180- Courage to Leap & Lead with Barry Posner, part 1

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold.

Whoa, let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello everybody. It's Tuesday and Tuesdays you get to spend with CB Bowman, And I get to spend it with you. And so here we are on Courage to Leap and Lead. And today's guest is an icon, an icon in the leadership space. I am so excited to meet him in person. I had a chance to meet his writing partner, oh, maybe about 4 or 5, I can't remember, years ago. when he came to one of our conferences, and now I get to meet the other half and have a conversation. So I am so grateful that Barry has joined us. Ladies and gentlemen, let me present Barry Posner, the sort of, shall we say, the father of leadership in our country. So Barry, welcome.

Thank you. And thank you for that grandiose introduction.

Well deserved.

I'm just one of the people carrying the water when it comes to leadership. So thank you.

So modest. So modest. Hey, Barrett, you know, as I mentioned in the beginning, you are an icon. But were you born an icon?

Well, as you know, that reminds me of a question, CB, that we're often asked, and that is, are leaders born or are leaders made? Are Icons Born or Are Icons Made? But to the question of leadership, born or made, we are always asked that question, Jim and I, in one form or the other. And what we like to say in a kind of a humorous way, we like to begin with the point of view that all leaders are born.

Okay.

I like to remind people that leadership is innate. Everybody's already capable of leadership. As well as I'm sure we'll talk about courage in a few moments as well. It's a normal distribution. And so, you know, everybody's capable of it. And the truth is, if you start there, you start with sort of the assumption then that it's not something that we have to find that's out here and put inside people, but rather it's something that's inside of people and kind of to liberate it. And that said, of course, you and I wouldn't be writing books if we didn't believe that all people could learn, you know, could in fact get better at whatever it is. But whether it's leadership or bowling or accounting, you know, I mean, everybody here can play the piano. Some people naturally play it better than others, but every one of us can get better if we want to. and if we practice and if we get good coaching. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we're all going to be able to be concert pianists. But we all can— we all can play the piano and we could all get better if we wanted to.

So Barry, take us back to when you were a youngin' and tell us, were you always into books and writing? I mean, how did you come up? Tell us about your parents. What's going on there?

So, um, so I'm a, I'm a first-generation college student. Um, I grew up in Southern Cali— I like to say, I like to say the truth of the matter is I was born in Hollywood and I grew up in Southern California. My parents owned a, uh, shoe store in, in Claremont, and after-school daycare for my brother and I was coming to the shoe store and sitting in the back when we were younger, and we got older, we could then clean the bathrooms, stock the shelves. We could then wait on customers. We could make change. I think I learned about leadership first through kind of customer service, kind of through serving others. That small shoe store would strive for a long time until in the next town over, the mall opened up with 6 shoe stores and 2 department stores. And all of a sudden, sort of customer service kind of wasn't, wasn't sufficient, you know, to grab, to grab people. And so, so, so things, so things moved on. But, but I think an important part of my sort of notion and interest now more formally in leadership It has to be about how do you help people to get comfortable enough that they will serve others as opposed to just serving their own self-interests.

So I want to come back to this. I'm just making a note. What would you say was the beginning of your learnings at the shoe store in terms of customer service? How did that translate into leadership?

Well, what it translated in was, was really listening, listening to what other, what other people wanted. Um, so not— I mean, the stereotype of selling is that you sell, you convince people to do things they don't want to do. All right. And, and leadership isn't, isn't that, you know, you know, you, you, you, you lead, you know, you lead out of you, you You try to really try and figure out, you know, a large part of it is trying. I mean, look, we're a shoe store. We obviously had product to sell, but nobody walked into the shoe store in order to make my family wealthy. They walked into the shoe store because they had a need. And the question was, could we satisfy that need? And I think the same thing is true in a lot of ways, you know, in a workplace. Nobody comes into my classroom in order to make me a good teacher. They come into my classroom because they think that there's something that I can help them learn. And the same thing these days, I think, is even, even truer for young people today when they ask, you know, when they ask me sort of, you know, what about, what about my first job? My, my question to them, my, my advice to them is, is try to find somebody that you can learn from. That's, that's what your first supervisor ought to be. Don't worry so much about the job because these days it's not going to be your last job. only gonna be your first job. So try to make sure that in your first job you find somebody that you, that you can learn from. Um, and increasingly I find the same thing true. Uh, CEO recently was telling me he's trying to hire a, a senior vice president, and the one of the important criteria was, was this somebody that could, that could help other people learn? Could this person develop, really develop the people on, on the team? Not just, not just— do the job, but, uh, but as the company is growing, be able to develop the ability of others to lead. And I think, and I think that's still, you know, I think that's still, still, still important. I, I used to, uh, you know, as a— since my parents hadn't gone to college, you know, I was supposed to go to college. I was supposed to be a doctor, you know, or, or a lawyer. Those were the, those were the things I think You know, most, most, you know, parents want their kids to be, you know.

