Courageous Authenticity: How to Speak Up Without Sabotaging Your Leadership

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What if unlocking your highest level of leadership wasn't about working harder, but evolving who you are at the core by leveraging courageous authenticity? Today's guest has helped transform leaders at Pixar, Roche, Yale and beyond. And she's built global businesses, authored books and created one of the most influential leadership frameworks in the world. She doesn't just teach leadership, she redefines it. Hi, I'm Susan Drumm and this is the enlightened executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each week we spotlight cutting edge strategies to help executives and entrepreneurs grow in leadership and in life. And today I couldn't be more excited to introduce my friend and colleague Cindy Adams of the Leadership Circle who provides strategic training tools that I've been using in my coaching for more than a dozen years. Cindy co founded Full Circle Group, the consulting arm of the Leadership Circle and is passionate about enabling leaders and organizations to build capability and capacity for creating what matters most to them. Cindy has extensive experience in leadership development, adult development, organizational effectiveness and transformation and utilizes a whole system solution to help leaders achieve desired results. In her early career with the U.S. department of Education, she enabled and mentored the homeless and disabled populations to acquire meaningful jobs and careers. In that role, she trained leaders to create second chances. That work ignited a lifelong commitment to enabling a world in which all people can thrive. Well, welcome to the show Cindy. I'm so excited to have you here. And we have the how we got connected was many years ago through Bill Adams who is also co founder of the Leadership Circle. And it's exciting to have you on the show. And you know, just for listeners, the Leadership Circle has been really powerful leadership development model and 360 instrument that gives you feedback on how your leadership is being actualized in the world with the peers, direct reports, you know, boards or CEOs and you've been instrumental in bringing this to the world. So I'm excited to have you on the show.

I am so excited to be with you in particular Susan and thank you for inviting me. I am thrilled to be here with you today.

Yeah, great. So you've had quite a journey. So let's start a bit with your journey. What's, what's your journey to more conscious leadership been like and what's helped you the most along the way?

Oh, it's such a great question and it's a really thought provoking question for me. First and foremost I would have to say that it might be a reach to say that I am really that fully conscious leader because I think we are all so human in it, right? Yes.

You work in progress.

I am a full work in progress and a piece of work. I have often referred back to Warren Bennis. I love his definition of leadership when he says the process of becoming a leader is similar to, if not identical to becoming a fully integrated human being. That level sets it for me. And I had a crush on Warren Bennis in terms of his work and his impact in the world. I still fall back to that. That leadership is just a way of talking about the development process of becoming a fully integrated human being. And, boy, do we need more fully integrated human beings now. We've always needed it, but wow. So my journey. Just a couple of pieces. I think that really.

Oh, wait, before you go into that.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Maybe you can elaborate. What do you mean by a fully integrated human being?

So when I think of a fully human, integrated human being, I think of a human being that is already complete and whole, just as they are like that internal soul. And yet there are so many pieces through childhood and what got us here that we kind of disown or we choose not to look at or make one for me was as long as I look good, like, the looking good part was really important to me. And that's not integrated. That's not radical humanity. That's not being vulnerable. So I took a lot of stuff out in a search for make sure you look good, make sure that people think you're competent. So the integrated piece is to just accept the fullness of who we are and to work on the fullness of who we are. Allow it all in.

Yeah, yeah. Great, great. That's. That's helpful. I see looking good as. As a typical place that people can go to. There's others. Right. There's being in control.

Yes.

Being right.

Yes.

You know, that looking good piece and eat or even being included. And what I find is there's sort of a. In those four. One that. That becomes more dominant. It's sort of the dominant subconscious voice that is driving certain leaders and it's running in the background, they think, or we think we're hiding it.

Right.

But everyone else can see it.

Right.

When it's like, if you're more committed to looking good than you are to the stated mission that you say you're after. Right. Everyone can see that you're actually like, that's actually what's driving the show versus what you say. No, I'm really committed to, you know, doubling revenue and tripling profit. Right. Of this company or whatever metric or KPI, you've set out. And I think that a fully integrated human being integrates like, understands that that might be underneath their actions and is working on that and healing that need for others to see them in a certain way.

Yeah, I love that, Susan. And what you described is a little bit about the leadership circle model and how we wire up our identity and our identity is wrapped early on in a lot of ego which keeps us safe and maybe what got us here but won't get us there helps us to feel worthy in situations but, but is such a big shield that we can't see necessarily or we think we're hiding like you said, and has costly impact on results in ourselves and our families.

Yeah. Yes, yes. So let's go back to where you were starting with your journey.

