Challenges of the C-Suite with Barbara Singer, Episode 23

Okay. Hi everybody, this is CB Bowman Live. We're having some technical issues today. I don't know what it is, but I can hear an echo of myself, but Barbara can't hear it, and we don't hear an echo of Barbara. So I'm not the most important person on the show today. Barbara is. So we're gonna rock this out. So starting now, you're on CB Bowman Live Challenges of the C-Suite. And today we have a very special guest, and I want to tell you a secret. She's my mentor. Don't tell anybody. And I adore her. She's my BFF. Um, she was my supporter when I had those down days of should I open the Association of corporate executive coaches, and she is wildly supportive of women in business. And so it is my honor, my pleasure, to introduce my friend Barbara Singer. Barbara is the CEO of Executive Corps, which is a cohort of master-level corporate executive coaches Global. So you want to stay tuned today and hear what she has to say about the challenges in the C-suite today. With that, Barbara, take it away. Introduce yourself, please.

CB, thank you so much for having me on the show. I would say all the same things about you. And, uh, you, you have had such laser focus on the C-suite You're just an inspiration with diversity, equity, and inclusion. And you're also this sense of strategic thinking, I think, everywhere that you go. So it's really nice to be invited to be a part of this. Thank you very much. Now I have to tell you.

Yes.

So of course, I've been working for 23 years accelerating talent. And most of that time, it's been at the top of the house. And I know you and I are going to go on a journey today and people will learn about me and learn about my life. But I was thinking about you in particular when I was getting ready for the show. And in my work at the top of the house and in publicly traded organizations, in midsize organizations, For whatever reason, this book that I have loved over the years called The Great Divide by Studs Terkel— I know many of the people who listen to you probably have read it— and there was a quotation that I stumbled across because I think the pandemic— and we've been in multiple pandemics globally— but the COVID-19 pandemic has created a divide between C-suite teams and their employees, between C-suite teams and their customers, their consumers. And yet there is this spirit that keeps them focused just like you on strategy. So the quotation is, and this is for anybody who's tuning in today, most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits. And I was thinking about you, and you are not a person who has a job that's too small for your spirit. I think you inspire us because you're always reaching for something greater. So for everybody who's listening in, I want to challenge you to think about your own life. So many of us have jobs or have had jobs that are too small for our spirits. And I often say in my work, People are far more influential than they realize. The other thing I was thinking about, about being on your show, and you've just had some amazing people. For those of you watching, if you haven't gone back, look at some of the other shows. Really fun, very accomplished people. You have just a wonderful network. But I would encourage everybody that is listening to promote yourself. Give every— everybody give yourself a a mental promotion into the C-suite. Whether you're a member of the C-suite of an organization, promote yourself into that mindset. And I think everything you and I will probably talk about on the journey will come through that lens. And one of the other things that I often say in my work is live your life like you're not afraid of getting fired. And promote yourself to the C-suite, when you have that mindset, you automatically put yourself in kind of into a strategic perspective.

So, you know, as often happens, Barbara, when I talk to you, when I listen to you, I become tongue-tied because I don't even know where to start. You impart such knowledge. So I want to start with I think I want to start with your journey. Tell us about your journey and what gave you the incredible wisdom to be able to see greatness in people, because that is one of your, your super strengths.

I, I posted on LinkedIn yesterday a happy International Women's Day, and I, I could only go back like 3 to 4 years of images I had of women in my life, and there were so many more I didn't get to do images of. But one of the pictures was a picture of my grandmother, who in 1920 graduated at the very top of her class. She gave the graduation speech in Boston. She went to Gordon College in Boston. And when you think about my journey, I come from a family of people who just encourage you, whether they're educators, my father was a CEO, but really I think it goes all the way back to my grandmother. And my grandmother and my father taught us that there really isn't anything that we can't do.

Wow.

And as we do it, It's so important to be a force for good. And I was thinking, I knew you were gonna ask me about my journey because I started working in talent management as a consultant back in 19— I think at the very end of 1993.

