The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 304: Laura Gassner Otting - How To Carve Your Own Path

Episode Date: March 31, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #304: Laura Gassner Otting - How To Carve Your Own Path Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com The Learning Leader Show "It starts young.  We have a world where we are given an identity. We need to think, 'is that really what I want?" Show Notes: Sustaining excellence: Live on the edge of your incompetence -- "The more you talk, the less you listen."  Need to be asking questions and listening. Tenacity, grit Put yourself in uncomfortable situations Be in a position to learn something new from your failures... "That is delightful." "Looking into someone and seeing their greatness." Running coach -- "Calm, confident, reflect back to the dream  Compete. Issues with execution... Why? "We get stuck chasing someone else's dream." How do we know? "It starts young.  We have a world where we are given an identity. We need to think, 'is that really what I want?" The four parts of consonace: Calling -- It's bigger than you Connection - The work actually matters Contribution - It contributes to the life you actually want Control - How much do I have? "My mother told me I needed to be a lawyer." -- "I wanted to run for office." How did Laura end up in the Clinton Whitehouse? "I learned how to show up for others... And be dedicated to excellence" "I was a great leader, but a terrible manager."  You need to be self-aware Advice to new managers: "People want feedback.  Ask them if that project reflected their understanding of the assignment or their ability?" Laura's TEDx Talk: Stop asking, 'how can I help?' Think, 'what needs to happen?' Her fight with Ann Coulter Must be willing to change your mind as a leader -- "Our stories are our connections." Becoming an athlete -- Laura ran the first mile of her life nine years ago.  Now, she's a competitive rower.  And she ran in the Boston marathon. Confidence is built through doing.  Continue to push the boundaries of our own competence. Tel Aviv: Hunger Weight Tenacity Speed Grit/Heart Don't get in the comparison trap with other people's highlight reels on social media Advice she received that's been helpful -- "You're just not that important" Study -- Team of Rivals -- About Lincoln Use the "Get To Know You Document" Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea

I had this huge Rolodex, unrelenting idealism and endless curiosity. And I am fascinated by people and their stories and what makes them tick. And so it's a long story to tell you that I came to this work just so in love with humanity and so in love with making the world a better place and then got to spend the next 20 years hearing stories from people about what makes them tick and who they are and why they do the work they do and why it really matters. If you have a business or you know someone who does, you probably know that small business owners wear a lot of hats.

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It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Texts learners to 44222-2. Now on tonight's feature leaders, the great Laura Gassner-Odding. Her entrepreneurial edge has been well home. over a 25-year career that started as a presidential appointee in Bill Clinton's White House, where she helped shape AmeriCorps. She then went on to found and run the nonprofit professionals advisory group. She's also a two-time best-selling author and has given an incredible TED talk. A few of

the topics that Laura and I got into. The four keys to true success in your career and life. Then how becoming an athlete at age 40 has made Laura a much better leader both physically and mentally than how she ended up working in the Clinton White House and what she learned from a lot of stories in this wide-ranging conversation with Laura Gassner, Auding. So excited to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Hi, it's so great to finally be here. I've listened for so long. Oh, well, thank you. and we have so many mutual friends. And I was telling you before, I think you've set the record for the number of people

who are both previous guest of my show, as well as pretty well-known speakers, who have said, you have to have Laura on your show. And so I'm happy that we're making it happen. Because you have a lot of fans out there that are in the limelight that are looking to support you and want to get your name out there and your story out there.

So that's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. You know, I think if you live in a world where you pay it forward and you just look out to support other people and, you know, as our mutual friend, Scott Stratton says, build elevators to bring everyone up together. It turns out that when you do need help and when you are trying to launch something that's interesting, people like come out of the woodwork and just fall all over themselves to help you. And it's it's kind of embarrassing and also really lovely. That's really cool. And that's probably actually part of your answer, I would imagine since you've listened, you know that I love learning. about the commonalities of people and leaders who sustain excellence. I'm very curious from your, we're going to get to your career and everything you've done and what you're currently doing. So there's a lot to talk about. But from your perspective, what have you found to be the commonalities among those

people who sustain excellence? So I am currently fascinated by the idea of living on the edge of our incompetence. And, you know, we spend a lot of time, you know, the entire title of your show is the learning leader, right? But when you get into a boardroom and you're sitting there and you're at the head of the table, you're the leader, people expect you to talk a lot. And the more you have to talk and the more you're expected to talk, the less you get to listen and you're supposed to have all the answers. But it turns out that if you ask questions, we can actually learn more together. But I think what's interesting is that in corporate America, we get hired and paid and promoted and praised by living

in the center of our excellence, by being perfect all the time, by performing at the time. By performing at the top of our game. That's how we thrive. And then, you know, I know you've got a young daughter. You're not quite at this age of, but I've got a 14 and a 16 year old. So I spend a lot of time at parent teacher conferences. And you go to parent teacher conferences and you hear things like, well, so your son is not doing well at this or your son is not doing well at that. And you think it's bad news, but it turns out that it's actually really good news because the teacher's understanding where your kid is struggling and then allowing your kid to find time struggling in that space and then develop tenacity and grit.

to get better at it. So kids are every day in school are forced to live on the edge of their incompetence. You figured out pre-algebra, it's time for algebra. You figured out algebra, it's time for geometry. If you forget algebra, it's time for trigonometry and all of those things that I don't know how to do anymore. But kids live on, they live in the space on the edge of their incompetence every single day. And if you think, like, when was the last time you did something that was truly highly uncomfortable? And when you think about those moments, you probably think, wow, I learned so. much in that moment. So I think leaders who sustain excellence are leaders who continually put themselves in a place where they're listening and they're learning and they're uncomfortable and they're just

sort of out there right on the edge of that incompetence. It makes me think of my friend James Clear. We recorded this cool podcast in front of a live audience and James had this big point that where he said the reason that he travels so much and he likes to go to places that they don't speak English, the language that he speaks. He said it's because you don't know what you're capable of until you force yourself into those situations. And then you learn and you figure things out. And it stretches you. And that's what it's all about is finding and creating opportunities that are uncomfortable,

that forces us to stretch. Because each time you can stretch, I mean, think about this physically, right? You're an athlete. You stretch a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. And you can go a little further. And before you know it, you look back over the course of a year or five years, and you're thinking, whoa, I've grown a lot because I've, put myself in situations to stretch.