Yeah. So I think, you know, early on for sure my superpower became I am what I do and getting really good at outdoing pretty much everyone around me. So work ethic, I'm going to work harder, I'm going to work faster, I'm going to do, I'm going to outdo and, and looking good is the facade behind that I do because I need to look good and I need to have opportunities that, and I need to be successful. If all of those things align, then I'm okay. If those don't things, those things don't align, I'm not okay. So what really helped me initially was some of that is not only being in employment positions, but a couple of pivotal ones and then also being a mom and getting a divorce. So those were big things. So early on I worked with the homeless population and the disabled population and helping in a, you know, I have an organizational background around organizational behavior and so I just started using that in the department of education where I was working with how might we look at homelessness as a kind of like a community behavior and how does that work? And I saw so many self sabotaging behaviors that were triggered by such pain. And of course, of course it was that and hurt people are, are hurt and they can and they, and they hurt people and they can't figure out how to get out because they've had a lot of bad choices that have led to self choices and other imposed on them that led to that circumstance. And it opened up a place of empathy for me that I didn't have before. And I started to think about what if we created a world in which all people could thrive and a society in which all people could thrive. So that's just kind of like one Ambition that sort of. This pulled through me. The other size, of course, was all the ways in which I was, which I was failing. And that was, I mean, you wouldn't call it total failure, you'd call it human being. But wow, did I have a first marriage that failed, you know, spectacularly for me with two young children and thinking I had it all together and thinking that I was better than. Because I was the one that was doing. And I was the one that was on top of things and I was the one, you know, making the money and not recognizing until after like some space in there that I had a lot to look at, man, I really had a lot to look at. And my children saying things like, my daughter, this still kills me. I think she's about 10. She said, Mom, I am the one thing that's always in your way of getting, of you getting done what you need to get done. And I just went, wow. Yeah, just, just, you know, just, just. And it did it like, it just like, you know, the wisdom of children. And I had no idea, you know, we're talking about it earlier, like, I had no idea I was having that impact. But she was right. She was right. I was so busy mind and thinking about, you know, the task and the accomplishment that of course she felt like I wasn't giving her true resonance and being present and yeah. Investing in her feeling. Right.

And all of that gets wired back from that initial. Well, if I need to look good, then I need to perform and outperform or over invest right. Over function. And then I lose sight of everything else because I have this belief. I mean, I can so relate to that. I, I remember that it got hardwired in for me and my first, on my first review in the working world. And I remember on that review it literally said, she appears young and people don't trust her. Well, I was young. I think it was like, it's my friend, you know, first job out of law school, I was in consulting. And I guess I would have been, I don't know, 24 or whatever.

And.

And so that stung in a way. It's sort of what you make it mean, right?

And yeah.

Then it became like, I've gotta have the professional armor on, like at all times. Right. And the looking good looks like I'm gonna show you that, that I am not. I am serious. Right, right, right. And I'm a businesswoman.

Right.

And. And in doing that, it sort of put up this Teflon because there's this side of me that's light and playful and fun. Oh, she wasn't coming out after that. She was no businesswoman.

Right.

And even to this day, I find remnants of it often that will show up because it's been so hardwired. So I can so relate to the. To that journey of really recognizing what was that, that first commitment that you made that you felt you needed to overcome to survive in the world. And how is it still running you today?

Absolutely, yeah. I relate to your story 100% as well. I mean, I looked younger than I was anyway. And so you wire up a woman, you wire up younger, and then you wire up some of those old stories. You can see how you would put a bunch of stuff in the closet, and I sure did. Yeah.

I remember somebody saying, you'll. You'll like that when you were older. And it's true. However, back then, it wasn't so good. Right.

I don't think that promise was as. As true as I need it to be, though, now. Yeah.

Right, right, right, right. And so what has been most helpful in you, like, what tools have you leveraged in order to help you make some of these transitions or help you along the growth journey?

Yeah, I've been really lucky in that way, I would say. I started out, I think it was kind of a sole desire to learn about growth and a belief that we are built to grow as human beings. I fundamentally believe that. And so when I hit rock bottom with some things, I still held a belief that this would be for my good if I was. Took my. And this is the good part about taking yourself seriously. If I took myself seriously enough to look inside and get underneath what was. What was driving me, and also why I valued certain things and why I didn't value certain things. And one of my biggest levers happened, actually, with a book I read. And it's. It's an old one. It is a book by Robert Fritz on the path to least resistance. And he. He does the kind of the structural dynamics of getting what you want and why sometimes you don't get what you want because you haven't. You don't have the right structure. But he posed the question, what if you could create the life you wanted? Susan, I never have thought of that when I read that book. I never supposed that I could. And it was after my divorce when I was reading it, and I just tinkered around and took that serious, like, what if I could? That fundamentally shifted a turn in me that was profound. And then I would say, there's two things here. And the other thing That I had to let go of. I really had to let go of was looking good. There was no way to look good in the situations I was in. There was no way. And I had to embrace not looking good and being vulnerable, which I had big, big problems with before that point. And in a ropes course, just real quick story. I had a badass kind of facilitator in a day taking me through a ropes course as part of a program, and she didn't even know me, and she put this label on me that said what I had to display that day was vulnerability. And I immediately went. And. And in the ropes course, just having it in front of me bugged me so much because the other side of it was, you have to ask for help. Today I threw it behind my back. And that moment, that kind of, you know, descent down, I had to embrace that I couldn't do this alone. And I. I had to be okay with putting away that costume that looked so perfect. Right, right.