Wow.

I think I was— my official start date was probably 1994. But I was so excited to get started working in professional services. I actually went in. a couple weeks earlier. And at that time, we had global clients like McKinsey, Cisco Systems, most of the engineering and construction firms, the national labs. And here I was in my mid-20s with this very small firm that was headquartered in Colorado. I think there were 8 employees when I started. And over the years, we grew to be ranked 28th before we were eventually acquired by Korn Ferry. But during those years, my job was to understand how we assess talent, how we accelerated them from a business development strategy perspective, how we looked at communication skills. I've been studying influence most of my life and also into my graduate work. We worked in Silicon Valley during the bubble. And so I was surrounded by all of these amazing people. But I think something that was really seminal, not only was our work with McKinsey, as we were helping people who were team leaders and eventually becoming partners in the firm, we were helping them develop their leadership skills. We eventually got hired to help Egon Zehnder globally work with how they interacted with their firm and their customers. And I worked with their partners internationally. And a lot of what I learned about working in the C-suite really came from working with these very senior partners in Egon Zehnder, many of whom were European, who had these amazing relationships with CEOs all over the world. And, you know, They were also so confident but collegial at the time. And I realized that when you were going to do this work, of course you needed to be well-prepared and you needed to be smart, but what you needed to be first was a human being. And I started to see the pressures at the top of the House very early in my career and realized it was a very lonely job. And they, they didn't have a lot of people without an agenda that they could trust and they could talk with. And that really kind of set me on my journey. That was back before we even called coaching coaching. We used to call coaching one-on-ones back in those early days with McKinsey and Egon Zehnder. And we had the excuse that we would work with people individually instead of in groups or teams because we were going to do one-on-ones. And it was also thought at that time we would never make it a standalone focus of our business. But it was something that we did because it was effective. But we always added it on.

Mm-hmm.

Later, I worked internationally in partnership with amazing Heidrick Struggles partners. After the acquisition, I got to work with some really talented folks at Korn Ferry. And the whole time my work was assessment-based. So One thing that I love about the business consulting facilitation and coaching that we do is we don't work without a net. We always have metrics.

Mm-hmm.

My whole career, even my undergrad and my graduate work, intersected with data and intersected with measuring human behavior and more recently human mindset. And I really learned during that time is that we have these huge databases that are full of trends and themes that inform us in a very unbiased way about what makes a great leader. And I was also very passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I realized that when we studied the data, we could see that women, we could see that Black leaders, we could see expats, people who were different in some way, people with a different gender identity, for instance, they were often held to a higher performance standard. We can see it in the numbers. They were working harder and getting better performance according to their 360 data than the succession planning and the promotions would suggest as well. I became really fascinated with combining really good data and evidence-based work with the work that we do because it levels the playing field. It helps us see things more objectively. I think the other thing that really kind of informed my work at the top of the house, I've had 10 years where I've been very involved in graduate business education. And I think sometimes we perceive that there's a divide between what's going on in graduate business education and direct interactions with C-suite teams. And I've learned a lot about what the research is telling us about business, but helping build that bridge between what researchers are finding and what the top of the house is making decisions on in the C-suite. And I've been on the board for 3 terms, I guess, of the Executive MBA Council. So I've had the pleasure of learning a lot from over 225 business schools around the world. But I think it comes back to when you're accelerating data, you're accelerating talent. Don't do it without data. Don't do it without a net, that there's tremendous information to be learned there. Also, crazy things about me.

Wait, wait, wait, Barbara. I want to go back to something because I want to— which you have taught me to do— challenge something that you said. So in recognizing potential and good talent, there's something that clicks in Barbara's mind before data comes in. What are those triggers that say to you, this is somebody I'm going to watch, this is somebody I'm going to support? What are those secrets in your head, Barbara, that give you the flag that this is either raw talent, potential talent, or existing talent?

