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S2/E9 Part 2 - Lisa Earle McLeod - The Measure Of A Life - What Are We Becoming?
7 Plays2 days ago
HOST: Jess Villegas - ACUITY Business Consulting
THIS IS THE 2ND OF A 2-PART EPISODE
My guest today is Lisa McLeod. She is a writer, executive coach, and keynote speaker who has worked with clients like Hilton, Roche, LinkedIn, Hootsuite, Volvo, and Dave & Busters. She is a regular contributor for The Harvard Business Review and over 2 million learners have taken her LinkedIn Learning courses. She has authored five books, including the global bestseller, "Selling with Noble Purpose”.
Lisa Earl McLeod Linkedin Profile
Jess Villegas Email: jess@acuitybusiness.consulting
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Transcript
Introduction and Margaret Mead's Impactful Quote
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You know what I want to communicate? I want to repeat a quote from Margaret Mead. Never doubt that a small, thoughtful group of committed citizens can change the world.
00:00:13
Speaker
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever happens. And i I want to say that because I'm needing to draw on it myself. We're in a time where our politics seems hopeless.
00:00:26
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Jobs are being replaced with ai Six people control 80% of the wealth in the world, or so it seems. And it's not a good place to be, and it would be easy to feel hopeless.
00:00:43
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But I also looked through the arc of human history, and those are the times when things actually changed.
Leaders Commute Podcast and Life Experiences
00:00:50
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When the pressure got so great and things got so bad that the average person became aware of it, and they said, we're not going to do it this way Welcome to the Leaders Commute podcast. I'm Jess Villegas.
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This podcast considers how the experiences that keep resurfacing over the commute of our lives inform our worldview for how to lead others and, more importantly, how we lead ourselves.
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Its mission is to assist you to transform those experiences from passive, compartmentalized episodes into leveraged connections for better thinking and outcomes. to Today's episode is titled The Measure of a Life, Part 2.
00:01:29
Speaker
What are we becoming? If you're just joining us here, this is the second half of my conversation with leadership author and consultant, Lisa McLeod. In the first half of my conversation with Lisa, we explored a question that often sits underneath much of our professional lives.
00:01:45
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What are we measuring? We talked about purpose, business, and the subtle ways that organizations migrate towards measuring things that were never intended to become the mission.
00:01:56
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But somewhere around the middle of our conversation, we stopped talking primarily about organizations and began talking about people and exploring what happens after someone discovers a voice and then realizes that voice may need a new language.
Lisa McLeod on Screenwriting and Leadership
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For Lisa, that conversation began with screenwriting, but it evolved into how our lives continue to unfold and how our deepest capacities gradually come into frame.
00:02:22
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Here's part two of my conversation with Lisa McLeod.
00:02:31
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You mentioned Jim Collins and the other thing is you mentioned money. And I'm going to look at those separately, but the question want to post to you within the the encoding stuff that we've mentioned a little bit at the beginning of this, you're doing screenwriting.
00:02:42
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And I've known this for a little while that you've been doing this and I can think of I'm not surprised. And then I'm thinking, well, I kind of am surprised, not because I don't think you know how to do screenwriting, but now I was trying to draw the connection between why screenwriting versus something else? Maybe the screenwriting is just an extension of the book writing, if it's a different way to get your message out. And I'm wondering, in the context of encodings, is this just just a another expression of kind of the same thing? do you see it that way?
00:03:12
Speaker
It is another expression of the same thing. And when you said you didn't know it that I knew how to do it, I didn't completely know how to do it. i'm not sure I do now, but I had a moment um a couple of years ago and i was, I'm in this group called the Marshall Goldsmith 100. Marshall Goldsmith, very famed leadership coach, voted number one leadership coach in the world, coached all these CEOs.
00:03:35
Speaker
He has a group called the MG 100, which are the top 100 coaches in the world that he mentors us. Fun fact, there's about 350 of us, but don't let that out. They named it MG100 and then let more people in. And I was one of the more people, so I'm happy. ah um I was like 250. So um we were at this meeting and there were about 10 of us around the table. You know how you go to a meeting, you're at these big rounds and there are about 10 of us at this meeting and we all start talking and somebody brings up Ted Lasso.
