S4:E16 🎙️LIVE with Anne Leslie

Hi, I'm John Maxwell. When the top companies in the world are looking for trainers, speakers, and coaches, there's one name that stands above the rest, and that's Maxwell Leadership. Our certified team members have gotten proven results for companies all over the globe, and our reputation, I'm proud to say, is second to none. Some of our members have risen to the top of their profession, including the one you're going to meet today. I proudly introduce you to my friend Bob Fabien Zinga.

Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ. If you need to develop into a better leader, this podcast is for you. If you want to achieve a greater level of success, this podcast is for you. His mentor, Dr. John C. Maxwell, said it best: everything rises and falls on leadership. We hope to inspire you today and provide you with an insight that has the potential to positively impact the trajectory of your life. Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast.

Hello everyone, uh, welcome to the Andale Leadership and Success Podcast. This is your host Coach Bizzy, and I have a wonderful, wonderful guest today. I'm very, very, uh, excited. We're going to be talking to Anne today, Anne Leslie, uh, from the US but working IBM America. And let me, uh, share my screen. This way you're going to be able to see, uh, just a second, the LinkedIn page that I am looking at as well. I really love technology, don't I? Okay, here, here we go. You should be able to see it now. Thank God for technology. So you should see our LinkedIn page right here. Uh, so I'm listed as CISM, CRISC, and CCSP. Basically, I'm doing, uh, security executive just like me. So she's the head of the cloud risk at EMEA. So if you have any question for Anne, please go ahead and type your question in the comment section. And I'm going to be checking out the comments while I talk to her. Today, we're going to be talking about leadership in general, but she's going to be able to share about her journey and what she does. And I'm asking you guys to please please, uh, support her. And thank you so much for being here, but I also would like to know where you are coming from, which city, state, region, and, uh, let us know where you are joining us from. Okay, with no further ado, I'm gonna bring Anne right here. She is, uh, hello Anne, how are you?

Hi, super excited to be with you. Thanks so much for the invitation.

Yes, thank you. And I know, uh, you are in Paris, France right now. I believe it's about 3 or 4, right?

It is 3 PM in the afternoon. Yep, I'm in the IBM office in France, in Paris.

Fantastic. I am in California, so it's 6 AM here, and on the East Coast it's 9 AM. So thanks so much for making the time. So I'd like to start with this question with all of my guests. If you can please tell us about your leadership journey. Sure.

My leadership journey, I think, is a story of unlearning in a lot of ways. I started off my early career, and I was— I'm a recovering perfectionist, I think is probably the best way of describing me. Great student, you know, I did everything by the book. And then I had an idea of what my career was going to be, and then I fell in love when I was in my last year of college, and I actually veered off the path that I thought I was going to take. I got married quite young, I had kids quite young, and I was a stay-at-home parent for about a decade, which was not something I ever anticipated I was going to do. Steve Jobs famously said that you can only connect the dots looking backwards, and it's when I look back on that period, I find a much deeper sense of congruency in terms of what it taught me, what I learned, how I developed. Being a stay-at-home parent, being a parent full stop is hard. Being a stay-at-home parent is— it brings its own challenges. You know, working parents struggle with other things, but My kids taught me resilience that I didn't have before. They taught me negotiation. They taught me focusing on priorities. Um, they taught me to stop trying to control everything. And I think that's probably one of the greatest learnings that has helped me as a leader, which is sometimes you just have to have faith, um, and a vision. And adapt and go with the flow. And I have learned to— I think I've learned to let go, and I've learned to embrace what is actually happening around me as opposed to my upfront vision of how I wanted things to be. I've stopped fighting reality.

Wow, that is quite Powerful. It's true, becoming a parent definitely changes everything. I remember when I first found out I was going to become a dad, I mean, I had to grow up so quickly, go from being a boy or a child to a man almost overnight, especially once you realize that you are fully responsible for the development, the future, and the life of these little mini children or humans or whatever. Wow, that is wonderful. So how did you get into cyber security? Security and risk management.