Yeah, and because you put yourself in situations where the option was fail miserably or learn a little something new about yourself. And none of us want to fail miserably. And it turns out that learning a little something new about yourself is not only the better path. It's also kind of delightful. You sort of turn around one day and you're like, wow, I didn't know I was capable of that.

Good job me. You know, that's kind of awesome. And you don't do that by putting yourself in a safe space all the time. So, Laura, you help people get unstuck. And I think I may know what that means, but I bet you could give me a better description of what that means. When somebody, I guess I just ask you, what does it mean to help somebody get unstuck? So people come to me and they tell me about their big hopes and their dreams and their goals.

And then they tell me about their like 15 point plans to do it. And then they never do it. And why do they never do it? It's because they get so lost in the minutia of all of the little plans. And they get distracted by becoming more efficient and processing more emails or whatever it is that they think is action. And it's not action. It's, or sorry, it's not impact.

It's only action. And so I spend time pulling people out and talking about what it is that they really want to do. What is the thing that causes them joy? What is the thing that is going to make them grow and, and learn and thrive and and be actually happy. And so for me, a lot of times it's looking into somebody and seeing that greatness that they have,

that maybe they once thought of and maybe they harbor deeply and maybe they're scared to let out because what if it doesn't work out as well as they hope it will. But if you have somebody who looks at you and says, you can do this, I see it in you, I believe in you, and I can help, I can help get you there if you want to do the hard yards to get there.

That's pretty powerful. I had a running coach once who I talked to when I'd only run 10K. It only run six miles. The longest I'd ever run. And I was like, I have this crazy idea. I think I'm going to run the Boston Marathon. And he looked at me like every good coach with calm confidence and said, you can do this. I believe in you.

And I'm here. And I went, wow, I can do this. You believe in me. And you're here. And he reflected back onto me, this dream that I have, but he reflected back onto me competence in the work that I had done to date that then gave me confidence that I could actually do this big dream. So obviously, I think having someone who believes in you is important.

It's necessary to have people rooting for us, people maybe holding a mirror, saying, no, you really can do this. But then you also mentioned that people have ideas and even plans, but then they don't make an impact or they struggle to execute. And I'm big on that, Laura. I think a lot of people listening, and I put myself in this category, we do a great job of going to conferences, of reading books, of watching TED talks, of educating ourselves. But we don't always do a great job of implementation and execution based on what we've learned.

And so what are some ideas or thoughts or tips you would give to those who are good learners? They're curious people. But then when it comes time to execute and implement and create long lasting habits, it doesn't really happen. What do you think about that? I think a lot of times we get trapped by other people's notions of success. So, you know, we think we're supposed to go to the right school and get the right internship and be in the right leadership training program and and read all the, you know, the, the right books and, and go for the promotion in the car and the spouse and the, you know,

perfect kids after school program and all the things that we're supposed to do. And I think part of the reason that we don't execute on all the input of all the information is that we're so busy chasing someone else's idea of success. Like, you cannot be in satiably hungry for someone else's goal. You just can't be. At the end of the day, that's when you're going to get distracted. by the latest binging on Netflix or somebody dropping something into your email box, which is like the next bright, shiny object, or the next TED Talk or Leadership Development Program

or something that's going to be the panacea to solve our problem. I think that's why a lot of these programs that promise people success are successful because they promise happiness. And over the course of 20 years of interviewing people, leaders at massive moments of career change, what I learned, as the CEO of my company, I really only interviewed people who were successful. By the time they got to me, they were successful, they were qualified. But what I learned is that of the thousands of people I interviewed, not all of them were happy. And I thought it was really interesting that there was a difference between success and happiness.

And that success, this thing that we're told to go for to put ourselves in the fastest track to the biggest promotion to lean into every part of our lives doesn't actually offer the, the gold of the end of the rainbow, right? Like, it actually doesn't lead to success. And so I became fascinated with this idea of why that is. And at the end of the day, what I learned is that it's because we're chasing someone else's idea. And until we stop and we say, well, what does success really mean for me? Then all the rest of it is just busy work.

How do we do that? Let's say I'm a currently, I've had a great career as an individual contributor, in fact, so good that I've got promoted. And now I'm a manager. I'm a boss, right, of people, people report to me. And the obvious next step is to be the vice president and ultimately become the CEO of the company, wherever it may be. That's the progression that we all, so to speak, want to be on if we're in that current space or which makes sense, right? So how do we know, well, wait a second.

Is that the right? Is that somebody else's thoughts? Or do I really? Is that what I really want? I mean, how do we know this? So it's interesting because it starts off when we are 17, 18 years old and we're choosing where we're going to go to college for most of your listeners. And that often starts because somewhere like in the fourth grade, some teacher was like, hey, you're really good at math.

You should go into finance. Or boy, you're a really argumentative kid. You should go into law or whatever the case may think. And that fourth grade teacher who really had no crystal ball or Ouigi board or, you know, crystals or whatever it is. made this pronouncement basically just anecdotally, and we took it as definitional. We decided, oh, okay, that's right. I'm good at math, or he's good at math, and she didn't say I was good at math, which means I'm probably bad at math, so I'm not going to do these things. And so we have this world in which we were given an identity early on, and then we decide

17, 18 years old, where we're going to go to college and what our major is, which is going to put us on a path for the rest of our life. And here's the kicker about that. When you're 17 or 18 years old, you don't have a frontal lobe, the part of your brain that actually decides, like that makes good decision. So we're creating a path for the rest of our life that then puts us on this treadmill of get the job, do the training program, get promoted, have employees be the boss, become the CEO at some point. And we don't even know if that's what we want. Right. So we're like on this whole path.

And we've never stopped to say, is that really what I want? Would that really make me happy? Is that really success for me? Right. Maybe I should go open up a coconut shop in the Bahamas or maybe what I really want to do is I want to start my own business or maybe what I really want to do is I want to be an expert in this area and I want to be the bright vice president of this thing and help grow that bigger rather than get promoted to now run the whole other rest of the company. So we don't stop and ask ourselves that. And I think it's because we, you know, we play the comparison game. We try to keep up with the Joneses.

