Mick Unplugged - Bonus Episode 12 | Leading with Positivity and Strategic Insight with Lisa Borders - Mick Unplugged

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Mick Hunt talks with Lisa Borders about her illustrious career across various sectors, focusing on her transformative impact on the WNBA and her dedication to community service. Lisa discusses her approach to leadership, the challenges she's faced, and her ongoing commitment to improving every environment she's part of, leaving a lasting legacy of growth and inclusion.Lisa Borders' Background: From corporate America to the presidency of the WNBA and beyond, Lisa has been a dynamic leader in sports, politics, and community welfare.Defining Moments: Lisa shares her strategies for revitalizing organizations and her passion for opening doors for others, ensuring sustainable success and growth.Discussion Topics:Lisa's leadership philosophy and her impact on the WNBA, transforming it into a thriving league.Her tenure at Coca-Cola and the Grady Health Foundation highlights significant public health and corporate social responsibility achievements.Insights into overcoming challenges and fostering consensus in diverse environments.Key Quotes"To whom much is given, much is required.""Leave places and spaces better than I found them."Next Steps:Explore: Learn more about Lisa Borders' initiatives and contributions.Reflect: Think about how you can use your position to impact your community positively.Engage: Share how Lisa's journey inspires you to lead with purpose using #MickUnplugged. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are you ready to change your habits, sculpt your destiny, and light up your path to greatness? Welcome to the epicenter of transformation. This is Mic Unplugged. We'll help you identify your because, so you can create a routine that's not just productive, but powerful. You'll embrace the art of evolution, adapt strategies to stay ahead of the game, and take a step toward the extraordinary. So let's unleash your potential. Now, here's Mick. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we delve deep into the journey of remarkable leaders who inspire change and drive impact. Today, we're truly honored to have a distinguished guest who

has left an incredible mark on sports, politics, and corporate leadership. She's the former president of the WNBA, vice president of global community affairs at the Cola Cola Company, president of the Grady Health Foundation, and most importantly, she's a champion for women's rights and a dynamic leader in the business world. Please welcome me in joining my Shiro, the trailblazing Lisa Borders. Lisa, welcome to Mick Unplugged. Oh, Mick, thank you so much for that gracious introduction. It's such a privilege to be with you.

You know what would have made it better? What's that? If I could have said graduate from the University of North Carolina. No, dude, you could never say that. Dookie here. Blue and blue. Deep blue. Not the Carolina blue, although that's a nice blue.

Thank you. Give you some love, but also tell you we got the best blue over there in North Carolina. In Durham, eight miles away from you guys. We have a trademark. Just throwing that out there. So you're making my brother and sister proud. They're both very weirdly passionate about Duke, but I'll leave it there. They're both great schools.

They've put out some great people and we're proud, particularly in the African-American community. When people go to college, we are so excited regardless of where they go. Go and learn and be able to share. Knowledge is an incredible privilege. So all jokes aside, kudos to everybody out there going to college and to all the recent graduates. Congratulations.

That's right. Graduation weekend is upon us. So Lisa, on Make Unplugged, we talk about, you know, being fueled by more than your why and really being in tune with your because, right? I feel like your because is the reason that makes you do what you do. And you can have multiple becauses in different stages of your life. And one of the things that I love tremendously about Lisa Borders is her purpose. And it's like you always have your eye on the purpose and the purpose of now. Today, Lisa, what's your because? What's driving you today? Yeah, great question, Mick.

And I would tell you, my personal mantra is always to leave places and spaces better than I found them. Having come from a spiritual background, my grandfather was William Holmes Borders Sr., pastor at Wheat Street Baptist Church in my hometown here in Atlanta for more than 50 years. And I learned a lot of Bible verses when I was very young. And the book of Luke is the one that resonated with me the most. You might recall he was a physician. And one of the passages that is deeply imprinted on my heart and on my mind is to whom much is given, much is required. And so I start there. That's my grounding, right, from the family and that religious and spiritual background. And I've had such an incredible opportunity to

spend time in so many roles, places, and spaces where others have yet to go. And so to be able to leave those places and spaces better than I found them by virtue of my work, my engagement, my passion, my energy, and enthusiasm, number one, but number two, to also be able to open the door for others who come along behind me, which means whatever I've done will be elevated, celebrated, extended, and sustained by those who come after us and take the next baton and add their indelible fingerprints to the mix. Amazing. And I'm going to take it a step further with you because to whom much is given, much is required. And you've done an amazing job and it's you can see it every place that you've been.