00:04:06
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And between the group of 10, I go around and I count, there's at least 50 books have been written between the 10 of us. These are people that coach senior leaders. We've done these huge projects with big companies and everybody's talking about Ted Lasso and what a great leadership model it is.
00:04:24
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And I look around and I realize there are more middle managers talking about Ted Lasso than any of our books, even if we add them all together. And so I'm like, damn, I think I need to write TV show.
00:04:41
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And like, it literally was that I was like, ah, you want to change leadership culture? Write a TV show. But then I got to thinking about it and I thought about Ted Lasso. So in the pilot, if you haven't seen Ted Lasso, there's two things you learn. It's a genius show. So I'm going to say it's a genius show and I'm a fan. I'm to tell you what made me think that Lisa McLeod made to write a TV show.
00:05:02
Speaker
is because in the the opener, you learn two things about Ted. You learn that he is a football coach, has been hired to coach soccer, British football. So he is a fish out of water.
00:05:15
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He does not know his sport. He has been hired to coach a sport that he does not know. And then the second thing you learn about him is that he... has flown across the ocean and is away from his child.
00:05:29
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And it is heartbreaking to him, that his little boy is on the other side of the ocean. And so I got to thinking about that. And those are two things that define Ted Lasso. And the whole thing is, how's he going to figure out how to coach his team? Some people like him, some people don't. He's got this heartbreak with a kid. But I thought, why don't we take a woman and she doesn't know her sport and she's an ocean away from her child.
00:05:52
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She's not endearing. She's a bad mother who's incompetent at her job. And that's when I did my back to God with the wind, hand to the skies. God is my witness. i'm writing a book. I'm gonna write a TV show about a woman leader. So I went back to school.
00:06:10
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and I got my MFA in screenwriting. Yes, I did. um Because I knew I didn't know how to write a TV show, so I figured I better learn. And I had written two scripts about women leaders.
00:06:22
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um I thought that I was gonna write TV comedy, um But as it turns out, I'm not that funny. um But I do have an ax to grind.
00:06:33
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So I wrote one show and it placed in the Austin Film Festival last year as my first script I'd written. Well, actually my second one, my first one was terrible. My mentor told me not to enter as my second one. And it placed the Austin Film Festival and it's about a jaded executive coach who lost her business and all her money because her client, a CEO, lied about medical data and she had to testify against him to keep from going to jail.
00:07:00
Speaker
And he got sent to jail. So now no one will hire her. She's drowning in legal bills and she has to rebuild her life from the back of Chicken Littles, a B grade family values, fast food chicken chain, where her old buddy has hired her to trade new fry cooks. And that is how she starts off.
00:07:19
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So i did I did end up writing these. And what it turns out is i am a solid writer. I'm not an excellent screenwriter yet. I'm a solid writer.
00:07:31
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But what I have a real ear for is dialogue. Because I've spent years coaching people and listening to how they talk. That's a skill. And that that also plays into fiction.
00:07:42
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So if you wrote two screenplays, one of which had a measure of success and the other was a learning experience. Yeah, and I've written a third that I've entered again. so I've written three. So I always say I've written two because one is not fit for public consumption and I'm never going back to it. is my It was my first rounder. um But yeah, so I've written these two screenplays and now I'm working on a novella.
00:08:05
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All of this may come to naught, but we'll see. So i don't know what screenplay writer etiquette is. So is it bad luck to say what it's theoretically about without having finished it? or Oh, the next one. No, I finished the second one. I just entered it. So the
Advice on Writing and Creative Work
00:08:20
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first one is called Pressure Fried.
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And it is set in his family values, fast food, chicken chain. And it's an ensemble cast. The Starve, which is a jaded executive coach in her 60s that has an ax to grind against powerful men, but they're the only way back to the money.