But it really, it really starts with us ignoring everybody else. and saying, you know what, the heck with everyone else and the heck with their definition of success, what does success mean for me? And that starts by understanding when we're in consonants. So when everything that we have, our energy, our alignment, our flow, we're all heading towards the same direction. And further, we have to think about at different ages and different life stages. So when we started that job that's then put us on the path to become CEO, we wanted different things in life than maybe we want now. maybe we were single, maybe we were paying off debt, maybe we were, you know, carefree and

had lots of time on our hands. And now maybe we've got small kids or aging parents. And so life changes. So what I learned in interviewing thousands of people is that what gives people consonants comes down to four basic elements. And we can we can go into more detail about these. But essentially, they come down to having a calling, something that's bigger than you. And that calling could be curing cancer, right? It could be higher purpose. It could also be buying a mazorati and a beach house. It could be paying off your debt. It could be, you know, serving a leader that inspires you or a company that you love, but it's something bigger than you. That's the first. The second is connection. Does the work that I'm doing on a daily basis every single day in my box,

in this space, in this organizational chart, in this company actually matter? Is it serving that calling I care about. Third, contribution. Where connection is about the work, contribution is all about you. Does this job contribute to the lifestyle that I want to live, right, in terms of how it's paying me, the flexibility it gives me? Is it allowing me to manifest the values that I want to have in the world? Is it contributing to the career trajectory that I'm trying to have? So how is this work contributing to that calling? And then lastly, control. How much control do I have? have over the connection and the contribution towards that calling. And at every age and at every life stage, we're going to want these four elements of consonants in different amounts. And so when I

help people get unstuck, it's often because they're still mired in the person that they were in fourth grade or at 18 or at 24 and thinking that they have to stay on that path. In fact, life has changed around them and they want to be on a different path. Hmm. How does this become, your calling? I mean, or what would you say is your calling? Is it helping people get unstuck your calling? Or I think people are saying, Laura, this is starting to speak to me now. All right, I hear the four things, the consonants. I'm with you. But who are you? And how did this, how did you become the subject matter expert, the master of this particular topic? Well, by heritage, I'm a Jewish mother, so telling people what to do is kind of in my DNA.

I come by it naturally. You know, I was that fourth grade kid who was told that I would be a good lawyer because apparently I was really argumentative and maybe a bit of a brat. And I also hated math. So I was told I'd be a good lawyer. And it was also at the time where there was a lot of Sturm and Drang in the political world. And I remember as a young kid watching the Iran hostage crisis and just being horrified that this existed and that it went on for so very long. And I had like a be in my bonnet about it. And I decided, like, I'm going to change the world.

I'm going to make, I'm going to solve all the problems. And of course, I figured the way to do that was to run for office. I was going to be the first female senator from the great state of Florida. That was going to be, who I was going to be. And of course, the path to that is law school. And so I went to law school and I got there and I looked around and I realized I made a huge mistake. I hated every second of it. And so, you know, what do you do when you're bored and you're sort of in a self-hating mode?

You date people you shouldn't. And I dated this guy who was a relatively horrible human being, but who had very good taste in political candidates. And because this was a very long time. You're going to say he had very good taste in women because he picked you. Well, not at the time. I mean, my husband, I think, is very good taste in women. I'm just a better place. Sorry, go ahead.

So this was before the Internet, and this guy was interested in some, you know, Southern Yokel running for president. And at the time, the only way to get information about somebody running was to, like, literally go to their campaign office, their local campaign office. So after school, he drove me in his I Rock Z because, you know, that's the kind of guy he was to this tiny little campaign office in Gainesville, Florida, which is like the seven circle of hell. I apologize to Gainesville, Florida residents, but boy, it was not a good place at the time.

It was fun fact, the world headquarters of the KKK at the time. So that is a fact I will stand by. But he drove me to the headquarters and we walk in and there's this little teeny black and white TV in the corner of the room with this then brown-haired young governor from Arkansas. saw telling the story about compulsory community service, community service in exchange for college tuition. And I was like, oh my God, that's the greatest idea ever. I'm so inspired. I am going to drop my Reagan Republican affiliation that I had because my dad was Republican. And so, of course, you know, that's what you do. People can never believe that I was actually

ever registered Republican who know me now, since I'm so active in Democratic politics. But I heard this idea and immediately I thought that needs to happen. I need to help make that happen. And so I dropped out of law school. I joined the campaign pretty much that afternoon, ended up living on a campaign bus and driving all over creation doing advance, so putting on rallies for, you know, tens and tens of, you know, 50,000 people. And the next thing you know, I end up in the Clinton White House helping to create what

has become AmeriCorps, where already a million people have served their communities and in exchange for college tuition. And it's been a real wonderful legacy. I did that for four years. And at the end of that experience, I went to my then boss, and I ran the 92 campaign. And I was like, yep, ready to get back out of the campaign trail. And he reminded me in a way that only a very good mentor can. And he basically told me that I was too old to eat cold pizza and sleep on high school gymnasium floors. And I was too young to be the domestic policy advisor. So I should go talk to his friend Arnie Miller, who ran Isaacson Miller, one of the largest search firms that did specifically mission-driven nonprofit search. And I go hide out on the Gore campaign for four,

or I go ahead and hide out in the nonprofit sector and then I do something big on the Gore campaign four years later. And I was like, awesome. Great. Terrific. I talked to Arne the next day and he says, ah, you don't want to work in the nonprofit sector. You want to come work for me. I'll teach everything you need to know. And I thought, okay, that job's in Boston. The guy I'm dating, much better guy. is going to be moving to Boston. I want to marry him. P.S. spoiler. I did.

And he has great taste in women. Of course. And I said, great, awesome. I'll take the job. And I had no idea what the job was, but I took the job. And it turns out that when you are an unrelenting idealist with absolutely no skills whatsoever, executive search is a phenomenal job. So I had this phenomenal.

