Courage to Leap & Lead with John Sigmon, ССС, MCEC, MCC - Episode 137

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. Welcome to another episode of Courage to Leap and Lead. I'm so excited that you're here today. To hear a good friend of mine, a colleague, and a member of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches and committee chairs. So I am super excited to welcome today John, and John is going to talk to us about his success. He has been incredibly successful. How we got there, and what was some of the stumbling blocks that he faced. We're going to learn some inside secrets of how to get past those stumbling blocks, both in life and in business. So here we go with Courage to Leap and Lead. Welcome, John. It's so good to see you today.

CB, it's so wonderful to see you as always. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, John. John keeps me on my toes, always cracking wise with a completely straight face, and you have to stop and think, I got it. And he seems so innocent, doesn't he?

I've cultivated that over a number of years. Thank you for that.

Hey, John, you're an executive coach and a professor and a dad, and you do it all so well. So tell us, first of all, why did you want to be on the show?

You know, that is a wonderful question. And the reason why I wanted to be on the show was that you have really— and I don't mean this in an overly grandiose way— but the idea of courage never actually occurred to me in such a pronounced way from the time that you started talking about it. So when you started talking about courage, it really spurred a lot of thinking for me and a reflection about my own life and where I've come from. You know, I've never really considered in a, in a deliberate way courage. So that's why I wanted to be on this show.

Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, I just had a conversation with the speakers bureau that represents me in England. He said to me, you know, you're getting a lot of visibility talking about courage. It's something I never thought about before. I said, you know, many of us haven't. It's because we think of the word courage in such a grandiose way.

Yeah.

It's got to be the person running into the building to save a life. And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about micro coverage, which is everyday actions that lead to the big coverage in your life, which is your goal. So I'm so glad that you are here to talk about that. So, John, tell us a little bit about yourself. Now, this part, audience, I have no idea what he's going to say, but tell us about yourself as a little boy.

Oh my goodness. Well, you know, that, that is a great, uh, entry point. So I grew up in a very rural area. My parents were— they had just turned 20 and 19 when I was born. So just contemplate that for just a moment, that, you know, my own children are 33 and 35 now.

Wow.

So my parents were just youngsters when I was born and brought into this world, and they had very little experience, clearly, in raising children. So as a little boy, I was really rambunctious and energetic and, you know, just all over the place. And my guess is if I were born in 1980 or so, I probably would have been prescribed Ritalin as a young child. But I was very adventurous. I loved to spend time in nature, and we lived at the end of a road, and we had no neighbors and a lot of forest and wooded area around us. And I just loved life. I enjoyed so much being outdoors and wandering around the neighborhood and just engaging with my friends. It was just— when I look back on my childhood, It was really a wonderful, wonderful experience. There were some bumps in the road, clearly. But as a little boy, I was very, very talkative, very, very energetic. And my suspicion is that I got on my parents' nerves quite a bit.

Did you get into trouble as a young man?

I did. So I spent probably the first 14 years of my life striving to be the best son that I could be for my parents. And I felt a lot of pressure around that. And right around the time I was 14 or so, my, my mother's father, my grandfather, who I was very, very close to, passed away suddenly. And that was a big blow for me because I spent a lot of time with them on the weekends, and they came over to, to babysit when my parents went on trips and things like that. So that was And from there, I spun out of control a little bit for a number of years, and I was quite difficult. I tell people this story all the time. If my children had treated me the way that I treated my parents, you know, I probably would have run off into the forest screaming. I mean, it was just— I was not a very good son at that point, quite frankly.

What kind of trouble did you get into, John?

Well, uh, let's see. I, uh, started acting out in school, and I wasn't— my parents had sent me to a private school. And, uh, I'll put it to you this way. One afternoon at this, this, uh, fancy private school, I was, uh, smoking pot in the library when I was 15 years old and got kicked out. So that was just a little tidbit of the sort of trouble that I created and got into. Uh, I was a very rebellious teenager for sure, and even into my young adulthood I was sort of that way.

How did your parents handle that?