So there's also a connection there with my kids. So after that decade or so as a full-time parent, stay-at-home parent, I— there was a change in my personal circumstances and I both wanted to and needed to find a role outside the home. And I found the beginnings of a new career working for a software company and I learned about technology, I learned about central banking, I learned about banking. It was sort of post-financial crisis, and I had a lot of fun, a lot of learning doing that. It was sort of high adrenaline, high energy, but there came a point where it began to become all-consuming, and I was working late, you know, the workweek was spilling into the weekend, and I came home late again one evening, and my daughter, who I think was 6 at the time, was standing behind the front door with her hands on her hips looking very irate, and and saying, "Why are you late again? Why did you miss dinner again?" And just the recrimination in her voice was scathing. And I was looking at her and I could see that she wasn't going to be blown off by any kind of wishy-washy jargon that might fly in a corporate setting. And I found that when I stripped away all the words that I might normally use to come up with an excuse, you know, in front of somebody in my work environment that wasn't going to wash with a child. And I found myself— I had no words. I had no words that were going to stack up and explain to her why what I was doing was more important, um, than being at home and spending time with her and her two brothers. And it was an awful moment. I I had this just feeling, this kind of empty sinking feeling going, if I can't explain the value of what I do to a child, am I kidding myself that there's value in what I do? And I couldn't shake that feeling. Now, I was grateful for the job that I had. It put food on the table, it paid the rent, you know, from a purely existential perspective, yes, you know, it ticked an awful lot of boxes. However, in terms of the compromises that I was having to make and the type of person, the parent that I was becoming, I didn't like it. And she just put her finger smack bang on the middle of it. So that feeling stayed with me for quite a few months. And then this, I think, maybe is probably an example of what I meant earlier, which is, you know, trusting and having faith that some things just happen. There's an element of serendipity. There's an element of when you put good things out in the world, they come back to you. I met somebody who became a friend and mentor, literally turned around at a conference and almost spilled my coffee on him, and he was gracious and I apologized. We had a conversation and it turned out that he's a very experienced security architect, he works in financial services, and on the side he was running, and still is running, an initiative to get, at that time, mid-career women into cybersecurity. And he said, 'Have you ever considered a career in cyber?' And I looked at him and he was a nice guy. I didn't want to, you know, awesome. Wow. But he sort of said, 'Have you ever considered it?' And I went, 'No.' And the reason I tell— there are multiple reasons I tell this story, but one of them is I now have a flourishing and successful career in cyber. Had you asked me 10 years ago— and somebody did ask me and I laughed because it seemed preposterous that anybody like me could find a space in that domain. And yet there is space for everyone. And I had such a narrow view of what cybersecurity and information security is— so narrow. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that. So we chatted and we both went our separate ways. And I came back to my home in France, and a few weeks passed by. And I happened to be sitting in front of my TV watching a parliamentary debate about the age of retirement. And I was looking at it. Now, I was recently divorced. I was rebuilding my life. And I was kind of going, oh my Lord, I'm, I'm going to have to work and be self-sufficient for 3 more decades at least. And there is nobody doing my line of work, which was selling software, who is older than 50. I was beginning to have a feeling of panic going, how am I going to keep myself relevant? And that's where I kind of, ah, that conversation I had with Patrick. So got the business card out, called Patrick, and I said, listen, I'm really sorry I laughed when you said that maybe a career in cyber could be a viable option for me. Could we have a do-over on that conversation? So long story, long story short, we did the conversation over. I had a completely different mindset. And one of the things that I have noticed repeatedly in cybersecurity is that people are incredibly generous with their time, their expertise, and their networks. So he introduced me to people who introduced me to people who gave me good advice. And the net-net of that was, given the experience I had in financial services, given that I was motivated and they could see I had an appetite for learning and an ability to learn, They said, start with cloud security, go get yourself a security certification in cloud security, which is where I got the CCSP. And the— it was as much proving to myself as to other people that I was able to do it.

Wow.

You know, sort of showing up and saying, no, I'm not technical the way you are, but I'm technical in my own way. And I am going to create a groove for myself. And I had to learn that. Right. I've had, that is a muscle that I've had to develop. I've gone through every shade of imposter syndrome. Um, I've gone through self-inflicted, you know, and ritual humiliation, but it didn't kill me. It was uncomfortable, but it's like one of the things that yoga teaches us, for example, is that all sensation is temporary.

Wow.

Good or bad. Right. So all of that to say, um, People, meeting good people and a search for alignment, I think, is probably the, the best way of describing how and why I decided to pivot into cybersecurity. I was looking for more alignment with, with what I have determined matters for me.

That is just amazing because every single year, at least a dozen times or more, I get people from across the US and around the world. They contact me on LinkedIn, they say, okay, how in the world do I get into cyber? Because the problem is, uh, they need to get experience, right? But they cannot get experience until they get a job, and nobody will give them a job because they don't have the experience. That catch-22 thing. So how, how did that work, uh, for you? What, what would you advise an aspiring, uh, cyber security professional?