And so how is that impacted how you lead today and what you're doing in the world?

It was an unlocking. Those are unlocking moves that happen over time. I had to get courage in being a new kind of human being and seeking feedback versus that's another core piece, like just seeking feedback. Just seeking feedback. What's my impact with my kids, with my husband at work? I had to get comfortable with hearing back what they would say. And that's actually kind of hard at first.

Well, yeah, there's two parts to it. It's. It's also making it really comfortable for people to be honest with you.

Yeah, right.

I mean, what I tell leaders when they talk about 360 is like, you can I encourage you to ask for feedback? Depending on how good you are, you might get 50% of the truth, 20% of the truth.

Right.

If you use a coach, you might get a little closer to 90% of the truth. 80 and 90. But like, where are people holding back for fear of damaging the relationship?

Yep. Yep.

And so I think that's what's powerful about the leadership circle, because it's anonymous.

Right.

People can share and make it easier and give you some kind of quantitative measure about where you're showing up. But this idea of getting the feedback, you've got to make it easy for people to be as honest as they possibly can, recognizing that they're not incentivized to be honest with you. To some degree.

Yeah. To some degree. That's so true. That's a good one that you bring up. And yeah, you know, when you've created a space for. This isn't a once a year feedback. This isn't a one and done feedback. This is a genuine, hey, what's my impact right now on how we're approaching this work together and, or. And my husband Bill has been so good for me because we've been in a relationship where we were both kind of that controlling, let's say, you know, power against in our model, like we're going to put push through. And what we affectionately called each other when we first got married was thunder and lightning. So equal response and a real willingness and commitment to learn how to have power with versus power over, which is the exact move and we need leaders to make that. It isn't about my brilliance or my power over the fact that I know the most or the fact that I think, you know, I, I don't even need to listen to you because I already know. But the move to power with for breakthroughs that we can't have alone, that that relation has been found. Relationship with him has been foundational to. Oh, wait, okay, here's when power meets power. Here's how this happens and how do we work together and relate in a way that we have tons of passion in the relationship, no safety in some way until we work out. And it was a big learning, like an evolutionary move.

Yeah. So I love this framework that you have of as opposed to power over power with. I think you describe power over really well. Can you say a little bit more about how does a leader show up as power with versus power based on my seat as CEO or, you know, chief marketing officer?

Yeah. The power with move is that I'm going to be, I'm going to let go of my knower and be a learner. So I have a voice. I don't let go of my voice. I don't let go of the fact that I may know some things, but I choose to be in relationship with so that we can collaborate, we can create safe spaces for feedback so that I can not have a fixed mindset about, you know, I know, but I can be a learner that can know more. I reserve, you know, Jeff Grimshaw, one of our colleagues, says, I reserve the right to get smarter. I love that phrase. I can always reserve the right to get smarter. And power with is about collaboration. It's about teamwork. It's about diverse ideas. It's about understanding that there's wisdom in the system. And I absolutely can't be a leader that can create collective breakthroughs and also Societal change. If I think I can do that all by myself.

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, what we say is it's about creating outcomes and capacity with others. That's what being a leader is. Otherwise, you're an individual contributor.

Otherwise you're an individual contributor and you're not scaling anyone or scaling the organization for outcomes that could be created if you would only yield your voice, if you would only listen, if you would only truly appreciate. This comes from a deep caring about people and what they care about. You can't do that in that other frame.

Yep, yep. You can't harness the collective wisdom of what's there to build something that not one individual person could have done. Individual, I mean, otherwise, that's what a true team is. And yet I feel like when you're working sometimes with teams, it's still in their mind. It's about their individual contribution. I mean, you could make the same analogy, of course, to sports teams. I mean, you just look at how they operate. Right. And all the. The feedback that we've gotten where you can take the best individual contributors and put them all on a team, but if they don't play well together, you know, we saw that in the Olympics. That doesn't work. Right. It's something about the magic of the interrelationship of the people that are there. And what does that require? That requires being, understanding, like what your superpower is. But it's a limited. You have a limited range of vision. You know, you have a central vision and peripheral vision, and where you're looking, that's what you see. But there's a whole nother realm of what you don't see and other people could see. So you've got to be open to that.

