The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 495: Julia Boorstin - Interviewing Powerful CEOs, Building Confidence, & Becoming A Talent Magnet (When Women Lead)

Episode Date: October 16, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG  @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Julia Boorstin is CNBC's Senior Media & Tech Correspondent. She covers media with a special focus on the intersection of media and technology. In 2013, Julia created and launched the CNBC Disruptor 50, an annual list she oversees, highlighting the private companies transforming the economy and challenging companies in established industries. She's the author of a new book called, "When Women Lead - What they achieve, why they succeed, how we can learn from them." Julia's parents inspired her to pursue hard things and instilled in her a love of asking questions. As parents, we should do the same. Asking questions is a sign of respect and that you care. We should ask more questions than we answer both at work and at home. Approach people with curiosity. It's how we show that we care. Julia found a unique way to add value to her employer: Creating the Disruptor 50 list. It's important for us to find unique ways to add value to our company and do work that inspires us at the same time. It's evident that Julia loves it and because of that, both CNBC and Julia win. She has taken an entrepreneurial approach to her career at CNBC and has come up with and championed many ideas that have been impactful and built her career. She shares how you can do that too… Julia shares her preparation process for interviewing a powerful leader like Sheryl Sandberg or Bob Iger. "I didn't have a background in business. I had to over-prepare." How to become a talent magnet and attract effective leaders to want to work for you... She shares the biggest takeaway that you learned from interviewing thousands of CEOs and executives including Katrina Lake, Gwyneth Paltrow, Whitney Wolfe Herd, Jennifer Hyman, and more. Advice Julia got from her dad: "The road is always better than the inn." Enjoy the process. "The best way out is always through." Don't look for shortcuts. "I can't go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." Be persistent. How to build confidence? Get the reps... Do it a lot. Confidence is built through action. Commonalities of excellent leader: Humility Focus High adaptability quotient Communal leadership Empathy "Make your own characteristics a superpower." Life/Career advice: Be willing to fail It's a volume game Be prepared for brainstorming meetings. Have a portfolio of ideas. Julia's book writing process: She interviewed 120 leaders What can men do to be supportive? "Men need to understand the statistics. Diversity = more value." Be a talent magnet. Be honest about what you don't know.

Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 6-6-866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book The Pursuit of Excellence will help you become a more effective leader.

Text, Hawk to 66866. Now, on to tonight's feature leader. She's a great one. It's Julia Borsten, CNBC Senior Media and Tech Correspondent. She covers media with a special focus on the intersection of media and technology. In 2013, Julia created and launched the CNBC Disruptor 50, an annual list. She oversees highlighting the private companies, transforming the economy and challenging companies in established industries. She's also the author of a great new book called When Women Lead, What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, How We Can Learn from Them.

During this conversation, we discuss how you can become a talent magnet and attract effective leaders to want to work with you. Then Julius shares her preparation process for interviewing powerful people like Cheryl Sandberg or Bob Eiger. Then I found this part to be really interesting. She's taken an entrepreneurial approach to her career at CNBC and has come up with and championed many ideas that have been impactful and help build her career. And she shares how you can do that too. This one is so good, ladies and gentlemen, it's Julia Borsden. All right, Julia, it's great to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you.

All right, so I want to take you back to a moment when you were 13 years old, okay? And I'm guessing you remember this. You were with your mom, and she said, quote, when you grow up, everything will be different. Can you talk to me about what happened next after that moment? Well, what's interesting is what she was talking about was the fact that when she was 13, she thought she had two choices. She grew up in the 1950s and 60s, and her choices were to be a nurse or to be a teacher. And that was about it.

She didn't have a choice of going out and running a company or rising through the ranks in corporate America. And she told me that, you know, things were changing, gender gaps were closing, and the world would be my oyster. And I really believed her for a while. And I had an amazing experience with, I felt very equal access. I was playing in the same roles as my male classmates all the way through college. But right after I graduated college, I showed up at Fortune Magazine. I was very lucky to get this amazing job as a young reporter at Fortune Magazine straight out of college. And I just saw, I saw both at the magazine itself, the magazine, the most senior ranks was dominated by men.

And then I also saw the people we were interviewing. saw in the CEOs who are coming into our office, the stories about the leaders, there were massive gender gaps, particularly when it came to leadership. Women just didn't have representation in the most senior ranks of business. And what, like, the natural question is why? Why do you think that is? I mean, it's just like, hey, this is just the way we've always done things. And so people promote people that look and feel like them, I guess, or what is it? What is the why that you uncovered as you went. I think it's exactly that. And I think it took me a while to figure out. I mean, my mom had described all the progress that had been made with, you know, with all the way back

from when women got the right to vote. And based on her perspective, there was a slow march towards progress. And I think what I realize is that when it came to leadership and business, that march towards progress is incredibly slow. And it's men who've been running these companies for years. And not that they haven't done a good job, but maybe women could be doing a good job as well. And it's interesting because now if you look at the Fortune 500, as of the most recent Fortune 500 list, only 8% of those 500 biggest companies have CEOs who are women. And that's an all-time high. So can you walk me through a little bit? I think your career is fascinating.

As I was preparing for a time to kind of see your path and how you've gone. What are some of the – let's start with Fortune. What are some of the things that you learned at Fortune about yourself, about the industry, about what you want to do moving forward? as you eventually went on to CNBC. Well, what's interesting, and I said I was very lucky to get a job at Fortune, and I feel like I was particularly lucky because I had never taken econ. I didn't take any business classes. I didn't know anything about statistics.