I know there's a lot of debate about the value of certifications Right? And I am sympathetic to both sides of that debate. In my case, the certification was extremely important because it was an unarguable proof point about my motivation, about my ability to learn, and what happened in the end was that it allowed the two people in IBM who wanted to hire me it allowed me, it allowed them to get over the hurdles that some other people might have been erecting, right? They were able to point to that going, but she's got quite a rare and quite a sophisticated certification. She didn't invent it. This isn't fake. She did it, which is proving that she can. So for people who might have had some doubts about, eh, she's very different to the candidates that we would normally hire, we're not so sure about her, the proof point and the data point of the certification was absolutely essential. It silences the naysayers and it makes the life of supporters easier because it's, it's not a guarantee that you're going to be successful in a role, but it's a pretty good indicator, right? Um, so that would be one of the things that I would say certifications have value when they are used strategically and for a purpose. And it's the same reason I did my MBA. I did an executive MBA shortly after I went back to work in 2016. Same thing, right? Because people would look at me and go, oof, you know, big gap, stay-at-home parent, lacking ambition, not quite sure about this person, you know, not many people do that. And I've had to arm myself both with data points like further education and certifications to silence those people. And I've also just had to learn to block out the noise. The two things have to go hand in hand in my view, right? That I could have certifications coming out my ears, but if I don't have an accompanying level of self-belief, the certifications aren't going to carry you on their own. So I have had to build that, you know. I have come out of interviews, um, with recruitment companies in Paris in tears, because one in particular sticks in mind. I was sitting in front of two headhunters, they happened to be women, and they were very, very tough. And this was of maybe, I don't know, 2011, 2012. And they were looking at me with great Parisian disdain, going, oh, mais madame, you know, after this career gap, you'll be lucky to get work, but please have no illusions of a career.

Wow.

And I didn't have the self-belief then that I did now, and I let them say it, and I didn't have anything to say back in return because part of me believed that maybe it was true.

Wow.

And I came out of that, and I was standing in the street, and I had tears that were both tears of humiliation, tears of fury, tears of indignation. And I had to make a decision there and there, which was Am I going to allow people to keep making me feel this way, or am I done with it? And I made a decision there on the street going, no, I'm done with it. I'm not going to allow that to put boundaries, to curate what my potential is. And so, yeah, it's been, it's been a work in progress over the last decade and a half or so.

Well, there is so much to unpack there. You are correct about the mindset, because to me, a no means a later, right? Maybe not now, but not yet. You need to find a way to go around it, under it, or blow out the obstacle, or whatever you need to do in order to get to where you want to go. Now, especially for women and ethnic minorities, right? I think that is something I see over and over again. Like, I remember I got into cyber maybe, what, 25 years ago when I joined the US Navy 20 years ago, and I am almost always the one and only Black person in the room. Now I see a lot more women, which is great, a little bit more minorities too. But yeah, I think it's really what you think about yourself, your mental, I don't know, toughness, I guess, has a lot to do with it. So you talked about certification. Education, going back for your MBA, and finally on getting the experience. And once you get the opportunity to really excel at whatever it is that you are doing, right?

There's one maybe point that I think, um, there's an element of luck, right? Um, now I don't want to downplay the effort I put in. I did, I put in a lot of hard work. Um, however, opportunities arise when You've kind of positioned yourself as well as you can by taking care of what is within your own control. So I took the decision to educate, etc., and then I kept putting myself out there. I kept going for interviews. Now, I had doors shut, right? I, I got so fatigued and I got so discouraged initially when I was looking for roles in cybersecurity because I I would be really put through my paces. I could go through 5, 6, 7 rounds of interviews. And when push came to shove, they would go, "Mm, but you're not an engineer. Mm, but you haven't done computer science. Mm, you haven't got any experience." And all of that was true, but I mean, that was visible on my CV. They didn't have to bring me in for the interviews and put me through all of that. And I got really fed up with it because they were judging me on everything that I wasn't. Instead of judging me on what I was and what I could be. And I came to a cybersecurity boot camp, um, that was being run for a day by IBM France in collaboration with an association in Paris called SEPHSIS, which is all about getting women into cybersecurity. And I came along just to listen to the speakers, and there was somebody, an executive from IBM, and who also became a mentor of mine, um, And he stood up and he did speak from the heart, he always does. He was talking about why diversity and inclusion and bringing people in with different points of view and different capabilities, why it's important beyond the corporate policy, just why he believes it's important from a human point of view. And beside me was sitting a young woman who, by her own admission, is on the autistic spectrum, and what she was explaining was She has immense ability, she had rafts and rafts of certifications, however her appearance is a little bit quirky and she doesn't necessarily have massive gravitas or executive presence when she speaks, but it doesn't take away from her value as a human. And what she said was, "I can't get people to see beyond that first layer." I can't get people to see what I can offer. They just see what they see and they don't dig any deeper, and I don't know what to do about it. And her voice was shaking and she had tears, and I just felt for her in that moment. And I couldn't just leave her alone because she was alone. Like, she was brave to speak up like that. And I said— because she was sitting right beside me— I said to the guy who was speaking, that's exactly where all of the corporate speak falls apart, is when there is somebody like this and she can't find a job in spite of what everybody in all of the big companies is saying about wanting to bring in difference. And he looked at me and I kind of went, okay, I think I can, you know, make— put a cross on ever working for IBM, but On the— it was the opposite. He came up to me afterwards and he said, I would really like to speak to you more about this topic. Um, again, long story short, he brought me in and gave me my first role in cybersecurity, and he was the first person to judge me on what he believed I could become and not on what I wasn't. And When I do talks internally, I always remind people of that, that it would have been so easy for me not to have been hired because everything on paper said that I was risky. I was inexperienced or inexperienced. I was, um, Irish in France. I was a foreigner, like a woman. I was not technically trained, et cetera, et cetera. There were so many indicators that would have made it believable that I was not a good candidate, but he and the guy who became my first line manager both went out on a limb. They brought me in, and in spite of certain people saying to them, when it go— not, not if, when— when it goes pear-shaped, it's on you. And they did it anyway. And the reason today I'm able to pay it forward I'm able to make a difference is because those two guys who had influence and authority and hiring power behave differently. They made a decision to do things differently. They took on a level of personal risk and professional jeopardy in doing that. It paid off. It's worked out well. But that's where change starts. Change starts is when an individual decides to make a change.