Um, looking back on it, as, as best as they could, I'm sure, but, you know, probably not all that well. They, uh, try— I think, you know, they tried everything that they could try. They, uh, cajoled me, they tried being my friend, they tried, uh, corporal punishment and discipline. They threatened to send me to military school or boarding school, all sorts of things like that. And I think at the end of the day, they just kind of threw their hands up a little bit. And, you know, I sort of waited out my time until I could turn 18. And the day that I turned 18, I rented a car— you could still do that back then— and I drove to my parents' home and I packed up all my stuff and I moved out.

No way.

I did, yes.

And what'd they say?

Uh, I had been telling them for a while that I was going to move, and when I turned 18, that that was going to be it for me. And I remember very distinctly, it's a very poignant moment for me. So I was in the driveway with this rented vehicle, putting things into it, and my mother came out And she was crying, and she was asking me, "Well, what what am I doing?" And my response to her was, "You know, I told you that I was going to move out when I'm 18. So I turned 18 today. I'm moving out." And you know, I think she just wasn't prepared for that moment, quite frankly. And when I look back on it, I think you know that was a pretty hurtful thing for me. to do to my parents. But at the time, I, you know, I didn't have any comprehension of that sort of empathy or how I should be behaving in the world. Because again, you know, from 14 to 18, I was just this rebellious, out of control, you know, made it through school and I did okay. But I drove my parents crazy.

How did you— how could you afford to move out at that age at that time?

Uh, yeah, you know, I, I started working part-time, uh, after school when I was 14 and a half years old, which at that time in— I was born in North Carolina, so you could get a worker's permit if your parents signed off on it.

Mm-hmm.

And my parents, my, my dad was a, a worker his whole life, and he really valued kind of putting your nose to the grindstone and working really hard. So he really wanted me— I mean, he, he didn't stand— my parents did not stand in my way of working and In fact, they, you know, picked me up and took me to work and things of that nature. So I started working and accumulating some money along the way, and, uh, that's how I did it. And when I was in high school in my senior year, they had a program where you could just take a few classes and then you could go to work during the day. And so it was just a bit, a bit of a different time, I think, back then.

Mm-hmm.

And it wasn't really frowned upon for young children to be working. I worked at a fast food restaurant in the evenings and weekends for 20 hours a week.

Wow.

I've been working my whole life, really.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, John, what do you do now?

What do I do now? Oh my goodness. Well, my passion is coaching, so I am a leadership and executive coach. I help leaders harness what I call sort of the 4 essential energies so that they can become more mindful leaders. So that is what I do. I am first and foremost—

What are the 4 essentials?

Well, they are the leadership energies as I see them are driver, collaborator, organizer, and visionary. And when people think about their leadership style, if you will, I often sort of steer them in a little bit of a different direction and have them start thinking about what is their preference for leadership.

Okay, wait, give us— if— give us that again.

Driver, visionary, collaborator, organizer, visionary.

Okay.

And when you pause for a moment and just consider those ways of being or ways of leading, I think most people can see that within them all of that exists. I have the capacity to be a very driven leader. I have the capacity to be very collaborative, to be visionary, to be organized. And I can describe a little bit of that, but I think people generally get the gist of that.

Mm-hmm.

Over time, I develop a preference for how I lead because I get results from that. And while I'm kind of exercising that capability, some of these other capabilities that I might have lie dormant. Or unexercised. So if I'm primarily a collaborative leader, let's say, and suddenly I have a need, the circumstance calls for me to be direct. Well, you know, if I haven't exercised that in a while, it might be really awkward or clunky or feel disingenuous or inauthentic for me to be direct. But the reality is that that's already there. So helping people recognize that is really a powerful leadership tool.

Where do you get these from? What, uh, what led you to create these 4 styles?

Yeah, so I, I, I've gotten that from a piece of work called The Zen Leader by a fabulous, uh, woman named Jenny Whitelaw. And so it comes out of that body of work, if you will. So it's just a way to describe how people interact with one another. And I think about it like as a leadership energy as opposed to a style of leading, if you will, because I think style is simply too limiting for what's needed in today's environment.

Can you go from one energy driver to another? Depending upon the situation?

You most definitely can. And that is really the practice, right? So if you think about leaders that you've observed, they typically, even in any given conversation, they can move from being very direct. My belief, for example, my belief is we need to do this, to being very collaborative. What do you think? Who else do we need to involve? Where might this take us? Visionary. What is the next step? Organizer. So you think about all of that exists even within your own conversations that you're having with, with colleagues and friends.