I have to say, it goes back to what my grandmother and my father taught me, is that when you encourage the people around you, there are people who respond very enthusiastically to being encouraged. And when you are quiet and you listen to what they have to say, you can watch how they're putting strategic ideas together in a radically creative kind of way. And immediately it starts firing in terms of people who just light up. But they need that first spark of somebody who believes in them. And I think for all of your listeners, anybody who's tuning in, you probably underestimate the power of you encouraging the people around you. And just by being encouraging and supportive and positive, you will find that people up around you every day light up and respond very positively. I had this moment. I bought this new house that you know that is was my mother's house, and we're down the street from a Chautauqua community in Ohio. It's called Lakeside. When I was a teenager, I got to hear Norman Vincent Peale. speak in an auditorium that seats 3,000 people. Just, I could almost walk there. I could walk you there with my computer and show you where this was. But I remember I had read a lot. I was just a voracious reader as a teenager. And I remember reading about Norman Vincent Peale when he came to Lakeside. He was very, very elderly. And he wrote, many of you know, I'm sure, The Power of Positive Thinking.

And, and I—

it resonated because it was what my grandmother and my father taught me, is that if you just were positively, um, disposed to the people around you, people who were responsive to that, people who wanted to be a force for good, um, if you took the time to pay attention and care about them, they would light up and tell you what their dreams were. And they just needed a thought partner in the journey. Does that answer your question?

That is scary amazing. So giving people the support and the nuggets to put strategic vision together and then allowing them to move forward, it's, it's absolutely missing today. Can you write a book about this or teach this to people?

I'm working on a book right now. which is on influence, psychological safety, balancing how much we listen with how much we assert, and having tangible impact in the organizations that we work in. It's related to one of the assessments that we have called the Language of Influence. I'm also enamored with how as human beings we create environments of psychological safety. I think right now in our society, you and I were just talking about the situation in Myanmar. All around the world, we need leaders who understand the dynamics of psychological safety, and it should be woven in our work the way that diversity, equity, and inclusion is now becoming more woven into the work that we do. Yeah, I'm working on it. You're going to have to coach me to finish.

Oh, I would be glad to do that. It would be my honor because I can't wait to read it. So now I want to go back and challenge you on data. Big data. Barbara, I know you're a data junkie.

I am.

So feel free to come back at me. But here's what I learned about data. both when I was at the New School and more recently. It's really as we used to say about computers, garbage in, garbage out.

Mm-hmm.

Data can be so misleading based upon how it's interpreted. And I'll give you a really good example that I heard recently in relationship to the D&I space. So a survey was done with a company, and they wanted to find out how much diversity they had in the company. And we're talking about racial diversity, because we know diversity is defined by many things today. And it came back that they had increased their diversity representation From 20% to something like 60%, and they were super excited. So the data said they were doing really good. When you lifted the covers for the data, they were doing good in terms of numbers of people hired, but the positions they were in were janitorial. So the data was misrepresented of where they really wanted to go and find out the information. So one is, how do we trust big data? 2, what do you need to interpret it correctly so that it supports the efforts of the C-suite?

You know, we used to say that executive coaching was the new wave of a talent management movement in the work that we do. I would say that systems work is the next wave of the work that we're doing. And I was also— some of you may be familiar with game theory. You may be familiar with probability assessment. There's so much being written out there about good decision-making. When you have binary data collection, Where you look at just one factor and you don't look at another factor, then you almost always get skewed results.

Hmm.