And well, these days it's also a computer technician, right?

Well, you know, an engineer, an accountant, you know, some, some, some kind of, some kind of professional. And so I, I was, I went to school and I was going to be, it's going to be a lawyer. And, and I actually didn't, in a very, we've published 7 editions of the Leadership Challenge and bio in the first edition, it says something to the effect that, you know, that Barry, you know, aspired to be a Supreme Court judge, but gave that up when he learned that he'd have to go to law school. But I think that had I—

Not necessarily these days. Oh, not politics. Okay.

It's actually not— it's actually not a formal requirement. Yes, but by tradition it seems to be. At any rate, the notion is, even if I'd been— even I've gone to law, I'm sure I would have taken the point of view that I'm here really to try to help, you know, help other people. You know, what's— you know, what is it that's your concern? And And I think for, for you and, and for me, you know, as, as, as coaches and as teachers, what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring out— we're trying to, to do 2 things. One is to bring out the best in people, but I think the other thing is to get them to believe that there's a best in them.

Hmm.

Because it really— I mean, my meta goal when I teach a class on leadership or do it, do a seminar, is to convince, is to convince people that they are That they, that they have been leaders, that they can lead, that they, that they make a difference. And then all I want to do is try and help improve their skills. I mean, they, you know.

Barry, you're talking from a high level in your background. It sounds as though everything you, you had the Midas touch. Everything that you did turned to gold.

Thank you. I, you know, it doesn't, it, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't feel like that. Um, you know, there were, there were, there were elections that I did, you know, school elections that I, that I didn't win. There were, uh, oratorical competitions that I didn't, that I, that I, that I didn't win, but I, but I, but I enjoyed I enjoyed, uh, I enjoyed the challenge of competition and also enjoyed, I think, the recognition. I mean, here's, here's the piece of it, is that, uh, even though we write about the, the 5 Practices of Exemplary Leadership and we, we sort of say at the end of the book, you know, that, uh, there's, there's no, there's no guarantees. You can do all this, you can do all this stuff and still get fired. You know, because you can't control everything.

Barry, were you ever fired?

I was not as promoted as quickly as I would have liked to have been. I wasn't fired.

How did you handle Disappointment? Like, I know you said you liked the challenge, but you weren't promoted as quickly as you had envisioned that you would be. How did that upset you? Did you not care?

No, see, I think, I think it's, you know, it's, it's, um, it's a paradox, I think, for, for, for all of us. I mean, I, I put it in kind of a leadership perspective. It means that Look, look, here's, here's, I'll give you a different metaphor. In basketball, it's said that, you know, that all the shots you don't take won't go in. But the truth is that all the shots that you take don't go in. But if you don't take the shot, you can't be successful. So what leaders have is they have this kind of mentality. I'll use a different sport now. A baseball player, baseball player gets up to bat. with the attitude that I'm going to get a hit. The truth of the matter is that a really good baseball player is going to get a hit, you know, 3 out of 10 times. That's a really good one. But doesn't get up to bat with the notion of I'm going to get out. I mean, the probabilities are I'm not going to be successful. That's— and I think that's a realization that leaders have to have as well, is that I said, sure, this is what you think should happen and this is what you believe should happen, but it's not always going to be the case. And I don't know what a good win-loss record should be, but you study the biographies of Martin Luther King, you study the biographies of so many great people, and you'll find that they weren't— it was not a straight line. Success was not a straight line. They had lots of peaks and valleys.

I think you're touching on something that's really, really important because I'm going to translate that also into the leadership space because so many leaders don't have— and that's my little four-legged agreeing with me. I think especially in this day and age, courage wanes. When faced with making that decision about solving that up and down and being afraid to just step out and go for leadership that's important to them to present and important for the people that are around them to listen, not necessarily to agree with, But to give it an opportunity. So both parties trying something new, an opportunity.