You've left it much better, not just better, but much better than where it was when you started there. I'm going to say one of the amazing things about Lisa Borders is her ability to make an impact, because I will say you can't leave something better if you didn't make an impact. What are some of the most impactful initiatives that you've had in your tenure at various places? Yeah. Thank you for that beautiful reflection. It was so generous. Let's do it like a Quentin Tarantino movie and do it in reverse order, right? So the most recent place that people most remember my engagement was at the WNBA. And it is enjoying incredible enthusiasm from all walks of life, men, women, girls, boys, short, tall, old, young, Jew, Gentile, you name it. And when I went to the W in 2016, the league was circling the drain, just to be completely candid.

And I'm not talking out of school. This was in the public domain. Absolutely. Rendence was down. There was no TV deal dedicated to the W. Folks didn't know who the players were, didn't know when the games were. So when I left there three seasons later in 2018, we had done a lot. But the thing I am most proud of, Mick, is that we moved a team from San Antonio to Las Vegas.

We identified the market. We found an owner. It was a public company. MGM bought the team. They named it the Aces. Aces. Yeah. Fast forward five years, the Aces were champions.

And then the next year they were repeat champions. And now they're going for a third time. They got the number one draft pick, my soror, and the face of the league today, Asia Wilson. So I am most proud of the fact, not only did we never lose a franchise on my watch. We actually created enthusiasm and laid down a marker with a public company buying a franchise in a new market, establishing footprints, fingerprints, heart share, mind share in a destination city. Getting folks to pay attention to the W and acknowledge that these professional athletes were extraordinary and are extraordinary women, of course, was very, very deliberate on my part and on the league's part. But I had to set the vision out there and say, people are going

to pay attention. I'm going to stand on the street corner with a bullhorn and talk about the W, whether people want to hear it or not. Five years after I've left, and we have a generational player in Caitlin Clark, who is also helping to elevate and celebrate the W. And I give her mad love and respect because that girl can shoot from the parking lot, not the three-point marker, not half court. She can shoot from the parking lot. Or as one of the kids just said to me recently, she can shoot from another zip code and still count it, right? But there were so many players, generational players before her who laid down the marker. You can start with Lisa Leslie in 1996, or you can look at Amaya Moore in 2017, or you can look at Diana Taurasi for the last 20 years or Sue Bird that just retired. There are so many young players that you can look at. Renee Howard here on the Atlanta Dream, just tons of players. And so for all of the excitement and

enthusiasm and energy that's being poured into the league and into those players today, I'm thrilled. So that's the W. At Grady Health Foundation, we actually had, that is a level one trauma center in Atlanta. We only had one at the time. And to give you some context for that, I think New York has like nine of them or something. In the absence of a level one trauma center, you can't have big concerts in your town. You can't have conventions in your town. The president will never come visit because you have to have a level one trauma center. So what people don't understand is it's really an economic engine. It drives business and tourism into the

town because you have the healthcare infrastructure to support that. But Grady was about to close when I took the job in 2008. We started a capital campaign. They'd never had one before, only level one trauma center. It was on its last legs and about to close. So this would have been an economic damage done to the city. It would have been also a really precarious position for all of the folks who were being served healthcare through the Grady Health System. All the mental health services for the entire state of Georgia come out of that health system. We started a capital campaign and we put a marker out there, Mick, and said, we're going to raise $325 million because that's what we think we need to support this health system and all of the folks that it serves, seen and unseen. That was a five

year campaign when we started. We raised that money, every penny of it, out of Atlanta in four years. Wow. Four years. So we infused it with capital. The clinical expertise was already there. The community engagement was there. The civic pride was there. But it was weak.