Wow, that is, that is quite amazing. So what are some practical steps then you would advise aspiring leaders in this field to take when facing relentless opposition?

So picking your battles. A younger version of me tried to fight every injustice.

Right?

I am, and I remind myself, there's a quote from Winston Churchill which is, "If you stop to throw stones at every barking dog, you're never going to make any progress." I'm probably, I'm not getting it exactly right, but that's the gist of it, right? The gist is you can't take on everything. So I think it's being clear about what is intolerable and taking that on, and then what is desirable. And sometimes there are big-ticket items that will take time, and you need to build up a coalition, and you can't do it on your own. So, yes, I advocate for that as well, because it's something I'm working on for myself, is people don't always see things the same way. And that's the flip side of diversity, right, is that we don't all see the things things the same way. However, when we are patient and we have a vision and we are committed to driving change, sometimes it's okay to trust the process and not compromise the outcome because we lack patience. So build up a coalition. Now there are some people who will never want to be convinced. I try not to wait— I try to identify those people early and try and work with the people who, even if they don't share my vision, sometimes they improve it actually by their opposition because they will show me things and make me work on my own perspective. But strong relationships built on trust and respect are crucial to anything, um, in every aspect of life, no more so than, uh, in work. Um, low-hanging fruit, um, I would always start by looking around and seeing who's in the team and who's in my periphery, my near periphery, who might not be getting a chance to contribute as much as they could be. Who have we got who might be a bit quieter than they need be? Who might be looking for a chance but isn't brave enough to speak up and ask for it? Um, and Gary Vaynerchuk, I, I watch his videos quite a lot on LinkedIn, and he always talks about it's your job as a leader to know what the people who work for you care about. And it's sometimes a little bit hard to do at scale, and it can be hard to do when the days already feel very full, but it doesn't have to be a 3-hour conversation. It can be a short conversation where you're really listening. And if you have their permission— I got this from a recent podcast— write down something that they say that you want to remember. It could be the name of their dog, it could be where they went on holiday, but it shows that you were listening. It shows that you care, um, and you— yeah, you care enough to remember. It's a small signal, but it's so powerful. Like, when I have somebody that I might not think really notices me that much and they remember where I come from in Ireland, or they remember the names of one of my kids, or they remember I have a golden retriever, or that I play drums, it's okay, they were listening, they were watching. So that I think is underestimated, is just try and get, get to know the people a bit more, even if you can't drive transformational change. In the times that we're living in, showing people that they matter in a lot of ways is already transformational.

Wow, that's really the essence of leadership. If we can now— I am showing your newsletter on LinkedIn, Faber Ming 42. Can you tell us about it and why people should subscribe?

Absolutely. So this newsletter isn't for everybody, and that's okay. It is something that I do mostly on my weekends. It's inspired by things that I read, podcasts that I listen to, songs that I, I hear, conversations that I have with people. And I often write as a way of trying to process something that I might be struggling a little bit with. Um, it could be topics related to friendship. What does it mean to be a good friend? Why do we need friends? What do our friends do for us? And that one that you're just scrolling there, the Kashmir and the cracks that connect, that one was inspired by a conversation that I had with somebody that left me feeling drained and empty. And I was wondering why, because the person wasn't a bad person, or isn't a bad person, but I've come to the realization that I want substance. I want people to be real with me the same way I want to be real. I want to be able to feel psychologically safe enough that I can reveal. I'm not posturing anymore. I don't want to talk about and pretend. I don't want a filtered version of my life in the same way I don't want other people to show me the filtered version of theirs. The best and most real and most nourishing conversations for me are the ones where we bond over our struggle and our difficulties and we can hold space for each other and learn to just listen. Again, my daughter, my daughter is an old soul, you know, she's a teenager, but she regularly calls me out, "I don't need you to fix this." I just need you to listen.

And, you know, I've heard it a thousand times.

Um, and I'm— I have so much admiration for her and for kids of her age and generation. They're so much better able to articulate things that they need. You know, I have to get to age 40 to be able to start using my words for stuff like that and to be able to put a label on what it is that I need from somebody. I don't need you to give me a solution. I just need you to be there. Don't criticize me. Don't try and fix me. I just need you to listen to me, which is the essence of coaching, you know, get rid of the advice monster. And I have found myself guilty of the parental advice monster so many times, and I have to rein it back in. And every time that I do have a conversation with somebody in work, for example, I hear her voice and say, okay, am I being the best version of me for this person and what they need right now? Um, so my kids keep teaching me.