I had this huge Rolodex, unrelenting idealism and endless curiosity. And I am fascinated by people and their stories and what makes them tick. And so it's a long story to tell you that I came to this work just so in love with humanity and so in love with making the world a better place and then got to spend the next 20 years hearing stories from people about what makes them tick and who they are and why they do the work they do and why it really matters. And so I started to, you know, I became a subject matter expert because over the course of thousands of these interviews, you know, you start noticing trends about whether or not someone's successful, but then also in high burnout situations,

whether or not it's tenable, whether or not they can stick with it. And often it's, what I found was that when people were in consonants, when they understood the, you know, the importance that they placed on calling, connection, contribution and control. and they were able to create a life that allowed for that, they could stay with that work and be successful for the long term. So as you were leading the executive search firm, is that correct? So I worked for Arnie for four years. I joke around that he was the worst.

He was the best boss. I'm so glad I no longer have. He was incredible at his work, difficult to work for. In fact, I've actually dedicated my new book to him because he taught me to show up in a way for other people to bring your best to everything you do all the time. And even though he was sometimes miserable to work for, he also was, he was so dedicated to excellence getting it right all the time that he instilled in me a love for the work. That said, I also found myself highly frustrated with the business model. And so after four years, I had this like moment of rage where I just

couldn't, I couldn't do it any longer in this sort of traditional way. And so I, I found in my own firm and I ran that and grew that for 15 years until a few years ago when I sold it to the team who helped me build it. Wow. So I want to pinpoint in on that, that part. Was it exec searches.com? Is that what it was? No. So exec searches.com was just like a little stopover in the middle. A friend of mine who had left the search firm was building this. And so I helped him with the content on that. Okay, okay, okay. So, but at one point, you're leading a team of people. You're the, you're the CEO, you're the boss, right? You had people reporting to you, right? What was the size and scope of that

role? Yeah, so when I was, I left Isaacson Miller and sort of in the meantime, helped a friend create exec searches.com. And my job with him was to help build out all the content and and sell the big projects. And he, I was like 11 months pregnant or something. at the time. And he was unhappy with our contract agreement because I was supposed to, I was, he was paying me basically not a lot of money, but a percentage of all the revenue I helped bring in. And at the end of a year, he noticed that I was making more money than him. And he thought as the head of the, you know, the founder, he should make more money than me. Now, he of course wanted to sell that business. I was like, well, that's not exactly how it works. And I'm 11 months pregnant.

I'm like, what, this is crazy. What am I doing? I should be doing this. I should be doing this for myself. He wanted me to take a pay cut and renegotiate the salary and I just decided that I could do this better on my own. So I founded the nonprofit professionals advisory group, the really worst named firm ever. But again, I was 11 months pregnant and full of rage. So, you know, it was not exactly a clarity moment for me. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I knew I wanted to work with nonprofits. I knew I wanted to work at the professional level. I knew I wanted to give them advice and I knew I wanted people. to think it was more than just me and my, you know, Dalmatian sitting on the floor.

So it was a nonprofit professionals advisory group that's pretty much the brilliance that went into it. So when I sold the firm, we were doing probably over 100 searches per year. We had a team of about 20, and it was a purely virtual firm. We never had office space. And that was before virtual stuff was really in fashion. In fact, I remember at one point going into a pitch meeting and this very, you know, old traditional, you know, guy was like, oh, so you're virtual. Does that mean you're not real? And my business partner, who is much more polite than I am and is absolutely lovely,

Southern accent says, well, you know, that real firm that you hired, the one with the big office space, the real fancy offices, and they're like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, the one that didn't really work out so well, so now you're giving us a shot, and they're like, well, yeah, She goes, well, how, was their office space really nice? It was nice, wasn't? I've never been in there. Was it nice? And they said, oh, well, we never went there.

Of course, they only came to us. And she was like, yeah, that's interesting. So why were you paying for that office space? And suddenly they were like, oh, I get it. How was it managing a team or leading a team that was distributed that way? Well, for her, it was a learning experience. For me, it was a nightmare, mostly because I'm a very bad manager. Really?

Terrible. You're perfect for this show. Thank you. I have a very good leader. Oh, okay, tell me the difference in your opinion. Yeah. Okay. So I once had a millennial, and I love millennials.

This is not a knock on millennials, and I think I've hired amazing millennials. But I had one who asked me to coffee one day, and she sits at me. me down and she says, well, I just want to talk to you about how to manage people of my generation. Okay, right? So I'm 48 at the time she's, you know, 32. I guess I was probably 42 at the time. She was probably 32 at the time. And she said, well, so have you heard of this thing called the compliment sandwich? And I'm thinking to myself, like nobody orders a rye bread sandwich, right? Like, you order the meat in the middle. Like, it's not a compliment sandwich. It's a, it's a bad And so I'm like, no, no, no, tell me. So she says, well, first you need to bring me in and

tell me something very good about my work. So I'm open to hearing what you have to say. And she's literally using this tone of voice. And then she goes, well, and then I would like you to tell me some, you need to give me some feedback. And she wags her finger at me. She's like, but it needs to be constructive. Then you have to tell me a second nice thing to say about my work. This is the sandwich part. Because the second nice thing means that, I'll leave wanting to put your your criticism and critique into practice. And meanwhile, I'm like, don't I sign your paycheck? Like, isn't that reason enough to put on criticism back on?

But I said, and I'm not proud of this moment, this is probably the worst moment of my management career. I said, the problem with that is that I can't think of a second nice thing to say about your work. Oh, it was devastating. It was terrible. I just, it was awful. But that was the day that I,

learned that my highest and best purpose to this firm, to building this firm, is to not manage the people. And that's when I found my business partner, who is classically trained cellist, Southern, you know, Ph.D in psychology from Georgetown. It was amazing at the management. The day-to-day quality improvement getting people better. And that allowed me to then be unfettered in my ability to be the leader, to be the champion, to be the friend in the foxhole, to jump in and defend my staff when our clients were being, nasty or to stand up in front of, you know, a big crowd of people and say, let me introduce you

to Alison or Tracy or, you know, or Catherine or any of the people who worked for me where I could say, they're amazing. Let me, you know, shine a light on them. And so my ability to be that champion and that amplifier, you know, really bubbled up to the top once I stopped trying to like nitpick quality and improve quality all day. long. So I think one of the most important roles of a leader is to understand when you're at your very best, like you're firing in all cylinders. You're making it rain. You're closing the deal. You are, you know, shining in front of your biggest client. Or maybe you're having a quiet moment with a staff member who is in need or or helping, you know, a manager figure out a really thorny

situation, you know, in private. Like it can be a big moment. It can be a small moment. But there are these moments when we know that we're like, yeah, that was me. I was awesome. That's your fundamental state of leadership. And if we can get rid of all the other stuff that we don't do that well, it allows the stuff that we do so well to bubble up. And for me, it wasn't managing. It was leading. So do you, for that person listening who is in the mid-level, they're not the CEO, right?