And so that money helped strengthen every dimension of Grady. So I didn't do that alone. I was the tip of the spear, but had the help of so many top to bottom, left to right, grassroots and grass tops, right? So at the end of the day, Grady is better off and standing strong and stronger even today since we raised that money and got the hospital back up on its feet. So getting the league back up on its feet, getting Grady back up on its feet. And lastly, I'll say when I was at the city of Atlanta as vice mayor, and I think about taking that role in 2004. And I was there till 2010 as president of city council and vice mayor of the city. The city was in a good place in the sense that we were running every day, but I served alongside the first female mayor, Shirley Franklin. And she calls herself,

as do we all, the sewer mayor, because she led the charge to fix the sewers, an unglamorous job, but it's infrastructure that helps with economic development in the city. You can't do anything without water. So the sewers and redoing them, all of the infrastructure across the entire city, Shirley was like, it's broken. Like we got to fix it. We needed to raise a bunch of money. We didn't have the bond rating to do it. She had to collaborate with the state legislators and help us. We were helped by levering their bond ratings. So the bottom line is she and I worked together. She set the vision as the chief executive of the city. I was head of the legislative branch of government. Those two things or two offices must work together to get the money

and the votes to get any project done. And this was one of the most massive projects ever done in the history of the city. So when I think about fixing the sewers, it sounds unglamorous. And yes, on my very first day, Mick, we went in a Flintstone type bucket and we got in and went down into the sewers so she could show me firsthand what was broken as we were boring through with this big Japanese machine with this point on the end of it that was grinding through the rock that was in the ground to correct the sewers, to rebuild the sewers. It was crazy. That experience was something like I had never seen before. Didn't expect it, but it has left an indelible mark on the city. You don't see the sewers. You just assume that they work. You just assume that there are pipes and infrastructure under the streets to bring you water whenever you need it, whether it's in your household or in your business or in your faith-based organization or institution. That's something we literally take for granted that she and I and the folks working with us at the city were able to tackle. So in

every sense of the word, that too got the city back up on her feet so that she could be strong and move forward. So everywhere I've ever been, I've had the privilege and the passion to make things better and lead them better than I found them. Truly amazing. You know, at the W, at Gradient, at the City, you know, hearing this, I know that there were challenges. Nothing's easy, right? Like Lisa can't be Lisa if everything were easy, right? What's one of the most significant challenges that you face in your career and how would you navigate that? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. So thank you for asking. I would say in every one of those situations, it was building consensus amongst all the different constituent groups. So anytime

you're trying to raise money, whether it was at the city or whether it was at the W, what you're trying to do is convince people that the direction that you're leading them is the right direction. And so you're inviting them on the journey, but you're also encouraging and soliciting them to put in not just their energy, but their capital, literally their money, right? If the city, you're trying to get your colleagues on council to vote for a piece of legislation, then you go get the bonds and you go get the money from New York or wherever, the underwriters. At Grady, you are literally in the city trying to build consensus around the fact that, okay, we need water, right? Do you know that's going to cost money? Do you know we're going to have to dig up every street in the city and it's going to be

inconvenient and it's going to be costly for a little bit, but it's going to be worth it in the final analysis. The same is true of the W, building consensus around women's sports, that that's a viable entity and a viable institution in which to pour your resources, your money, your thoughts, your actions. So what I found is it was always easier to speak one-on-one with people initially. Your, for lack of a better term, and you may have heard this before, your bell pal. Is there one person or one organization that will signal to all of the people and all of the institutions or many of them to say, okay, this person's in the boat. I should get in the boat because Mick has in effect endorsed this. So he's on board. I believe in his judgment. So I'm going to get in the boat too, even if I didn't have a one-on-one

conversation. Setting the vision isn't hard in my view building consensus around the vision is hard and getting people not only to be aware but to accept the vision and act on the vision which means they have to be engaged in some way does that make sense totally makes sense i know you're a mentor to many what's some advice from Lisa Borders to be the best version of themselves, but more importantly, to be the best leader that they can be? confidence and compassion. Competence means bringing not only your book sense to a problem, but bringing your full self, your full experience, your true gifts to the table. That in my view is full competence. It's not just reading an accounting book or reading a marketing book. Yes, that's important, but I think you have to bring some context to it. And that comes from life experience. Young or old, you've got some to share. So that's competence.

Confidence, in my view, is built over time, incrementally by doing something as a routine. We think about this when we ride a bicycle or play a piano or throw a ball or cook an egg. Whatever you're doing, the more you do it, the better you get at it. And then compassion, of course, is all about empathy and walking in someone else's shoes and understanding where they are in their ability to communicate with you, collaborate with you, or understand what you're talking about, that means, as my grandfather, the preacher would say, you got to use two ears and one mouth that God gave you for a reason and listen twice as much as you talk. What I would say is not only create, but cultivate and curate those three attributes, competence, confidence, and compassion.