When you're looking at data, you have to look at it systemically. And you also have to look at it through a lens of wisdom and kind of a holistic perspective. It's so important to look at the data from the individual's perspective. We need to look at it from the team's perspective. We need to look at it from the organization's perspective. Also, we need to have really good checks and balances in terms of how we pick up biases in how the questions are phrased. And we also have what we'll see in some entities. Sometimes we see this in the military or in corporate America where they're used to a lot of 360 evaluation. Being required before somebody is promoted by rank or by position in the organization, over time those ratings can be inflated. And so you also need safeguards to understand what kind of rater bias is going on. But the simple answer is we can't look at binary data. We have to look at data holistically, and we have to look at at least 3 variables. before we can trust that there may be an interesting trend. And then it's further investigation as we go forward. We've been doing a lot more work around awareness and we've been focusing on 7 different dimensions of awareness. And we also been doing a lot of work around enterprise leadership. Years ago, we were working with a telecommunications company. We worked from the CEO level on down. We studied of the top 500 talent. We had 360 data. We had employee engagement data. We had performance reviews. And we also had financial performance. So we had 4 vectors of the data that we looked at. When we studied the top 500 and we looked exclusively also at the top level of executive officers right at the top of the house, we found, and we've replicated this time and time again from organization to organization, that only 2% of those executives and officers were really well-rounded in terms of being a great internal people leader, a great external leader, and a great operational leader. And it led us on this journey where we realized that enterprise leadership And graduate business education really strives to emphasize having knowledge around all the major functions of a corporation or an organization. But even beyond that, how your leadership focuses on the people inside, how your leadership focuses on the people that you're serving, your customers, your consumers, maybe your patients. your clients, the markets, the industries, the regulatory climate that you focus in. And then operational excellence so that you are approaching business from a cost savings perspective and you have the money to invest in innovation. They're not either-ors.

Yeah.

But those are tensions that you're managing. And having that kind of holistic mindset And then as an individual, being able to look at your communication, look at your emotional intelligence, look at your own self-awareness. And by the way, we call self-awareness the super predictor of executive success at the top of the house. Looking at your force for good, your communication and your influence skills. And I don't know if I said intuition, but those are all factors. as well as your caring and your connection. Through the pandemic, we've watched leaders, the CEO Hans and the Chief People Officer at Verizon, Christy, are great examples of senior leaders who've done a tremendous amount of communication almost on a daily basis out to the entire organization. And they've created this sense of caring and a sense of belonging, maybe not to everybody, but to a lot of people that work in that system. And so all of those elements in a holistic perspective is very important, but you're absolutely right. When you look at diversity figures and they have a 60% improvement, you're looking at binary data. And I think for all of us who are listening in today, I think the message is look at things more holistically. Test your assumptions. Your assumptions may be faulty. And look at multiple data points. One of the other predictors that we see when people are making that move from director to vice president, and even more importantly, from vice president to the C-suite, is how well they synthesize multiple perspectives into themes. You know, back early in my career when I was doing business acquisition strategy, We used to talk about how important it was to speak to your executive sponsors, your clients, your customers. Get out there in the field and zipper relationships. Talk to people in the front lines, the first responders, all the way to the senior leaders and begin to find out what their goals were, what their issues were in the business, and what they needed. Today, we have so much interaction online. It's so important to continue to talk to people and to also see how your consumers, your customers, and the people that you care for are behaving in the internet, because it tells you a lot about what they need and how you need to innovate.

So without— It's so true. And I want to go back to the 7 differences, the 7 different dimensions of, I think you said influence.

No, actually we're studying 7 different dimensions of awareness.

Awareness.

With holistic performance mindsets. And then we also study 10 different styles of of influence coined by Gary Uckel, who was a Stanford professor. He kind of got the movement around influence going. Bob Cialdini, whom you know, advanced a lot of what we know about influence. But tremendous amount of research and work has continued in this area. It's pretty, pretty exciting. But those are 2 different— first is you get your mindset and you're thinking clean.

Mm-hmm.

And then secondly, Make sure you've got a wide repertoire for how you communicate. And it needs to be very balanced between how much you're asserting and how much you're listening. Because if that gets out of balance, you're probably missing data.

You know, you remind me of a conversation I had. What's today? Tuesday. I think it was on Friday. So the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, which, you know, I started, is for really top-level executive coaches, corporate executive coaches. And we had somebody who was applying for certification within that space. And nowadays, I don't really do the interviewing. We have a vetting committee. We have, you know, various ways to come into the association. And the vetting committee is for whether or not somebody receives their MCEC. And there was one person that the committee was on the fence about, and they said, CB, would you speak to this person? And I spoke to the person. Within 2 minutes, I knew she was a perfect fit, from just from the way that she framed things. But she said something to me that scared me.