They may not have the luxury of kind of farming out the two and separating. They need to do both. What do you think about that? What advice do you give to that person who has to have moments of coaching? Now, I hate the thought of the sandwich thing or some have called it PCP praise, criticism, praise. Because it's, it's, it's, we, you and I were talking prior to recording that, that is just so fake and not authentic. There will be moments, I think, when we talk to when we coach and we teach and we manage and we lead,

where we're going to just tell them what we think, which is should be pretty much every time. And sometimes that's great. and sometimes it's not. It doesn't need to be structured or put in a sandwich, right? So I guess I'm curious back to my original thought on that, which is, what advice you give that person who is not the CEO, but they're in the middle and they have to have moments of coaching. They have to have moments where they manage their little business within the bigger business,

and they have to have moments where they're the visionary leader, kind of play the manage, coach, leader role. What advice do you have to them? So I think a lot of times we're afraid to give feedback because we think that people are going to be upset. We think they're going to be sad. Now, if you tell someone you can't think of a second nice thing and say about their work, they are going to be upset and sad. And I think that's probably valid. And you should have a restraining order taken against you.

But I think that what we don't realize is that people want feedback in the same way that we want feedback. And, you know, I've had people that I coach say to me in the same breath, I really wish I could get more feedback and, oh, yeah, I hate giving feedback to other people. And it's like, well, you know, if you think about it not as this thing that we're afraid of. Now, if there's somebody, I like to give feedback in a way where I ask people the question in two different ways. I ask them if the project reflected, A, their understanding of the material and the, the assignment, right? So did we miss the mark because, you know, this is a B plus, this is a C minus, whatever it is, where are we in terms of, does my reaction to your work reflect how much

you understood the subject matter, the material, the client, the assignment, et cetera? And then the second question is, does my reaction to the work reflect your ability? And if it doesn't reflect your ability, is that because you need new skills? Is that because you didn't have enough resources, is that because you didn't have enough time, or that I wasn't present enough to, you know, be supportive and answer questions that you had along the way. And so it's not really a you got this wrong. It's let's figure out where the holes are, because some of the holes are yours. Some of the holes are mine. And most of the holes are probably ours. Mm-hmm. Gotcha. You, in addition to that, you gave a TED talk that I watched again this

morning that I think has a title that may make people think a little bit. And I've had guests who speak about this topic from both sides. And so I'm curious for you to expand, but it's titled, Stop Asking, How Can I Help? And I love for you to expand on what that means to you and what that should mean to everybody who's listening when your TED Talk is titled, Stop Asking How Can I Help? Well, I should preface this by saying that the TED Talk is titled, is titled, Stop Asking How Can I Help? But the aim of the TED Talk is for all of us to be able to help more. So I'm not, I'm not an anti-helper. I think helping is fantastic. I think we just get, we're just misguided about how we help.

And so the TED Talk came about because I was incensed about the way that we respond to major national and international tragedies, whether they are, you know, shooting attacks, or tsunamis or tornadoes or what have you. And we do it by often, you know, doing things like sending teddy bears. And it is, it is fine to send a teddy bear. It is lovely to send a teddy bear. It comes from the very best part of who we are to want to send this like a little ray of hope. But, you know, when a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School,

67,000 teddy bears landed in Newtown, Connecticut. And the money that it costs to buy and ship and store and distribute those teddy bears can be used for other things that can solve bigger problems, like mental health services or common sense gun control or grief counseling for families. And it turns out that most of those teddy bears end up in incinerators waiting to be burned anyway, so they don't even get to the kids. But they make us feel really good. And so we get stuck when we say, how can I help in these short-term cathedrals of comfort that are all about us? and there's a better question to ask, which I believe is what needs to happen. So instead of saying, how can I help and then sending a teddy bear, if we said, what needs to happen, we would be more focused on the problem itself rather than us as the solutions.

So if you then take this context into a corporation and if your boss comes to you and says, you seem like you're having a hard time on this problem, how can I help? Well, you may answer and tell them what you need, but the truth is you're probably going to, you know, fake it a little bit or maybe lie to them or you don't want to tell them that, you know, you're four days behind on a five-day project or that you just don't really understand, you know, the problem at hand. And you're going to search for a solution that makes them feel really good, right? How can I help? Oh, well, you could review this, you could review the next draft for me because you know they like reviewing drafts. And then you put them in a situation where they're micromanaging you because that's what they'd like to do. which actually doesn't help you. And if they came to you, if your boss came to you and said, boy, you seem like you're really struggling on this assignment,

what needs to happen so that we get this, you know, to the client in time? You could say, well, I would really like, you know, a second person doing the research so that I could work on the writing. Or I'm having trouble, you know, getting the Excel spreadsheet exactly to it, but I know Joe in accounting is really good at that. Can I have five hours of his time? Or, you know, so if they asked the question in a way that wasn't personal and was about the solution, being about the problem and not the solution being about us and our own egos, we actually could

move forward better. Well, I like that. Especially the, you know, what needs to happen. Like, it's more, it seems more action-oriented focus. So like, let's work on getting this thing done, whatever this is. And it makes more sense. When you think about it of teddy bears being in the incinerator, that, yeah, I didn't really think of it that way.

because I thought, well, that's a nice thing to do. You know, try to comfort and help people. But if you got much more practical, there's probably much better use of that capital than on teddy bears that are going to be tossed away. And we could do both. So like what needs to happen is that little kid who's really sad needs a winter coat or a pint of blood or a bed in the homeless shelter or a teddy bear. But he also needs. And then there's, you know, all the rest of the major policy changes. So it just, it stops us from being heartened.

these like these cathedrals that we build to our own egos and actually focus on building institutions of long-term change. Have you found your, because you're not quiet about choosing a political party that your message at times is polarizing and one side or the other does not want to listen to you? Yes. I have been dragged on Twitter by Ann Coulter. That was not fun. Really?

