that have helped
steer you in different ways, androle models and sponsors and mentors. And
a great mentor, sponsor coach isJim Cash. Professor Jim Cash is the
first African American to be tenured atthe Harvard Business School, and I'm probably
(38:43):
one of a thousand people will callhim a mentor. He has a building
named after him at the Harvard BusinessSchool now, and at that naming,
you would be amazed at the eighthundred people who showed up for a building
being named after him. Yeah,and so that's impact totally. And so
(39:04):
I think again, if if I, as a coach, or mentor or
sponsor to others, can make zeropoint two percent of an impact that individual
like Jim cash Is has made ona body of people, I think I'll
call that a success. Absolutely.It's it's a great standard to set for
(39:27):
yourself. So I want to goback quickly to the lost of the quick
questions that we discussed at the beginning. You mentioned lacrosse. Stick. I
was expecting you to say football.Tell us a little about that. Well,
my oldest daughter plays lacrosse. Okay, and did you ever play lacrosse.
I'm from Texas. We don't doit cross lacrosse. Yeah, And
(39:51):
I grew up in Texas in theeighties and early nineties, So lacrosse when
I went to West Point, whenI learned about lacrosse, all about lacrosse.
Team from Long Island or Virginia orNew Jersey, but mostly Long Island
not a thing. But my oldestdaughter plays lacrosse. And there's a level
(40:14):
of finesse, agility, and fearlessnessthat comes with playing the sport. And
so I mean trying to catch aball in a little net. That's a
little too complicated for me, andso I think, but its translates to
(40:36):
leadership because in the current day,you have to be massively resilient because everything's
coming at you twenty four to seven, a lot of pressure. You have
to be agile to maneuver up,down and sideways. And for leaders at
the highest level, yes, theyhave to think about inward, but they
(41:00):
really have to manage outward in orderto protect the operations inward. And that
requires a level of agility that Idon't think we give credit where credit is
due to those leaders who do itwell. By being able to manage their
digital footprint, by being able tomanage their board, by being able to
(41:22):
manage how they market and how theirbrands are defined. The leader has to
be able to do that. Andthen also that sport requires a lot of
stamina that it does, and ifwe're honest, leadership is a contact sport.
Can't You can't do it from behindyour iPad, you know, or
(41:45):
be an email tough guy or atough person. You gotta have stamina,
And with stamina means you have tohave a lot of reps. And I
think that's the part that is massivelynecessary practice, the practice of leadership and
getting reps. And when you tripand when you fall, you get up
and do it again and again andagain. And I think that's the part
(42:08):
where being at HBS, it's greatto see on one end nbas who are
massively amazing trip for the first timein some of their lives, and then
on the other end engaged with amazingexecutives who are really trying to ponder how
to make their best better and increasetheir stamina to increase their business to do
(42:32):
even better at the same time.So it's great to be able to move
between those two worlds at the sametime and a lacrosse stick. I think
kind of it defines that I likethat analogy. Ice has been really great
chatting about your research and your insightson leadership and technology and crisis management topics,
(42:58):
which, as I've seen at thebeginning, is the triad that every
organization has to grapple with. Ina sense, you're the uber coach right
working with organizations on how to developtheir leaders And thank you for joining us
too. Thank you, thank you, thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever
(43:19):
you listen and leave us a review. Find your ideal coach at www dot
viidmix dot com. Special thanks toour producer Martin Maluski and singer songwriter Doug Allen.
Welcome to Idemics Performance and Wellness,where world leading coaches and scientists explain how
their research can help you achieve yourpersonal and professional goals. Foster hi It's
Sanjayanti, co founder and CEO ofIdemics Coaching. Coaching has played an important
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(00:24):
leader, mother and wife. IDMXcoaches help you increase your self awareness,
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(00:46):
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(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Welcome today. We're excited to
have Professor Heis Gibson join us onthe show. Heiss is a senior lecturer
of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He's a West Point graduate and Army
aviator, retired US Army colonel,having served with distinction for over twenty five
(01:32):
years, earning the Legion of Meritand Bronze Star, among other accolades.
Heiss's research interest is in leadership,technology and crisis management. His first,
thank you for your service, andwelcome to idea. Max. Oh,
thank you for the invitation. Reallyappreciate it. So I wanted to start
with some really quick questions. Sothey're going to be five quick short answers.
(01:57):
Here we go, Our leader isborn or maye both? Okay?