Uh-huh.

And it caused me to You know, like, oh my God, I have a problem. She said to me that she wasn't sure that she was at the level of existing members. And I said, why? And she said, well, one of the things is that you ask for somebody who go— has been published. And I said, okay, let me explain what that means. And thank you, because that means we need to change that dimensionality. It means that we're looking for people who go out into the world and who educate leaders and others on what executive coaching really looks like. And for us, it's being an enterprise-wide business partner. That communication doesn't have to be by writing a book. It can be by speaking. It could be a blog. It could be, um, a LinkedIn Live show. It could be live streaming. It could be a podcast. It doesn't need to be a book. So you're right, you have to go out and you have to talk to people. Because to me, that was a miscommunication on our behalf.

I think you had, um, you had Boyazis on the show not long ago, and of course he is just a giant in appreciative inquiry. I love the work that he's done. He said something on one of your previous shows that really resonated with me, and I think when you are coaching at the top of the house there, um, you're expected to coach and listen. You're expected to bring in possibilities strategically from a consulting perspective. And you are also expected to help navigate that top management team— onboarding, conflict, changing priorities, changing structure that they may be facing. And you have to be ready and well-versed in all of those things. You have to be well-versed in board best practices. And in, in our work, we never tell anybody what to do. But the way that we define coaching is helping a person discover new possibilities that they haven't thought of just on their own that positively impacts themselves, their teams, and the organization. And hopefully over time, we can measure it in a bottom-line impact sort of way.

That's so perfectly said because for years, as you know, our struggle has been people who believe in appreciative inquiry and stopping there. And the role of a master coach is so much greater than that. And I love what Richard said, you know, you— your research presents a new view and a current view at looking at the role of a— Master-level corporate executive coach, which is not singular. And it comes from a sense of abundance versus scarcity when working with a client.

Sure. And the executive teams that we serve, they're grappling with technology, artificial intelligence, a changing demographic of our global population. The consumer behavior has radically changed. Our economic models are not always predicting what some of the changes are in our markets. We have geopolitical challenges that we've never seen before. And the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on numerous challenges that we were seeing in multiple societies. And so everything has been magnified. And these C-suite teams are also learning how to lead in a virtual world. And the pandemic isn't over yet. And so there's still a lot that everybody is grappling with, and we will come out different. There will be more disruptive innovation. As CEOs and their top management teams and their boards They really have to play that long game. And in Eastern cultures, many times strategic planning will go on for 50 years, even 100 years in some of those companies. And I think we've been so focused on shareholder value in publicly traded companies, but there is a shift and there is an openness, I think, to seeing things in new ways. I'm really excited about some of the new chapters that are going to be coming. But we also know that there are a lot of new challenges that we're facing and that we're looking at more directly, I think.

Barbara, one of the things I've heard said is that with this new leadership for the new normal, we are feminizing leadership. What is your response to that?

Well, of course, I come with a potential bias. I'll give you the data to try and normalize this. First of all, men and women are so very important. Women make up, I think the latest statistic is 55% of the global workforce. Women and men, I know, and I don't know if you've ever read the book Half the Sky. I absolutely love that book. It's somewhere on my shelves behind me. The one thing that I'm passionate about is that men and women, making men feel psychologically safe while we're lifting up women is very important. There is, you know, that old expression, and I know it's a cliché, that all, and you know, I'm a big boater. I spend all my spare time on the water. but all ships rise together.

Yes.

When we talk about eradicating desperate poverty, there is this economic model that's proven time and time again that all ships rise together. I think the same is true for men and women. And what I also see, and I learned this years ago working with McKinsey, one of the very first individuals that I coached, again, we didn't call it coaching back then, Was working his team until 2:00 AM every morning. They would spend hours and hours on just a few bullet points on a PowerPoint before it went out to a client.

