The Art of 360 Feedback For Emerging Leaders

You're listening to Leading up with Udemy. This podcast is your guide to developing your skills as an emerging or seasoned leader. I'm Alan Todd, your host and the Vice President of Leadership Development at Udemy. Together we can work, lead and live differently to create a better world. I was delighted to sit down with the executive coach Alyssa Cohn on the podcast this week. Alyssa as an executive coach has a lot of really well formed lessons on everything from figuring out your triggers and how to give feedback and how to find ways to better lead yourself and then lead others and lead the business. She is very direct and I think there's a lesson in Alyssa's directness for all leaders that we could all be a little bit more transparent, a little bit more direct. And she made a comment about when you talk to people to be clear and diplomatic. Clear is about giving you that honest, direct feedback. But diplomatic's important. It's about how you say it. The way in which you deliver that message makes a big difference in how people receive it. And I think that's really important and I think it's undervalued in a lot of leadership roles.

360 feedback is getting feedback from people all around you to help you see how you show up. Because you're the expert on your intention but everybody around you is the expert on your impact. And when you can attune and align your intention with your impact then that helps you build leadership capacity. However, when you're not aligned, what that means is that you're acting in a way and they're not receiving it in that way. Which means you have to have awareness around that so you can fix it.

This week on Leading up my guest is renowned executive coach and author Alyssa Cohn. She is a world renowned executive coach who has worked with founders and C suite executives of fast growing startups like Venmo and Etsy and DraftKings and CEOs and senior leaders at large companies like Dell, Microsoft, Google, Pfizer and many more. Thinkers50 and Marshall Goldsmith named Alyssa the number one startup coach in the world. Her book From Startup to Grownup is a guidebook for entrepreneurs on the leadership journey from founder to CEO. And her podcast of the same name finds Alyssa talking to founders, creators and builders of all kinds of about their insights and experiences in going from startup to grownup. Alyssa, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much Alan. We're thrilled to be here.

So one thing I'm dying to know. You're coaching leaders of fast growth companies and giant companies. What's the Difference between the leadership skills required to run these fast growth companies and the big behemoths.

Yeah, so it's a great question. All of the CEOs I work with and really all CEOs everybody, everywhere, need to have an advanced and sophisticated set of leadership skills. That's of course true. And you have to be able to adjust to your situation. The difference with startup CEOs in particular, founder CEOs, is that a startup is an extreme work environment, which means there's a lot of pressure. The highs and lows come fast and furious and the rapid pace of change in a startup is exponential, which means that your playbook from last week may not work this week. And so what you need to do is to rapidly gain skills with a lot of velocity. You need to have new learning, new self awareness and build new skills and a new understanding rapidly. And I would say the pace of change and the pace of the need for you to grow is what's really different for startup CEOs.

And what about the large company senior leaders? Does their job look different? Different? What is it that they have to do that's different than the startup CEOs?

Yeah, I think what they have to do is think about a larger set of stakeholders. So for example, I coach the CEO of a large public company and he would recognize that at the end of the day he didn't really have the opportunity to personally affect anything. He had to do all the orchestration through his leadership and they had to do the orchestration through their managers. That's not laziness and that's not bad. That is just the way it is when you're running really what is essentially a big battleship. And so they have to think much more about how do they influence, how do they communicate, how do they communicate at scale and also how do they create the conditions people to making good decisions. Even when leaders are not present startup CEOs even of large organizations, as they grow bigger, they do, especially founders, they tend to have an impact themselves. They can definitely get in with their own hands when necessary and people definitely look to them for a lot more direct leadership. But I think the skills that are necessary in large public companies have to do with influence, have to do with communication, have to do with helping their people make good decisions even when nobody else is around.

Now how about if we go the other way? You coach these fast growth startups, is there anything different about leading brand new startups or startups that aren't fast growth but smaller in scale?