There are many other skills, but if you use those as the fundamentals, we talk about this in sports, get your footwork right before you try to do a hook shot, right? Or before you try to do a jump shot or before you try to drive the lane, get your footwork right. That's fundamentals being strong. So the same thing is true in my view for those three attributes as fundamentals of what I term enlightened leadership. It's not top down. It's no longer sage on the stage. It's guide on the side with those attributes. I'm dropping dimes here, Mick. Lisa, I have so many notes right now.

I have two pages of notes from just this short conversation. And some of these, I know you're not doing it purposely, but I think you are. Some of these, I feel like I needed this too. Freaking love you. This is the universe being attuned to us, my friend. This is both ways. It is. It is. So we've talked a little bit about some past. We've talked to some great insights in the core things people can implement today. What's new for Lisa? What's some projects Lisa's working on a lot of creative projects, Mick. So the way I think about this now, I'll soon be 67 years old. And I'm, oh, yeah, and I'm loving it. Listen, I'm on the top side of the earth. No day is promised. So I'm enjoying every single day. And people often ask me at this age, are you retired? And I say, oh, no, when people retire, like they die, like you got to have something to do. So in my view, I am repositioning and I have a portfolio of activities that I do now. And they're in three

buckets, as you might well imagine. I've got corporate boards, I've got consulting, and then I've got creative projects. The creative projects is where I spend the lion's share of my time. And so I am writing a book and I am putting together some digital courses that I'll be launching probably in late summer, early fall, because I realized there's a lot in my head make folks say to me all the time, oh, I can Google you and find out everything about you. Well, not exactly. You can find out a lot. You can find out what jobs I had and what years I was there and what my title was. You really have no idea of the backstory of how the team got to Las Vegas. You know, I moved one there, but you have no idea why or how or what we did, what we did right, what we didn't do right.

So I often say to my mentees, listen, you can make your own mistakes. You do not need to make mine. I've already made them and I have figured out what I did wrong in many instances and sometimes self-corrected, sometimes not, but you need to know about that. And so you can learn from that. And instead of turning left, maybe you need to know about that. And so you can learn from that. And instead of turning left, maybe you need to go straight because you already saw that I turned left and got my butt handed to me. Right. So at the end of the day, this notion of writing a book and someone said, is it a memoir? Is it a mandate? Is that what is it? And I said, it's a little bit of a memoir because it's going to have live stories in there that things I've experienced, but it's really about sharing insights about

through those stories of what I did and how I did it and where it went well and where not so much. Right. So things like writing a book or I'm bringing back my enlightened podcast, which will be a precursor to the book. I had many, many conversations with guests on my podcast who taught me lessons. These were my friends that I called up and said, will you have a conversation with me about life and your life's journey and what you learned so far? And I'll be be doggone if they of course did it, but I thought, oh my God, I am learning so much. Let me give you an example. Elena Deledon is one of the players in the WNBA. She talked about her journey around sports, of course, but she has Lyme disease and she's been very public about how she's dealt with that and when it kept her down

and what she had to do to advocate for herself. But during that conversation, she started talking with me about meditation. And I said, we call her EDD. I was like, EDD, I just can't get into it. Like I can't do it. And she said, it's like anything you need to just keep practicing, just keep trying, just keep at it. It doesn't work perhaps for everybody, but it works for me. And I commend it to you. I'm thinking Edie knows a lot, but she doesn't know nothing about me and doing this. Needless to say, she was absolutely right. And I was absolutely wrong. And now I meditate every day, every day. It took some time. I use a platform called open. I have my favorite teachers and I love, love,

love that time. It's me time first thing in the morning. And I often use it at night, meditate before I go to sleep. And it puts me in a very restful, easeful place and helps my mind slow down so that I can rest. But creative lane or bucket, if you will, is where I spend the lion's share of my time. Yes, I go to board meetings. Yes, I do consulting. I pick my clients very carefully. I don't pick people that won't listen or don't think they have a problem because you beat your head against the wall.