Mm-hmm. So if somebody doesn't have access to all of those energies, are they not a good leader?

They are a good leader. And my belief is that virtually everyone has access to those capabilities, that they're inherent in, in who we are as people.

Mm-hmm.

I have the cap— now, I may need to develop it. I may need to overcome some fear that I have about being direct. Right? But the ability to be direct is there. And so when people tell me, just using this as an example, that they, they're not comfortable doing that, you know, my question back then is, what would happen if the room you're in catches on fire suddenly? Are you going to call together a committee to discuss it? Are you going to pull out your project plan and see what to do next? No, you're going to get out of the room before you die.

Right.

That's direct, action-oriented energy. And so rather than waiting for a circumstance to call for that, starting to cultivate your instinct and your intuition about what would be needed in this moment and moving in that direction, that's being an effective leader. So my belief is that people have those capabilities already.

So do they bring you in to strengthen one of those energies?

Yes. So typically people are a little— I think people are generally unaware or they're not cognizant of the fact that they do have these capabilities because you'll hear people say things all the time. I'm not a numbers person. Well, yeah, you probably are a numbers person. You may not prefer that. You may not like it, but you can do numbers and you can do math. Or people say, you know, I'm not a great speaker. Well, maybe you're not great, but you can get good, right? So I do think, you know, exercising this— first of all, just understanding that they exist. These energies exist. You have the ability to collaborate, right? You have the ability to be direct. You have the ability to plan and be organized. Again, your skills may be different in one area versus the other. But once people start to recognize that, Then the next phase is for them to start noticing what do they see around them. When you're in a meeting and you're interacting with others, what do you notice about their leadership preference? What is the energy that they bring? How do other people respond to that? So that in that way, people can get more comfortable and start to recognize that they have those capabilities and how to use them.

Do you think that Zoom has helped people identify their energies better? Or not?

I think it's been a bit of a detriment, quite honestly.

Really?

Yeah. I think that there are some— I think more— listen, just to be clear, I'm a big fan of hybrid work. And I trained to be a coach on the telephone, right? And live and in person. So I do think there's a lot of value here. It's just, as a coach, It's a little bit more clunky doing exercises and things of that nature via Zoom with these sorts of things, but it's eminently doable. And I think that there is a little bit of advantage to having those types of conversations live and in person. I don't think it's dramatic by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think it presents a little bit of an obstacle to navigate through.

See, I would have thought the reverse, but it could be because I'm introverted. Because I can actually see your expressions. I'm like not focused on things that are around the person, but I'm zoomed in on you and your body language and your face because I'm on Zoom.

Yeah, I listen, I, I can see that. I think my challenge is this: I, I strive to make eye contact, and by doing that, I'm looking right here at this little dot.

Right.

So you're sort of down here in my peripheral vision. I can look at you now. So now I'm looking at you and I can see you and your background and body. So perhaps there's something there for me to kind of figure out a little bit in terms of how I'm looking at the camera and the person back and forth.

Ah, yeah. Yeah. Because I'm looking at the screen. But if I look at the camera, I'm looking like that, you know. Now, John, so you're very successful in what you do. And I know that you also teach.

I do.

Mm-hmm. What in your life do you consider to be the pivotal moments where you may have had fail— where you, where you have had failure, and how did you flip that around to success? Give us a personal example.

Yeah. So I'm, I'm gonna go back to the original question that you asked, which was about my child— me as a boy. And, you know, I had a, I had a pivotal moment in my childhood that was really just sort of incidental, I think, but it really impacted me in a big way.

Mm-hmm.

When I was a young boy, my father gave me a screwdriver and he told me to go out to the car and to take out the headlight of his car. Those were the instructions as I remember them. So I, so I was very excited about that. You know, I get to do a project for my dad. So I took the screwdriver outside and I found the screw on the headlight and I started turning and turning and turning and nothing was happening. So I went to the next one. I was turning and turning and nothing happened. So when I went back to my dad and I said, you know, I'm trying this, but nothing's happening. And he went out to kind of supervise, if you will. And then he proceeded to discover that what I had been turning were some screws that adjust the headlight, not take it out.

Okay.