Oh yeah, absolutely. You have to adjust Your leadership style to your situation at hand. So actually I've worked with plenty of startups who've started as like 10 people, 20 people, 30 people, grown to 150 people and have had to backtrack because of different market conditions, back to seven people or 60 people. And so you've gotta be able to adjust your style up or down. But at the end of the day it comes back to how do you communicate so people really are hearing what you're saying. And that happens through meetings with large groups, small groups, one on ones, really making sure everyone understands kind of the same thing. The music in your head is the same as the music in their head. And I would say that the most important skill across the board for all these CEOs is be able to be clear about what the current situation requires and then to find the right tool.

For the right moment, going deeper onto to these leadership skills. I always like the quote from Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. And you argue that before we can lead people and lead a business, we have to first lead ourselves. So talk about that. What does that mean?

Yeah, you know, in my book From Startup to Grown up, that's exactly what I say. It's divided into three sections. Managing yourself, managing the team and managing the business. It always starts with you. Why? Because the first person you lead every day is the one who wakes up in your pajamas. You've got to make sure that you have the right self awareness to figure out how to lead that person. Because you're responsible for certainly yourself, maybe a family, and certainly a bunch of employees in an organization. So how do you make sure you are emotionally in the right place? How do you make sure you have a strong sense of the most important things to accomplish and the most important things that people around you need to be doing. How do you tune yourself to the right communication, to the right motivation tools? And it starts with being aware of your own triggers. It starts at being aware of how you come across. And it starts by making sure that you are taking care of yourself emotionally, spiritually and physically. So you can show up with a lot more intention.

In terms of the self awareness, what do you mean by triggers?

Well, triggers are a lot of things anybody in organization's probably experienced at some point feeling something that surprised them. So somebody says something and they become overly emotional for some reason. I work with one co founder and normal aggravation happens in the workplace. And when normal aggravation happens in the workplace because people don't know what exactly what's going on because they make mistakes. He tends to have an overactive, an over expression around that. So what's going on? Well, turns out if you go back to managing yourself, we sort of see that he's very self critical, that he's massively perfectionist and therefore there's this constant inner discontent driving him. So when anyone makes a simple mistake, he definitely overreacts to that. So that's one example of recognizing that he has a trigger that he needs to get ahold of. The other thing I would say is that when you have patterns that happen over and over again. So for example, you always hire a person who looks like this kind of a person and you fall in love with their resume and then they disappoint you. Well, that happens once, that's kind of understandable. That happens three times and you're like, maybe you're the problem. And maybe you need to recognize that you have a pattern of not going deep enough when you're interviewing people or falling in love with somebody before you really get to know them. All of those different ways you can identify your own triggers. Personally, of course, when you do 360 feedback, as I, as a coach I'm constantly doing 360 feedback for my clients. 360 feedback is getting feedback from people all around you to help you see how you show up. Because you're the expert on your intention, but everybody around you is the expert on your impact. And when you can attune and align your intention with your impact, that helps you build your leadership, helps you build leadership capacity. However, when you're not aligned, what that means is that you're acting in a way and they're not receiving it in that way. Which means you have to have awareness around that so you can fix it.

Yeah. So with regards to feedback, Marcus Buckingham, he was the bestselling author First Break all the Rules and he's been going on these rants of late that basically says people don't want feedback and it's based on a set of flawed assumptions about humans and nobody wants it. And then there's this whole other school of thought. Feedback is fuel. And you coach CEOs who regularly have to have unpleasant conversations, give negative feedback because let's face it, they deal with tough situations. There's no choice. How do leaders use feedback to improve performance?