I remember those days.

I know. This individual didn't have a significant other, didn't have children, and worked 80 to 100-hour weeks all the time and was greatly, greatly unhappy. I think I really caught the bug for the work that we do. And I can tell you his name. Of course I won't, but I have his name in my, in my head. And my real success is when he called me a year later and he said, I'm still at the firm. I'm really happy. My teams are pretty happy. People want to work with me. And by the way, I got a date. And then he called me 6 months down the line. He said, I'm in love. I were going to get married. Very traditional, came from a very traditional family. He was an expat from outside of the U.S. And then another year later, uh, he called me again and was married, had children, made partner in the firm, and was, um, really making great inroads in one of the practice groups. You know, there was, um, someone that you had on the show who said we really can't compartmentalize our personal lives and our work lives. And I'm an expert on compartmentalization. I have 4 children. And I've traveled internationally and jumped on and off planes my entire career. And I do it with a tremendous amount of compartmentalization so that when I need to be focused, I can compartmentalize. But the truth is, My family, my loved ones, my friends, the people I work with, I take them everywhere that I go. They're with me in spirit. I did a board meeting a couple of years ago in Switzerland, and I, early in my career, I kind of kept my children invisible from the C-suite. And my CEO at the time, I watched him struggle to even remember my children's names. And I'm sorry if he's listening. He's a very dear person, but that was the truth. I mean, it was my job to keep that part of my life as invisible as possible. There weren't a lot of women doing what I was doing. It was a male-dominated team, and, and I, I knew that they didn't really want me to share any struggles or limitations I had because I was a young working mother. So I kept it all invisible. And a couple years ago, I felt like I was coming out of the closet. I took my team of children to Switzerland with me, and the board that I was working on at the time just had open arms for all of my children. They invited them to all the board dinners. Wow. Imagine the lectures I gave my children about keeping their button-downs tidy and using the right fork. and you're up. And bless my children's heart, they charmed everybody, but I held my breath. We continued to get invited. And I realized people knew me far more deeply when they saw my personal life.

Yeah.

The same is true of the executives that we serve at the Top of the House. It's their courageous authenticity. And they're amazing people. in very, very lonely jobs, making decisions often that impact thousands of people's lives. I mean, they may have 22,000 employees that will have some ripple effect from a decision that they make. So sometimes, I know we joke, I've said this before, I'm like, I should pay people to do our job because it's such a privilege and an honor. It really is. of work that we get to do. But it goes back to that fundamental nugget. And I don't care who's listening. I don't care what your role is. When you wake up each day with a mindset that you're strong, you're resilient, you're thinking holistically, and you work to encourage the people around you and think 5 years down the line, think around the corner, what do you see? Educate yourself. And be strategic. That combination of encouraging and being strategic, those are, those are building blocks to the self-awareness that you need to really succeed in any role at any level.

Well, I have to tell a little secret story here. So, you know, of course, as I said in the beginning, I've always admired Barbara. And one day we were just talking girl talk. And she told me— Oh no, I don't know what you're gonna say. She was dating this new person, and I hung up the phone and I thought, what? How in the world could you possibly do that? She's in this country this day, that country that day. She's got children, and she's part— are twins, and And all I have is this one company. What is my excuse? And I sat there and I thought, well, Barbara's taught you a lot about business in very few words. She's telling you, get out and get yourself a person to love you, that you can love.

I was thinking that. I was thinking at that time because Life is short, and not everybody may know that that's listening in on the show, but I was widowed in 2007, and it changed how I do my work because focusing on critical priorities, big bets, life is short. You need to decide a few things you're gonna focus on and do them really well. But I keep this little plaque, I'll show it to you, on my desk. It says, it's never too late to start your life over.

Oh, I love that.

And I'll tell you what, you can— I was on the top management team at the time. You heard the kinds of clients that we had. And I was traveling. I was helping open our European office. So I was outside of the US about a third of my time. But when you lose a person that you love, um, you really start focusing on what's important.