Now, having said all of that, the, the next thing that he said to me is what really impacted me. This is what he said. He said, you know what, if you can't do something right, you shouldn't try to do it. Now, that's how I remember it. My dad is a wonderful human being. He's still alive today. And I guarantee you that he didn't mean anything mean-spirited by that. He was probably just frustrated. And I get it as a parent. But what that did, looking back on it, was it made me really scared in many ways to try new things.

Hmm.

That's one impact. The other impact was when I discovered something that I'm interested in, it led me to this notion that I must be the best at whatever it is. So if I became a stamp collector, well, I had to know everything about stamps, the entire natural history, etc. If I became a basketball player, I had to be the best. So there was a— there was some benefit out of that for me, but it did have that impact. So that was something that really profoundly impacted me as a child. Now, I have used that over time. I have leveraged that to my advantage. So here's my— here's an example I would give you. As a coach, when I first became a coach, I threw myself all into that process with that voice probably in the back of my mind, I must be the best. And that when I can harness that energy in a healthy way, it drives me toward mastery.

Hmm.

When I let it overcome me, I start to divert back to this idea that, you know what, I'm not good enough, or people won't like me, or, you know, all of those sorts of negative messages. So what I have found for myself is harnessing that energy in a way that helps me continue that journey toward mastery in my work and in my life. So I'm really grateful that my dad gave me that screwdriver and that task that day. And although that message has really hampered me in a wide number of different ways across my life, where I am with that today is It's a blessing in many ways. It's part of who I am and part of what drives me as a person and as a coach.

You know, it's, it's just really interesting how you brought that story to us because I interviewed Dr. Sharon Melnick and she does research on intergenerational communication. And it is stunning how many parents who meant to say something good, in their heads they're saying something good and inspiring, a child takes it and flips it into something that hampers them later on in life. And I wonder then, that's a heavy weight to put on parents.

Yeah.

You know? you know that they're coming— for the most part, parents are coming at you for the good. And then as an adult, you stop and you think, oh yeah, well, that's what they said, and that's the reason why I'm like that. And I love Marshall Goldsmith, who says, what, you're an adult and you're still blaming your parents? Get over it. Right? But many people don't have a sassy colleague to say that to them, right? So how does one— how did you get to the point where you said, okay, it's on me now to interpret this so that it is an asset and not a deficit? How did you get to that point?

Yeah, it was, as you might imagine, it was a process, not really an event. But here's, here's what happened. If I could just tell you a brief little story here.

Yes, please.

I was at what I thought was the pinnacle of my career. I had just been appointed to my second C-suite role as a chief human resources officer. And I was so excited. I mean, it was just really the ultimate achievement in my estimation at that time. And so again, I was full of doubt about myself and about whether I was going to be great at this job. And so I threw myself into it. And I remember a very seminal moment that occurred while I was in that role. So I was at a compensation committee conversation. We were doing year-end performance reviews for the executive team. The CEO was here, the board was over here. And in that conversation, we were really mixing it up. And I was making some good points back and forth. They were making some good points, and we were having a lively, energizing conversation. And when the meeting was over, we all shook hands and smiled, and it was all grand. So I went back to my CEO's office and said, how do you think that went? Just by typical practice. And her words to me were these: it did not go well. In fact, It was clear to everyone in the room how irritated you were about that conversation. And when she told me that, I mean, I, I almost broke into tears. I was so shocked and taken aback by that comment, because in that moment I felt like I was the congenial, let me make my point, What do you have to say? I was that version of John. But no one else in that entire room saw it that way. Because I went back to the board chair and I said, you know, what was your experience? And she told me almost the exact same thing. So from— so that was a seminal moment for me, really late in my career. And as a result of that, I had a— I had this exact conversation with a friend of mine later in the evening, and he suggested that I get a coach. And just FYI, up until that point, I didn't really have a very positive impression of coaching, quite frankly. And so he told me what to— he gave me specific instructions. He said, go back to your boss and tell her this. Tell her I want to become a better leader. Will you get me a coach? And that's exactly what I did. And as I was going up the elevator to her office, I'm thinking she'll say no because this is expensive and I really don't need it, etc. But of course she said yes. That is what propelled me into becoming a professional coach myself. And that process that I went through is what helped clue me into this idea that You know, I'm a sensitive person. I probably feel things a little bit more than other people may, and that's a superpower for me. So as a coach, you know, I think about helping people harness these leadership energies so they can be more impactful or effective. That's what drives me. And so that is how, you know, it's probably not a very specific answer, but that process is how I got to be where I could harness a little bit of that energy, some of that negativity that I carried throughout my childhood into something positive that could have a great impact. And again, not to be too grandiose about it, but my belief is that, you know, having an impact in the world that we live in, even if it's one person at a time, is what really drives me.