And Fortune magazine at the time had this theory that you couldn't teach a business person how to write, but you could teach a journalist about business. And I'd always done journalism. I'd been an editor on the Daily Princetonian, my college newspaper. And I think actually the fact that I didn't have a background in business and I didn't have internships in business really became an advantage for me because I knew I needed to over-prepare. So I treated this as a challenge. I needed to learn everything about business to really understand these companies and the CEOs who I was going to be interviewing. So I learned so much from some of

these senior editors. There was this legendary writer named Carol Loomis who was close with Warren Buffett and she taught me how to read SEC documents. And I took the numbers and the sort of the math of it incredibly seriously because I knew I didn't know it going in. And the fact that I overprepared really helped me be a utility at the magazine. And there were a lot of writers who had taken econ and they were like, yeah, I got it, but I'm not going to put in the hard work of digging into the numbers. The fact that I knew I didn't get it going in made me overprepare. And that was ultimately a big advantage because a lot of the writers were like, oh, I don't want to do the stories with the numbers. That's too much trouble. And I thought this is great. I figured this stuff out,

bring it on. And I think sometimes being an outsider, not knowing your stuff, if you can use that as an opportunity to over prepare and then say, hey, I'm speaking the same language as the people we're writing for. I need to translate this complicated business world into the language that I two months ago would have understood. That was an advantage as well. You dedicate this book to Paul and Sharon. Those are your parents who inspire. Are you right? They inspire me to pursue hard things and instilled in me a love of asking questions. Can you tell me more about your mom and your dad and your upbringing and how they inspired you to do hard things and to ask questions?

I think there is this idea in my family that if something is easy, then it's not gratifying when you've done it. But if you do something really hard, then you can feel really proud of yourself afterwards. So my parents are both writers. I obviously was raised in a writing family. My grandfather was a writer. he was a historian and he actually was librarian of Congress. And he wrote a lot of books. And he

actually, I remember when I would visit my grandparents used to wake up in the morning hours before breakfast, would go down to his little office and write for hours at a time. And then he'd come upstairs and have his grapefruit or whatever he had for his grapefruit and coffee, his grandpa breakfast. And I think there was this idea that if you found something you were passionate about, like my grandfather did with his early morning writing, or my parents did, my dad produced documentaries, my mom wrote some books and was a food and travel writer that work was something to be enjoyed and you wanted to make you wanted to make the hard stuff exciting and my parents would always say to me when I was nervous about so I was I'm nervous I'm to go perform I did I did ballet I'm nervous

I'm to go perform I did speech and debate I'm nervous I have a big debate tournament and they say you're not nervous that feeling is one of excitement and this idea of trying to reframe things that were scary or hard is something that was good and that fear that that you know that that that you know that nervousness actually showed that you cared and caring is important. Do you still get nervous when you go on live TV or do you view this as excitement or how what's your frame of mind when you're going on to do a live live hit? You know live TV live hits I usually don't. I think I get into like a flow state. I think a lot of it like, like what does it feel like to be in a flow state? Because I've been in a flow state on TV. I've got into a flow state with writing. I don't know if you think about this.

You interview so many people. Do you feel like you get in a flow state when you're interviewing people? Definitely. It depends on how you. It depends on how you. you define that. I feel like I try to be 100% focused on being engrossed and being a deep listener because I think the best questions are typically follow-up questions. And the only way you can do that is if you're truly listening all the way through and then maybe trying to pick a thing or two to go a step deeper. And maybe that would be flow. I think a lot of it for me, I'd be curious for you. And this is on my list of things as to us is, and doing it over and over and over and over has been a huge help for me.

Like most things in life, the more you do it. And you do this for a living. And you're not only that, though, you're also interviewing very powerful people. And so I am curious about that for you. When you have a Cheryl Sandberg or a Jack Dorsey and you're interviewing them, it could probably be easy for them to feel like they're a level above you. And I get the sense that you don't allow that. I don't know.

I could be wrong, but like how do you feel when you're, it sounds like you're an overpreparer, which I love. I think it's a great quality. But also the dealing with power and staying on same level so that you can get what you're trying to get out of the interview, out of the conversation. How do you think about that? Well, so I think you're absolutely right. It goes back to being overprepared. Being over prepared when I was a 21-year-old reporter at Fortune Magazine.

enabled me to deal with 60-year-old mutual fund managers who I was interviewing. So I was always, from the moment I graduated college, was always dealing with people who are older and more powerful than me. Now, 23 years later, they're not all older than I am, but they are more powerful than I am, but there is power in asking questions. And I think it goes back to the thing about my parents. They believed in taking on hard things because that's more gratifying, but also in asking questions. My family, like, asking, asking questions is a sign of respect just when we're dealing with each other and also a sign that you care. So I find that this idea of the importance of asking questions has just been

ingrained into me my entire life. And it very much, you know, combines with what you were talking about with being overprepared to not get intimidated. Some people don't feel comfortable asking questions. I mean, I know a lot of my friends, they feel awkward even asking a friend a question about what's going on with their lives or for advice on something. And I think I just have no embarrassment or fear about asking questions. Having said that, it does, you know, it can be stressful. I think there's a difference between nervous and something making you feel nervous and you being stressed because you know the stakes are high. There are a lot of times I know the stakes are high. I mean, for instance, like I cover Disney earnings every quarter. And a lot of the times I would interview Bob Eiger,