00:08:36
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So something may done. The second one is called Staged, and it is about um an interior designer who comes from a gritty blue-collar background where people don't even think interior design should be a job. and she is trying to establish herself, and she has a big show house that's live-streamed.
00:09:03
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And at which she finds out that her fancy French boyfriend is married and everyone finds out. So her life falls apart. So it seems like one of the things that I realized we had ah one of a really good mentor come into our program, this guy named Rod Lurie. He's written a bunch of movies and shows and he came in for a week of our residency.
00:09:25
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And he wrote my favorite show, which is Commander in Chief, which is starring Geena Davis about 15 years ago, first female president. Apparently no one watched it but me. It got canceled. I actually did. I did watch that. I i don't remember that one.
00:09:37
Speaker
Oh, my God. like in Yeah. in the In the spirit of West Wing. like It was fantastic. And anyhow, he said to me, i had written this one script, and he said to me, you know, a middle-aged actress would kill for this role.
00:09:54
Speaker
because these are really rich roles for a middle-aged or older actress. And I said, well, I don't want to be like a one trick pony, you know, that that's all I write for. And he goes, it's a pretty good trick. Stick with it. And I took his advice. i was like, okay, I write about jaded middle-aged women. Perfect. And then a year later, Hacks came out and I was like, it is a good trick. It's like there's still a lot of laying there for other aspiring screenwriters. That's when I realized. He said, you are not going to get a meeting with Netflix, but you can get these scripts to a middle-aged actress who goes, I want to do it. So that's my path.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah. Let me ask you a question. This is me trying to get a ah free moment of ah of Lisa McLeod mentoring, consulting. I'm not going to pay for this. Perfect. Live time. Here we go. It's just live time. I'm going to catch you off guard. But when I think about whatever the next thing I want to do and what are the next, if I do ever decide to write a book, that would really be the next thing because I've never written a book. but But I do have a lot of things that I've written. i have a methodology in my head and I think, oh, maybe one day I'll write a book. I think I would like to do something that's not standard. There's a million books about leadership and about yeah self-help.
00:11:04
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I think even in one of our conversations, I've said to you, you know, I think about leadership, the the term of leadership for the rest of us, because there's plenty of books written for a bunch of people yeah who who are not us, who are whoever.
00:11:17
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who the fighters are. But the point I want to make there is, even if I try to do something very different from just the thing I try to espouse as a consultant or whatever, I i do a lot around systems thinking and self-development,
00:11:29
Speaker
I have a hard time figuring out how to inject all that stuff. It's going to infuse it into anything I do because I'm built that But I keep thinking when I write a story about, you know, about
The Ease of Podcasting vs. Book Writing
00:11:40
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this dog versus that dog, somehow I'll have some systems thinking aperture put to it because I think about systems thinking all the time. And i'm thinking, is that stopping me?
00:11:48
Speaker
So who you are is going to be infused in any book you write. If, I mean, you've read my books, if you had read Forget Perfect, you would go, yeah, that tracks.
00:12:01
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that So who you are is infused in all of them. um Writing a book is very difficult. And the only reason to write a book is because you can't not write the book.
00:12:14
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And so for years, people told me to write a sales book. And I said, I don't need to. There's plenty of good sales books. even though sales was my profession, even though I ran a sales team, even though I was sales consultant, I always said, I don't need to, you know read, read, spend selling, read these other books. they're That's it.
00:12:34
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It wasn't until I had this unique lens of selling with noble purpose based on this study that I had done. And without doing too deep a dive on it, what I learned was that there was an emotional undercurrent to the top sellers.
00:12:52
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And so the second I saw that, and that to use Jim Collins's lexicon, second it came into frame, everything else just backfilled through that frame.
00:13:03
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Everything came back into it. Like this is, if you have a higher purpose, this is how you do your meetings. This is how you do your coaching. This is how you do this. This is how you do this. And it was so clear to me. that everything meshed hung under this galvanizing idea.
00:13:18
Speaker
But the reason I say that is i have always liked your title leadership for the rest of us. And The thing that shouldn't hold you back from a book, so this is kind of, what i'm going talk out of both sides of my mouth here. There's a duality here.