Absolutely. Actually, there's two sides to your question. Right. So first of all, how do leaders use feedback? The first is they have to be aware enough to get the feedback. So my clients are self selecting. They've Hired me because they're willing and able to improve. The desire is they're hungry to improve. So to do 360 feedback is a very normal process. To give them a snapshot of how they are showing up today and what's working and not working about their style. The most common reaction when I give someone 360 feedback. So again, I go to everybody around them and I say, what's working? Like if we're doing about you, Alan, I would say, what are Alan's strongest strengths? What are Alan's development opportunities? And what specific suggestions do you have for Alan to help him improve? And. And I would get all that information, I'd present it to you, and I present it to my CEOs. And the most common reaction is defensiveness. No, they don't understand. Boo hoo. Right? That is normal. And then to their credit, they pretty quickly get over it. Then the next most common reaction is it's all true. You're right, I get it. It's all true. And then they have to do the painstaking work of making that change. And the thing about feedback is that it's just perception. And perception is not reality, except that their perception is their reality. Which means you gotta deal with their reality, right, of how you're showing up. But the second part of that question has to do with how do you give other people feedback? And the truth is that your life, your professional life and your personal life, there's an exponential increase in the quality of your life, the amount you're able and willing to have to difficult conversations with people. To say the truth, to be direct. Now, what I coach my clients to do is to be direct and also diplomatic, to be clear and also compassionate. Because you have a listener on the other side of you. You have a human being on the other side of you. And if you just land your feedback in this blunt way, which doesn't take into account their feelings, they're not going to hear you. This can be resentful. So you've got to do it with care, but you've got to do it with candor. And the truth is that anybody who wants to grow will grow from feedback. Anybody who does not want to grow will get defensive and stop there. In response to feedback. And I would submit, you don't want them in your company.

So you've said one of the mistakes you think they make is they don't give feedback quick enough, often enough, or move people out fast enough.

That's true.

Why is that?

Because I've observed that for 22 years as a coach, I'll tell you. One time I was coaching a CEO and he had to give some feedback to one of his executives and they happened to be on a trip. And so I got em all prepared. You know, like, you're gonna talk to this person, you're gonna have the feedback and you're gonna have the conversation while you're on this two or three day trip. Oh yeah, I'm gonna do it, Alyssa. Absolutely. Okay. So they're on this two or three day trip and he comes back and I say, okay, so how'd that feedback conversation go? Oh, I didn't have time. And I'm like, okay, didn't have time. So then I happened to talk to the same executive the next day. And because I'm like this, I said, the CEO does have some feedback for you and I'm sure you're going to talk about this and I would love to discuss it with you, but I guess you didn't really have time on your trip. He said, what do you mean we didn't have time? We spent two entire days together in the car. So why. Right. Interpersonal squeamishness is the number one reason people don't give feedback. Right. The second is I don't exactly know what to say. Which comes back to interpersonal squeamishness. Lack of planning, lack of desire to do it because you don't wanna go to the trouble. Cause it's uncomfortable of actually putting your mouth around the words. Which by the way, is why I give a lot of scripts to my clients. Because it's very helpful to have words to use when you need to give this. And then there's also a question of loyalty. This person's been with me for so long, I don't want to rock the boat. And I think because they have not been clear, there is definitely a question, have I been clear to this person and have I let them know that there's such a problem that I'm going to need to move them out if they can't fix this problem? And if you can't answer that question, have I been clear? Strongly affirmative. Then of course you're uncomfortable firing someone. Naturally. And so it's kind of a cascading effect about what goes on around here. And then the other thing is it's just really hard to fire someone. It just really is. It's hard to deal with that, like, what are they going to do? I'm going to feel bad, they're going to feel bad. I would say it differently I would say that every employee has a contract, right? And so the contract goes back and forth. So your job as a CEO, as a leader, is to create the conditions for great work, to be clear, to be consistent, provide a workplace that everybody wants to achieve and do their best. Their job, they have a job too. They have to show up, they have to do their work. They have to do what's expected of them. They have to do more than what's expected. More than what's expected is not just achieving their goals. It's also managing their teams appropriately, fitting with the culture. And the way that we have decided it's about some of these nuanced, maybe hard to articulate skills and energy, that it's hard for the CEO or any leader to point out that they are not doing. So. I think it's a whole stew of elements that make it harder. But I would say that if you're willing to do the work, to be rigorous about what your expectations are and where the person is meeting and not meeting your expectations, and to have a couple of candid conversations, which, no question, are uncomfortable, you're at least gonna be able to answer in the affirmative. Have I been clear?

Is it one of the hardest things for leaders to do? Is it the thing that they most fear?

Um, no. I mean, there's a lot of things that are hard to do that's hard to do. I think coaching people is hard to do. It's easier to tell them what to do. It's easier to answer their questions rather than really push them to think about it. I think it's really hard to even articulate what you're hoping for from your executives around you. I think developing strategy, especially these days, where things are changing so fast in the macro environment, is really hard. I think there's actually a lot of hard things to do when you're a leader. Finding great talent is, like, one of the hardest things to do.