Is it possible to develop a systemof leadership? Absolutely? Do you think
most companies have a well functioning systemof leadership or not not at all?
Is it possible to draw some lessonson leadership from the military to apply in
(02:22):
a corporate context. Yes. Andif you had to pick a piece of
sports equipment to be what would thatbe? Wow, that's a good one.
Was it top of mine right now? Is it lacrostic. Okay,
that was not the answer I wasexpecting, but we'll come back to that.
(02:45):
So leadership, technology, crisis management. It's perhaps the single most important
triad of topics right that every businessand every leader needs to confront when they
ask questions like how do I createsustainable leadership in the organization? How will
technology affect my customers and business modeland people? How resilient is the organization?
(03:10):
And can of withstand crises? Right? Which aries on a more than
regular basis. Nowadays, you spentthe first part of your working life in
the military, and I imagine youaren't surrounded by people who are ex military
at Harvard Business School? So whatis it that made you want to become
(03:30):
an academic thinking about these issues?First, I think that I really appreciate
the question around the reason why Iwanted to become academic. I think is
because of the flexibility and the opportunityto continue the arc of service. So
(03:53):
if you think about just my background, the thread that goes through it that's
not really at present is the wordservice. And I think taking all that
I've learned in an academic space bystudying and researching, even when I was
in the military and all the actualpractical lessons that I've learned through serving Iraq
(04:19):
and Afghanistan and leading large, largehelicopter organizations. I think there's an opportunity
to marry those things and they putit out into the world. And what
better place to put tangible, realactionable information out into the world than at
(04:40):
the Harvard Business School. Yeah,I agree with you there. I think
that intersection of the experience you havehaving been in the military, having run
teams, but also having done thestep back through your academic work in the
military and just thinking about teams,operations, leadership is fascinating, right,
(05:03):
because not a lot of academics havethat experience to sort of bring to the
table in the corporate context. Ithink absolutely, and I believe that there's
a unique opportunity, especially when youhave a chance to sit back, reflect
(05:24):
on what you've done and realize thatthere's been amazing academics who've studied the theory
behind it and have had conversations withfolks across many industries, many senior leaders,
and realize that the same challenges thatI faced as an army officer are
(05:46):
very similar to challenges that most CEOsin any industry face every single day,
and I think there's a space andnecessary space for individuals who can go deep
and try to really unpack the mechanismsbehind things, versus many leaders believing it's
(06:08):
just your serendipity. I just knowhow to do this right. Well,
actually, you just don't know howto do it. You don't remember when
you were like seven years old andyou fell off a bike and you learn
something there that translates to how youengage with your employees today. That might
be a stretch, but there's aconnection that but it's a system basically.
(06:29):
Yeah. And do you feel thatobviously missions are so different right between the
military and a corporation, And Ithink increasingly we have a set of generations
or a set of people across generationswho are quite skeptical, like the trust
(06:50):
in corporations has really eroded over thislast kind of fifteen to twenty year period
that trust hasn't eroded in a militarycon text. Tell us a little bit
about your thoughts on alignment around missionand the contrast you see between organizations and
the military. The most important thingin order for any organization to accomplish its
(07:15):
desired mission or desired end state,as I'll say, is to figure out
a way to communicate some leader's awesomegoal, which is around what is that
your value set? And from thatvalue set, well the operationalize that you
need to have some kind of missionor something tangible, in which we do.
(07:38):
Unfortunately a lot of times in corporatesettings it kind of stops there at
that here's our values, here's ourmission, but there's a lack of communicating
how that mission is operationalized. Sowhen you get down to the brass tax,
the individuals in the organization who aregetting the work done, especially in
(08:01):
the current day, people want toknow where does my contribution matter in the
larger organization. So it's sort oflike those so what like what happened with
my contribution and how did it makean impact? And I would say because
of what you highlight of the generationaldifferences that we think about organizations having about
(08:22):
five generations ish now, which meansthose who are older really don't need that
right, don't really care as much. I'm just going to get it done,
whereas uh, our colleagues who maybe on the on a young who
have just entered the workforce, reallydo want to know what their value is
and needs to be communicated, whichfor the leaders kind of exhausting. Now,
(08:45):
if I jump to a military context, this alignment around mission is just
a part of the culture. Sothe culture requires us to communicate here's our
mission, and this is how you'regoing to do this mission, and this
is where your contribution sub organization exists. And then the leaders are trained and
(09:09):
developed in such a way to beable to translate that without saying something like
my boss said. So they're ableto take it, understand it, and
then figure out how to morph itinto the relevance for what they have to
do and where they fit, whichis communicated all the way down, which
creates the alignment necessary to accomplish amission, which is why you can drop
(09:35):
any US military organization group anywhere onthe planet and something will get done and
they'll align around that mission. YEAmakes total sense. I want to show
our listeners a short clip from apresentation that you made which talks about what's
(09:56):
required of leaders. So let's takea quick look and listen. But the
most important part about leadership is actuallythe twelve benches between our ears. Because
leadership is really easy, really simple. I got to do is a few
things in order to be a decentleader. Just these six things, that's
(10:16):
all no problem. So you needto understand what's going on. Then you
need to be to visualize what youjust understood, describe it in a way
that everyone understands in order for youto direct resources, then assess their resources
you direct, and then while iyou're leading, So why is an?