Yes.

I, I also think our lives are big. There is room for incredible work, but there's also room for incredible happiness at home as well. And so I've been, I've been lucky, um, I've been lucky in that way, but I don't take it for, for granted. I, I teach at Notre Dame, all my students can always do extra credit if they write a gratitude journal. Oh my gosh. Because that goes along with this sense of encouragement and a positive mindset. But when you live your life seeing how much you have and how grateful you are, even when tragedy hits, you're far more, far more resilient to navigate through it. And I can tell you, you can do a C-suite job You can have 4 kids, you can be a woman, and you can be happy. Not every day is going to be great, but the vast majority of my life has been just extraordinary. I tell my family, if something happens and my life is over, it's time for a party because it's just been so incredible. Um, and I hope there's a lot more of it.

There will be. There has to be. Well, so I didn't finish telling the story. So I hung up the phone and I thought— and, and Barbara and I have similar backgrounds in that I lost my fiancé, um, from a heart attack. And I, for many years, I just wallowed in that, you know, openly, but just thought, okay, I'm done with this stuff. But when I heard that she had a boyfriend and I stopped and I thought, okay, it's time, it's time. So it took me a couple of years, but then one day I woke up and I said, I'm selling my house, I'm leaving New Jersey, I'm moving to Colorado, and I'm finding a husband. Not a boyfriend, a husband. A year and a half later, after moving here, I was married. I had full intent, and I have never been happier. And I owe so much of that to you, Barbara, just opening my mind that I could have more.

Yeah, yeah, there— it's, it's been so fun to just see that happiness and that glow in you. Um, Yes, and yes, we can. Everybody, I don't care if you're a man or a woman, how you identify, there is more.

Yeah.

How we show up and how we care for the people around us as we're doing important work, and we also need to, of course, keep— mind the house. We have to do good housekeeping in our organizations, keep our financials strong so that we can be Creative, but there is room for all of it.

Yes, yes, there is. And I am definitely here to tell anyone who's listening, go for it.

Well, we're talking about the C-suite. I would just echo the same thing. You know, we're going to see our boards, we're going to see our C-suite teams change. They're going to look a lot different 5 years from now. They're going to look a lot different 10 years from now. So anybody who's listening in who's thinking, I'm ready for that board role, or I'm ready to go from director to VP, or from VP to the C-suite, or I'm ready to start my own business, it's a great time to do that.

Well, I'm ready for the director role for a for-profit. So anyone listening, I'll put in a personal ad. We have only 10 minutes left. I want to ask you the big question. What is the number one issue that you see leaders in the C-suite facing now?

Well, can I answer with 2?

Yes.

You and I were talking about this before the show went live this morning. But cybersecurity is one of the— and risk are 2 of the most important conversations happening at the top of the house right now. There was a— one of the only women to ever win a Nobel for economy coined the term global commons, and it's really informed some of the governing principles of the United Nations. But the internet is a shared resource that we all have, and our are attacks on our personal security and attacks on organizations right now. I don't know a C-suite team that isn't grappling with that in some way. The other thing that they're grappling with, so they've got the kind of the operational aspect of the business, but also grappling with retaining talent and onboarding talent in a virtual world.

Hmm.

And they need to know their predictors for executive success, their predictors for the magic middle, the first-time managers up to director level. But keeping really important talent, and there's been a tremendous amount of merger and acquisition momentum during the pandemic. And understanding even what some of these organizations have bought or what they've merged with. They have these treasure troves and they're working more in silos. Sometimes they're working on the wrong things. Sometimes they're not as strategic because they're moving out of crisis management and thinking about how their business has changed post-pandemic. But keeping those talented professionals, And that treasure trove of what they've acquired or they've recruited and onboarding them in a virtual world is pretty vexing for most C-suite teams that we work with. Did that answer your question?

It does. And so my question to you, especially on the second one, because the first one is just probably beyond our capabilities of resolving, that is the cybersecurity part. But the second part, what's the key learning in recruiting and retaining by virtual reality?

