The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Leading with Heart: Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results by John Baird, Edward Sullivan

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Leading with Heart: Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results by John Baird, Edward Sullivan Amazon.com As we reach the peak of the Great Resignation, two veteran executive coaches help today's leaders learn how to retain and inspire their teams through the one thing their research has found works: LEADING with HEART. In these pages, leadership coaches John Baird and Edward Sullivan share hundreds of hours of research and firsthand accounts of guiding leaders at some of the world's most respected big brands and small startups (Apple, Nike, Google, Slack to name a few). Through their coaching and research they uncovered the 5 behaviors transformative leaders engage in to connect authentically with their teams: They are aware of their people's needs. They help their people to confront the fears that hold them back. They understand their own desires & what drives their people. They leverage their unique gifts & help people find their own. They connect with their core sense of purpose & help people find theirs. The key to achieving these behaviors is asking the right questions and having conversations that connect you and your employees on the deepest human level--conversations the authors coach you on how to navigate. At a time when workplaces are struggling to build high-morale and connected cultures, LEADING with HEART will help leaders to unlock the best version of themselves and those around them with transformative results. No matter where you are in your career, this book is your launch point to leading with heart. By encouraging you to ignore outdated "leadership hacks" and embrace introspection and growth, Leading with Heart guides you to ask the right questions and find your own answers. Now you too can create a leadership game-plan that is authentic to you and brings out the best in those around you. About the author Edward Sullivan is the CEO & Managing Partner at Velocity Coaching. His 25-year career as an executive coach and political consultant has taken him around the globe coaching and advising start-up founders, Fortune 500 executives, and heads of state of foreign nations. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, USA Today, Nasdaq, and more. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.

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Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. The folks is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, they are the latest things that makes the future. Welcome to the big show. For over 16 years and 23 and our episodes. We bring you the Chris Voss show, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all of the most brilliant minds on the show with

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but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his hot new book that he's got coming out here shortly in a while. We're going to tease it out a little bit. Let's put it that way. And we're going to talk about his book from June 21st, 2022. It is called, Leading with Heart, Five Conversations that Unlock Creativity, Purpose and Results. We have Edward Sullivan on the show joining us.

He has a co-author on the book, When You're Searching for It, of John Baird. So just make sure you get that right. When You're Checking It, he is an author, adventure surfer and CEO coach. He is the CEO of Velocity Coaching. He helps his clients with heart led cultures, deliver world-cast

results and not lose their souls in the process. Damn, I already sold mine. I sold it for this podcast and $5. His clients have included the CEOs of Bombas, cleared Geico, Geneva, Harry's hatch, hinge, sweet green web flow, and many more. Do we get paid for the ads on that? Edward holds an MBA from Wharton school and

MPA from the Harvard Kennedy school. As well as been featured in the New York Times, the Washington post, fortune Forbes, fast company, Harvard business review, ink USA today, and now his pinnacle of achievement on the Chris Foss show. Welcome to the show. How are you, Edward? I'm doing great, Chris.

Thank you so much. And I realized we've got to cut that bio down a little bit. That's funny. It starts moving like a lightning. Yeah. It is good. There is a lot of things there, but it's a good one. A lot of things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're the co-author of Leading with Your Heart. Give us your dot coms where people can find you on the interwebs. Absolutely. The book is at leadingwithheartbook.com. I'm on social media at Edward L. Sullivan, and my company, Velocity Coaching, is just velocitycoaching.com. So give us a 30,000 overview.

What's inside the new book? Chris Yeah. So, the big idea here is that running a company is hard and hiding all of your emotions makes it even harder, right? Pete What are these emotions you speak of? Chris I know. What are these emotions, right? It's funny, you know, Chris, we've got a work self and a home self. At least that's what we've been told for a long time, that we should leave our emotions at home, we should leave all of our troubles at home and just go to work, get to work, get things done. But that's not really how human beings function. So the big idea here with Leading with Heart is we should be having more emotionally authentic conversations in the workplace.

Conversations about what we really need to feel creative, conversations about what fears might be holding us back, what we really want out of the job, what we really want in life, so we can get to the truth faster, develop great products faster, and ultimately serve our customers better. Pete Slauson And so, you talk about how the mindset behind leadership, behind business, you know, there used to be kind of this, one of my favorite analogies is the IBM man, the guy who shows up to work, everyone wears the same uniform, and yada, yada, yada, there's no personality, there's really no emotion when you really think about it, because everyone just wore black.