just because of the logistics of it, immediately after reporting the earnings. So I would get the numbers, I would have to instantly analyze them, report the numbers on TV as I'm, as I'm going through the quarterly report, like no time to stop and think, and then instantly go into an interview with Bob Iger, who would be sitting across from me watching me as I analyzed his company's numbers and reported them on live TV. Like, that is a stressful situation. And there's a different, but to me, but I knew I could do it. I just knew that I didn't, I couldn't let the stress or the anxiety around the circumstances get in the way of of me doing my job. Because I knew at my core that I could do it. I just knew that if I thought

too much about the fact that the CEO is watching me as I was reading the report and reporting the numbers, then that sort of could get in my head. But I think with a lot of these things, I know my stuff. I know my questions. I think overpreparing is my, you know, that is my safety blanket. I will oftentimes go over questions with my colleagues and then write down the questions and then not even look at them during the interview because it's all about listening. So I was curious because you've done so many of these interviews. I mean, I don't know what the technical definition of a flow state is for me. But for me, if I can just forget about the circumstances, even forget that I'm on live television and focus on the person I'm interviewing, then I could just focus on the task at hand and not get distracted by all the other pieces of it, if that makes sense.

I am, this may be a selfish question, but someone who is an absolute professional interviewer of some of the most impactful people in the world, what is like do you write a. script, do you have an outline? When you actually look at the review, the footage of the interview with Bob Eager or Cheryl Sandberg or somebody else, how much of it does go to that outline versus you just being in flow and asking questions that maybe pop up on the file? Like, what's your prep process versus the actual execution of the interview? So I like to think about questions as in buckets. Like what are the main topics? Of course, I have to ask about. And I'm like, here are the topics. And then I might write down questions, you know, within those, each of those topics. And then I might think about like random things that,

or tangential things, not random, but tangential things that could feel relevant in the moment. So let's say there's some privacy hearing on Capitol Hill or something happening with a rival company or something that's tangential and not necessarily something you'd have to ask about, but if the person said something, you'd be like, okay, well, now I definitely should ask that question. So it's almost like having a backup plan and a backup plan. But then I feel like if I I really like to start working on the questions early so I can mull them over in the back of my head long before I'm actually in the moment of the interview. And so then when I'm in the interview, because I've already been thinking about these questions for so long,

I might refer down to them, but it's more that I know what I have to do, and then I can play it by ear in the interview. But I do like to just be in the moment and listen to answers as much as possible. And I actually find that's much, much easier when you're in person rather than doing interviews on Zoom. But you must have a lot of experience with it. Yeah. I find the best podcast episodes are the ones where you may hit a little bit of the outline and of the prepared questions, but you never really look at them.

I like to actually handwrite notes. This is part of my learning process of how I try to make what I'm learning sticky, handwrite notes, and then I type them out. I do not farm that out because it is a part of how I learn. and then it could lead to being better in the future. And I write books on this stuff too. So that's the one element that I do more of on Zoom and less of when I interview people in person.

Because in person, I try to stay looking at them and then I'll have to go back and just add an extra step of writing the notes. But I also really like writing things. I'll write down questions, even if they're already typed out on my, I mean, right now on my computer, just for that process,

because writing them down, it helps me memorize them. Well, it's funny, when I do live shows or live podcast, like in person with somebody. Sometimes we do them in front of an audience. And they're like, here, just put them on your iPad. I'm like, well, I just like the paper. Because the pop, the questions may arise. I just did one with Cat Cole in Atlanta.

She's an amazing leader of athletic greens. And so many questions kind of arose while she was talking that I needed to write those out. So I think it's like being in the moment, rethinking things. Now, a lot of that comes from doing deep preparation of reading, all the articles, reading the books, watching the TED Talks and the videos, I think, are helpful. The thought of doing the Bob Eiger interview immediately after that, though, blows my mind. And you said an important thing during that answer, I know I can do it. How do you know you can do it?

Because I've been doing it for 23 years. I think that's when, you know. What about the beginning of that? How was it? How did you build that? Because I get a question from usually younger leaders, how do you build confidence? How do I get confidence? I don't feel like I'm there.

They have imposter syndrome. They're not really sure. What was like for you in the beginning of that? Well, I think being a very young reporter at Fortune Magazine, I was hired when I was 21. I think I was the youngest person they had ever hired at the time. You get in the reps. I always think about the Malcolm Gladwell, 10,000 hours thing. The reason why the Beatles are the Beatles is because they practiced over.

They performed over and over and over. I wasn't practicing. It was performing. So I've just been doing this a really long time. And I think that the more I do this and the older I get, the more experience I have and the more I can pull on my different experiences and interviews and things I read 15 years ago and my memories of the financial crisis and all, you know, being a young reporter during the dot-com bubble. And I know it's scary for people to get older, but I think I see it as such an advantage right now to have that perspective. But I remember when I was starting off as this young reporter at Fortune Magazine, I would be interviewing these older men and they would be so mean to me sometimes. I remember a couple of them would say things like, how do you possibly know what you're talking about? And I'd say, I did my research.