Sure. Um, you know, it's, it's even, even in the words these days. Instead of talking about people bouncing back from disappointment, um, it's bouncing forward.

It's—

Oh, I love that.

It's that sort of notion that you know, you know, get knocked down, get, you know, get up again. But it's, it's, it's that sort of willingness to learn from experience. And that's, that's a piece of— I was asked in a classroom the other day, group of students were asking me sort of, uh, you know, kind of, you know, some of, some of my role models when it comes, when it comes to leadership. And, uh, and, and one of the things that's been true about the people that I most admire as leaders is that they turned out— turn out to be, to be quite humble. Um, you know, I know you've, you know, you've— I know that you've just written a really great book. I'm trying to remember what's it called. It looks like it's right back there. A little plug for your book. But, you know, Jim and I started to write a book on leadership ourselves, uh, Almost 15 years ago. And as part of—

How did you, uh, sorry, how did you guys meet that you formed such a great writing partnership?

Well, Jim and I, Jim and I met in the early 1980s. I was on the— I still am on the faculty at Santa Clara University. Jim came to Santa Clara to head up our Executive Development Center, and, um, within a very, very few days, he, he tells the story how I came to to what was what was his office, but really it had been my office, and I wanted him to know that. And then I made you know some you know half half-hearted comment like welcome, and if there's anything I can do to help, let me know. And he took me up on it. Yeah. So we we we did a seminar in February of 1983. which was, which was kind of the catalyst for our beginning to do some writing together on, on leadership. And, and we've been good, good friends and, and working, working partners for, you know, 40, you know, 40 going on, on 40 years. And And, and, and we're, and, and we're cheerleaders for each other, and we're also, you know, able to tease each other about, you know, our idiosyncrasies, and we bring different, you know, I, I say sometimes he's, he's prone to hyperbole, and at times he'll say, you know, I'm too hesitant, you know. Find the middle ground.

There's a couple of things that you've said that I didn't want to pass over. One of the things— well, you said several things that were interesting. You mentioned a CEO that was hiring, and he wanted somebody who was going to be able to reach out and help others. How do you interview for that kind of skill set, that kind of willingness to help others?

Well, I think you do a lot, a lot of that through kind of behavioral interviewing. You know, so, you know, what, what, what hap— you know, tell me about the people that have worked for you and tell me what, you know, tell me what they're doing now. You know, how many people who are working for you now worked for you in another company, you know, wanted to, you know, wanted to, you know, to continue to follow you and be in a relationship with you. There's a, there's a sense you can kind of listen to people's language as they talk about, you know, all the things that I did in the past, as opposed to all the things we did in the past. And, and in fact, get so excited that they really start telling a story about what somebody else on their team did rather than simply what— and, and, and she was able to do that, you know. I mean, I was, I was her supervisor, maybe, but she did. You know, da da da da da da da. I mean, those, you know, when people get excited talking about other people, more excited than they are talking, you know, talking about themselves. I think those are, those are, you know, some, some of the things that you would, that you would look for. But in, you know, for that student looking for a job, you're, you know, you're trying to talk to this, talk to the hiring, to the manager that you're gonna work for. And you're kind of asking, you know, or looking for the same kinds of questions. And it's, it's a relationship. Could I, you know, do I, do I think I could spend time talking with this person? Do I think this person would have an, would have an interest in me, would, would want me to be, you know, would want me to be successful? You know, the other, the other thing about this is, so we've always said that as a manager, that one of the things that makes you promotable is when you're able to have somebody that can take your job. So if you're, if you're not building up the competence of the people on your team, then, uh, then the truth, the truth is that, you know, we can't do without you, which means you'll stay right where you are, uh, because you, you know, because we can't, we can't, we can't afford it. We can't afford to lose you. Um.

You also said That leadership is inside of you. What does that mean?

Well, what it means, back, CB, is that notion is that leadership is a set of behaviors. And so all the things that you need to do as a leader, they're a set of behaviors, and anybody can engage in those behaviors. The thing that's inside is that not everybody wants to. We sometimes talk about where leadership begins is trying to figure out what it is that you care about. If there isn't anything that you care about, then everything's fine. There's no reason to demonstrate leadership, courage, or initiative, or take responsibility. You just kind of do what you're told and do what you need to do. You know, leader— leadership happens when you sort of say, you go beyond sort of saying, you know, I don't think this is very good, or I think it could be better, to actually being willing to do something about it. Um, and that's— and maybe that's, to your way of thinking, that's when you're willing to take the leap.

