The School of Greatness - 636 Lead the Way with Nancy Duarte

Episode Date: May 4, 2018

“WHEN YOU HAVE A VISION, IT BURNS INSIDE OF YOU.” If you want to find your purpose in life, you need to dream with others in mind. When you find that purpose, you’ll have to lead others. When you do, there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with that. To explain this more, and how to tell if you’re really meant to be a leader, I brought back this clip from Nancy Duarte. Nancy Duarte is the founder of the design firm Duarte, Inc. They have consulted companies and leaders like Apple, Google, GE, and so many more to create the speeches and presentations that have shaped all of the brands we love. Her most recent book is all about how leaders can use storytelling to enroll their teams to follow their vision. You’ll learn all about what it takes to bear the torch of leadership, on Episode 636. In This Episode You Will Learn: Who the real leaders are (1:00) The importance of being a torch bearer (1:51) Why we need self mastery (2:25) How businesses used to be run (2:53) What your dreams need to have to be successful (3:48) Plus much, much more

This is 5-Minute Friday! We've got the one and only Nancy Duarte in the house. She is a communication expert who's been featured on major platforms like Forbes, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and on CNN. And her firm, Duarte Inc., has created more than a quarter of a million presentations for the world's most influential businesses, institutions, causes, and authors.

And Nancy has won several prestigious awards for communications and entrepreneurship and teaches classes at Stanford university several times a year. Also, her firm has influenced how the world perceives some of the most important brands, including Apple, Facebook, GE, Google, and TED. She is also the author of three award-winning books and just came out with a new one called Illuminate. We didn't want leader and follower, So we have torchbearer and travelers. And the torchbearer is someone who decides to lead.

I think everyone's called to lead, but few actually choose to accept it. It's a lot. And it sounds heavy, yeah. But it's like a mantle you choose to, you know, Frodo got the ring. He was a ring bearer, right? And he had to choose to go on this journey or not go on it. He had a choice. He could have given it to someone else.

Yeah, he flipped it over his shoulder. He'd been like, tink. And so it is. I mean, it sounds kind of heavy, and I wish it sounded more delightful to lead. But it's like you're the bearer of a torch. And we liked the concept because if you think about the places in which you use a torch, they're usually a little scary and dark, maybe wet, cave, unknown. And a leader, what they'll do is cast just enough light to be like, oh, I can do that. It's just this short-term thing.

You may have this vision, the long view, but you have to communicate the short trip in a compelling enough way that makes people want to take those next few steps and get there. And so that's why we chose Torchbearer. Because it also, something about fire and the passing of fire, kind of burns in your belly, right? When you have a vision, it burns inside of you. Like, you'll do everything you can to make sure that vision's realized. And so that kind of passing of fire and it kind of burning in your belly is a big part of it, too.

It's funny because I think you actually said it. It needs to be on behalf of others, I think. I think we're born to advocate for those less fortunate than us. And once we get to that place, we give ourselves away, right? The only reason you need self-mastery is so you can give it away. I think the happy people do that. The miserable ones don't. I think that's part of it.

It was funny when we were looking at stories for Lumini. There were these great stories of how business used to be run. People don't realize Watson Senior, the CEO of IBM during the war, he kept producing computers. The world didn't need them. Didn't need them at all. I mean, they were the, you don't even remember what computers were back then. They were more like calculators. They had cards and stuff.

Anyway, he just kept making them just to keep the people employed. Now, you wouldn't be able to do that today, right? You have to return so much to shareholders. Kept them employed. And he had to build warehouses to just put these computers in. He didn't even need them. The war was over and suddenly the US government needed a census and he had all the computers in stock that they needed. And he made this great big sale right after the war was done, right? Yeah. Hershey, same thing, kept all of his team employed during the war doing civic projects. They would build

parks and he just kept them going. You can't make decisions like that in business, especially not public businesses today. So I think there is this purpose. I think you have to dream with a purpose. There has to be a purpose in mind, or your dreams will be blocked. So I do think it's on behalf of us.

And it can't be self-centered only, right? You can have self-centered dreams. We want to have a better life, make more money or be healthy, whatever it is, but I think it's got to be a greater good. Right. True? Right.