These are good, valid questions. So I think I really had to prove myself and find a way to not let comments that I couldn't possibly be informed. It bother me. And also to know that I had done enough research that I should be confident. my questions. And I was really lucky to have amazing mentors along the way to help coach me through questions and also reassure me that I was doing a good job and say, yeah, that was great. Or, you know, your insights are good. And there are advantages of coming into something as an outsider. And I think having that balance of humility of the ability to learn and knowing

you want to learn, that ability, the balance of ability and confidence is something that I think about a lot as I interview leaders. And there's this idea that I write about in my book. book, when women lead, this idea that being confident all the time is not a good thing, that you don't want to be confident all the time because then you're not going to gather all the information that you need to make wise decisions or put together the best plan. And what you really want is to turn down your confidence level, like see confidence as being on a dial, turn down your confidence level when you're gathering information and really think of

your information gathering process is not just like coming up with an idea. But thinking of the world as your oyster, everyone has a different perspective they could give you, they could share with you, and you want as many diverse perspectives as possible. And then once you've gathered all that information and you've analyzed it, once you've made your decision, that's when you want to turn up your confidence in order to execute and communicate your idea. You don't want to be anxious when you're communicating your decision. You want to be confident when you're communicating, but you don't want to be confident all the time. I think there's this idea in our society that, like, you should always be confident.

And, like, I wasn't confident when I was a 21-year-old reporter. But the fact that I would spend late nights reading analyst notes made me feel confident. So for me, the safety blanket of the over-preparing helps me feel better when I'm walking into a room. And I know, like, look, I spent hours going through this stuff. I know this annual report. I know this 10-Q just as well as they do. Or with some of these companies, like Facebook, I've been covering Facebook since. since they were in a tiny little office in Palo Alto.

Like, I know this company. I can ask these hard questions. Confidence needs evidence. And what I mean is like your parents sounds like they ingrained this when you were young. You regularly put yourself in the position to do hard things. You overprepared, which is hard. That's work.

That's the quiet time that nobody ever sees of you reading and asking questions of a mentor to help understand something. Like, that's the evidence that you're providing. for yourself, which then creates some of that confidence. And then having the humility, which is, I think, when you turn the dial down, as you said, the humility to say, well, I don't have this all figured out. I need other people's help. I need to have an open minding to ask questions, need to learning, to get better.

And then I love that kind of analogy of turning the dial back and forth. And that is in that you've proven to yourself. I'm curious. So I want to jump into your book, when women lead initially. There's a lot of different things you could probably write a book about. You've interviewed tons and tons of amazing leaders. What was it about this topic that made you want to write a book called When Women Lead? So I have this amazing job at CNBC, and I've been able to be entrepreneurial and create a couple different franchises for the network. And one of them is the Disruptor 50 List. And this is a list of the 50 fastest growing private companies.

And I love this project because every year I get to interview all these amazing CEOs of fast-growing startups. And also to see how powerful these tech-driven companies are in business and also in society. And on the other hand, I was working on this franchise called Closing the Gap, which is about people and companies closing. and diversity gaps. And there, I kept on getting struck by this crazy statistic. And that is, over the last 10 years, female founders of startups have drawn 3% or less of all venture capital funding. So here I was, on one hand, seeing these amazing, fast-growing tech startups and seeing that they are game-changing, they are world-changing, companies from SpaceX to Uber, to Airbnb, to yes, Facebook. And on the other hand, the women are getting less than 3% of all venture

capital dollars. So I put these two things together and I thought, these women I'm interviewing who are running and founding these companies, they are amazing. And I thought, yes, they actually are exceptional. They are by definition exceptional, but they are also exceptional. And I figured if they can defy those odds and if they can be among that tiny percentage, there are lessons that they have that would be valuable for all of us. And I was like, I want to learn from these women how they manage to do it. We all want to be exceptional, right? So I started interviewing these women who had really defied the odds and created these game-changing companies, whether it was in the retail space, companies like rent the runway and the Real Real,

or Sally Krochek, who left the finance industry and created a new business focused on women, or all these women in the new health tech space, in the fem tech space. This is health tech focused on things like fertility. There are all these amazing companies. And I wanted to tell these women's stories, A, because they had defied the odds, but also be because I don't think people really know their stories. And so much of the business news is obviously focused on the public companies. But when it comes to female tech leaders, if I asked you who the first female tech leader is to come to mind,

you might say Elizabeth Holmes just because she's the face in the news. And the reality is that she's not representative of all of these amazing female leaders. And I think that they have leadership characteristics. All these women I've interviewed have leadership characteristics that are incredibly valuable, not just for other women, but for men as well. And the characteristics that they've used to be in that tiny minority and defy the odds, I think they're exactly what we need right now to navigate these uncertain times in business. What are some of the takeaways, the key learnings, the characteristics that you found

and the amazing women leaders that you interviewed? Well, back to the conversation about turning up and down your confidence. These are women who showed humility and a willingness to focus on data and not on their own ego or frankly on the plan that they had put in place, but to focus on data, have a high adaptability quotient. There's some really interesting research around adaptability. Now, we talk about IQ and EQ, emotional quotient, but then there's also adaptability quotient, the ability to see when things are changing, such as maybe ahead of a pandemic, and to figure out how to make changes to your business by incorporating the data about what's going on. And there's data that women have a lot of

those characteristics. But then also, to the point about turning down your confidence and gathering a lot of information, this idea of communal leadership. You can lead top down and say, I'm making a decision, I'm going to tell my company what to do, or you could say, let's gather ideas and figure out what I can gain and what perspectives I can learn from from people from different parts of my team. And so women are more likely to lead with communal leadership. And I think in times like these, when it's hard if you're in a corporate office, away from people, away from your customers, away from your investors, away from the people who are your employees. It's hard to know exactly what's happening, and the more you can bring in diverse perspectives, the better that is. So those are some of the

