Tell me about your vision. First of all, thank
you for having me. So I've spent a lot of my
career as a leader. I got thrust into leadership
when I was young and I made a lot of mistakes
and grew a lot. So my vision is based on growth
and trial and experiment. I think we're entering
a time where visions, where leaders need to be.
deeply creative and tapping much more into their
intuition than looking for set playbooks. I think
everything about the way, and depending on when
you maybe went to school, we were taught to lead
is being adjusted and it's challenging. No one,
no one likes that change. So I think it's a time
for leaders to be deeply creative and flexible
and quite open in how they are guiding. Tell
me more about that. Sure. I think there's been
a significant erosion in trust based on the events
of the last years, whether it was pandemic or
just political divisiveness. And when leaders
aren't, first of all, transparent about their
true north and their own values, I don't think...
teams, employees, anyone's willing to follow
anymore. I think the level of suspicion and the
thought by individual contributors that they
need to do what's best for them versus best for
the vision, if you will, it's what I love about
the name of the podcast, goes. So if a leader
can't explain where they are going, And why,
why that aligns with their values, who they are,
because it's not enough to say integrity, right?
You need to actually be able to say, this is
what integrity looks like for me. I've worked
with a lot of clients and you know what? Integrity
shows up differently. It doesn't mean that it's
not integrity, but integrity may be for one person.
in the moment, always giving direct feedback.
For another, it may mean never not doing what
they're going to do. Now, they sound the same,
but they're actually different and they show
up differently for organizations and for teams.
And I think the better a leader can articulate
where they are going and why, and then what their,
either the company's values are or... more moving
their personal values are and what it looks like
the more you lead with um i would call all oars
in the water going the same same direction um
and you don't have dragging oars and flipped
over oars because people are confused thank you
for sharing that um to a degree i agree with
what you say so tell me more about that like
how this research and this conclusion you come
on to and that you discovered, what was the journey
for that? How did you get started on that path?
I learned a hard, hard lesson early on in my
career when I was 22. And I had a first career
in television journalism. It's what my education
was in. And I got a, at the time that I thought
was like my dream job, a big break. I got a main
anchor job. Got been a news reporter for about
six months, got moved to another station as the
main anchor. I'm 22. I go in. I'm also producing
the evening newscast. And, you know, I meet my
new colleagues and I don't spend enough time
understanding what the dynamic was in that newsroom.
I went in thinking people would be happy to have
me there. I was going to learn on the job about
the community. I started. I was new, young. So
I was making some mistakes on air, not pronouncing
things. But I started to get anonymous notes,
right? When you produce an evening newscast and
you anchor an evening newscast, you go in in
the afternoon, right? Because you're working
till 1130 and midnight. And I would get to work
and there'd be anonymous notes outlining the
mistakes I had made and outlining that I should
leave. At first, I buckled inside. I went to
the news director and He sort of said, you know,
oh, don't worry about it. It's jealous, you know,
blow it off. And I had to really think very hard.
And this created my leadership philosophy because
I could either quit and say, you know, it's them
and look for another job. I could either give
in to the stress I was feeling. I was getting
sick. I was having ringing ears. I was having
panic attacks. Right. I'm telling you a very
condensed story. What I ended up doing was I
started by getting better, right? I was young.
I didn't know the town. I worked with a speech
coach to make sure I pronounced all the things
right. These were hard to pronounce names with
more vowels than I had ever seen strung together.
So I needed to get better. I learned the history.
I learned the culture. I then, as I was getting
better on air, I... had a series of one -on -one
meetings with the newsroom. And I just showed
them the notes. By then I had a stack of notes.
I mean, I wasn't getting like one note and then
a week later, another. I mean, it was every day
someone was going through the air checks and
finding mistakes. One by one, I had people come
in and I didn't ask who did it. I didn't ask
if they did it. I was very calm, but I did say
this wasn't okay. I'm new. I'm willing to learn.
But any feedback needs to come to my face that
that's how I'm going to operate. Right. I shared
that I was scared, but I'm not leaving. Right.
So I sort of put my stake in the ground in a
calm way and started to establish who I was and
how I was going to work with this. You know,
the note stopped. um which was was great i still
to this day right this is honestly it's 30 years
ago um no idea who sent them right you could
come up with suspects it didn't matter um after
about a year i took a hard look around at the
culture and thought and i have advised clients
and ever since then is this a place that's nurturing
growth or stifling growth and what i found it
was largely in a newsroom based on a whole series
of reasons that was insecure and very fear -based.
Station ownership had created that environment,
right? I sort of got dropped into this environment,
but it hadn't changed and I couldn't influence
that. And I recognize that even though I had
managed to get my situation in better shape,
it wasn't going to be an environment I wanted
to be in. What happened to that story, it was
several years before I could tell anyone about
that story. When I left that station, I had nightmares
for years. It took a while to fully process it.
I took the right actions at the time, which formed
me. But then as a leader, first when I ran other
newsrooms, and then when I got into corporate
America, I recognized how important it was to,
if you're coming into a team you don't know,
to really listen and understand the culture you're
in, and then share as explicitly as you can what
works for you and what doesn't. Like, where do
you get flagged? Obviously, I have, because of
that early experience, a real need for clear,
direct communication. I provide that, but I also
expect it. And the story is painful. as it is
to tell all these years later, has been helpful
for teams and people to understand how I will
respond and how I expect to be treated. And so
my advice for leaders is the more you can sort
of create the who you are and why you are without,
you know, I've spent seven minutes, maybe, I
don't know, I'm not looking at a clock, giving
you an idea. Leaders can do that very quickly.
This is not a multi -year activity. There's usually
one or two stories that really have formed how
we behave, and it's a repeatable pattern. And
I think if you can share that. And then your
teams or large organizations can share it back.
It's very, very helpful. Thank you for being
here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in
to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing
your reactions as these episodes continue to
move forward. This is going to get more and more
fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.