It was like going to a funeral when you think about it, I actually come to think of it every day at work. And now there's colors and there's diversity and all that stuff that goes on in a thing. And I think, why is the time for this now that we need to start leading with the heart where leaders need to have more empathy? We can't just be cold, narcissistic, dark triad, Machiavellian, you know, sociopathic bastards. I mean, some people are still trying. Some people are still trying their best to make that work. and sociopathic bastards. Elon Musk. I mean, some people are still trying.

Some people are still trying their best to make that work. But I think you used an interesting word, that people were walking around all dressed in black in their black suits. They felt, I think they felt dead inside is really ultimately what happened. And what we've realized is that people were spending 50, 60% of their energy at work pretending.

They were spending most of their energy hiding what was really going on, pretending, trying their best to exemplify this mythical executive presence you've probably heard a lot about, right? Executive presence is that IBM company man, the sharp suit, you know, the perfect handshake, the, you know, the perfect hair. And what we've realized over the years is that in this day and age, in today's market, people want authentic presence, not executive presence. And authentic presence is who are you really showing up as today? What are you bringing into the office? How do we work through that? How do we use whatever's going on for you as fuel to help you do your work even

better as something you need to be like quietly managing in the background and pretending like it's not happening. Yeah. It's, it's, it's important to connect with people. I used to call it touching the hearts and minds of people. And then Adrian said, I couldn't use the word touching anymore, but But no, it really was that. I would go around my office and check in with people. Hey, Bob, the sales guy, how are you doing today, man? How's things at home? You basically do a checkup on them to make sure that they're, what do we used to call it? The checkup from the neck

up sort of thing? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so you check in with them and you'd also let them know that you cared, that you gave a shit. I cared about my salespeople because they were worth a lot of money. No, I'm just kidding. That's right. And when you're checking in with them, right, in terms of, do you have everything you need? Exactly. Is anything going on with you that's a blocker, right? As opposed to, did you get the memo? When can I expect that report? You know, you're framing the conversation around,

do you have everything you need to get this job done? I like to say that when a flower doesn't bloom, we don't put it on a performance improvement plan, right? We check its environment. We make sure, does it have enough water, enough fertilizer, enough sunlight? And for some reason, we're not really doing that with the people we work with, right? We just try to turn the screws down a little bit, hold them more accountable. Obviously I need to be harder on Chris this time, as opposed to what's

going on with Chris, you know, maybe Chris needs a little bit more water, a little more sunshine. And, you know, and that's very true. I found that with my salespeople, it was even more important, even telemarketers, but with my, with my salespeople that would do the same true. I found that with my salespeople, it was even more important, even telemarketers, but with my salespeople that would do the sales, the one thing I learned about being a CEO is I had to be a psychologist too. Absolutely.

I remember one of my salespeople walked into my office one day and he goes, Chris, I joined your company and I thought you guys were full of shit on how much money I could make as a salesman and I'm kicking ass and taking names. We were one of the few companies that provided leads at the time. Most of the salespeople that we hired that worked for other companies didn't have leads. We kind of had a system that could force them to be successful. Unless you couldn't sell, then you wouldn't sell. But anyway, he came in one time to me and he goes, Chris, I'm having trouble selling. And I go,

what's going on? And I'm thinking, why is this my problem? But you're the CEO and the entrepreneur, everything's your problem. You're the CEO and the janitor. And so he said to me, he goes, I can't get motivated to sell. And I go, what's going on? He goes, I'm making like 20 grand a month with you. And I've never made that kind of money in my life ever. My head's blowing up. I got, I got a new car. I got a new computer. I can afford my own house for the first time in years.

He had a lot of kids. I think it was like six or 10 kids. It was, and he was buying on his child support and he goes, for the very first time, I'm caught up in my child support. I got all my bills paid, I got all my shit's right and I can't sell anymore. I can't get motivated to sell.