My friend at Kellogg, Elmer Almachar, he calls it organic collisions. And in our old world, we had the luxury of organic collisions. We'd walk down the hall, we'd pop into somebody's office, we'd grab lunch. We'd sit on an airplane when we traveled for a business trip, and we were making decisions organically in real time through our conversations. And we didn't even realize in graduate business education, the learning is not often happening in the classroom. It's happening in the discussions of how students are processing a new theory that they're learning or a new piece of research. And so this lack of organic collisions means that we now need to orchestrate and treat onboarding as a team sport. That's something that we've been working on. We've been helping a couple of large organizations roll out very comprehensive virtual onboarding programs because if you don't have organic collisions, collisions, then you need— it's almost like being a conductor of a symphony. We used to have a lot of street musicians that could walk down the street and see each other and start jamming. We don't have that anymore. We have people behind their cameras who are very talented, but we need a system that conducts them to focus on a few big bets and really also build relationships. But you have to take the time because out of sight, out of mind. If you don't have regular reasons to communicate with somebody, then we're starting to see a greater divide among people who've traditionally partnered across borders. We have more barriers right now to communicate across borders, but the same is true across our functions. You really have to go out of your way to get Zoom time. or to get video time with someone. And we run back-to-back-to-back-to-back Zoom meetings.

Yeah.

But there's a great Harvard Business Review article that's pre-pandemic called Beware of the Busy Manager. I think during the pandemic, to justify our raison d'être for our jobs, we focused on things that we knew we were good at, but it might have been more transactional parts of the business. And we've lost those strategic conversations and those organic collisions. And we certainly are seeing talent that are moving around at certain levels more quickly because they're not creating that sense of belonging when they join an organization.

Got it. Yeah, I agree. Hey, Barbara, I hate to sort of go into wrap-up zone, Um, but I need to do that. Uh, and so what I want to do is to mention to everybody, please mark your calendars. The Association of Corporate Executive Coaches conference is coming up, and this year we're doing it by Zoom, and we're doing it over 4 days. And this week we have a pre-conference with a Master of Podcasting. You will share secrets on monetizing podcasting, but the actual conference dates are May 6th, May 20th, June 3rd, and June 17th. So mark your calendars. And Barbara, having done that little bit of commercial for me, I would love for you to tell us the name of your company and how they can find out more About what you're doing, both from a coaching perspective and for those leaders out there who really need your expertise.

So let me make sure I understand the question. You, you want a name of a company?

Your company.

Oh, the name of my company. You're so sweet. So Executive Core. We have people all over the world doing international engagements who are triple— we call them triple threats. They do consulting, facilitation, executive coaching, and we all do assessment work and we accelerate talent. So that's Executive Corps. CB, thank you so much for mentioning that.

And how can they find out more information? What is the website?

executivecorps.com.

Perfect, perfect. And I must say that many of the members of the Executive Corps are also members of Transparency and ACEC because they add such incredible value to our field. Barbara, it has just been amazing speaking to you. Do you have a last word for us? We're almost at zero.

Okay, wait, I have another quotation.

Yes.

Work— this is another Studs Terkel quotation. Work is about search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment as well rather than torpor. In short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. Studs Terkel.

Wow, powerful. Absolutely powerful. Barbara, it's been so fabulous having you here, and I hope you'll come back and visit us again. And, um, that book you're writing, let me see, I'm gonna put the publication date on that of 1 year from now.

All right, you can hold me to it. CB, I adore you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Thank you, everybody. Remember to tune in on Thursday for CB Bowman Live. But you know, on Thursdays we talk about the workplace specifically, social justice, and how to view it in a way that is supportive of your goals. So I hope you'll tune in on Thursday. We come in an hour earlier. And next week on Tuesday, we'll be here with another very special guest on Challenges of the Lead— Challenges of the C-Suite. So go with success, go with happiness, and go with positive intent. We'll see you on Thursday. Bye now. Bye.