Why is an everyone doing it?And why are there over a thousand books
(10:37):
on Amazon right now that have leadershipin the title. But if you're able
to do these sort of okay,then it's very infectious. You're going to
be able to power down to yourteam in a way in which to develop
them, which it gives you thetrade space necessary in order to manage risk
(11:00):
and do the things only you cando. Because when you're a leader,
I'll say, at the top ofthe pyramids, so to speak, there's
a handful of things only you cando, and you have fantastic teammates that
you can leverage that can help yoube a better person, enable your organization,
and then power all the way downand create the flat organization we all
(11:24):
wish we had. But it's challengingto maintain and manage as you highlight.
Leadership is something both leaders and organizationsreally struggle with, and here we are
discussing leadership because of that existential struggle. You laid out this idea of these
(11:48):
are the things that a leader needsto do. Tell us a little bit
more about how you develop that framework. Well, I would take complete,
you know, I will take it'sall of my It's all mine. I
did all of this, but Ican't do that. I learned it from
being in the military because it's partof how we generally communicate what is required
(12:13):
of leaders. So leaders have tobe able to lead. That's pretty basic,
right, But they also have tobe able to understand what they need
to do. And once they understandwhat they need to do, they have
to be able to describe this,describe what they need to do to others,
because it's not really what they aredoing, it is how do they
translate what's required to someone else.Then they have to do solid assessments,
(12:37):
not only of people, but assessmentsof missions and what can we do what
can we not do in order tounderstand where to ask for help. Then
they have to be able to directresources. And I think as we as
leaders become more senior. Sometimes it'sforgotten that the higher you elevate in an
(12:58):
organization, the more you become aresource manager where you have to allocate things,
which means you're actually giving your poweraway, right because you've been elevated
to such a level to where youneed to focus on, like you know,
strategy and looking forward and engagement shareholdersand boards. Not the day to
(13:18):
day, but what many people do. And we're all we all have done
this. Once we get promoted inthe next job, what do we care
about, Well, we were reallygood at what we were just doing,
and so we impeded our our teammateswho have our job because we do it
better. And so those are likesome of those those elements that are needed
(13:43):
in order for you to be agood leader. And if you can do
all of them well and I'm missinga couple, you're you're you're going to
be a good leader. The challengeis it's hard to do all of those
well, and depending on what seasonyou're in as a leader, will really
dictate which one of these you're strongor weak at. It's hard to be
(14:05):
strong at all. At the sametime, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, in our business,we come across this a lot,
right, It's this idea of theskills that got you here to this whatever
level you're now at, are notthe skills that you need to hone to
take you forward. And you know, people get stuck very often working in
(14:33):
the business and now they're being expectedto work on the business and managed teams,
and a lot of the coaching workthat we do revolves around this topic.
You said leaders have different seasons.Talk a little bit more about that.
Well, when we think about thearc of our leadership journeys, there's
(14:56):
like early stage, mid stage,and late stage. And in our early
stages, we're pretty vigorous, wejust want to get it done. We
really think we know what we're doing. But if we're honest, we're just
gaining tools. We're getting tactical talents, skills, we're understanding that, you
(15:16):
know, we need to be reallygood at doing Excel, building models or
some other very tactical thing, whichis really really important. And then at
some point as we move from thattactical state to that middle state into management
more than like two people. Managingtwo people is important, but when you
get about ten or fifteen or avery large p and L where you manage
(15:41):
a budget profit and loss. Andyou managed a budget, then you need
a little bit different skills and you'repracticing there and you start to realize the
importance of relationships, that business andleadership is still a deeply human endeavor.