So in an area of rapid change, it would seem that having some stability, things like routines would help make us better. And you've written about Rafael Nadal, the tennis great talk about how do you coach leaders to build routines to make them better leaders?

Yeah. So, first of all, it's really helpful to identify what you mean when you say better leader. Right. So when I work with all my CEOs, I'm like, if you were gonna be the best leader, like the best leader, from your point of view, what would that be like? And of course, they don't know. They haven't thought about that. So then we spend some time thinking about that, and then they can articulate what a great leader is from their point of view. So a great leader just throw out some words here, would be inspiring, would be consistent, would be calm in a crisis, would be able to adapt to a situation that's necessary, change their style quickly, that kind of thing. Fantastic. So starting point of that is again for you to have your own emotional self control. So I truly believe that routines and rituals, when enacted consistently, help you be your best. So that certainly might mean a morning routine that makes you feel good. One of my clients, we can talk later about imposter syndrome, but one of my clients had a bad case of imposter syndrome, which means he was constantly afraid he was going to be called out as a fraud. So I asked him to write a highlight reel. So a highlight reel is your best of moments, times where you overcame challenges and you really were proud of yourself. So he thought that was pretty hokey. But to humor me, he did that and he wrote down his highlight reel. Then, surprisingly to him, because he found it very helpful as a ritual, he read his highlight reel to himself every day. And then he challenged himself to add one new thing to his highlight reel that was a ritual. What that did, surprisingly for him, but it really worked, is it filled him with a good feeling and it helped motivate him to then do the difficult things for the day, like to do one difficult thing in the morning that made him feel much better all day. And he kept doing that over and over, reading the highlight reel and doing one difficult thing and as a ritual. And that both became part of his practice and really upped his energy level as well as his productivity. So that's an example where it's a ritual and a routine that's not like meditation or writing in your journal. I think there's so many things that you can ritualize that are going to help you be better for yourself, which means you're going to better show up with other people.

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Going on to that Imposter syndrome. We all have a little voice inside our head sometimes that says we're not good enough or negative self talk. How do successful leaders do that? Other ways beyond the highlight reel.

Yeah, so it's true. 70% of workers in America with the surveys have at some point suffered from imposter syndrome. When you think about high achievers, and I know everyone on this podcast listening to this podcast is a high achiever. 95% of high achievers suffer from imposter syndrome or severe self doubt. The feeling they're going to be called out is a fraud. So the highlight reel is one element, one tool that I use. The second tool is actually tuning into that voice and really getting clear about the irrational nature of what it's saying to you. So one of my clients, she had a lot of imposter syndrome around leaders. She was a youngish leader, she was the president of a very large division at a very large public company. And she was clear they'd made a mistake. So I was pushing her to ask, okay, so they made a mistake, fine. They're going to find you out. Tell me what's going to happen. And we went down to this path of like, they're going to demote me. Okay, they're going to demote you and everyone's knowing about it and you're going to be uncomfortable. And then what? It ended up with her being demoted to this lowly office in the broom closet. Right, that's what she had in her mind. Now, that was unconscious. So when I helped her make the unconscious conscious, she realized that she came to work every day with fear of being pushed into, like being found out, pulled out of her role, and being put in that little office in the broom closet. So every. That's very helpful because we could laugh at that. We realized how irrational that was, by the way, since it's really hard to have difficult conversations with people and fire people. I was like, you got a lot of time because they're not really going to be able to like have this discussion with you for quite a while. In the meantime, you're probably going to have a few wins under your belt. But every time she then had this issue, like this fear in her chest about the imposter syndrome, we would both use the code word broom closet. And that would really help her come to her senses and not be so irrational about what she was concerned was going to happen. That's another very good tool to Use. I just want to share one more tool, which is to create an avatar. So again, back to who you want to be as a leader. What can also be super helpful is, is how would this person act? One thing around imposter syndrome is like, I'm not a real CEO. If I were Steve Jobs, he would know what to do. So that's like the bad kind. That's comparison. However, you might at a moment be uncertain or unsure about what to do. And if Steve Jobs is your avatar or someone else is your avatar because you admire the way they would handle a certain thing, you can channel that person and act the way they would act in the moment, kind of borrow their energy. So one of my clients had to deal with a lot of authority figures, and that was very difficult for her. She was a community organization. She ran a nonprofit, and that was very difficult for her because of her own background. So I asked her, who's an avatar that you can turn to when you are ready, when you're feeling pushed around like on the playground? And she immediately came up with Anthony Bourdain, the celebrity chef, this TV star from parts unknown. And she told me, I can picture him coming out of the bush with a machete in his mouth. And I'm like, whoa, I did not expect that from you, but God bless, I love it. So she began to channel Anthony Bourdain in the moments where she felt like a little girl and if she found it very, very helpful because she had this inner knowing, inner picture of herself with a machete in her mouth.