Yes. Yes, I got them. Well, I, in the wake of Charlottesville, which I think we all know was a white supremacist rally and a guy drove a car into the crowd and killed a young woman, we had silence from the White House. And regardless of how you feel about this president and his politics and his party and all the rest, when something like this happens, you should not have silence from the White House. So should at least be a statement. And three days after, when there was not a statement, the Southern Poverty Law Center put out their annual census on hate groups that are operating in the United States. And there was a significant rise since this president was elected. And I was angry about it. And I shared on Facebook some expletives about the patriarchy and Bible voters and blocks of, you know, straight white men who who hide behind these these voting blocks and say, well, it's not me. I'm worried about, you know, the economy when all these other things are happening.

And I just found that to be, you know, my comments were certainly intemperate, but I stand by them. I do feel like when injustice happens anywhere, it happens everywhere. And I think that we have a responsibility to each other. as members of the community of the world to really stand by each other. And proliferation of hate groups, I think, is, for me, that's, like, there's a line in the sand, right? And, like, neo-Nazism is a clear line in the sand. Like, that is, I'm okay, you know, not being on that side.

But I found that people who decide to just look the other way because they vote, their pocketbooks first and are not thinking about those who really don't have a voice, I feel like we do have a responsibility to those people. And so I do a lot of Democratic fundraising. An article was written kind of a hit piece on me that was written on me as like a proxy, you know, for the candidates that I was supporting. And then that was sent to her. It was sent to Herman Kane. It was sent to, you know, insert, you know, Republican mouthpiece here. And it was, It was blasted everywhere, and it was, you know, weeks of death threats and rape threats and, you know, really scary, ugly stuff that you would never say to anybody face to face.

But, you know, it's moments like that where you think, well, is what I said wrong? Do I stand by what I said? Do I have confidence in those beliefs? And it turns out, you know, I'm – I said to my husband, I was like, God, you know, this is really uncomfortable. and it's, I, I, maybe I, I don't know, do I regret it? Should I not have done it? And he's like, look, he's like, you got in the ring. You get punched in the face.

That's what happens. He said, it's actually kind of amazing. It didn't happen already. But if you believe deeply in something and you care about it enough, sometimes you're going to get punched in the face for it. And, you know, it is, it is the price of going into battle, I think, sometimes. So are there audiences that will tune me out and not listen to me? I mean, I don't get on stage and talk about.

my politics. I don't I don't really proselytized to other people, but I am, I am upfront about what I believe in, and I think that I back it up with facts. The tweet was taken out of context, so the census data about the proliferation of hate groups was not attached to it. So I think that made it easy. It made it an easy target. But, you know, I think you have to believe in something and stand for something or you stand for nothing. Yeah. And I respect it. I think, I think, talk to Michael Lombardi and he quoted Jack Nicholson about this. The elixir of life is, and it's what I try, and I'm really intentional in 2019 and moving forward about this. I've, to have people with fact-based different points of view from one another.

I think that's very healthy. And we should have healthy discourse. Some of the people that I follow, I think, do a great job of that. Joe Rogan's one of the original podcasters, the best of the best. And he does a fantastic job, I think, of finding people that he doesn't always, that maybe a back-to-back guest will have one viewpoint and the other. And on a much smaller scale, right, somebody like Warren Berger, you and I talk about, you listen to his episode recently to say, he says, you know, say, how can I help you? And you say there may be a better question. Even something as small as that or as big as this, I think it's healthy for all of us to be able to understand fact-based positions from people, have constructive dialogue, disagree from time to time.

I mean, think about the conversations I have in my friends. I mean, when you're close friends with somebody, you like make fun of each other. You disagree. You, again, maybe you change your mind sometimes. And I think that is the mark of fantastic leaders is that they, believe what they believe until somebody brings them better and more evidence that then they're willing to change their mind. I think that's really important. Yeah.

I mean, one of the nicest things that came out of the whole Twitter dragging thing was that I had a number of Republicans with whom I'm very good friends reach out to me and be like, whoa, that's something. And we had phenomenal conversations where we realized that we actually agree on more than we disagree. It is often do you put economic policy above social policy or social policy above economic policy. But at the same time, we agree on all the policies. It just comes down to at the end of the day, where you stand depends on where you sit. And if you sit in a place where these policies are threatening you, then you vote a certain way. And if you stand in a place where these policies can help you, then you vote a different way. And that's okay.

We're not less human than each other. We do actually agree on more than we disagree. And I think, you know, the tenor, and I definitely contributed this with my intemperate posting. But I think the tenor of politics where we are no longer human to each other, where we only look at what divides us and not what brings us together, is really destructive. And I think as leaders, as we're trying to find cohort and community in our companies, the only way to do that is to spend time thinking about where, you know, what we have in common. And because, you know, I was talking to a woman last night who spends time getting to know people's stories. And she said, you know, our stories are our connections. And I thought, God, that's so rich.

Because at the end of the day, you know, so, for example, when I was doing search, I would have a client who would ask, who was looking to hire somebody with the, you know, of diversity. And I would ask them what that meant. And sometimes it would mean, you know, we're looking for a woman of color, LGBTQ, et cetera. But when you really dug down into it, what they were. really looking for is I want somebody who represents the people, my customers, my clients, my, you know, the people that I'm trying to reach. And sometimes that might be, you know, a Caucasian guy from Ireland who is, you know, just got here and is the first of his family go to college.

That guy may be the diverse hire, right? This white guy. And so it really depends on who else you have in the rest of your group and how that person asks to the conversation. And so, you know, I took my responsibility in all of this seriously, but I also took my responsibility to listen to everybody who was talking to me. And there were tweets that I got that were so ugly, they would set your hair on fire. Like I, you know, one day a friend of mine asked me, you know, did you read any of these tweets to your kids?

And I was like, I can't even find a single one I can read to my kids. I mean, they are terrible. But then the actual conversations I had with real people who reached out and said, hey, I saw what you wrote. I'd love to talk about it. And I had wonderful conversations with good friends and with total strangers. And it was actually, it actually ended up being a really lovely moment of togetherness rather than divisiveness.

Very cool. Certainly didn't even have that in my notes, Laura. And you've seen my notes. There's like seven pages. So whatever. We go with it. That's part of the deal. It's like try to be a listener and go.