That is, that is awesome. And from everything you've said, so what is the importance of, you know, personal, professional leadership development, even if people don't even want to get into cyber, just life in general?

So for me, I think the way I think about it now is everything that I focus on is about integration. It's like I don't try and segment and compartmentalize. I am who I am. Now, I will accentuate— it's a bit like, you know, on an old-fashioned stereo, right? You sort of dial up the treble and dial down the bass. There are contexts where I will dial up certain things and dial down others. But by and large, I am who I am, and I know I've learned to feel in my body when I'm not, when I'm not aligned and when there is a lack of congruency. So if I'm in a situation, and it can happen, I will feel literally a kind of a hollow in between my ribs going, something's off. I'm not feeling safe, or I'm not being totally me, I'm not revealing, there's something not quite right, and I really pay attention to those bodily sensations. The way I think about development, be it for work or just life in general, is I'm trying to live better. I'm trying to give living my best shot, is the way I put it, and I spend a lot of time at work. So given that I do spend a lot of time at work, I want to contribute in a way that feels meaningful. I want to contribute in a way that aligns with my values. I want to have relationships with people where I feel that, um, I'm representing the best bits of me as best I can. Um, And I'm always thinking about just this feeling of, I guess, inner peace in some ways. It sounds a little bit, you know, it sounds a little bit woo-hoo, but it genuinely does come back to bodily sensation. You know, there is a coaching organization that you may be familiar with called the Conscious Leadership Group, and and, um, some of the, the founders and coaches in that— Diana Chapman would be one, Jim Dethmer would be another one— they've written, um, really interesting stuff, and they have some really interesting videos, and they talk about aliveness, and it's a concept that really resonates with me, which is what are you willing to risk for your aliveness? And they talk about integrity breaches So the little white lies, the things that we don't reveal. And what I have found with age— I think it's again the cliché of age, but age and wisdom— is I'm not actually trying to add much more into my life. If anything, I'm trying to subtract. So I'm trying to simplify, I'm trying to clarify, I'm trying to do the things where it makes me feel good, where I can add value, where it brings meaning. And, you know, one of— there's a book that has been helpful to me called Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and a very simple principle for life, which is if it's not a hell yeah, It's a no. So when you're trying to decide, do you spend time on something, right? It's either a hell yeah, or it's a gracious no, not no, not anymore. And I've gotten better at that. I've gotten better at filtering. So it all comes back to me for— I live my life in reverse, right? So I had a difficult period shortly before I went back to work where there was an episode of depression, a bit of burnout. And it was cathartic in a lot of ways, difficult, but I had a thought that shaped everything that was to come next. And the thought that I had when I was sitting in my kitchen, I was watching my IKEA clock go tick-tock, tick-tock, and I had a cold cup of coffee in front of me. I sort of looked around, I went, is this it? Is this my life? And I wasn't at all happy with the feeling that this was it. And the thought that I had that was very morbid was, if I died tomorrow, who would miss me? And what would they say about me? And the answer that I had when I asked myself that question was in no way satisfactory in my eyes. I was like, I am not okay with with my time on earth amounting to this. I am not going to be missed by enough people. I haven't done enough. I haven't contributed enough. I haven't made a big enough dent in the universe. It needs to be more. So I started living my life in reverse, and I always think about when I have a big decision to make, when I'm on my deathbed, which I hope is far, far away, right? But I live with is this going to cause me regret? Am I going to regret doing this, or am I going to regret not doing this? And I live with the personal principle of I do not want to die with regret. So anything that is within my control that might cause me regret, I take care of it now.

Wow, that is, uh, very, very Powerful. And I believe the books that you mentioned, and I know leaders are readers. Let me see if I can share this screen. It should show up here.

Sure.

Yeah, my computer is a little bit slower today. I believe this is the one, right? Essentialism.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Okay, that is fantastic. You can only get it for just $8.25. And then the Conscious Leadership Organizations that you mention. I believe this is their website. I'm gonna add all of that in.

Yeah, so they have some free resources. Yeah, free resources that I found really, really helpful. So they, you know, they talk about the Karpman Drama Triangle, getting out of drama. Just a lot. I'm a bit like a magpie in some ways, sort of in terms of personal development. I see things and I bring them together and associate them, then I go back to them. And I found that Something that I might have read 5 years ago will have a different resonance with me now, just because I've grown up and I've had new experiences.

Wow!

I think the last question I want to ask you really quick, since you mentioned that before we go into my 7 questions of leadership, is: so what about the $1 million question, life and work balance? How do you handle that?