(16:03):
And can you become massively rich onnot being relational. Sure we have examples
of that, but at the endin a later season, that's when you
realize how important your life is asa leader by the relationships you still have
(16:25):
over that time. Because I thinkwhat I learned in the military from one
of my bosses, he said,you'll never know how good you are while
you're sitting in the seat, theseat of leadership, whatever that that is.
You'll only know how well you didafter you leave. And what will
show you that is when someone causeyou sends you a note ask you for
(16:52):
help. You realize at that momentyou had an impact. But while you're
in the seat, you're just tryingto get things done. And the same
thing happens to leaders in a corporatesetting. They're trying to get things done,
but they'd never really know how wellthey're doing, because even though there's
feedback and there's performance reviews, youknow it, you're not really getting the
(17:15):
direct feedback on how are you doingunless you're probably in a private equity firm
or VC firm where you're much smallerand tighter, and you're probably getting far
more direct feedback from your peers thanyou would in a standard large fortune one
hundred company. Makes sense, Iwant to shift gears a little bit.
One of the other things that youtalk a lot about in your research is
(17:37):
this concept of T shaped leadership,big tea leaders, little tea leaders.
Would you explain that for our listeners? Uh, no problem a, I
think, Uh again, I'll I'llget full credit where credit is due.
Uh. The idea of a Tshaped leader is about a thirty year old
concept. But what caused me toreally wanna dig into it, uh was
(18:03):
a talk I had with our ourformer Deannora, who wrote about T shape
leadership uh in around two thousand andsix. UH, and I shared with
him that this sounds interesting. Youknow, you have folks who are deep,
and that's when you're early in er, in your early stage as a
leader, you're deep at some thing, and then your placing an organization,
(18:26):
and then you you gain a bunchof experiences and then you broaden your perspective.
UH. To me, that cameacross as if all t's are the
same MM. And an example ofthat is that UH in the US Army,
UH, we send UH officers andpeople around the world to do a
(18:47):
lot of different things. Yeah.And at the time that I'm at the
Harvard Business School getting my doctorate,I that's my job. I'm an Army
lieutenant colonel getting a doctorate, bebopping around Cambridge with a backpack as a
very old graduate student. Whereas Ihave another colleague who's camping in Louisiana,
(19:07):
are doing extreme things in California,but there also are not in a unit.
But it's as if we're getting thesame experience, but we're not.
And so when I did the research, I realized that not all experiences are
the same. They can contribute toour broadening, but there's only certain experiences
(19:30):
that really extend you, and thenothers takes you really good at your current
job. And that's where the littleT versus big T came into play.
Not to say that little is worsethan bigent they're just different. And it's
the acknowledgement of the difference and thatorganizations don't just through the good of their
(19:51):
heart provide opportunities to their employees.I'm going to give you an experience that
either A I want to take advantageof right now in near term, or
B I'm going to make a strategicinvestment in you as a person in order
to leverage that experience that I gaveyou three to five years from now if
(20:11):
I keep you. And so thoseexperiences are more the big TA level versus
those tactical experiences or the little T. And then we can't forget the eye.
You need to have eyes if wethink about a factor, eyes are
just I need you to push thered button. It needs you to come
to work, provide value by doinga very singular thing. And there's many
(20:34):
organizations that have a lot of eyes. I have a little brother who's works
like a chemical plant, and youneed a lot of eyes. And a
chemical plant. The only tea youneed is like the guy running the plant.
Everyone else are groups of eyes doinga very specific function to create a
process to make your product that isextremely valuable, different than a McKenzie consult
(21:00):
firm or ben or BCG or anyconsulting firm. You need a lot of
big t's because you're expecting people todo cognitive gymnastics, to go from this
industry to that industry of this industryand be able to tie how they can
add value and make them better quickly. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
I like that. I like thelittle eyes. You've talked in some
(21:26):
of your work about how uncertainty isa given right and probably every generation feels
this, but it certainly feels likea time in the world where uncertainty is
on the increase rather than rather thanthe decrease. It's a framework that you've
called VUKA, which I want youto explain to our audience and then talk
(21:49):
a little bit about the link betweenthat framework of VUCA and the all that
coaching plays in helping leaders navigate theuncertainties. That's a great question, and
(22:11):
I appreciate it because in the inthe military, generally, we assume that
the world is volatile, uncertain,complex, and ambiguous. That's the going
in assumption. By having that goingin assumption, that means when you go
(22:33):
into an ambiguous situation, not doinganything is not an option. You have
to do something. You have tomove forward because sitting still could be detrimental,
and so that going in idea allowsfor constant movement and even certainty in
(22:57):
ambiguity and be able to create anopportunity to be comfortable operating in the gray.
