Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring CB Bowman

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us, joining us on the LinkedIn Live version of our podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. And today my guest is CB Baumann, an old friend. She is a speaker, an author, a consultant, a coach, and an all-around fascinating woman. So without further ado, welcome. How are you today?

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, I'm a, you know, Renaissance woman doing it all.

Exactly. So you've been in this thought leadership universe for quite some time, right? Um, give me a sense of, of what you've seen over the last— I don't know, not just COVID, but the last several years— that's different, that's interesting, that's, that's, that's noteworthy.

Well, now listen, I can go way back because of my age, but we will— I could talk to you about Zoom. I could talk to you about—

I didn't say that your first book came out as a, you know, on a '78 LP or something. I didn't go there. But what have you seen that's changed and evolved over the last several years for—

You know what? Most of the change I've seen happened because of COVID 2 major incidents. Well, maybe 5, because you have the 5 pandemics that, that hit us, like sucked us into a black hole, right? So we had social justice.

Yeah.

All right, with the killing of Floyd. We had COVID that locked us in, right? And that allowed Zoom to be pushed out. We had economics.

Yeah.

Walking into the stores and seeing an empty shelf, like on, Like in Cuba. What else did we have? And we had environment. Did I name all 5?

I think there might be 4, but—

Well, close, close. I can't remember the 5th one because I'm on the show now. But I've seen the most change since that collision of everything together.

Right.

Yeah. I think that Well, I was gonna say the top 2 are Floyd, which triggered social justice, right? Which leveled the playing field for all of us.

All right. So if you're a thought leader, forget about your domain area of expertise, because that varies amongst everybody. What do you do with that? Right? So how do you— because at the end of the day, as a thought leader, you need to connect your ideas to the people that matter most to you. Right? That's kind of the universal principle.

You know what? Yes and no. So as a thought leader, to me, a true definition of a thought leader is somebody who can pivot, right? If you stay in your own lane, to me, that's, that's an expert, but it's not a thought leader.

To me, this is about that, though. When you, when you say stay in your own lane, do you Do you mean topic or modality?

Topic.

Okay. And I would, I would politely push back a little on that. I think that it's important.

What? You're gonna— let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Bring it.

Well, I, I think now there are exceptions. You know, Dan Pink is an exception. Malcolm Gladwell is an exception. Seth Godin is an exception. But I think most thought leaders do best when they kind of stay in their lane. Right? They have their expertise, could be leadership, agility, resilience, whatever. And the fluidity comes in the modalities and the way they reach their audience. But let's disagree. That's fun too.

Yeah. So it depends upon— I think the variation is how we define staying in their own lane, right? So if we take Malcolm, who is an expert in all things interesting, Right. If COVID hits, he's going to shift to talk about the effects of COVID in relationship to society, in relationship to economics. You know, he has that ability to pivot. That's because his name is so well known that we will just, you know, inhale anything he puts on paper. Right? Right.

Okay.

Okay, now if I take, for example, Marshall Goldsmith, okay, who we both know, he's a thought leader in the leadership field. But if you really listen to him, there's some spaces he doesn't touch— government and politics. Well, no, true.

But, but he has always stayed in the leadership space. He doesn't— there's lots of things he doesn't— he's not a communications expert. He's not, you know, there's a long list of things that he does not claim expertise in. And I think at the end of the day—

Wait a second, he doesn't claim it. He doesn't claim it. But if you think about it, he, in a way, he still owns the space. And communication is a good one. Coaching is another one, right? He doesn't claim it, but other people assign it to him.

Right, right. Well, I think even the communication piece, I agree with that from the context of he'll talk about communication through the lens of leadership, not here's, you know, he's not a presentation skills guy or a here's how to write your best presentation.

Would you not agree with me that Marshall Goldsmith is one of the best marketeers you've ever met?

Yeah. Oh, 100%.

But he's known for leadership.

Right. That marketing got him there, but he— the product that he's marketed is leadership development, leadership solutions, executive coaching. What he markets—

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, he markets Marshall Goldsmith.