characteristics. Also leading with empathy, there's been a lot of research about how empathy is incredibly valuable to connect with customers, to connect with employees. And especially in uncertain times, it's actually found that employees would rather, in times of a crisis, people, employees would rather work for women because they feel like she's going to be more sensitive to their needs. So a lot of advantages that people don't talk about. And by the way, anyone can lead with empathy. That's not something that's the exclusive domain of women. It just happens that women traditionally have been more likely to embrace that kind of characteristic. What was most surprising or a big aha or even just super interesting as you were preparing for all of these conversations as well as in executing the

interviews and having them to write the book. Well, so I'll say just to back up, I start off wanting to tell these amazing women's stories because I knew they had defied the odds. But then as I dug into their stories, I thought, I don't have a framework to really understand how they're leading and why these leadership characteristics are working. I was like, I see that the empathy is working, but I don't, I can't explain exactly why. So I dug into the research, again, back to the over-preparing, and I read about 300 academic studies from written by social scientists and psychologists and business school professors around the world. And I found so much research and data explaining why these characteristics work and why women are more likely to use them, but also why they work in

general. And that was so interesting. And it brought me back to those days of staying up late at Fortune Magazine reading these dense documents because there's so, the fact that there's so much research out there, but sometimes written in these very dense academic formats, I really was excited to be able to unlock that and weave it into my stories. So one thing that I was really surprised by was this idea that, you know, we think about leaders. They're exceptional. You know, I use that word a couple times before. And they have amazing ideas and perspectives. And I always kind of thought that they were born that way. You know, these women were so impressive to me. And I thought they were probably always like this and running the lemonade stand in elementary school or whatever

it was they were doing. And I was really struck by the fact that no one was always like this. Everyone had to really work on their leadership. They had to work on their ideas. And the ones that were really successful had the humility to be very aware of their failures and to really learn from their failures. And this idea that no one came out of the womb ready to run a company was really kind of reassuring to me because it showed me that they had all made massive progress. And the ones that to me really were most interesting were telling me things like, you know, I'm really competitive.

Like this woman, Christine Hunziger, she runs a company called Castle. She's like, I'm really competitive. And at first, that was a disadvantage to me. That really made it hard. People didn't like working with me. And then I figured out how to channel that in such a way that I was inclusive of my team. And I made my competitiveness a superpower. And so I think it was this idea of being able to identify what your own characteristics are.

and work on them and work to make them work for you. So there's a woman, a couple of women I write about who are introverts. They are self-professed introverse, which is not a characteristic traditionally associated with leadership, but they figured out how do you make their introversion work for them. And they worked on it. And nothing comes easy. And it was really inspiring to me to see that we can all make progress

on whatever it is that we want to work on. And the more we understand who we really are and what our key traits are, we can figure out how to make that trait work for us, even if it's not a trait that's traditionally associated with leadership. Introversion being a key example. So I think that's really, it's like about self-knowledge and benchmarking your progress. And I don't know if you've seen this data, but there's a lot of data about athletes and business and how athletes are more likely to be successful in business. these are like college or serious high school athletes. And I'm not an athlete. I did dance in high school.

So I performed, which is a great advantage when I got into this business, but was not an athlete. But when I dug into the research about why athletes are better at business, that was inspiring too, because it's not that athletes are trained to compete against other teams. You'd think that that would be the reason why athletes do better in business. But in fact, is that athletes are trained and accustomed to do what they call after event reviews to see how they did, to measure their performance, say, look, we may have won that game, but my performance was not good. Or we lost that game, and here's why. And digging into your

performance so regularly that it's not stressful or upsetting, but just matter of fact, and then measuring and benchmarking your own progress. And every CEO who is successful did that. You're speaking my language. I mean, I played high school college and a little bit of after college. football, played quarterback, Julia, and we videotaped every single repetition that we took in practice and obviously in the games. And we were scored a plus or a minus or a double plus or a double minus. And then we would have a score for every single repetition of every single practice. And so not only are you open to it, you crave it. You got to have it. And if I, when I remember when I got into sales, my first real job after playing football, it would bother me if I

wasn't receiving enough coaching and feedback because you benchmark yourself against your previous self. And if you don't feel like you're on this kind of upward trajectory, it feels like I'm dying. Like literally, like I'm not, if I'm not growing, I'm dying. And that is a really bad feeling. So I identify with that. I would imagine that you probably saw that not only with former athletes, but with the people that you're interviewing, that had to be one of the commonalities among them, Is that they have this kind of growth? Commonality among everyone. Commonality among everyone.

And some of the CEOs I interviewed had been very serious violinists and went to high school at Juilliard. There was one Catherine Power who's founded four or five companies. She was a very serious professional dancer. She didn't go to college, but she, after high school, she danced professionally. She was so used to the self-criticism and not criticism, but sort of self-evaluation and figuring out how to continue to push herself. And this idea that the data is about athletics, but the underlying reason why it's so useful is because it's about benchmarking after event reviews and measuring and driving your own progress forward.

Every woman had some way of doing that over the course of her career. And that's something that anyone can do. But I think having the humility to do that, but also making these evaluations so practiced that it's not hard. someone says, isn't it painful to get to get criticized after a failure? I'm like, no, every failure is an opportunity for progress. I think the women who are so successful now, they know that they've all had challenges in the past.