I see, it's because he's only motivated by the money. He was motivated by the money and being behind, you know, I gotta catch up, I gotta catch up. He finally got up and his head was blowing up and so, you know, I had to catch up, I got to catch up. He finally got up and his head was blowing up. And so, I had to go in and we had to try and fix it. There's a million of those stories I have of where, I had salespeople that all of a sudden they got some sort of jam in their brain and we had to go in there

and do some mental surgery and play psychologists. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Chris, I think that's also the problem when people feel that they're only motivated by money. And when they have enough money to cover their bases and cover the child support, they're like, where's my motivation? And that's when really the big question around purpose comes in. And that's number question number five in the book, Leading with Heart is what is your purpose? If people have something bigger than themselves to believe in, they'll put in the extra hours, right? If they believe in serving the customer,

if they believe in this larger vision that you have. And you know, I don't think every company's gonna have some big lofty vision, right? Or sense of purpose. You know, if you run a dry cleaning store, you know, you run a dry cleaning store, and it's a nice, simple service for the neighborhood, and you get the sense of purpose from the relationships you have with people in the neighborhood, right? As opposed to we are revolutionizing dry cleaning, whatever that would mean. And I think people need to connect to what's the larger story here as opposed to I'm here to do a job to get money to pay my bills. And as soon as my bills are paid, I don't want to do the job. There's something missing there.

Pete Slauson Definitely. Yeah. And you know, there was all sorts of issues we had, great stories. I mean, there were issues with home and family and stuff. And I'm like, so I have to do the marriage counseling for you now because that's part of my job. But that's the funny thing. You do actually. I just got off the phone 20 minutes ago with the CEO of a biotech company, who's one of our potential clients. And she said she is a PhD in bioscience and she spends most of

her time giving her executives therapy of some sort. And I said, how's that feel? And she said a little bit unnatural. But when I think about it, it's actually the most important thing I can be doing because the CEO and this is kind of the crux of our work. The CEO's core job is enablement of other people in the company. Enablement. Enablement. It's not actually to do the work yourself. Like a lot of bosses, they say, you know, if you want something done right, you got

to do it yourself. And that's when people get in this trap of they delegate something, they give really poor direction on what good looks like, it comes back, that's not what I wanted. And they end up doing it themselves. As opposed to sitting down saying, this is what good looks like. What do you need to get it done? When do you think you can have it done? Oh, three weeks from now?

How about two weeks from now? Let's check in and see if you're almost there. A really good leader, a really good CEO is checking in along the way, is making sure people have what they need and is nine times out of 10, yeah, playing a little bit of therapist. Yeah. I mean, you've got to care about people. I mean, why do you think it's changed now with leading with the heart? I mean, I know the new generations, they wanted something more than maybe the Boomers did.

Gen X, I mean, we were going to give a shit because we're the greatest generation ever. Ever. And that will ride out through time from what I've seen, but get off my lawn, kids. Anyway, we love the Gen X and the Millennials. But so, you know, they seem to want something more. They're, they want purpose. They want, they want to know they're making a difference. They want to know that they're maybe they're not just, you know, making a widget of work.

They're, they're changing the world and impacting the world or maybe improving the quality of the future for their children. And you know, boomers and Gen X were just like, who gives a fuck. But yeah, just get her done. But why have things changed? I mean, it seems like the old, God, who was the guy, Peter Drucker sort of way of business was Machiavellian, you know, it was the dark triads, Machiavellian, psychopathy and narcissism. You know, we see that displayed right now. It's what's going on with Elon Musk and other leaders.

Yeah. I think a lot of the folks in the workforce today, you know, let's say like millennials, Gen Z, there's even some, the next generation, I think they're calling them alpha, you know, they're starting to enter the workforce. They do want something more. And I think they want something more because they saw their parents very unhappy.

They saw their parents just like going to work, punching the clock, doing a job they didn't care about, buying the McMansion in the suburbs, you know, having two or three cars in the garage, getting divorced. Like they lived through all this, right? As the children. And now they're like, you know what, I want to do something a little different with my life. I want a little bit more purpose. I want greater sense of community. I want to love what I do. And that's ultimately what, I think that's what Leading with Heart's about. That's what everybody really wants, is they want to just love what they do. Pete Slauson Definitely. There's five behaviors that you have that transformative leaders engage in to connect with authenticity with their

teams. Can you cite a couple off maybe your favorites and give us a real explanation on them? I mean, the first one, we start the book off just encouraging people to ask the question, what do you need to feel creative? And it's not just, hey, you employee, what do you need? But what do I need? What do I as the reader need to feel creative, right? Because if we're not getting our needs met, we're not going to be able to show up as our best selves. And our needs run the gamut, everything from are you sleeping well? Are you eating well? Are you, you know, not drinking as much anymore, whatever it might be, to are you able to have emotionally connected conversations in the workplace?

Are you getting recognition? Are you getting affirmation, right? There's a lot of talk in the last few years about psychological safety. That can be overdone, right? Sometimes people can, they're putting so much energy into psychological safety that they develop this kind of lazy workforce where everyone wants to feel coddled, right, which is the pendulum has maybe swung too far.