Okay, but that, that to some degree is synonymous with leadership, right?

Yeah.

Interesting. All right, so, but let's put this in a little bit of context. So like, let's talk about how you chose to get your last book out into the marketplace as opposed to the one before that.

So this is going to be my first book that's coming out hopefully in May. You know, the publishing industry is topsy-turvy right now. The, the work that I did before was always a chapter in somebody else's book.

Okay. So you were doing compilations and now you're going solo?

I'm going— I'm flying solo. Yeah.

Diana Ross, you got rid of the Supremes.

I'm going Diana Ross, right?

Later Supremes, okay.

Yeah, and it all came about because of Marshall. So it's a great story. I was in a meeting with him and he said to me, Stevie, what do you wanna be known for? And I said, come on, Marshall, the CEO of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches. And Marshall, when he disagrees with you, he has this famous thing. He goes, eh, eh, eh. And that's what I got in front of a lot of people. And I thought, what is this man, crazy? He's not going to get in my head and tell me what I should be focusing on. But after the call, his words kept coming back to me, and I kept pushing them away. And we had this— I had this tub of water. going on. Soon after that, a member of my coaching association called me and said, CB, I'd like for you to be a keynote speaker.

Okay.

And I said, anything. You're a member. Whatever you want. And I said, do you want me to speak about coaching? And she said, no. And I said, oh, you want me to speak about DEI? And she said, no. I said, well, what the heck do you want me to speak about? That's— those are the 2 things I know. And she said, I want you to talk about courage.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And I said, no, you want Brené Brown, not me. And she said, no, I want you. And I said, but I don't know anything about courage. And she said to me, C.B., you're the most courageous person I know. And I sat down to the keyboard. And I started writing the keynote. And all of a sudden, it was like the floods came. My fingers were going, right, right. And I'm like, holy cow, people have been telling me this all of my life. And I always said, no, I'm not courageous.

Stay there a minute. So I think this, this is an interesting thought for thought leaders is I identify as, right? Like, this is what I think my stuff is. But what— how do others think of you? And I think, quite frankly, I could think I'm the King of Siam, it doesn't really matter, right? You know, but getting that understanding and tuning in and listening into how others perceive you— now, it might be good, bad, or ugly.

Yes, yes.

That's fine. Yeah, you need to look at that. And I think I'm thinking about looking at it from an opportunistic perspective. So if that was the first person that said, hey, CB, I think you're courageous, you might say, yeah, okay, that's, that's nice. But there was a pattern of multiple people expressing that thought to you.

Yes.

Those to not go there, ignore it, whatever. But then once you start—

Imposter syndrome all the way.

Yeah.

And I mean, I'm not talking about within recent years. I'm talking about my entire life.

Right. So what are you doing differently now that you've sort of accepted or had this aha or this breakthrough? Are you leaning in more to courage than some of the other things you've done?

You know what? When I wrote the book, I said, you don't want to write a boring story and you don't want to do a tell-all. So what, what's the deal here? And I sat down and I thought about each of the major events in my life where people said I was courageous.

Mm-hmm.

And then I said, well, how did I get there?

Mm-hmm.

So I'm a graduate of the New School for Social Research.

Yep.

And my philosophy is the answer is in the question.

Right.

And so— and I also think the answer is the beginning of the question, right? So I said, all right, if you were courageous in these acts and you can now admit it, what process did you go through? And did you continue to use that same process?

So stay right there a moment because I think that is the million-dollar answer. And what do I mean by that, right? So there are people that have done amazing things in the universe and will continue to do amazing things in the universe. but they're not teachable, right?

Right.

So, you know, when you're out there on the speaking circuit, you want to hear the latest Super Bowl winner or the latest, you know, gold medalist. And not to diminish, but, you know, the hard work and the effort and the abilities that they have. But I could listen to gold medalists in ice skating all day, every day. It's not going to do anything for me. I could learn about their grit. I can learn about their resilience. I could, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not going to make me a gold medal ice skater. I know the crowd is disappointed, right? But the fact that you realized— the question that you asked yourself is, wait a minute, is there a process, a methodology, a system that I can break down into teachable components to others? That's the magic.