But every challenge, what some people might call a failure, is something to learn from. Well, and take control of it. Take responsibility for it, meaning that you seek it out, you yearn for, or even hire somebody if you have to, I think, to provide that feedback, I think, is really important. I want to dig into actually your story for a second here because I think a lot of us could learn from it in your career and what you've built for yourself because you mentioned some of the things that CNBC has allowed you to do, but I would imagine they've allowed you to do it because you've had more of maybe an aggressive posture to say, I have an idea. I would say they've enabled

me to do it. I mean, the great thing about being a journalist is, you know, you have to be entrepreneurial because every story is something that you know they're this they're the news things that you respond to like there are quarterly earnings i'm going to cover every quarter but then there are things that are more enterprising and we literally call them enterprise stories so they're you know you could say they're entrepreneurial but coming from fortune magazine where i saw there are these things like lists and cnbc will do these big in-depth projects for instance you know we just did one with nbc and it was a cross-platform thing digging into the metaverse and we all brainstormed how you know know, five different reporters working across NBC and CNBC could each cover different angles in

the Metaverse. There was so much opportunity to be creative and enterprising as a journalist. And so, and my bosses have always encouraged me to come up with ideas. And that's why I love being a journalist. It's so, so creative. And so with CNBC, I remember I would be pitching ideas to my then boss. And I had a bunch of ideas and Disruptor 50 was one of them. He said, let's do it. This is a great idea. And, and that's the advantage of being in a place where you're encouraged to be curious and coming up with ideas. I think that there's opportunity to be entrepreneurial in lots of different ways. So I've been at CNBC for 16 years. I'm not risk-taking in my career. I've only had two jobs, really. But the reason I love my job so

much is that I can keep creating new things and finding new opportunities to dig into stories. And the same was true with closing the gap. You know, after the Me Too Times Up movement, there had been so many CEOs who'd been fired or laughed. But what I wanted to do was highlight the positive stories. And that's the thing I like in general. Like if I have an opportunity, I want to tell a positive story. There's enough bad news out there. When it comes to the enterprising stuff, let's dig into the positive stuff. And so I think there's a real interest in finding the solutions and to say, look, we're going to highlight the companies that are generating more profits because they've closed gender and diversity gaps. What advice would you give to somebody who's like a little bit,

maybe a woman who's earlier in her career that you can take from what you've done because I don't think it's natural for everybody to be as entrepreneurial as you are. I know you said your company has certainly encouraged it, but still a lot of people show up and are like, let me do my job really well. And if I do it well, I'll get promoted. Whereas you do that, and that's almost like table stakes for you. And then in addition to that, oh, I want to create written separate 50. I'm going to create closing the gap. I'm going to create these things. I'm going to come up with ideas. And then not only I'm going to come up with them, I'm going to execute. I'm going to run with them and they're going to become a thing. And that makes you

incredibly valuable to your company. And I want people listening to this to become incredibly valuable to their company so that not only they get promoted and get the things that they want, but maybe they even create a market for themselves and who knows what can happen. What advice do you give to that person who has not done that yet? And maybe he hasn't even thinking of that, but they should. I would say a couple things. One is be willing to be to face. right? You're going to get rejected. Come up with a lot of ideas and know that most of them will be rejected. And then if someone likes your idea, know that that's not the end of the road. From there, it's about iterating. But I think that part of it is just like a volume game. And I have regular,

you know, brainstorming story meetings with my bosses and my colleagues. And I love these meetings because I know that each one of them, I'm going to throw ideas out there. They're going to through ideas out there, but also at the end of the meetings, a bunch of my ideas will be turned down. But the ones that are not turned down are an opportunity to go and run and work on it. So I would say just think about it as a volume play. It's like a portfolio. You want to create a portfolio of ideas. Someone likes one of them. You go with that idea. Maybe you turn that into three ideas and figure out which of those works the best. So don't be afraid to fail. The other one, the reason why I like creating these things and working on these projects is because once you

love something, once you're excited about something, it's really fun to work on it. It doesn't feel like work. And so I always figured if I could take the thing about my job that I love the most, love interviewing, fascinating, innovative people, and turn that into a bigger thing, that would just give me more opportunity to work on those kinds of stories. So I know it's easy just to get through the day and, you know, there's all these reports on quiet quitting.

But ultimately, the reason why being entrepreneurial within your job is a good thing, even if you're tired and burnout, is because you will be more excited about coming to work every day. So I think it's always about sort of taking a step back, thinking on a Sunday night, what is the thing about going to work tomorrow that I'm most excited about? And how could I figure out ways to do more of that? Because that's where you're going to be bringing value to your boss and to your team. Book writing is completely different. What was your process like? How did you do it?

When did you do it? What was it like? What did you love? What did you hate? Talk to me about the book writing process. Well, that's the same thing. I found this project that I was really excited about. And so I really wanted to do it.

It didn't feel like homework. It felt like this thing that I was excited to rush to at the end of the day. And I feel so lucky for that because, look, I got to interview about 120 amazing leaders. And much of this, sorry, most of this I did during the first darkest period of the pandemic when everyone was locked at home. And for me, it was an amazing escape from that day-to-day grind of not leaving the house. getting my kids on Zoom school. And it just was a joy for me to be inspired by these people. And it was also an opportunity to connect at a time when everyone was at home,

everyone was evaluating their lives and figuring out what really mattered to them. So I feel very lucky that there was this moment where people were really reflective. And I think therefore really open to talking to me about their visions and their life and their plan and how they got to where they were and they were thinking about maybe what they wanted to do next or why it was that they did what they did. So it was really exciting for me. So because of that, I was willing to do crazy things like on Saturdays, you know, I'd wake up really early for work because I work East Coast hours here on the West Coast.