I actually totally resonate with that story.

Hmm.

You know, when I was in corporate America, I was told when I came out of meetings and I thought I was really resonating with people, CB, what were you so upset about? What's going on? Why did you attack that person? What are you talking about? And I would get angry at their question because I would say, yeah, they're just picking on this Black woman, right? We're all about anger. And so it was very hard for me to accept it as good criticism. to learn that there was a different way of communicating. Even when I started ACEC, I would just tick people off. And because, you know, it's all committee-driven, and I didn't understand why people were like, oh, we don't want to be near that. It took me a long time and a lot of good people saying to me, Get a grip. Slow it down. You know, watch, listen, learn, and shut up.

You know, that, that, that really rings true with me, you know, and I think, you know, on the other side of that, what I— some of the actions that I took that were really, really helpful was Kind of borrowing a page from Marshall Goldsmith's book, I enlisted a couple of accountability partners because clearly I could not see what everybody else could clearly see. I just didn't get it.

Yeah.

And so I got that feedback and that feedforward, and that really did help kind of pull me in a different direction with my leadership and how I think about myself and how I operate in this world. And it just did give me that clarity that I felt like I needed. So, you know, to answer your question, it was a process to kind of come to the other side of that. But where I am today is, you know, all of these things comprise who I am as a person.

Hmm.

And it's foolhardy in my estimation to run away from those things. So the more that I can embrace the— my past and the things that, that I went through and experienced and use that as a way to further my practice and, you know, what I'm bringing to the world. I, I just, you know, that really is what motivates me and keeps me energized in this work.

That is— well, maybe I'm speaking for myself, but that is a lot of work. It's a lot of work to separate yourself and make yourself sort of like this, uh, person, this— have this out-of-body experience where you can look down, observe what you are doing, observe how people are interacting with you, and listen to what they're saying. I mean, that's tough stuff.

It's hard. There's, you know, and you know this, especially when you're in it.

Yes.

I mean, all this sounds very simple, but it's just, it's rarely easy, you know. So I'm in the middle of a heated conversation, and wow, it is really, really difficult to extricate myself from that and sort of be in that seat of the observer like you're suggesting.

Hey, why?

And sometimes, you know, for me, just as a tool, I know this sounds kind of silly, but a lot of times I'll think about myself in those moments in the third person.

Oh, that's a good— how do you do that?

So I'll ask myself, I'll just ask myself a coaching question. I wonder why, I wonder why John is so upset. What is it about this circumstance that's gotten him so wound up? You know, it's all just kind of— it, again, it sounds kind of silly.

No, it doesn't.

But I think just kind of, it helps me visualize stepping outside of what I'm experiencing. Because in a lot of ways, again, not to go too far afield, that's not really me necessarily, right? I'm the person observing that. Right. And so if I can get to that place, that's a golden place for me to be, because I can, I can do something with that. That's actionable. I can come up with an answer. Well, John's really upset because CB pushed his buttons, right? And brought up something perhaps that was a sensitive topic for him.

Right?

And so then I can kind of reengage. So again, it's a little bit of a mental jiu-jitsu, I guess.

That is an incredibly powerful exercise. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

I love— listen, you could do a whole book on that. Holy crap. Well, I actually have to think back. I did that yesterday with my husband. I got angry with him about something very trivial. He wouldn't listen to a book that I had, and I wanted him to listen to the book with me. And he's just— he's not into that, the crap that I'm into, right? And he sat there and I said, whoa, you are really angry. What's— what are you going to do about that? And I looked at him and I said, you know, I wanted to share this book with you. And that's all I had to say. And it was so different. Now, he didn't listen to the book, but he did say at one point, because we were waiting for the gym to open, he said, well, we could spend some time and listen to your book. And it was like— because I figured out I didn't have to carry that anger all day. I figured out what the trigger was for me. And it was that I wanted to share my book with him. Yeah, I just feel like I might toy with him.