But the creative space is totally my space where I can sit down. I can think, I can write, I can talk, I can sing, I can do whatever I want to do for whatever amount of time I want to do it. So I am spending the lion's share of my time in that space. Love it. Well, I want to be the first subscriber when the platform is ready, when the podcast re-releases, I'm definitely going to subscribe. I still listen to some of the older versions on Apple and Spotify anyway. So there's plenty of episodes and, you know, I'm a Tar Heel, but, you know, you and Grant get me sometimes. You and Grant get me sometimes. So I'll just throw that out there. Listen, thank you for that. And what I'd like you to do, thank you so much for being willing to subscribe, is to come on the pod when I relaunch and talk about this journey that you've had in your life, but also on this pod, because you too have had some extraordinary guests. And you've been doing this, as the kids say, for a minute, right? So you will have some insights to share about pods in general, but your life is unique, just like everyone's. And I'd love to hear more about that when we get ready to relaunch. Don't ask. You just tell me and I'm

there. I mean that from my soul. So I want to get you out of here on this. I always like leaving the listener and you've given so much advice. What's two things that you want people to start doing today that can impact their life, their business, their career? What's two things that you want people to start doing today that can impact their life, their business, their career? What's two things of Lisa-isms that you want to drop us? Absolutely. Thank you for that. The first thing I would say is let's work on a mind shift, a positive shift in the mind,

because whatever your mind can envision, that's what will come through in your behaviors. So thinking more positive about yourself, about your life, about your house, whatever we're talking about. And this is hard. We don't realize how much negative self-talk we do because oftentimes we don't say it out loud. It's just in our head, but that oftentimes inhibits our behavior. So I'm working on this just like everybody else, and it never gets done. You have to keep working on it. So that's the first thing is let's shift your mind. The second thing I would say is let's shift your body. And here's what I mean by that. In my view, health is our greatest wealth in any community, but certainly in the African American community. If you're not healthy, I don't care what you want to do. I don't care how much

money you have. I don't care how much imagination you have, how much time. If you are not healthy, you can't execute on anything. So you got to have a positive mindset and you got to move this body on a regular basis. I too have affirmations that I'm saying every day, I believe in myself. I'm going to bet on myself. Everybody thought Kobe was arrogant when he said he's the best basketball player or Muhammad Ali said, I'm the greatest. But that was about positive mindset. And yes, both of them happen to be athletes. And so they too were in it to win it every single day. So they engage their mind in a positive way and they are engaging their body. Muhammad Ali was punching people in the mouth. Let's just be clear. And Kobe was dropping 80 points on

people, but each of their bodies were directly engaged. So when I look at the WNBA players, that's what they've all told me too. I would ask them questions and they would say, it starts in the mind. The body is reacting to the mind. Go with it. When you're shooting and your shot doesn't drop, what do you do? You keep shooting, right? You just keep shooting. You never give up. But those two things, first and foremost, have to be engaged or nothing works, Mick. Nothing works. So get your mind right and get your body right and everything else will follow. I adore you. I mean that. I adore you. Even though you were just telling me get in shape, I still adore you. I still do. Listen, I'm trying to do it my darn self. I got up today. One of my goals for,

I just read a book called The 12 Week Year. And instead of thinking annually, you think in 12 week increments and you set goals and you have inputs and you measure your outputs. So one of my goals was to lose 20 pounds. That was, is, because I haven't done it yet, but I'm working on it. And one of my inputs is walking 20,000 steps during a week. So initially I was doing two days at 10,000 steps, which takes me about two hours if I'm walking outside. Now I've decided I'm going to do whatever I do, but I'm going to do it every day. So instead of trying to do 10,002 days,

it's like, okay, maybe this day's five, maybe this day's 12, maybe this day's four, right? So to that point of get your body right, losing weight will be the output. The input is the steps, the consistency, the routine of getting outside or riding my Peloton or whatever I'm doing, that is going to get me from point A to point B. So getting my mind right and getting my body right. I love it. Lisa, thank you so much for being with us today. I told you this when we talked before, but you made my day. You really did.

Thank you. Well, it's always such a privilege to be invited to any show, but to your show in particular, I'm your home. Thank you, my friend. Look at that. And to all the listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it. Thanks for listening to Mick Unplugged. We hope this episode helps you take the next step toward the extraordinary and launches a revolution in your life. Don't forget to rate and review the

podcast and be sure to check us out on YouTube at Mick Unplugged. Remember, stay empowered, stay inspired, and stay unplugged.