And on Saturdays, I would wake up at 5 a.m. I'd make a pot of copy. And I'd sit on the couch with my cats. And I'd work for like three or four hours before my kids woke up and needed me. And, you know, they'd wake up and do their thing. But by the time they were ready for me to pay attention to them, I'd already rush through whether it was reading transcripts or writing. And so I would find these windows where I can't believe that I, I mean, in retrospect,

I can't believe I woke up so early on the weekends, but I just sort of gone into a routine of knowing I would have like two or three hours and then just really making the most of them. And I think I was so motivated because I was excited by these stories and I wanted to understand the research and seeing the research and the stories come together was just thrilling. And so it was a really fun project to work on, particularly during the pandemic when I wanted something exciting and hopeful to bring me out of the sadness the day to day. And this was really that. Wow. So I'm thinking of this from somebody in like my position.

Let's say if whether I worked in corporate America or not as a guy, what are some of the things guys can do to be better about understanding and maybe. I don't know the right terminology to use, but to get the numbers more in order as they should be. Well, I would say there are two reasons why this book is incredibly valuable for men. And I would say probably even more valuable for men than for women. First, the statistics about gender gaps are so crazy that a couple of men who've read this, especially in the early drafts, thought they were typos. There were numbers that they thought were typos. And I think that men need to understand the statistics, both about how big gender gaps are,

but also about the fact that there's a lot of data that diverse leadership, both in terms of gender and in terms of race, is more financially valuable. And I think men who are investing, they're hiring, promoting, they should see these statistics and see them all in one place because every piece of data points to the fact that more diversity doesn't just bring in outside ideas. That seems obviously different people, different perspectives, but having diversity in a room in the business context forces people in the room to reconsider their own ideas and be more careful and cautious in their decision making. That's what you want. You want the people in the room, men, women to all take a minute and not just go forward with

their assumptions, but say, hey, there's someone new here. I better think twice before I go forward with that old assumption that I had a week ago. So I think the data is incredibly, incredibly powerful and valuable for men who care about making money, whether it's as out of business, leaders, et cetera. The other thing I would say is from a leadership standpoint is the characteristics in this book have not traditionally been associated with leadership, right? Being an introvert, how could someone who's an introvert be a good leader? But in fact, there are all these studies about how being vulnerable, leading with gratitude,

something called radical trust that one of the women in the book talks about, these characteristics that you do not associate with leadership or power and that men have not traditionally led with are in fact hugely valuable for leadership. So if you're a man who wants to succeed in this business world, whether it's learning about how to improve your adaptability quotient, how to improve your emotional intelligence and your empathy, and how to use these traits that maybe women were more likely to use, men can use them too, and they're going to be exactly what you need to succeed in this time of so much

uncertainty. We have inflation. We have business disruptions with the pandemic. We have all of these stock market volatility fears. All of that, you want to understand what traits are best, especially in times of crisis. And if it's women who are more likely to have led that way, just copy some of their traits. Everyone wins. It's really good. I was towards the end of your book reading about Gwyneth Paltrow. her questioning and not understanding some of the jargon and that then helped her encourage people to ask questions. And this is something that I, I don't know from a gender perspective, but I just think as a human perspective, it's, we'd all be better off if we probably asked more than we

told. And I sense that this is right in line with how you view life. Can you talk more about maybe what you learn from her and others and about just the importance of all of us. as leaders to ask questions. Yeah, and to take a moment, and I think really understand where you should be humble. Some of the best leaders in the book that were able to gather the most powerful teams were the ones who admitted what they didn't know. So Katrina Lake, I remember talking to people about Katrina Lake who founded Stitch Fix and took that company public. I said, so what was so amazing about Katrina Lake? And people would tell me she was a talent magnet. And I would say, well, what do you mean she was a talent magnet? They would say she would hire the most amazing people. She would,

get the head of algorithms from Netflix, the CEO of Walmart.com, these people who are running massive businesses, she'd get them to work for this little startup before it went public. And I'd say, how on earth did she do that? And I was like, look, I'd love to figure out how you become a talent magnet. That's something that every leader would want to know, right? So I dug and dug and dug and dug and dug. And I was like, is there data? Is there research about how to, how a CEO can be a talent magnet? And I kept on interviewing people. And I just came back to this answer. She said, look, I just was really honest about what I didn't know. And I would reach out to people and I would say, look, you are the prime, you know, prime executive when it comes to algorithms. I don't know

this world. Come, help me. And people love this idea that they'd get to work for her. She'd appreciate what they brought and would let them do their thing. She wasn't going to say, well, I know a lot about about algorithms. So, you know, you can come work with me and we'll build this together. But no, she said, look, I want you to come and lead in this area. And this idea, she was empowering. people and giving them their own purview was really inspiring. So when I think about Gwyneth Paltrow and this idea of her saying, look, I'm, I'm new to this. I didn't go to business school. You're all sitting here talking about these these acronyms. And I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about. Can we just clarify this year? And there was a moment where she said she went from looking at her phone

underneath the desk and Googling things underneath the desk to putting her phone on the desk and saying, look, guys, can you just explain? I want to make sure I understand so I can analyze these numbers. And by being so direct and so open about what she did and didn't know, that like kind of unlocked this thing in the room where all of a sudden her other employees are like, I'm so glad to you ask that question. I wasn't sure. But it sort of destigmatizes these questions and destigmatizes that vulnerability about what you know or don't know.

And then everyone feels so empowered and like it's not a problem not to have the answer. One of the things, though, when you're, let's say you're newly promoted, and I think guys and girls struggle with us alike, but maybe women are penalized more than men for this. I could, I'm not sure, but I think this could be true. And in this, they almost feel like they, I know that's my wife's a sales leader. She works for a tech company and has leaders who report to her as well as individual contributors. And I think she, she would feel a big, pressure, even when she was brand newly promoted, which happened years ago, to know everything, to be the expert, because if not, it's like there was judgment or she felt that. I have to guess there are other women who feel that, maybe even more so than men. What about for that person? Because Gwyneth Bousser is famous.