It's, it's, it's a, you know, when again, it's, it's simple, but in the moment it's rarely easy. And when I do it like you just suggested, it's almost like magic. You know, it really does shift things in a pretty significant way. And, you know, part and parcel of that, that, that I have found that works for me is when I get really uncomfortable And when you mention your husband, I think about conversations I have with family members, and sometimes they can be uncomfortable. So the mantra that I tell myself when I start to feel uncomfortable, my initial reaction is I want to stand up and walk away. I just want to get away. So the mantra I tell myself is stay, just stay, stay with it. Because there's some learning, there's something there for me. That's the reason why I feel uncomfortable. And so at this late stage of my life and career, kind of coming to that place really is very, very fulfilling for me. I, you know, oftentimes I wish that I had kind of come to that place a little earlier in my career or in my life. But you know what? At the end of the day, I'm where I am, and it's a really good place to be.

You know, it's interesting because I've watched you in committee meetings, and I could tell when you just want to get up and go away.

Yeah.

It's on your face. I'm like, oh God, we got to change this conversation so John will stay. Then you'll sit back and you'll go like this. And then you come out with the most profound response that nobody has thought about. And I'm like, how did he do that? I know he was totally tired of this conversation. So How does he then reengage and then come back with something that really contributes greatly to the conversation? And I've watched you do that over and over and over again, and I could not figure out how you were doing it. So now I know the secret.

Well, thank you for— thank you for recognizing that. And again, you know, that's not something that I consciously often recognize in myself. And so, you know, not to keep going back to Marshall's work, but, you know, to continue to cultivate that ecosystem of feedback and feedforward, it's just so important. And just having that reinforcement from, from people like you and people that I interact with is just invaluable, really. So I never really recognized that myself. But yeah, that's what's going on. Sometimes I'm like, I just need to turn my camera off and get the hell out of here. But then I tell myself, just stay, stay. That's it. Stay, stay with it. Right? It's all good. Nothing terrible. I'm not being tortured. I mean, no, it's all good. Just stay because there's something there to learn.

Yeah, well, not only do you get something out of it that you learn, you throw back at us and we go, crap, why didn't we think about that? Because we're all in this quagmire together, and we're all going down in the quicksand, and John is up there going, hey, did you think about that? Oh, there's the leaf. Let's pull out.

Yeah. What's going on down there?

Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's a wonderful thing that you have. It really is. And usually come back with some sort of humor in it. And I'm like, oh, there goes John.

Shoot.

Okay, now on the right track.

You know, I, uh, you know, you mentioned humor a couple of different times, and I, I, I have often thought that, uh, you know, I'd love to do, uh, stand-up comedy at some point.

Oh, you should.

I actually, a number of years ago, I took an introduction to improvisational comedy course And I took that because I always felt like, you know, I'm not really a quick-on-my-feet thinker, you know, and I find myself in meetings quite often. And, you know, attorneys feel, you know, with a lot of attorneys, and they can oftentimes— the perception from me is they can think very quickly on their feet.

Right.

They can come back with an answer. And when people push back, they don't seem flustered or flummoxed by that. And I see myself as not that way at all. And so when people push back on me, I feel like I can get defensive. So I took this class and I just thought it was just such a wonderful experience. Now, there were a lot of business lessons I took away from that, but, you know, I might go back at some point and give it another go.

Oh no. Well, first of all, I think that you are amazingly funny. I describe your wit as very English. And because it's, it's intellectual wit. And I think you would make a great comedian for business people, you know, when they have these offsites. Oh, I mean, you're absolutely hysterical.

Well, if I could get an audience like you, uh, that would be great.

Oh, easy. Absolutely easy. So now tell us, in, in, uh, business, where have you experienced failures? Since clearly you're really good at what you do and flip that around to success?

Yeah. You know, I, I think that the example that comes to mind for me is probably about a decade or so ago, sort of back in this space where I was a chief human resources officer.

And— By the way, I never knew that about you.

Yeah, I've held 2 C-suite roles. I was a chief financial officer at one point in my career, and then later I became a chief human resources officer. So I've been very fortunate that way, honestly.

You bet.

So I came into that role at a lower level as an HR business partner, and I had come in to replace someone. They were the HR business partner for the charitable arm of the organization and the financial arm of the organization. organization. And for some, there was some turmoil there. They didn't like this person or, or whatever. So I came in to be that person's replacement and they redeployed them somewhere else, right?