I think about it in terms of integration. I've stopped trying to balance when I have tried to balance, I just kept falling over, right? So I think about it in terms of, again, that sort of metaphor of the dial, which is at certain points there will be things that I dial up, and I, I think I'm better now at explaining to the people around me on whom that has an impact why I'm doing it. So my kids, for example, I am better able to articulate why I might be doing something at a certain time, why I might be less available. However, I also think I've gotten better at not kidding myself, which is not lying to myself, right? So I am very honest now with saying why I'm doing something. And not making up believable but slightly fallacious excuses about why I'm doing something. So I have learned to hold myself to quite a high standard in terms of— excuse the term— but no bullshit. I don't bullshit myself anymore. So if I'm doing something, I own it, and I am okay with saying it. And if I find that I'm not actually being totally clean and I'm making stuff up and going, okay, no, back to the drawing board, I'm not doing that. So that will be one of the things, for example, that I learned from the work of Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman from the Conscious Leadership Group, is that because those kind of believable but not totally true statements are a massive source of drama. And I don't want drama anymore. I don't want to be contributing to it. I don't want to be affected by it. So to the extent that I can, I, I try and be really clean-cut around why I'm doing the things that I'm doing. Um, I try and communicate and use my words more, um, to explain to the people who might have an opinion on us or be impacted by it. And I stick by it as well. You know, I've learned that Not everybody is going to like what I do, and actually that's one of the, one of the more influential books that I've read recently is The Courage to Be Disliked. I highly recommend it. It's a little bit jarring in parts, but that's the whole point of it, and that's why it's beneficial. And I've had to actually read it 3 times because there's a lot in it. But it essentially— there are many messages in it, but one that I think that sticks out for me is if you find that you are being disliked by certain people, take the positive aspect of it, which is there's a high probability you're being true to yourself.

Hmm, wow, that is powerful.

Well, yeah, I would— you can either read the book, or it's available as an audiobook too. To. Like I say, quite dense, there's a lot in it, but I've found it to be quite influential.

I think in everything you are saying, really, there is the importance of emotional intelligence, right? Being self-aware. I live in Silicon Valley where we have a lot of people with very, very high IQs, almost geniuses, I guess, but emotionally they're kind of like babies at times, and that is so important just to be aware, not just of yourself but of everybody else around you too and how to treat people.

Yeah, actually, just one last recommendation because I have found this super helpful. There's both a website and a book called The School of Life, and The School of Life, founded by Alain de Botton, he's sort of a modern-day philosopher but incredibly pragmatic, and he talks all about the life skills that we need to live healthy, harmonious, happy, balanced lives. And unfortunately, wow, we don't learn these things in school, you know. And when we are learning trigonometry, it would be— it's not that it's irrelevant, it's important, but we don't learn how to— we don't learn how to interrelate with people the way we should. We don't learn about dealing with our own inner narratives and our own inner worlds and all the things that, you know, are tied to emotional intelligence. So that would be another resource that I regularly go back to, and I find it really, really helpful.

Fantastic. The School of Life, The Coach Should Be Disliked. We're gonna make sure to add a link in the comments so everybody can have access to those. But thank you, thanks so much. I've already learned so much, and we almost running out of time. I think I only have about 20 minutes left with you, so let's go through my 7 questions. We have to go through that for this leadership and success podcast. So first type of question: what is the greatest lesson you've learned so far?

I think my biggest lesson is about positioning. I don't try and set a course and say that's the only way it's going to be, right? Life has taught me this very, very infrequently do my plans go according to plan. What I always try and do is think about positioning a bit like on a chessboard, which is, what can I do today that will be a no-regrets move no matter what? So we started off this conversation talking about certifications. For me, it would be a good example. You're never gonna lose because of doing a certification. It will maybe cost you time and money, but you're never gonna lose. For me, it's a no-regrets move. So I always think about positioning. More than a rigid set path is what can I do, always focusing on what's in my locus of control, leveraging my agency to help myself so that if something serendipitous comes to me from my periphery that I may not have seen, I'm in a good position to actually do something so that I'm always operating from a position of options and not of constraint.

Wow, that is powerful. What can I do today that will be a no-regret move no matter what? Well, that is— that could be life-changing, actually.

Wow.

Oh, by the way, I am also streaming on Twitch. I usually don't use that. I think most people who go there are gamers or something. I believe it's owned by Amazon now. But anyway, somebody from Twitch said hello. Wow, this is wonderful. So what is the secret of your success, you think?

Being willing to fail but fail forward, which is, no matter how bad the situation is, I look at it and say, what did it teach me? You know, I am divorced, so, you know, I look at that relationship and that marriage and go, well, what did it teach me? And I choose to not think about things in terms of regret. I think of what did it teach me and how can I bring the best of that forward. So it's always letting go of what I can't change, um, and making a decision that no matter what the circumstances are, just a belief that there's always a way forward. And I've had to cultivate that belief. I don't think I was born born with that belief, but I've developed a belief that there's always a way. Just, I keep citing books, but this is another one. Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. That would be one of the ones. It's a small book. You got it right. That has been, yeah, I would say for me that was a life-changing read because reading that and what that guy went through in a concentration camp and kind of going, okay, I think I have problems, right? And you're kind of going, he went through what he went through and he came out on the other side and still managed to contribute so much to the people around him and to the world. And I always just think of that going, I have no excuses to be thinking negatively.