She could probably do that. The CEO is famous. They could probably, or at least they have the title. what about for that person who's not famous and just got the title and they feel like, oh, my God, I got to know all the answers. And if I don't, they're going to think I'm stupid and it doesn't help that I'm like the only woman in the room now. I got to know my stuff.

What about for that person? That plays into this concern about imposter syndrome. And there's a lot of data about women being afraid that they, that they don't deserve a title because they're the only one or this idea that they're in this tiny minority and the emphasis and the focus is going to be on them. And there's a lot of data on that. And it's no joke. There's also a real double standard.

Women are judged more harshly than men on so many different counts, including, you know, if they use humor in the office, if they show emotion in the office, all of these things, they're judged more harshly. But one thing I found was really valuable for these women is they say, look, I know X, Y, and Z. But I'm unclear about this specific thing. And I think really laying out, not saying I don't know what I'm doing, but saying, I really need some guidance on this factor of the business or bringing someone in saying, look, I know a little bit about this, but you are the expert. Teach us all. And being very clear

that, yes, you know your stuff, but there are areas where everyone can learn. I think that's when you're inviting expert help and admitting that, yeah, you're not knowing the expert on everything. Bring in the expert and say, look, we could use some specific help in this area. And then you're not saying, oh, I don't know what I'm doing. You're just saying, here's where we need the help. I love it. This is so good, Julia. I really appreciate you invest your time, especially getting up early with me here on the West Coast. Oh, I'm always up early. That's the secret to my success is just waking up really early. Well, now that you say that, do you have any other secrets that you could share that other than waking up early? I'd like to wake up early and just get my day started, not think too much about it. Just like get right in. I'm like a firefighter. I lay out everything the night before. I love asking questions. And I really found that people are incredibly helpful. And I think that if you ask for help and explain to someone why you want their perspective,

then they're flatter to know that you care. And then they're eager to give you their help. And so I've been so grateful that I've gone to so many people. I've probably asked hundreds of people who are the CEOs who you think are most interesting. Are there any characteristics you've noticed? And just saying, here's why I want you to tell me that. And not just like, I'm sending you a mass email and hoping you'll respond. It's like, I value you.

And I think when you tell someone that you value their opinion, then they're more likely to share it with you. Are you like this in your personal life, like at cocktail, I know I read that you like to host dinner parties. Are you the life of the party? Are you asking a bunch of questions or are people asking questions to you like? What's it like socially since for a living this? You're asking questions and being inquisitive.

My husband would say that at dinner parties, I'm like a moderator. I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to talk. want to pull everyone into the conversation. I'm asking questions. And I think I do. I am a question asker. I can't help it. But I love it when people interact who don't know each other. And so I'll say, oh, so-and-so, you should talk to so-and-so. You have this thing in common. And I'll try to generate conversation among people and almost pose a question for them to talk about. So what are the keys to hosting a great dinner party? Mix of people, some of whom know each other, but definitely some who don't know each other.

and not so big that you can't all at some points be part of the same conversation. Love it. And now, like, the pandemic had to be a, I mean, it's a bummer for a lot of reasons, but that had to be one of them that you really missed, I bet. I also didn't have any time to host dinner parties when I was writing this book. But we started gathering people outside in our backyard, and I just love bringing people together from different worlds and seeing what they're curious about. Again, it comes back to the question asking.

I just, I can't help myself. The book's called When Women Lead, What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, How We Can Learn from Them. Thank you for sending it over and giving me a chance to read it, Julia. And this is so good. I appreciate the passion and energy and love, obviously, for your topic that you bring to this. I know you're on TV a lot. You're talking to people a lot and you just bring it 100%, which means a lot to me. So I really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. Well, you're such a pro. You've done the 10,000 hours of interviews. You know what you're doing. You're an ultimate expert. Well, I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. And I'd love to learn more from you about the whole art of interviewing. We could have a two-hour conversation on that alone.

So if you're up for it, I'd love to have another one. Absolutely. Let's do it. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a great one. This conversation with Julia is another great reminder about.

how important our role is those of us who are parents. Her parents inspired her to pursue hard things and instilled in her a love of asking questions. Again, we should do the same, whether you're leading your children or even you're leading at work. I think we should inspire people to want to pursue hard things. That's how we build confidence, right? Confidence needs evidence, doing all. hard things helps provide that for ourselves, as well as a love for asking questions. Asking questions is a sign of respect, as she said, and that you care.

Let's ask more questions than we answer, both at work and at home. Let's approach people with more curiosity and less judgment. This is how we show we care, both the people that we work with and the people that we live with. And then I loved her entrepreneurial spirit in her career, creating the Disruptor 50 lists, right? Just having a brainstorming session on a regular basis with people you work with, coming up with ideas, realizing it's a quantity game. Most of them will not work, but every once in a while, one of them will. And I have to imagine that one of the reasons she's so valuable to her employer at CNBC and probably a desired person for others to want to hire, is because not only is she awesome at her day job and interviewing people and being great on air,

but she's also an idea machine and is coming up with ways to add value to her company. And it's evident that she loves it. And this is a win-win situation for both CNBC and Julia. And I think all of us could learn and be inspired by that. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. If so, I'd love it if you would tell a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Julia Borson, I think she'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate

the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcasts, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.