Okay.

So that's what happened. And I made a name for myself in that role. And later, as you know, I became the Chief Human Resources Officer. So in that space, one of my first tasks was onboarding a new CEO helping her orchestrate her new leadership team, including me, and also onboarding a new person for the— our charitable foundation. And in the midst of all of that, I had a mandate to really radically shift and change the human resources function for the organization. So all of that was going on concurrently, and I was highly energized. I was so excited by this opportunity. So what happened was, as I was reorganizing my group, the person who I replaced as HR business partner didn't really fit into that role any longer. And I invited this individual to apply for another role in learning and development because I felt like they could be a great mentor. There were some programs we could do, all of those sorts of things. So I encouraged her to apply for this open role because her role was going to go away. She applied for the role. It was a competitive process, and we wanted to make her an offer for this role. So I went up to my CEO because we were kind of in lockstep with all of the reorganization happening, and she wanted to be informed of all of the different moves. And so when I presented this to her, she pushed back on me really hard. She had had some experience working with this person. And her impression was not good. So we had a back and forth about that. And the chief operating officer was in the, in the room as well. And so what happened was they were telling me in no uncertain terms that they did not want this person in that role. And my belief from being on the ground was this person would be perfect for this role. So after a lot of discussion back and forth, I took a deep breath, right? And I kind of remembered my core values, right? The things that are really important to me in this life, right? And this is what I said. If I'm not able to hire the people I want to be on my team so that we can be successful, you can have my resignation this afternoon. Now, that came from a place of frustration. But I expressed it pretty close to how I just expressed it to you. And to my surprise, in some ways, that kind of ended the conversation. So they kind of nodded their heads. So what could have been a failure, right? I could have just said, you know what, you're right, I won't offer her the job, I'll offer it to somebody else. But if you go for it, up until a year and a half ago, that person was still at that organization doing great things. And, and so, you know, when you started this work on courage and microcourage, as I mentioned, you know, I'd never considered that as part of who I am as a person. I thought about myself as being determined, resilient, fearless, maybe reckless in some ways, but I never thought about myself as a courageous person. But that's an example that I pulled from as I started looking into more of the work that you're doing and thinking a little bit more deeply about courage.

Wow, that is a fantastic story. That you stood your ground. You were so courageous in that moment.

It scared the crap out of me.

That's a lot of what being courageous is about, is taking on things that, you know, in your gut, you know it's the right move, but speaking it as a spoken word, it's a whole nother animal. And did they ever come back and say, John, you did good?

You know, it's funny that you asked that question. The CEO at the time is somebody that I still have a good working relationship with, and we had a history prior to that. So she did come back to me later. So, uh, about, uh, 3 years later, I left for other opportunities. And in my exit, when we were having the conversation, she came back to that moment. She came back to 2 moments. She came back to the moment when I asked her for a coach, and she came back to that particular moment, and she reminded me. And so she— so this is what she said: well done. She's not a very— she's not a very congratulatory person, and she would probably never say, you know what, you were right and we were misguided, etc. But here's what she said. Well done. She mentioned the person's name. She said, remember the conversation we had about so-and-so? And I said, oh yeah, I remember. And she said, well done. And I took that. So that really buoyed my spirits kind of leaving the organization. And, you know, it was just a, a profound moment for me when I look back on it.

That's powerful because, you know, when So many people have always said to me when I was coming along in business, first person who speaks loses. And that's akin to somebody who speaks 1,000 words in 2 words.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

It depends on who it's coming from, how it's said, and when it's said. And that well done was thousands of words.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I love that.

Wow, fantastic. So I was, I was waiting for you to say, and I left the organization, they fired me.

You know, I was— and, and I'll tie this back to the other part of that story, which was around me getting a coach initially. And that way— and, and the coach that I had He was a former head of HR as well for Fortune 50 companies. And one of the things he told me along the line, he says, you know, as a chief human resources officer, you need to be prepared every day to put your badge on the table. And so what he meant by that, you need to be prepared every day to say, you know what, this is not the right move. We shouldn't be doing this. You have my resignation. And so, you know, I kind of took that to heart. I didn't want to use that as a weapon or anything, but just in that moment, I felt like, you know what? And the value for me was, you know, you should— the trust, it felt like the trust was not there from them to me. And so the value that that really kind of touched for me was autonomy. And that's a huge driver for me and why I feel like I've been so successful in this part of my career because I have a lot of autonomy in how I do things and how I approach things. And it's just a wonderful, wonderful experience.