Many might believe that, well amilitarist organization. In a militarist organization,
people will just do what they're told. There's absolutely no innovation. People
(23:18):
will just run into a wall,maybe in a movie. But because the
military is a people center organization.People are people. Yes, there are
rules, but you'll have to bemotivated to get things done. And so
they expect their leaders to be ableto bring order to chaos. And by
(23:42):
having this going in assumption around volatile, being volatile in certain complex ambiguous,
Okay, we put that on thetable, got it. We have no
idea what we're doing, but we'retold we have to do something. We
have a mission, and we haveother works to help us bring order to
(24:02):
chaos to move forward. And Ithink that's where coaching helps leaders manage their
anxiety during uncertain times. The challengetoday is that the uncertainty is like all
the time, those thousand year floods, similarly to the military in a way
(24:26):
every day, and so I thinkleaders unfortunately haven't had enough reps in bad
times. So if we really startto unpack it, we think about two
thousand and nine. We need topick dates, So two thousand and nine,
two thousand and two, those aremoments between two thousand and nine and
(24:48):
twenty twenty. It is pretty good, at least in the US generally for
markets and business innovation, really good. So you have a whole crop of
leaders who've grown up in really goodtimes. Yeah. And you have some
of the l h more seas seasonedleaders in the organizations who remember right the
(25:10):
nineties, the two thousand some eventhe eighties. Yeah, so we've been
here before yeah uh, and areless anxious, right, and they have
they have the scabs to remember andand they have pattern recognition R. Whereas
the leaders who have come up posttwo thousand nine to now don't, which
means their anxiety is really really high. Yeah, which causes the need for
(25:36):
coaching to be really important. Therewas a time where coaching was looked at
as a bad thing. Oh,what's wrong with you? Right, as
you had there's a problem, right, Whereas I think every leader I know
has an amazing coach to help themthink about how to maneuver and how to
manage not only themselves, provide theman outlet to really reflect or how to
(26:03):
manage their organizations, and without thatoutlet, they might be in a very
different state. Yeah. No,that totally makes sense. I mean,
we couldn't have said it better.I it's I you know, leaders are
a lot like high performance athletes,right, and most high performance athletes don't
not have a coach y for areason. It it's made me think about
(26:26):
what you just said, has mademe think about the culture of organizations,
and this idea of whether culturally organizationsare equipped to deal with uncertainty or not
equipped to deal with uncertainty. Inthe military, clearly the whole organization and
the ethos of it is equipped todeal with uncertainty. I you know,
(26:49):
in my experience, I spent sometime working at what I'll call old economy
companies and then I spend some timeworking at a Silicon Valley company, and
the cultures of those two sets oforganizations are deeply, deeply different. Right,
the old economy companies, the culturegenerally is one of risk aversion and
(27:12):
the sort of overall messaging is don'tscrew it up, right, And in
the Valley the culture is of riskfriendliness. It's like, make mistakes,
you know, it's fine, we'llfigure it out. And no mistake is
sort of insurmountable. And those aretwo really different perspectives to come at the
(27:34):
world from. Tell me about yourobservations with respect to culture and how sort
of culture enables or hampers an organizationfrom confronting uncertainty and navigating it. Well,
(27:55):
that's a big one around culture.And so I think if I'll use
a recent example, if we overover the good years that we've established twenty
nine and twenty twenty. Some maysay that depend on who you are or
where you sit will determine determine yourlevel of goodness. But if we think
about companies that grew really fast,they grew with a culture of we're a
(28:22):
family, We're going to support eachother. You know, come as you
are, do what you want,no big deal. But then those organizations
grew and grew and grew, andthen post pandemic, there's a recalibration that's
(28:44):
happened. So those organizations that werefamilies had to I mean, there's an
old analogy. You can't like fireyour family. You can't you know you
you know you don't pick yourself.You don't at your family, which means
you can't fire your family, youknow, period, But in corporations you
(29:04):
can. You can let people go. So are you a family and so
so just those actions completely cut atthe culture of the organization and causes employees
to be concerned. But if asyou highlighted old economy old economy companies,
(29:32):
that wasn't a big deal. Thatwas just part of how the corporation.