Like we're becoming friends. I like that. One completely, I have a couple more questions, but one's completely separate. So we'll, we share the fact that we're both. have a background in athletics. I know you're an athlete. You're into rowing, I believe, from what I hear. I did some homework from some of our mutual friends.

I'd like to learn or at least hear from you how, because I'm a big believer that getting up and doing something physical, my friend Scott Galloway said we should sweat more than we should watch other people sweat, right? I watch football on TV. I love that. I love it too, and I believe it. And, you know, and I like to watch football. So, I mean, I think, but I try to abide by that.

I think it's a good, just kind of a very simplistic way, but true. How has you being in such great physical shape, being into athletics, helped you then from a mental perspective, helped you on stage, helped you in your work, because I'm a big, big believer in this, and I think you are, but I'm curious here from your perspective. So it's, it's funny. And I'm like giggling because you're calling me an athlete, which I think is hysterical. Well, first of all, Clay Hebert said, she's a stud athlete, talked to her about athletics and rowing. And I said, okay.

And Clay's my friend. He's your friend. So anyway, go ahead. Okay. But here's here's my secret. I ran my first ever mile of my life nine years ago. That's awesome. That's even better.

I mean, that's great. Yeah. I was picked last for every single team. I went to computer sleepaway camp. I mean, I was like the editor of my high school yearbook. I was a big giant nerd, and I'm still a big giant nerd. I just started sweating more than I watch other people sweat. I love that.

And, you know, if some of your listeners don't hate me already because of the politics stuff, I'll tell you, I sweat a lot during the Patriots day. The Patriots get, I'm sweating a lot. Yeah, I know. So sorry. God. I'm like, now I'm like the worst person ever. You've never. What is it?

Like the goat? I'm like the wote, like the worst of all time. That's who I am. But so I ran my first mile ever when I was when I was just about to turn 40. I walked into my kid's school and I saw the head of the school who's about 60 years old. And she looked amazing. I was like, Alan, like, what's going on? You look incredible.

Like, is there, have you been, like, you've lost so much weight? Have you been really sick or is there a new man in your life? Because, you know, you look too good to have been really sick. What's going on? And she said, there is a new man in my life. His name is Mike. coach Mike. She dragged me the next day

to this like really dirty gym at a local Boys and Girls Club. It was a beautiful Boys and Girls Club, but the floor of the gym was nasty. And we did all this boot camp stuff. And at the end of the class, Coach Mike has you run around the gym like 47 times or whatever it is to make it a mile.

And it took me six weeks to be able to run a mile without stopping. And at the end of the six weeks, I was like, oh, I might do a 5K. And then so I did a, 5K about six weeks later that literally like women and like fashion glasses and men with double jogging strollers were passing me. I mean, I was very, very slow. But at the end of it, I thought, oh, I made you'll do a 10K. And then at the end of that, I met this running coach. I was like,

maybe I'll run the Boston Marathon. And you have to qualify to run the Boston Marathon. You have to be fast. I am double jogger stroller, not fast. But you can also get a charity bib. And my husband, who is very against the whole idea of marathons was like, oh, you shouldn't do it. It's terrible. It's bad for your knees. And I said, if I can get a charity bib in the next five minutes, will you be supportive of this and, like, keep your complaints about knees and backs and all that to yourself? And he said, yes.

So I post on Facebook. I'm looking to run the Boston Marathon in April. Who's got a bib for me? And within like 30 seconds, like six different people are like, run for my group, run for my group. And so I did it on a total whim. But here's the thing. I think where it's helped me is that we can dream big.

I can dream that I want to be the Queen of England all day long, but nobody's going to bring me tea and crump it to 3 p.m. It just doesn't happen. The reason that we're able to do big things is because we develop the confidence in ourselves to dream it and do it. But it doesn't start with the dream. It starts with the doing, I believe. And when you run a 5K and then you think you're running a 10K,

and then you run the 10K, and then you try to do a half marathon and do it. the HF Marathon and then you get to the marathon, you are demonstrating competence. And the more competence you display, the more confidence you have that you can do that next big thing. And we talked in the beginning of the show about living on the edge of your incompetence. But the way to do that is to continue to push the boundaries of where you have competence. And so I think that becoming an athlete and then, you know, getting into rowing and now I row on a competitive team, which is hysterical because I'm five-foot-five. so I'm, you know, small. But I roll like I'm six feet.

I think, I feel, I pretend, I act like my persona is a six-foot-tall person that doesn't help with the physics, but I think in my brain does something. I think that when you, when you are out there on the edge of your incompetence, the only reason why you're able to keep going is because you have this track record of competence that tells you that, you know, your pants aren't going to light on fire. You're actually going to survive it. I was on stage speaking in Tel Aviv, and I was talking about how. how when I was doing search, I used to look for five things in every candidate.

Because, you know, subject matter expertise, you can get that from a book. But I would look for hunger, weight, tenacity, speed, and grit. And a woman in the front row was like, grit, what is grit? So I describe, you know, that it's this toughness that makes you want to keep going. And as I was describing, she goes, oh, yahoot. And I said, wait, what? And she goes, yahoot. Hout is their word for this feeling of grit.

So I was like, oh, yahout. And I, like, got, like, deep in my core. And I made everybody in the audience get up and yell, yeah, hoot. And I feel like being an athlete has helped me find that place. It's helped me develop, like, deep in the pain cave, yahoot. That you're just like, if you say it, like, say it. It's like, yeah, hoot. And you like, it's good.

I love it. You know you want to say it. Yahoo. How do you spell it? Now give me, give me it like a Y-A-H-U-T. Give me a real like from your gut. Yahoo!

Is that good? It feels good, right? Yahoo! Y-A-H-U-T. That's it. I love learning new stuff like that. I can put it in right away. Laura, this is fantastic.