Wow.

One of my CEOs was telling himself he couldn't hire senior executives. And, like, why not? It was very strange. He didn't want to pull away people from their secure jobs to come and work for him in case they failed. Wow. Okay. So, like, you tune into your self talk, then you have your own code word for what that means. So in the moment of difficulty, you can call it up as a result of having done the work that tunes into your self talk.

Yeah, I love it. Those are great things. And I think your highlight reel reminds me we've had Kim Cameron on the show and he's written a bunch of books in Positive Leadership as one of the top scholars in positive organizational leadership. And one of the things he always says is sometimes people think it's like, schmaltzy, or they think it's saccharine sweet, the positive stuff. And then he rattles off, like, research fact after research fact. That highlight reel can completely reprogram your brain and ultimately if you do it enough over time, completely change some of your like brain and emotional chemistry that makes you a better person and more positive.

Totally, totally. And I would just say I myself am a pretty well known skeptic and I think things are schmaltzy. So here's my advice to you. See for yourself. Try it. Don't spend your energy rejecting ideas. Just try it a couple of times and see what happens.

I think that's absolutely pristine advice. Just go try it. You don't need to be a skeptic. It doesn't cost anything, right? A lot of our listeners aspire to be future leaders. Maybe they want to start up, but they're not. They're on a team. They're not a team leader. So what's your advice for early career people? How might they do better? How do they work better with their boss? How can they perform better at work?

Yeah, I love that question. First of all, above and beyond their boss, most important thing for you to do right now as you're early in your career is build your network. Build your network outside of the organization by figuring out who might be in your industry who are interesting people. Everyone wants to mentor junior people. So feel comfortable talking to people around you and having coffee with them. The second thing is do the work and pluck up your courage to go. Approach senior executives in your current workplace and have coffee with them again. Everybody wants to mentor junior people. Believe me, they will be impressed that you ask them, that you ask them out for coffee. Now I would say this, the other thing is that the way to do a great job at work is to do a great job at work. So distinguish yourself, be proactive, be willing to do more, be cheerful, be interested in what's going on around you and then have your one on ones with your boss and ask direct questions as in what? What's the best way to communicate with you? What looks like a win for you? How do I get a win with you? And how do you like to receive information? How do you like to me to update you on tasks, the status of tasks, that kind of thing. And when you have that kind of open dialogue and you're really focused on delivering more than your share, that is going to distinguish you from so many of the people at work.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think people struggle with getting up the courage to do what you just said. Like I've heard that what you're saying and it makes perfect sense. But most people listening aren't going to do it. So what can we do here. Now, between you and me, to get one of our listeners to pluck up the courage to go find some senior people in their company and just ask them for some advice, career advice.

Ellen, let me tell you a little secret. Successful people do what unsuccessful people don't feel like doing. So the way we're going to motivate that person. And we're talking to you. You know what I mean? You right now.

Yeah.

Okay.

They're listening.