The corporation operated, And so Ithink many organizations now are grappling with what
their culture is going to be,How are their cultures going to operate,
and how do they really want todefine it to ensure that they highlight their
(29:53):
values, higher talent that is alignedwith their values, but also can do
what they need to do for theshareholders, which are very opposing things,
because the most expensive part of anyorganization are going to be the people.
So I think double clicking on cultureis going to be far more important today
(30:21):
and in the future than it hasever been, not because of anything the
leader's doing. It's because of whatthe employees are come to the workforce expect,
and that expectation is that you,as a leader, care about me
you as an organization will support meor I will leave. And if we
(30:45):
look at the highly talented technical field, that's where that's more present, far
less present that idea in other organizationswhere you're just kind of getting things done
or even but we're starting to bleedover and even into manufacturing. People still
want to feel valued. So Ithink organizations will continue to do fight around
(31:14):
what is our culture? Are realignedand how we communicate it in a way
to at least hit the middle.Yeah, I mean that communication piece is
so important in my view. Alot of times, you know, the
organizations that we work with, wefind that what you'll call the big tea
(31:37):
leaders are thinking about and are preoccupiedabout what is the culture that we're creating
in the organization? How do Ichange it? How do I evolve it?
But many times the thinking about culturewhen it stops there but doesn't go
the next step, which is okay, having thought about the culture that I
(31:57):
want to have as a leader,how am I going to push that through
the organization. It's going to beby ensuring that those little tea leaders become
the carriers of that culture so thatit filters down top to bottom, right,
and that requires time and investment andcoaching, among other things. But
(32:20):
so often companies don't focus on this, and so that culture sort of is
there at the few top levels,but then never actually gets down into the
organization, and then you see allthe problems around retention and this kind of
constant revolving door of recruitment that thenultimately turns into a very high cost model
(32:42):
for the company. And I thinkthe reason why that it stops at the
top is because if we think aboutthose who made it to the top,
they're really really good. Yeah,but they may not have had any actual
development or been forced to really driveideas all the way down. They were
(33:08):
just they moved up it's great,or they replaced in a position that's amazing.
But basic things like leveraging what I'vetalked about leader's intent. Where as
a leader you communicate the why,what are we trying to do, and
how you want to end. That'sa very basic framing that, if done
(33:34):
well, can then be translated fromthe top to the middle to the bottom.
And what that does is provides accountabilityon both sides. The end state.
Telling you how I wanted to endas a leader makes that leader accountable.
So it's almost like a pack thatjust made with my team. But
(33:54):
in doing it making that pack,I also told the team why are we
doing something and what needs to happen, which means I just set the expectations.
So it almost kind of gets awayfrom all the fluff around, you
know, you know, choose yourown adventure and get back to the brass
tacks of why are we here,what are we trying to add value?
(34:19):
Or how are we're trying to addvalue to our customers, to our shareholders
into ourselves in a very strict way, that's a very basic framework, but
there's a lot of long emails,company statements that are made that don't even
do those things, which continues howwe began the idea of well, what's
(34:44):
my role? How do I dothings? Because it's never truly communicated at
a tactical level. Yeah, makesa lot of sense. So as we
wrap up here, what role hascoaching p in your life? Who have
been the individuals that you consider mostinfluential who have mentored you coached you through
(35:08):
the years. I've had a lotof coaches. I have too, so
I'm happy to hear you say that, And so when I think about it,
I was told this when I wasa young officer, that all of
us are someone's mentee, mentor,and if we hit a certain level,
(35:35):
somebody sponsor at every level. Andso when I think about amazing coaches,
I think about guys like Brigadar GeneralBernie Banks, who retired long ago in
his Director of Leadership Center at RICE. I think about a guy named Steve
Dwyer Westpoint class at eighty. Hewas my first aviation battalion commander, and
(35:59):
I taught us on mathematics at WestPoint. I think of Lieutenant General Ron
Clark, who's the current senior militaryaide to the Secretary of Defense. I
think about guys like Kevin Lofton,the former CEO of Common Spirit Healthcare.
Or I think of folks like FrancisFrye, my amazing colleague at the Harvard
(36:22):
Business School, or Sadela Neely,another amazing colleague, or notth Rahman.