00:13:34
Speaker
On the one hand, you should only write a book because you feel like you have something to say, that you have something to say that's not being said, and you're kind of annoyed that it's not out there. And so, well, I guess somebody's got to write it It's going to be me. So it should be that.
00:13:51
Speaker
At the same time, don't feel bad if someone is else has already said it in a different way. that maybe didn't land as well with you because your version of that is going to be unique.
00:14:05
Speaker
So if you could hold both of those truths, I have something to say then I'm not finding out there because if I'd found it out there, I'd just be giving that person's book to everybody.
00:14:17
Speaker
I wouldn't need to write a book, but I'm not finding it out there. These others are out there saying it, but it's just not landing with me in the way that that matches who I am. That's how you'll come up with a good book.
00:14:29
Speaker
I think that's that's good framing. i don't know if I'm taking the path of least resistance, but I definitely am one of those guys that can be aggravated and irritated that something's not being said that should be said. Yes. Maybe that's not exactly the same as I got to write that book that does that. One thing I did start to think was the podcast format.
00:14:47
Speaker
just because million people do it now, I kept thinking, well, maybe I'm just taking the easy way out, but I thoroughly enjoy, for example, what we're doing right this moment. I feel like I'm saying things I really wanna say to people who appreciate it.
00:14:59
Speaker
And maybe there's a book that does kind of the same thing. And then I start to wonder, well, a podcast was relatively easier, a lot easier to do than to write a book. And maybe I'll just get as good as I can in that format. That doesn't mean I won't write a book, but I'm only saying all that.
00:15:14
Speaker
Because I had this idea that, gee, the podcast thing, is there so many people in it? Is there a good reason to try and get really, really good at it? Well, one thing about writing a book is um versus a podcast versus other things. I got this advice a long time ago from Meryl Streep's husband.
00:15:33
Speaker
Do I know Meryl Streep? No. Do I know her husband? No. But she wrote in a magazine about it, a woman's magazine that I read at the hairdresser 25 years ago, and it stuck with me ever since. And it was at the time when she was doing, he's actually her ex-husband now, but the advice still holds. um She was actually doing all those roles with like the accents, you know, like where you're just like, is that her? I can't tell. She's so different. You know, the French lieutenant's woman, the, you know, out of Africa, you know, these really big exotic roles.
00:16:05
Speaker
And someone asked her, what do you start with? Do you start with the physical mannerisms? Do you start with the dialogue? Do you start with accent? What do you start with? And she said, I learned this from my husband, who's a sculptor. You start with the part that's the easiest.
00:16:17
Speaker
You always start with the E part. This is the it most interesting and the easiest to you. And so how many years did Oprah do a talk show before she even wrote a book? I mean, do the part that is natural and easiest for you because you'll be the most successful at it.
00:16:35
Speaker
And then the universal point you were to go after that. I've been working in that direction generally, and this will be the last free piece of advice want to try and get out and you. Next time I'll send you check. But I have found that what's happening now that I'm talking to all these people, I'm just gathering more yeah and more facets of what I would talk about anyway. And some of it is more interesting and some is less interesting, but it's not a waste of time. I'm learning a lot. of things Yeah. and And I'm learning new things that I hadn't, but I thought I kind of had a good bit of it figured out.
00:17:04
Speaker
And now I find with every conversation or thoughtful conversation, I'm finding there's something new to talk about. So I will say that's kind of kept me in the middle of the road. Instead of saying I'm taking the easy way out, sounds like we were both raised with the same puritan work ethic. I don't know, at least that's what they called it in my family. yeah um You're doing the natural course of things. What's natural?
00:17:27
Speaker
I have another question on the screenplay thing. It was just really more technical question. I'm just thinking a lot of us walk around and, you know we're the water cooler and we think we know things. I just read something recently in a book where someone says, if you want to test how well someone ah puts a value on knowledge, just ask them the simplest things. Like if you ask someone, how does a bike work? You know, how do certain things work? And you think, you know, but you don't, if you try to describe it, there's propulsion and there's whatever.