Yeah. I'm telling you, you should be the one that does the thing that other people don't feel like doing. Not only that, but back to the what's the worst that can happen? You can email one of your senior executives or run into them in some place and then say, by the way, could we just schedule 20 minutes for coffee? I'd love to talk to you about your career and just get a sense of you and what's important around here. And what are they gonna say? You're fired? Unlikely. Unlikely, right. They're probably gonna say, sure or even, I'd love to see Kathy, my scheduler. Or if you email them, they might not get back to you. And you know what? Your life is gonna be just fine. So recognize, like, what's the worst that can happen and what's the best that could happen? The best that can happen is you get pulled into amazing projects and you develop a stellar network that I personally wish I had done when I was in my 20s. I didn't realize it was a thing that you could do. So don't be like me.

And for listeners in season one, we had Erin Mara. She's the chief learning officer at BJ's Wholesale Club and young rising star. And I said, aaron, how do you get to be C suite leader at a very large, successful, publicly traded. And without hesitation, she's like, I just found early mentors. I'm like, how did you do it? I just got up to courage and asked. It's exactly what you said, Alyssa. You give us perfect advice for early career people to do it. And we have other proof points of people. You, of course, have seen them in your coaching, and we've had them on the podcast. So one part of knowing yourself is knowing your strengths. I'll start with Harvard professor John Cotter. He famously wrote about managers versus leaders, and he says management is focused on order and stability, while leadership is focused on change in movement. And he said, one's not better than the other, but you do have to have both. And my question for you, can one person be both? And when you're going from startup to grownup, do you have to go from one to the other?

Yeah, I think it is a deep philosophical question and it is in some ways two different people. And there's no question that in the startup world, we definitely talk about the founder being almost like a very different character from the operating CEO. Now, to my mind, if you want to be the operating CEO, you can grow and you can build those skills. But I do agree that there's a natural inclination in one direction or the other and there's nothing wrong with going with your strengths. However, even if you're just a manager, quote unquote, and you don't have to do maybe more visionary, strategic things, there are going to be moments where you're going to be called upon to exercise real leadership, real courage, real conviction when you don't feel like it, real ability to inspire people. There are times if you are more of a natural leader that you are going to have to do the tools of management, follow up, give feedback and coaching directly, do performance appraisals. I'm working with one CEO right now and we're working on his performance appraisals. And he is not the kind of person who wants to put pen to paper and do this, but he recognizes that for his executives, if he's expecting them to be great managers of their people, he needs to do some of the tools of management as well. And so I would just say it's not helpful to limit yourself, like, oh, that's not me. I think it's helpful to go with your strengths and to recognize that you want to have some baseline skills that you can draw upon. And then it's really helpful to hire someone around you to also deal with the other side of that coin.

So what do you make of, let's say, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, phenomenal entrepreneurs, both CEOs? Are they entrepreneurs or CEOs?

Well, that's an interesting question. I think that there's a lot of mythology around Steve Jobs, who is no longer alive, so we can't ask him. I've talked to many, many people who knew Steve well, who worked with him closely, and the mythology about his sort of dictatorial style, I think has been in some ways vastly overblown. I think there's no question he was a massive visionary, let's just face it, right? Also a massive communicator and showman. And I think he brought on people around him to be more of those managers. But I think he also created the conditions where people wanted to be at Apple because of what he brought to the table. You know, I think Elon Musk is even more mythologized. I don't know Elon Musk, do you? Nope. So, you know, I think that there's been a lot of stories in the press about him, and there's no question that he is a visionary. There's no question that he's a hard worker. There's no question that he's an incredible entrepreneur. I may have a contrary opinion about the things that he did in Twitter coming in. One thing I would say is that Twitter was clearly overstaffed. He could have maybe thought differently about the way he did it and done it differently. But, like, for him to come in and make cuts at Twitter was a very CEO move, not an entrepreneur move. Entrepreneurs are more like, oh, spend, spend, spend, doesn't really matter. I just read a biography of Walt Disney, so it's all I can think about or talk about is Walt Disney. And Walt Disney was a profound entrepreneur. He never gave away control. He never in his whole life. Even at the end of his life, he was still grasping for control. His vision was driving everything. He. He didn't really want people around him to have kind of power and control. He brought managers in. He was upset about the way they implemented process. He fired them. So I think that's really interesting. And by the way, it was chaos at Walt Disney until the end, until. Until Walt died. And yet they still built something amazing.