Yeah, Yeah, I. I think, you know, there's a lot of work on first mountain. Second mountain, first half of life. Second half of life, reactive, creative. In. In our model adult development, I think early on, it isn't. It is important to kind of find out what your superpower is in terms of survival and getting to be a productive citizen in the world and navigating. And then the second half of life, it's. It's more about shedding all of that stuff away, and that's hard. What I now know for me is my job as a leader is to enable other people to thrive, to use my voice when it's needed, but not just use my voice, because I have a power seat and mostly to be present to what is happening. And that requires me to just, like, be in Tune even with the. The spiritual aspect of the universe is here. It's. We're living in an emerging future. The signs are everywhere around where we can participate and where we're being called to. And so if I can just be present for all of that in the organization and in my life, that's the most important thing. Mm.

And so how we started talking earlier on about the importance of courageous authenticity and how has been a linchpin for you. Can you share more about that aspect of leadership and why that was so critical for your growth?

Early on, I had. I worked with a partner who saw something that I didn't see for a moment. And he said, you have a really good intuition. You need to trust that. And that was helpful to me and also was going to require a new level of courage for me to step into, especially as a young woman leader, to step into things I didn't have data for. And in the model, our first move is always to get an authentic relationship with ourself. Like, know my doubts and fears, know what I want, be clear about who I am in the world. And I love the scientific fact that although we share DNA as a human genome and as human beings, there is only one DNA like mine, and that I have a unique gift. So intuition prompted this idea of, okay, wait a minute. Because I was always, I'm not good enough. I need to just pay attention, you know, And I got disinvited to boardrooms too, though, like, because I was a woman. So, you know, the bigger narrative, yeah, I'm not skilled enough. I need to get more of this. I need to get more of that. And he helped me see that. Wait a minute. You have really good intuition. You're more than enough. I didn't believe it, but that was one test and I think. So the first move is to get an authentic relationship with yourself. See your gifts, notice and experiment with them. The second is how do I more authentically be in relationship with others? And that's where I think courageous authenticity needs to really be well understood. And you know this, Susan, like, the difference between critical and courageous authenticity are two very different come froms. And yet we struggle, men and women and all, you know, all people and how they identify can struggle with. With that. Because when we're practicing courageous authenticity, sometimes it's going to come off harsh and we're clunky with it. I've noticed in particular that women struggle in this area because when we're in. In a brave moment and stepping into a brave moment, it's really easy to just go hard versus our soft startup and ensuring that we're coming from a place that is in service of the other and the organization. So for me, that was another big evolutionary move of learning to be courageously authentic without any edge, trusting my intuition and coming from a clean place, an integrated human being. Clean space.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

That makes sense. It's also what is the motivation behind the communication you're about to give?

Right.

Because it'll be critical if it's coming from a place of ego, identity, self image. Right. The I know better power over all of those pieces if it's coming from a place of the mission that you're out to accomplish that's outside yourself.

Right.

That matters to you in service of that. I want to be courageously authentic because this mission over here matters so much to me. And it's in service of getting closer to that.

Right.

Or is it in service? Right.

Yeah.

And there's service of me being triggered and annoyed by something you just did, which is all ego.

Right? Right. And it's hard to distinguish sometimes with that. Yes. I'm coaching somebody right now that's just having a really tough time distinguishing that they are courageously authentic. And they also haven't yet refined a way to give that gift in a way it can be received, which is nuanced around really being present and really being compassionate and really looking at the full spectrum of how can I be a translator in what isn't being quite understood versus the opposer. Right. To what is being said. Does that.

Yeah.

English. Yeah.

What's one thing that you would suggest a leader do tomorrow? An action step that they could take to help themselves along this journey hard.

To come down to one thing. I would say they can always start paying more attention to impact. So is what I'm doing actually creating what I think it's doing or what I perceive I'm going after that can get closer together Right off the bat you're a better leader.

Yeah. And part of that then is the action you could take is asking what kind of impact am I having?

What kind of impact am I having right now? Yeah. Yeah.

Even in simple things like you delegate something you could ask for feedback. How well did I describe that delegate that to you? You know, hand off that task. But hardly any leader ever asked that question.

Hardly anyone ever asked that question. And installation a delegator.

Right. Yeah.

How was that? Was that seen as an opportunity or was that seen as a punishment? And. And did I give you enough clarity? And are you excited about the fact that that's delegated to you. You know, it's just a few things. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It's just.

Yeah.

Just ask.

Yeah, for sure. Well, this has been a really enlightening conversation. Thank you for joining us today. Where can people learn more about you and your work?

They can go to leadershipcircle.com or I'm available on LinkedIn for anyone. It's Cynthia Adams on LinkedIn. I think you, you're going to post that on the. Yeah, those are two great places to catch me. Great.

Well, thank you so much for being part of this. And if you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Allison Maslin, who uncovers ways to help entrepreneurs build a business that runs without them by leveraging the power of their team. Let's lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. And I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.