That is, that is amazing. Actually, my mentor John Maxwell is one who made that quote famous: fail early, fail often, but always fail forward. Actually, there is a 2-minute video clip by Will Smith and Denzel Washington. They kind of talk about this philosophy. Maybe at the end I am going to play it. It's very, very inspirational. This is wonderful, man. I'm going to need to get you back here. You do have a half stop, right? It's 4 PM your time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, quickly, man. I have so much to talk to you about. Alright, so what is the greatest investment you have made in yourself?

I think the greatest investment I've made in myself— education. I think the education has served me in so many ways. It served to prove to the people who didn't want to believe in me that they needed to. And it changed me. I mean, the cybersecurity education that I did opened me up and brought me into contact with so many other people who have enriched me in so many other ways. It challenged me. You know, the Executive MBA, for example, I think many, if not all, people who do that kind of training, there will come a point in it where you just, you hit a wall. Going, why on earth did I ever sign up for this? And it comes often when you're trying to do your final capstone project, your thesis. And I remember sitting on my couch curled up in a ball going, I can't do it, and crying and believing that I couldn't do it. And yet I did, I finished it. So the education in a lot of ways for me has been kind of like a gift, which is, I made myself do hard things, but because I made myself do the hard thing, I gave myself the gift of feeling worthy in my own eyes. And I think that has been something I've struggled with, which is learning to appreciate myself and getting to a point where it's okay You don't need to strive anymore. You don't need to prove anymore. But I had to go through that cycle of doing things that I found very, very difficult and really stretching myself, proving that I could, and then going, it's okay, you can take your foot off the pedal. You are a valuable human as you are. You don't need to go and get any more qualifications. So it's been both valuable in terms of what it taught me. From an academic point of view, and I have— it's something that matters to me. Knowledge and books and learning matter to me. Um, in terms of the self-development, it pushed me to the point of, it's okay, you've done enough, you can always learn. I'm never going to stop learning, but I'm learning because it enriches me, not because I'm trying to prove anything.

Wow, that is, that is Powerful. So as a leader, how has failure shaped your life?

I spent, I would say, the first 3 and a half decades of my life trying to avoid failure. I was a very— now I grew up in, you know, privilege is relative, but I think I grew up in a relatively privileged environment. I didn't want for anything. I pushed myself very hard though from a very early age to be perfect. I was like the consummate good girl, um, always got good grades, I did things by the book, um, and I exhausted myself. I wore myself out trying to be good, and I think I probably wore people out around me because I don't think I was a whole lot of fun to be around when I was like that. And I did everything I could to avoid the risk of failure because I think probably deep down I equated failure with, well, if I fail, then I'm not lovable, I'm not worthy, I'm not, you know, I'm not wanted, which was an untrue narrative, but it was one that I think I had running through me. So burnout and depression hit me like a freight train in my mid-30s. You don't choose that. That's not an experience that you choose, it just happens. And I experienced the early weeks of that as failure. This is weakness, this is, this is, this is not what I do, this is not what the kind of people I want to be do. And I had to unlearn all of that. I had to understand the roots of what had been happening to me in the months and weeks and years prior. Like, burnout doesn't happen overnight. It is a process of— it builds up and accumulates. So that was my first experience of failure, in inverted commas, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me because had it not happened to me, I would have stayed on that trajectory of always trying to be perfect, and I would have led a very different life one that is much less fulfilling, one that is much less aligned. So that what I experienced as failure was a rupture with the past, but the best thing that could have happened to me.

Wow, okay, that is quite powerful. If you had to choose 3 people to have dinner with, who would you choose? They could be mythical, historical, or people who are living now.

I would love to have dinner with Michelle Obama. Um, I would love to have dinner— um, I would love to have dinner with Elon Musk so that he can explain to me why he believes what he believes, because he believes things that I think are very, very different to what I believe. But I would love to hear from him how he sees the world, so I could see what it is he's possibly seeing that I'm not. Um, and the third person, who would I— who would I like? Um, Rosa Parks. I would love to hear what it was like just to what was going on in her mind when she did what she did.

Very good. Wow. So I know number 5, we kind of already talked about it. You mentioned a few books already, which is great. So this one, we kind of touched a little bit, but if you had one day to live, what would you have liked your final contribution to be?