I want to switch. As we think about being a great leader, there's a concept that you coach people on around just personal mastery and expertise and expert performance. How do good people become great leaders? And how do they develop new skills or cement new habits? Is there a process they go through? I'm looking for some secrets, some tips that you would give a coachee to become great, to achieve mastery in some domain of life.

Yep. Listen up, people. Get your pens ready. It starts with intention. So it's just like what I talked about before. Figure out who you want to be. Like, truly write down who you want to be as a leader. And if you don't know, well, that's interesting. You'll never be a great leader if you can't articulate what greatness is. So read books, talk to other people. Observe people around you to distinguish and determine what a great leader looks like. Second, recognize that there are a set of skills that are going to get you there. And so pick the skills that you need to learn to get there. You can figure those out by finding mentors you can figure those out by self study, by reading, by observing around you. But recognize there are skills you need to develop. Use mentoring, self study, reading, observation to develop those skills. If you think you need a class, take a class. Udemy has a lot of classes. One of my classes is think like a CEO or communicate like a CEO. That's gonna help you build the skills you need to be that great leader that you want. And then constantly repeat that process over and over again as you continue to add skills to your repertoire. By the way, it's also the best way, way to future proof your entire career.

So take Alyssa's course on Udemy. Definitely what's racing through my head is like grit and perseverance. Great leaders, they don't get there without that. How important is that to you?

Grit and perseverance is everything. When you get a rejection or something doesn't go well, you're like, oh, I'm the only one. No. Every successful person has overcome massive rejection, massive setbacks, massive things that don't work out. Back to Walt Disney, 15 years. He had a bankruptcy and was constantly close to running out of money. First animated film, Snow White. It was an enormous critical success. They almost won a business that year. Steve Jobs, who got kicked out of Apple. Everybody encounters setbacks. They're a normal part of life. In fact, I talked to a professional football player and I told him, I always tell my clients that if you're in the NFL and you screw up a play and everyone knows you screwed up the play and it's embarrassing, you gotta put that behind. You gotta play the present. And I said to him, is that true? Am I saying that in a way that resonates for you? And he looked at me, he said, we are taught that mistakes are part of the game and setbacks are part of the game. And I would just say to everybody, setbacks are part of the game. Don't think you're gonna get through life without a lot of setbacks. You've got to find different strategies to quickly recover and try, try again, because that is going to lead you to the career and life of your dreams.

That's beautiful. And with your intention, write it down. What do great leaders look like? What does it look like for you? And write it down. Know your triggers. Learn how you come across. If you're giving feedback, be clear and diplomatic, which I love. Final question. As we wrap up, we have a question that we ask all of our guests. And this can be professional or personal. What are you curious about and learning now?

I'm going to give you personal and professional. So professional is I'm learning much more about podcasting because I have my own podcast, it's called From Startup to Grownup and I'm learning all the things you need to know to be a good podcast host, Alan, which I know that you're also learning. You've done a great job today.

Thank you.

And I appreciate learning from your example, but I love interviewing people, I love having deep conversations and so being a great podcaster is exciting for me and I'm learning every day. The second thing I'm learning about is health and longevity and health span and lifespan, specifically around what specifically it takes to be healthy, to be in shape and conditioned to build muscle. And I'm listening to Dr. Andrew Huberman's podcast where he has Dr. Andy Galperin on it and they've done six discussions, four hours each, that I am consuming in order to do my own self study about what it takes to build muscle and along with healthspan. So I love it. That's what I love to do.

Alyssa, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Thanks for having me, Alan. It was really fun.

Thanks again to Alyssa Cohn for joining us today on the podcast. Follow Leading Up a Podcast from Udemy Business Wherever you find your podcasts, listen to new episodes every Wednesday. Did you learn something new this episode? If you did, and I hope you did, consider telling a friend about the show or sharing the show on LinkedIn in we want to inspire as many leaders as we can. To learn more about Leading up or how Udemy can help you develop leaders at scale and move business forward, visit business.udemy.com the leading up podcast is produced by Udemy in partnership with Pod People. Special thanks to our production team, Alex Vicmanis, Amy Machado, Brian Rivers, Danielle Roth and Carter Wogan. Our original theme is by Soundboard.