Mm-hmm.

Because goodness knows, I mean, today there's no shortage of opportunities to make a difference. And it's easy enough to complain about stuff.

What are the behaviors that we all have, whether we choose to use them or not, that lead to a good leader?

Well, it's really an opportunity for me to talk about the research that Jim and I have done. And I said back in 1983, Jim and I were doing a 2-day workshop through the university on leadership. And the first day was being done by what was then another young man named Tom Peters. And Tom did—

Oh, okay, another icon.

Tom did the first day. And Tom and Bob Waterman had written a book called In Search of Excellence. It had come out in November of 1982. So, and Tom was in Palo Alto, was nearby. And he did the first day. And In Search of Excellence is really a A wonderful book and a wonderful story, but mostly about what companies do and what you can do if you're the CEO of the company. But the 40 people that we had in our seminar were middle managers, senior managers, but they didn't own the company and their name wasn't on the door. And so, they couldn't— they weren't Bruce Nordstrom. So, they couldn't just change Nordstrom because they wanted to. So, So that morning, we, we stumbled upon, really stumbled upon asking people to take what we'd heard the day before about excellent companies, but let's apply that to ourselves. And we asked people what has now been 40 years of asking people to tell us about a time that they were at their personal best as a leader. And when you think about the time that you were at your personal best as a leader, what were you doing? What were the actions and behaviors that you took that that mattered, that, that made a difference. Um, and, and through a process that, that morning and that day, we were able to, to identify as a group, 40 of us as a group, 7 big ideas about, you know, that, that covered all the things that all of us were doing when we were at our, at our personal best. And, and Jim and I would then spend a few more years collecting more stories, uh, collecting data, and, and eventually writing about, you know, those, those, those practices. But let me just start with kind of a meta, a meta finding that, that continues through today. And that is, first of all, everybody has a story to tell. So if you— so it sort of suggests that this thing called leadership is not something that some people have and some people don't. It's everybody's, everybody's got it, everybody's got a story to tell. And when we listen to their stories, what we find is that the stories are not exactly alike because we're all different and the circumstances are different. But the behaviors that we engaged in are more similar than they are different. They're not— they don't overlap 100%, which is, from our point of view, which is a good thing because this is not a formula. It's not 2 parts hydrogen, 1 part oxygen gives us water. This is a social science. Um, and, and it, and it allows for the variability between, um, you know, based upon, you know, any kind of personality characteristic or circumstance you want to, you want to bet. But here's the point. If everybody's got a story to tell and the stories that they tell about the behaviors are more similar than they are different, then that, then that sort of at a meta level says, well, leadership is something that everybody's capable of. It is something that we can actually observe. It's something we can understand. Therefore, we can actually teach people about the behaviors that you have to engage in if you want to lead. And then that's the issue is, do you want to? And that's what we can't teach. We can't lead a horse to water and make them drink. We can't do that. We have to try to figure out back to this sort of sort of where does leadership begin? Well, what do you care about? And that's why in our, in our book and in our workshops, we, we spend a lot of time trying to get people in touch with their values and, and, and, uh, and trying to figure out, well, who am I and, and what do I really care about and why do I care about those things and what would I be willing to do? Um, what would I be willing to do in, in in pursuit of those, of those things.