I can go down a whole listof faculty. So and what the what
those different coaches do is really helphelp me navigate seasons at certain points in
my life. How do I howdo I get past this? What do
(36:45):
I need to do? What Ineed to think? About and you need
someone who's not going to tell youit's it's going to be okay. You
need someone to tell you, well, these are your options. This is
what I would recommend, but it'sreally up to you. The best coach
I have had and still have,this guy named Major General Price. He
(37:07):
was he was an HR leader inthe Army for all the Forces command when
he retired, which is a wholelot of people, and now as an
executive. But he's known me sinceI was a sophomore in college and has
walked with me through my base ofmy entire life, and he would always
(37:30):
give me advice. He's a greatcoach, and most times I would always
balk at his advice, like allthe time, but he still talked to
me. So that's also something thatas a mentor or a coach, you
can give your best advice, butdon't get upset when someone does the pull
(37:54):
ops at what you just said.And so that's also like being a parent
and supporting people through things. SoI think for me, because I have
a lot of coaches, all thepeople I named I actually still talked to,
but I've known them or came incontent with them at very specific points
(38:19):
and they've been thought partners to you, objective thought partners right that have helped
steer you in different ways, androle models and sponsors and mentors. And
a great mentor, sponsor coach isJim Cash. Professor Jim Cash is the
first African American to be tenured atthe Harvard Business School, and I'm probably
(38:43):
one of a thousand people will callhim a mentor. He has a building
named after him at the Harvard BusinessSchool now, and at that naming,
you would be amazed at the eighthundred people who showed up for a building
being named after him. Yeah,and so that's impact totally. And so
(39:04):
I think again, if if I, as a coach, or mentor or
sponsor to others, can make zeropoint two percent of an impact that individual
like Jim cash Is has made ona body of people, I think I'll
call that a success. Absolutely.It's it's a great standard to set for
(39:27):
yourself. So I want to goback quickly to the lost of the quick
questions that we discussed at the beginning. You mentioned lacrosse. Stick. I
was expecting you to say football.Tell us a little about that. Well,
my oldest daughter plays lacrosse. Okay, and did you ever play lacrosse.
I'm from Texas. We don't doit cross lacrosse. Yeah, And
(39:51):
I grew up in Texas in theeighties and early nineties, So lacrosse when
I went to West Point, whenI learned about lacrosse, all about lacrosse.
Team from Long Island or Virginia orNew Jersey, but mostly Long Island
not a thing. But my oldestdaughter plays lacrosse. And there's a level
(40:14):
of finesse, agility, and fearlessnessthat comes with playing the sport. And
so I mean trying to catch aball in a little net. That's a
little too complicated for me, andso I think, but its translates to
(40:36):
leadership because in the current day,you have to be massively resilient because everything's
coming at you twenty four to seven, a lot of pressure. You have
to be agile to maneuver up,down and sideways. And for leaders at
the highest level, yes, theyhave to think about inward, but they
(41:00):
really have to manage outward in orderto protect the operations inward. And that
requires a level of agility that Idon't think we give credit where credit is
due to those leaders who do itwell. By being able to manage their
digital footprint, by being able tomanage their board, by being able to
(41:22):
manage how they market and how theirbrands are defined. The leader has to
be able to do that. Andthen also that sport requires a lot of
stamina that it does, and ifwe're honest, leadership is a contact sport.
Can't You can't do it from behindyour iPad, you know, or
(41:45):
be an email tough guy or atough person. You gotta have stamina,
And with stamina means you have tohave a lot of reps. And I
think that's the part that is massivelynecessary practice, the practice of leadership and
getting reps. And when you tripand when you fall, you get up
and do it again and again andagain. And I think that's the part
(42:08):
where being at HBS, it's greatto see on one end nbas who are
massively amazing trip for the first timein some of their lives, and then
on the other end engaged with amazingexecutives who are really trying to ponder how
to make their best better and increasetheir stamina to increase their business to do
(42:32):
even better at the same time.So it's great to be able to move
between those two worlds at the sametime and a lacrosse stick. I think
kind of it defines that I likethat analogy. Ice has been really great
chatting about your research and your insightson leadership and technology and crisis management topics,
(42:58):
which, as I've seen at thebeginning, is the triad that every
organization has to grapple with. Ina sense, you're the uber coach right
working with organizations on how to developtheir leaders And thank you for joining us
too. Thank you, thank you, thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever
(43:19):
you listen and leave us a review. Find your ideal coach at www dot
viidmix dot com. Special thanks toour producer Martin Maluski and singer songwriter Doug Allen.
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