Yes.

That's really the turbo boosters, the rocket ship.

Yes. I did some strategic thinking.

Yes.

And broke it down. And I looked at the work that Bené does and So happy that she does all the work on courage. But what I realized is she, like others, didn't tell me how to be courageous. And I needed to tell people how. And I needed to tell them by example that was humorous, that was heartfelt, and then put together a formula.

Yeah.

You know, algebra. X plus Y equals.

Yeah.

And so I created this 7-step process. And I looked at it and I said, okay, does that apply to each of the situations that you were courageous about? And voilà, it did.

So it's interesting that there's lots of ways to create things. It could be based on research, it could be on academia, it could be based on hypothesis, it could be based on storytelling, etc. You sort of forensically went backwards. So you came up with the 7 steps. And then you, you pressure tested it backwards.

Yes.

Now, at the moment in time that you were doing these courageous things, you didn't consciously say, and the next step is step 3, and the next step is step 4. It was just either intuitive or in your DNA, whatever.

It wasn't, but it wasn't. I was actually using these steps, and I didn't really—

You were using them is my question.

I'm sorry?

Did you know at the time that you were using them? No.

No, I didn't. I didn't.

That's my point.

Yes, exactly.

The discovery was, wow, the commonality between these disparate things that I never thought had anything in common was I was doing something. So when we do this type of work with our clients, we're trying to get what lives between their ears out and have others examine it and look at it and say, actually, it's not a bunch of random things. You've done things in a certain way. And you're not even aware that you've done it in this way. Now, once we unleash that, now you can teach this to dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of others.

Exactly, exactly. And it made me aware of my courageousness.

Right, right.

And now when I go off, when I go off track, I have to hold myself accountable. And that is painful. Very painful.

Stay there for a minute, because that's the other thing is, is that once you put out into the world what your thing is, you become— you're on, right? You're the poster child for that. Now, there are probably moments in your life, if you're human, and I know that you are, where you might be less than courageous. Or—

Oh, I got called out by Marshall Goldsmith this week.

Okay.

I called him up and I said, Marshall, I don't think I'm going to apply for this Thinkers50 thing. You know what, I don't stand a chance in hell. Why spend the time?

Right.

And he said to me, well, CB, you're applying for the 50 Greatest Thinkers for Coaches, aren't you?

Right.

And I chose my words very carefully. I said, well, I wasn't planning on going to London, which is where Yep. And he said, but, Cece, you are applying for it, right? You've won it already. And I said, yes, of course. And he said, okay. And he said, and, and not applying for the Big Thinkers 50 as a leader, why wouldn't you do that? And I said, because look at all the people around me.

Right.

You know, I'm not doing great things for the community. I'm doing great things for leaders in companies. And he said, so your focus is on courage. Are you— would applying to this be a courageous act?

Oh, yeah.

And I said, you didn't. You didn't. Dropped the mic, and he started laughing hysterically. I said, Marshall, thank you very much. I'll be talking to you soon.

So my version of that similar trick is, uh, in the work that I do with, with clients, is every now and then, and maybe more frequently than I'd like to admit, I might have to say to someone, have you read your book? Or if I'm feeling a little more obnoxious, I might actually ship them a copy of their book. But I know the author well, you know, and I, I think you would appreciate reading this book. Um, because it's also a reason that we lean into certain topics. So I want to be mindful of time because I know you got to go in a couple minutes. This has been awesome as always. Love talking with you. Um, in the minute or two that we have left, any— no pressure— but courageous words of wisdom you would have for thought leaders that are Uh, maybe a couple years behind you and sort of forging their path?

Listen to people without a filter. Figure out your lane.

Yep.

And don't be afraid to close that lane down and move into a new one.

Love it. Thank you so much, and I appreciate you and all that you do. Thank you, CB.

Thank you so much for inviting me. I want to come back. I'm self-inviting.

Come on back. Here you go. That was a courageous thing. Come on back. Thank you. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Bye now.