Um, you know, so the behaviors are—

Well, so we— thank you, we— a long introduction to, to your question. Um, we talk, we talk about, we talk about 5 practices. We talk about leaders model the way. Um, in the stories of people's personal best, nobody said I modeled the way. What they said was they led by example. They were deeply committed. They didn't ask anybody to do anything that they weren't willing to do themselves. They were passionate. So, we put all those things together and we titled that Model the Way. When people said that they were at their personal best, we called it inspiring a shared vision. What they told us was they had a vision, a goal, a mission, a passion, a burning agenda. They had something in the future that they really wanted to accomplish, and they were enthusiastic, contagiously enthusiastic. And they had to get buy-in. It wasn't just about what they wanted to accomplish. It wasn't just, I have a dream, but here's what we're going to have to do. in order to achieve that dream. When leaders were at their personal best, what they talked about— again, we called it challenge the process— but what they told us was that they had to move outside their comfort zone. They had to take a risk. They had to experiment. They had to try things that they hadn't, that they had never done before. Um, they needed, they needed to, um, this is— they needed to, to case the joint. That's CASE, C-A-S-E, copy and steal everything, you know, just look outside of themselves and figure out, you know, so who else has written a good book that I should read? Who else? What's another company that, that's well known for customer service or reliability? And what can we learn from them? So, a real focus on learning. You know, when I was challenging the process, I didn't know how to do this at the start. We'd never done it before, so I had to learn. Some stuff. When people were at their personal best, they had to enable others to act. And so people talked about the things that they did to build a team, to, to train and develop other people, to learn how to delegate, to trust other people, to build relationships. And finally, when people at their personal best, we called it encourage the heart. And they talked about the importance of making sure that people felt recognized. Appreciated, rewarded, celebrated. And not only for what they did, but for, for who they are, building a sense of community. And people talked about making sure that the work was fun, that it wasn't just all, wasn't just all work. So it was, you know, we worked, we worked hard, and then we all went out, you know, for pizza, or, you know, we, we We had a party when this thing was all over. Um, we, uh, we broke bread together when we, when we achieved milestones. So those are what we call the 5— let me put my hand up here— the 5 practices of exemplary leadership. And again, these— this was the language that, that we use in our, in our book and in our materials to describe those things. And what we do is we typically ask people in a workshop Tell us about your personal best leadership experience. And then after you, you do that, can you, can you see yourself, can you see yourself in this framework? All right, you didn't, you didn't say challenge the process, but you certainly said we had to, we had to, we had to innovate, we had to be creative. All right, well, that's what we call challenge the process. And so then I simply asked the group, well, If, if what you're telling— I'm just going to hold up a mirror to you. If this is what you're telling me you did when you were at your best, would you like to be able to be more effective in those things, be more comfortable doing those things than you are today? It's like, you know, how many of you have— how many of you have, you know, more money than you know what to do with? So if I could tell you how you could have more money, would you be interested? And in the same way, if If people say, well, if I could be even more effective than I am today, and that's all I'm trying to do. I'm always using the words, how can you be an even better leader than you are today? I'm not doing, you know, none of us, we're not starting at zero. There are no, when it comes to that, we measure this through the Leadership Practice Inventory, 30 behaviors. And we have respondents, we have about more than 5 million respondents that have completed the Leadership Practice Inventory over the, over the decades now. And there are only, and there are only 69 people out of over 5 million who indicated that they, that they never do any of these behaviors. And I don't believe them.

I was going to say, and why?

I, I Because it's just the law of large numbers, you know. So we, we look at this and say, look, 99.9996% of the people who have completed this instrument indicate that the, the behaviors that are associated with leadership, they, they do. Um, and so—

I'm sorry, Barry, did, did you notice any changes depending upon race, religion, gender, What have you?

Well, the answer, the answer is yes and no. The answer, the answer is that you and I are not exactly the same, right? So our, our responses are not going to be exactly the same for a variety of reasons.

Yeah, but I color my hair, so.

Well, it's great. But, but here's, here's the, here's the most, the more important thing is is that the more you or I do these behaviors, the more other people will see us as effective. And so I can go into, I can go into, in, in, into an organization, I can say, okay, in this, here's, here's an average score in, in this bank, and here's an average score in this hospital, and they're not the same. But the people in each of these circumstances who engage in this behavior more than, than their peers are more effective given where they are. So culture matters, you know. So, so, so people in, in, I mean, I could even take 2 banks. I mean, you know, or I could take, I could take Japan or Great Britain or Colorado, and I could say, well, the average scores are not the same, but I can tell you that within Colorado, those people who engage in these behaviors more are going to be seen as more effective than those who engage less, even if they don't do it, or even if they do it more or less than people do it in London. That's, that's not the issue. And the good news is, CB, I think, is, is that you and I don't have—

you—

we get style points.

Mhm.

Back to your hair, you know, we get style We get style points. And so we don't, we, we, we don't all have to do it exactly alike. But take, take this. I'll, I'll ask you, I'll ask an audience, how many of you like to be taken for granted? And, and, and nobody raises, nobody says I like to be taken for granted. So it doesn't make a difference what country, culture, height you are, Ethnicity, age, education. Nobody likes to be taken for granted. So you have to figure out then, how do I make sure that the, that the person or the people I'm working with don't feel I'm taking them for granted?