But John, were you not afraid that they would take your word and say, okay, you're out of here? And what would you have done then? I mean, did you have no fear at all?

You know, I'm reflecting on that for just a moment here because that is a really wonderful question. And the answer to that is no, not really. Now, I was nervous saying it, and I think if I had planned it or thought about it or even been intentional about how I was going to approach that conversation, it might have had a different outcome. But I was sort of called up to the office in the spur of the moment. There was a lot of things happening. There's a lot of swirl and tension and activity. And I think it didn't sound frustrating, but I think that that comment, that what I said came from a place of frustration. I was kind of frustrated at the moment. So yeah, I had virtually no fear there. If they had said, okay, we accept your resignation, you know, Pack your bags. Now, I would have been a little shocked, but I would have been okay with that.

So I, I know we're out of time, but I wanted to dive into why would you have been okay with that? What would you have done? Um, and the fact that you didn't prepare to say that, and I'm particularly interested because I think women Minorities would not have responded in that way. Their courage might have been to keep quiet. That's courage too.

Yes.

For fear of not being able to find another job, for fear of not being able to put food on the table. Were you married then?

I was married, yes. And had a lot of debt. So I had a lot of bills to pay.

Oh my God.

Car payments, house payments, the whole thing, just like everybody else.

That— it's amazing that you, in that moment, your values took over your fear. Because really, that's what happened.

Yeah.

Like, it was like shock. Like you hear that somebody's died that you didn't expect that to happen. It's shock. And you just blazed right through it. That's something that I think we would all like to have that ability, that courage, that strength to say, my values are at play here. They need to surface to the top. That's all there is to it. And whatever happens, happens.

Yes. You know, I agree, CB. And, you know, I think the challenge is, it's, you know, a lot of these things are situational, right? I mean, I was at a certain point in my career, and again, I didn't plan to make that statement, but something about how they presented this argument to me really touched on a bit of a nerve. And it was almost automaticity. It was almost like an automatic response. You know, I'm not going to do that. And if you make me do that, I quit. I mean, that was basically what I said, in much nicer words than that. But it was 25 years earlier than that. I probably would not have been able to summon that courage. to do that. My circumstance was different at the time, right? My level of awareness about my own courage and my own place in this world was different at that time. So it's just a confluence, I think, of those moments. Yet at the same time, I've continued to work on and develop those boundaries for my life and my work that are really rooted in those values or the things that are important to me in my life. And it has made it so much easier for me to say no, which is really hard for me to do oftentimes.

So I hate to end this, but I think you've just said something incredibly important, which is it takes courage to say yes. And it takes courage to say no.

Yes.

I remember when I was in your shoes and I asked for a coach and I was told, no, you don't qualify.

Oh my gosh.

And I just hung my head in shame. I thought, I've done something wrong. I should not have asked for it. What did I do wrong? And it wasn't until years later When I had to sue a Fortune 500, that company, for race discrimination, I realized what happened. But I would have given anything to be able to realize it then and gone out and gotten my own coach. That's probably why I'm such a good coach right now. But the fact that you could take your values and placed them ahead of anything, anything at that moment, when you stop and think about it, it's a good thing.

I agree.

You recognized that your values were honorable and not negative, and they were not to the detriment of you and your family, and you did it. Thank you, CB. Audience, I'm so sorry that we have to leave now.

I'm sorry, CB. Oh my gosh.

John's on a tight schedule, you know. He's got to go out there and help people like you and me. And so we'll forgive him this time, but we'll ask him to come back because stories like that are so inspiring to all of us.

Thank you, CB. I would love to come back and talk a little bit more about how values have helped in my career and some of these other things that we've touched on. So thank you for all of your work in this area. It has really, really served as a powerful reflection for me in my life and career. Absolutely. I'm so excited.

Thank you, John. Audience, please come back next week for another wonderful interview with people like John to spur us on and to add to our courage bank and strengthen our courage muscle. This is CB. See you next week.