Somewhere in the middle is a place where people feel supported but challenged. And that's really what inspires people to get a lot of work done. I think the second question in the book, the second challenge for leaders is to address fear in the workplace, right? What fears might be holding you back?

Chris, every single negative behavior you see in the workplace is related to fear. You see people being acting out, you see them hoarding resources, you see them trying to take credit, backstabbing, backchanneling, all of it is about fear. So if we can understand fear, if we can kind of digest the fear and use it for a good purpose, which is, you know, we're afraid of the competition, right? We're afraid of losing a client. That's maybe a good fear, but I'm afraid of my colleague. I'm afraid of not getting a promotion.

I'm afraid of not getting the recognition I want. That's not a fear that we need in the workplace. So we really challenge leaders to confront those issues and take them on. Pete Em you've got to be a psychologist, you've got to be emotionally intelligent with yourself and with your employees. Pete That's right. That's right. Yeah. And emotional intelligence is all about understanding what you're feeling, understanding

what other people might be feeling, and understanding the context between you. And it's oftentimes, I've heard it described as a black box. The black box is the context and like the shared understanding. And when the black box is small, it means we're speaking different languages. We're not understanding each other. When the black box is really large, we have a perfect understanding of what each other is thinking and feeling

and what each other is trying to express. And it's actually those little black boxes, those areas where people aren't getting curious about how others are feeling, aren't getting curious about what are you hearing me say? I said I wanted this, what did you actually hear me say? If we're not staying curious about each other, we're unable to work well together. Pete Yeah. One of the other aspects you have that's in the book that's really interesting to me is

adventure as a leadership tool. Just about how you share your passion for surfing, snowboarding, sailing, etc. as stepping out of your comfort zone that helps fuel personal and professional growth. Do you do that for yourself or for your employees, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah, you know, I mean, I think I live a life of adventure. I love surfing and sailing, snowboarding, as you said. It feeds a certain part of me that I think makes me feel more creative, makes me feel more alive. And it also allows me to bring a certain level

of like enthusiasm and playfulness into the workplace. And when I talk about adventure in the workplace, it's really about giving yourself the permission to take risks, right? To include some playfulness in the workplace, right? To do something completely out of character, out of the ordinary, and just to see what happens. I think one of the challenges we're facing is

a lot of people play it too safe, Chris. They keep their cards really close to their chest, they try to show up, not raise too much attention for themselves, they try to just get the job done, punch the clock and get out, right? And then they wonder why they're not happy with their job, or they wonder why they didn't get the promotion, or they wonder why the boss never remembers their name.

I think it's important for all of us to give ourselves the permission to have a little adventure at work, to do something out of the ordinary, to run some experiments, and maybe you fall flat on your face. Hopefully you work in a place where experimentation and failure is rewarded as opposed to punished. Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing is curating that good sort of, that good atmosphere, that

good, what's the word I'm seeking? Culture in your environment and making sure that there's that seed. You know, we still always have have the rule only the unanswered question or the unanswered question, the only wrong question is the unanswered question or something. Unasked question. Unasked question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Friday of the brain is really- I hear you.

I hear you. That's almost happy hour. Yeah, plus I'm old so the brain's gone already. But yeah, we used to tell all our employees, the only stupid question is the unasked question. And that was to get them to identify for us stuff they hadn't learned maybe in training or they missed or something they needed to bring them up to speed. But they were fearful

of, you know, that we'd be like, you idiot, did you think you were training? You idiot, yeah. You know, what, what, are you moron? What, what the you haven't known this the whole time and shaming someone for, you know, maybe they missed something and, or maybe they just need to get firmed up on something. They're like, why don't we do this again? And so making it an environment where it was safe to ask questions, it was safe to say, I don't know how this works.