Thank you so much for being willing to share what you believe in and all of your work. Your book is titled Limitless, how to ignore everybody, carve your own path, and live your best life. One question about that, actually, the subtitle. Why should we ignore everybody? Well, I think that the root, like the Buddhist feel, I think the root of all unhappiness comes from comparison. And so if you are comparing yourself to everybody else and what they're doing and what

they think is right and what you need to do and you should do and you must do, you don't actually decide what's right for you. And so I just want people, you know, the title actually came from our friend Clay, who when I was talking to him about the book, he's like, well, how do you want people to feel after they've read it? I'm like, I just want them to feel limitless. And he goes, well, how do they do it? I'm like, by just ignoring everybody else already and just carving their own path and living

their best life and just being them. And he's like, well, there's your title. I mean, it was like, we went back and forth and by the end of it, it was like so clear. And I think that until we stop living for. other people and we decide what really matters to us. You know, the best piece of advice I ever got was this. You're just not that important. And what that means is there are so many things that we're doing all day long, the emails

and the drive-bys and the can-I-pick your brains and all of this stuff. And we're not that important. It feels like we're that important because we are the proximate heartbeat that has been asked to be part of it. But we're actually not that important. They might find the solution somewhere else. Someone else will answer the email faster. Like it'll get done.

There are parts in our life, though, at our work and our families where we are that important. And if we spend all this time listening to everybody else's decision about how we should spend our time and what we should do and packing things into our to-do list that aren't on our goal list, then we don't actually double down in the areas where we are that important. So I think the first step to being limitless is to ignore everybody else and everybody else's ideas about what you should do and must do and need to do and carve your own path yourself. I love it, but I have to say one tweak that I would make is I like studying people in history and others like yourself and asking them questions of how they've sustained excellence and then trying to learn from that. Not looking at all of your great, you know, being on the Today Show on Instagram that makes me think, oh, I want to be on the Today Show. Like, yes, I think that part is bad where I have that brief moment of Laura got to go on the Today Show and I haven't got to go on the Today Show. like, that makes me sad. Right.

I'm with you there. Well, I'll introduce you. Okay. Well, I might take you up on that. But I think that part is the part where it's like, I don't know if that's helpful for me to feel that moment of envy that you got to go on a really cool TV show and I haven't yet. And versus, okay, I've noticed that Abraham Lincoln was fantastic in history at changing his mind. Was for slavery than was not. Right.

Like, whatever. And I think that part is where I wouldn't want to ignore other people. I wouldn't want to ignore everybody. I do want to study parts of their story and their makeup and some of what it is that they did in order to sustain excellent. So I know this is semantics and it's a tiny little thing. And I fully understand what you're saying. But that's like my one little tweak that if I listen back to this episode and I didn't say this, I'd be upset with myself. So I have to have to say it to you here as we're still recorded here, Laura.

Yeah, no, I think that's great. And I, you know, I am a big student of history. I think the way that we, the way that we decide what really matters to us is not to listen to everyone else put their ideas on us, but to study other people and to say, yeah, that, that jibes with me. Like that, I really feel that. You know, I remember reading the team of rivals about Abraham Lincoln and just listening to how he brought all of his, all of his rivals into his cabinet. And he listened to all of their, competing thoughts and ideas and criticism. And he did change his mind. I mean, I think the fact that we think about politicians and we say, oh, they felt this way here and they feel this way there, they're just flip-flopping. Well, maybe they're evolving in their ideas. And I think it's, I think that shouldn't be a bad thing that we evolved in our thinking. It's a great thing.

So your listeners can actually go to a quiz that I put together called it's Limitlessassessment.com. And they can take a quiz. It's about 60 questions, and it takes probably about 10, 15 minutes at most. And it will help them understand two things, how much they have and how much they want of these four Cs, calling connection, contribution, and control. So they will get, you know, they will get like a little radar chart that shows them their compulsion. How much do they want of calling?

How much do they have of calling? And then there are tips about how to do it. And in some of those tips are to go and find other people who they think have more of the things that they want and to ask them stories about how they did it and how they and and not to get advice about well you have to do this and you must do that but once they have a clear path once they've carved their path about what they want they can actually find other people who have been successful in that and they can bring them into what I call their family it's like your combination of your your friends and your family that become that accountability group that

that hold you to what you want and give you ideas and and momentum love it and today Laura, I don't think I told you, but we have what we call now from my friend Neil Pris Recha, the end of the podcast club. And what that is is people reach out to both Laura and me on Twitter. This time it'll be all good stuff, I hope, and say, what is one thing that one takeaway? That's it. Just one takeaway that you learned. I'm at Ryan Hawk 1,2.

You are? I'm at Hey LGO. Is it like, are you like J-Lo? Like, Elgo? Is that, is that a thing for you? Well, people just started calling me L-G-O because my name for GASN or G-R-G-O-Hodding. It's just a lot of name, but you know, I'm a lot of woman, so what can I tell you?

I saw it first and I thought, is it, hey, Elgo? I kind of like that, but no, it's L-G-O, okay. No, it is, it is, it is L-G-O. Well, maybe I can try to try to make you more like J-Lah. I like that nickname. I like that. I got a lot. All right.

In the podcast club, yeah, certainly reach out to, hey, LGO and at Ryan Ongt. Tell us one thing you learned. I'd love to interact and continue the conversation with everybody listening as well as, Laura, I absolutely want to continue our dialogue as we both progress. You've got so much good stuff going on. I'm excited for your book to come out and for everybody to buy it and to read it and to implement it and to take the assessment. I think it would be really helpful.

Thank you so much for being here. Cool. This was awesome. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Laura. Wow. Really interesting talk with.

Laura, that is not necessarily how I expected it to go. And sometimes those are my favorites. I truly want these to feel like two people who are meeting up for lunch and becoming friends. I actually tell my guest that before we record, that's what I hope happens. And I think it did with Laura. She shared a lot of useful and entertaining content here. And I'm looking forward to continuing the dialogue with her as we both progress. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, I would love it. If you would write a review, subscribe, and rate the show, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, right a review, subscribe and rate the show, hopefully five stars. And tell a friend, perhaps one that has never listened to a podcast before,

who has never listened to the Learning Leader Show. That's the best form of marketing. It's word of mouth one out of time. Thank you so much for once again giving me the opportunity to continue to do what I love on a daily basis, which is have conversations with people like Laura, who make me think, who make me analyze my belief system, and question things. I think that's really healthy. Thank you.

Talk with you next week. Can't wait. This episode is once again brought to you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a listener of the Learning Leader show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll. Sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader. That's G-U-S-T-O.com slash leader.