I would love I would love to be able to give a smile and hope to somebody who hasn't got any. And it could be anything from— it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be a momentous event, but I think we've all had moments like that where it could be with a stranger, it could be with somebody who's a friend, it could be with somebody in the family. It's often in my experience somebody who is going through something difficult or with whom we have had a difficult relationship. And there is just a moment of true unfiltered connection where the humanity in us touches the humanity in another person. And it could be in our fingertips, it could be holding hands, it might just be in a smile. But that feeling for me is absolute gold. That for me is what life is, connecting with people.

Wow.

And now the last question, number 7, is how can we add value back to you? We've already talked about people to follow you on LinkedIn and subscribe to your newsletter. You also have a YouTube channel, which is And tell us about this Council on Countering Hybrid Warfare.

Absolutely.

I think it's New York, right?

So this is just another example of how, um, the network in cybersecurity— one person knows another person, makes an introduction. So I mentioned, uh, Patrick, um, the, the friend and mentor who initially got me into cybersecurity. He introduced me to a whole new community of people, um, who were involved in conflict negotiations, mediation, hostage release, all kinds of things related to a domain I knew nothing about. And they collaborate on topics related to hybrid warfare and how the field of conflict resolution, dispute resolution, negotiation is relevant to that. And I was contacted and asked whether I would like to contribute, and my reaction was similar to that first conversation about cyber, which is I don't know anything about this. This feels like something—

it looks like you keep doing that.

It's like something that state leaders should be involved in. Like, I'm really excited, but I don't think I know anything about this. And that's exactly why we want you in it. So, um, I have learned a lot actually from being— having the privilege of being with these people, because they're great individuals, but they are also towers of knowledge in their individual fields. And negotiation, conflict resolution, and mediation, particularly of intractable disputes, I find it fascinating. Um, wow, the emotional intelligence that's involved. It's the— there's so, so much we could all learn. And actually, I would love in schools, I would love if, you know, that was part of a curriculum, is that we teach people negotiation. We teach people mediation, and we teach people trying to see the world through the eyes and the lens of someone else. You don't have to agree with them, but it's in the name of cohabiting and coexisting, particularly in the world we're living in right now where, you know, there's so much polarization. So that project, um, called Project Sechat, um, was around hybrid warfare, and we did, um, a symposium. We've done some writing around it. And I just stay in contact with the people behind it simply because they enrich me in so many ways.

And I think for a lot of the aspiring tech and military leaders out there in the audience, very important to stretch yourself, right? Yeah. Don't be the smartest person in the room. It's okay to go back to level zero and learn all over again.

Absolutely.

I think for most people, they try something new, they feel like, no, they're just getting started. They don't have any knowledge or confidence. And then they just give up when you're supposed to continue and become a master of whatever that skill is. It takes time. My mentor used to say, what, 5,000, 10,000 hours, about 5 years to become an expert in almost anything. But anyway, so we are running out of time, we have to let you go in 2 minutes. So really, really quickly, 3 adjectives that describes you as a child.

Oh, as a child? Oh, so I was shy, I was deferential, I was Shy, deferential, but I was very imaginative.

Imaginative, good. As an adult?

Bold, daring, compassionate.

Fantastic, I really believe compassionate, it came through everything you talked about. Lastly, what is one word that represents our shared experience on this podcast right now?

Energizing.

What comes to mind? Okay, I think, uh, humbling for me. It was really a great, great privilege to talk to you. I know you have to go, it's, uh, uh, 4 PM now in Paris. I'm gonna have to let you go, but, but thank you, thank you so much for coming to the podcast. So there's gonna be a replay and it should be on all major podcast platforms within an hour or so. Again, thank you.

Thanks so much, it was great.

Once you publish your book, I want you to come back here, please. We have so much more to talk about. Actually, you usually want to talk with people about 30-45 minutes. I've pretty much done for my 7 questions, but I had to skip quite a few today. But again, thank you for being here. I'm going to play the fail often, fail forward clip right after you leave. And let me just triple-check there is no question on LinkedIn or YouTube. So again, I am so, so grateful you came.

Thank you so much for having me.

Goodbye. Oh, wow. There's a misconception about failing. You have to fail a lot. You have to fail early. You have to fail often and you have to fail forward.

Fall forward.

Early on in my career, I auditioned for a part in a Broadway musical. I didn't get the job, but here's the thing: I didn't quit. I didn't fall back. I walked out of there to prepare for the next audition and the next audition and the next audition, but I continued to fail. Fail and fail, but it didn't matter because you know what? You hang around the barbershop long enough, sooner or later you're gonna get a haircut.

So you will catch a break, and I did catch a break. Do you have the guts to fail?

If you're not willing to fall on your face, you can't create at a high level. To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.

Thank you for listening to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach Beezy. If you like what you heard, please subscribe to our channels and come back for more wisdom nuggets on how you may develop into a better leader and achieve greater levels of success. Leadership is the most critical skill skill. The world will always need leaders to lead others, deploy the next disruptive technology, or execute a business strategy. You may as well decide on counting yourself among the 21st century leaders. See you right here next time on the Leadership and Success Podcast with Coach BZ.