And you know what the most important thing is there, Chris, for leaders to show that they're not perfect too. If the leader can get up in front of the company and say, I need help. Or if the leader can get up in front of the company and say, I don't know the answer to that. You know, perfect leaders indicate to everyone in the company that perfection is what gets rewarded. When you show up and you're looking so crisp and so quaffed and everything is perfect speech,

you never make a mistake, you always know the answer. Everyone in the company feels like, oh my gosh, that's the bar. That's what I lean to live up to. One of my early teachers used to talk about conspicuous incompetence as a theme, as a practice. And it sounds very strange, right? It's like, why would you want to be conspicuously incompetent in anything? But he would do it purposefully as a leader of this organization to give everyone else permission to be incompetent sometimes

too. Pete Slauson Yeah. Pete Slauson Yeah. Pete Slauson The world has changed. I think leadership has changed. You know, you have to be more dynamic. You have to be The world has changed. I think leadership has changed. You have to be more dynamic. You have to be there for your people. You just can't rule by fiat anymore and declare this is what the company is and then behave

otherwise. That's right. And people go, you're full of shit. Yeah. You need people to be excited about what you're doing as opposed to quietly undermining it. Yeah. It's pretty wild. Yeah. So as we go out, tell us about your journey through life. How did you become an entrepreneur? How did you get to where you were in life?

Yeah. So my first career was actually in nonprofit management. I was 23 years old, running a nonprofit organization in New Mexico, trying to save wild lands and wild critters running a nonprofit organization in New Mexico, trying to save wild lands and wild critters, and camping, sleeping out under the stars, you know, five or six nights a month, being a wild man in Santa Fe, New Mexico, really fun. And and then I oddly got recruited into politics. And I spent about seven, eight years flying around the world with a guy named James Carville. And if you know him, you're a agent with a guy named James Carville. I don't know if you know him, the race agent.

So I was James Carville's protege, my late twenties and early thirties, doing different presidential races around the world. And eventually ended up in Silicon Valley, did about 10 years in Silicon Valley. And at some point along the way, one of my business school classmates asked me to coach her, which I thought was a very strange request because we were friends, we were classmates, colleagues. And she said, no, no, you've got one, you've got something that I want, which is the ability to speak comfortably in public and correct yourself when you have to and don't get flustered. And she said, and you've also worked with

all these crazy politicians. You must be able, if you've helped people get elected president, you can probably help me get a promotion. And, and it just kind of snowballed from there, Chris, it was like, that was 12 years ago. And I've been running velocity for the last 10 years. And, you know, it's been incredible. It's been this organic journey where, you know, one day the CEO of Geico called and said, Hey, I'd like you to be my coach. And, you know, dozens, I think at this point, we've worked with hundreds of CEOs and I've personally worked with, you know, five or six dozen of them. And it's just been unbelievable watching people go through this

transformation and then transforming their companies as a result. Pete Slauson The old James Carville. James Carville The old James. Raging Cajun. Fun guy. Pete Slauson Raging Cajun. What a guy. I never thought that him and Mary Madeline would ever marry or get together. That was wild. Jared Slauson That was wild. And you know what? They were incredible together.

So, I would go out to the weekends, spend the weekend with them, and he'd be helping her on her talking points for things she's doing with Karl Rove. She'd be helping him with his talking points on something he's doing on CNN that night. They were completely, it was like, you know, all's fair. I think that's what the Tyler book was. Yeah. I mean, I always cite that. I'm like, you know, if those two can get along, the head of Bush's and the head of Clinton's thing, and they can find a way to love each other, maybe we, maybe there's hope for the rest of us.

Name of this book. Exactly. Exactly. So as we go out, give people the final pitch to pick up the book. I think, do we want to tease out of a book you're working on now? We can tease a little bit. And if listeners have any ideas or if there's any CEOs listening to this and would like to be interviewed for it, I'm in the middle of doing a massive research project, Chris.

My goal is to talk to 150 CEOs this year. I already have 50 scheduled. And the question I'm asking them is, where do you find the most friction in your business? Because my theory is that the name of my company is Velocity, right? And there's two components to Velocity. There's propulsion minus friction equals velocity. And most CEOs spend all their time talking about propulsion. How much money have I raised? How many people can I hire? How much of our product have we sold? What's our product roadmap?

They almost never talk about the friction. But as a coach, I spend 90% of my time extracting friction from organizations. So this book is all about the friction. And it's all about the little places where just a little bit of friction, it slowly adds up and compounds and grinds the whole organization to a halt. So that's a teaser. That's what it's going to be about. Yeah.

Thank you very much for coming to the show, Edward. We really appreciate it. Thank you, folks. Really had a good time with you. Thank you so much. You got it. You got it. Folks, order of the book where refined books are sold. It is called Leading with Heart, Five Conversations that Unlock Creativity, Purpose,

and Results out June 21st, 2022. And follow Edward so you can find out for his next book launches and other things he does and all that good stuff. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Forge's Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Forge's Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1, the Tik Tok, and all those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that's your episode.