00:17:51
Speaker
And i always think that way about screenplay writing. I keep thinking, well, what's the big deal? you're You're writing stuff down, but now you're just writing it down a little differently. and But I have no idea what that differently is other than put somebody's name to something that somebody said. I mean, can you just educate me on what it really is?
00:18:07
Speaker
It's very different. um Because when you see, so if you've seen the show Hacks, which I love, which is just a masterful show.
00:18:19
Speaker
If you
Leadership, Parenting, and Purpose Beyond Profit
00:18:20
Speaker
watch the pilot of Hacks, the opener, and the pilot, the lexicon is the pilot is the first episode. And a lot of times they'll shoot the pilot and then the network will order more of the shows. In the case of Hacks, they served up a five season show at the start. So they shot the whole thing. But in the pilot, in the first three minutes of Hacks,
00:18:42
Speaker
you know who Jean Smart is, who her people are, what she thinks of them, what her problem is. i mean, it's amazing because she moves from scene to scene to scene.
00:18:53
Speaker
So you got three pages, only half of which is dialogue, where you have to tell everybody everything they need to know about that character. And in the opener, she's on stage in Las Vegas. She says hello. And I've watched it a bunch of times because it's so masterful. She's stage in Las Vegas. So we know she's a comedian. The way she laughs, she tells kind of an old joke. Then she says hello, the showgirl. So you know she's nice. Then she gets a call from her um agent that says they're not thinking of booking her anymore. Then she flies overnight to QVC and then she goes on QVC and she's talking this stuff. And then she gets home and her house manager says there's a problem. And then she ends up alone at her place with her dogs. And that's who she's serving her dinner to. So like so fast.
00:19:37
Speaker
It is totally a different kind of writing because you have got to figure out, like people want to start with this big message and it doesn't start with that. It starts with a character and what's going to be their arc and what's their problem they need to solve. And your you know little message that you have for the world sits way underneath that.
00:19:59
Speaker
Lisa one thing I want to come back to in my short story about my daughter, i have the benefit now of 20 more years of hindsight. And I'm not going to sit here and brag it or other than to say that where she is now is completely predictable.
00:20:14
Speaker
She's doing well. She's well-regarded. Whether it's important work or not, who knows? She has to decide that. But let's put it this way. She's moving down the path that she seems to have set for herself for a long time.
00:20:25
Speaker
And what's interesting is I knew that she was that kind of person all the way back when she found a way to make me terrified for her being a rafting person. And the reason for that, I'm just trying to get more context to it, is because up to that point, it's not like she ran a race as a 10-year-old and she was that kid who ran her 10K when she was 10.
00:20:42
Speaker
She just never showed a lot of inclination around um that type of skill. And when she went away that summer, to the Nantahala Outdoor Center to work. She had never been in a raft in her life. So what terrified me wasn't that she was my daughter and I didn't think she could do it. I thought, she's never done it.
00:20:58
Speaker
Why are you going to put me in that kind of danger? All that to say is, looking back, if I had been more trustworthy, I would have said, look, she's operating and exactly the she needs to operate. I just hadn't seen it. And I felt really ah bad for not appreciating that earlier. Now I appreciate it So that's a long lead up. I guess what i'm saying is I know it's important for fathers to be much better at doing what I did, but I'm thinking how to overlay that with leaders in terms of how to understand how their organizations can be optimized by knowing what their people can do and what they love to do and what they're likely, how they're likely gonna contribute to organization. I wonder in your work, if you have any sort of thoughts about about that.
00:21:36
Speaker
I do have some very big thoughts about that. And I used to shy away from comparing leadership to parenthood. And I shied away from it because one, you should not treat your people like children.
00:21:53
Speaker
And two, as a mother, that didn't seem that powerful of a way to lead. But I don't shy away from it now because as a mother, I did infuse things into two people that are making a huge difference in the world, that are outperforming me on multiple levels, on their self-awareness, on their careers, on all kinds of things. And so I think it is parenting is actually leadership.
00:22:21
Speaker
Because one of the things, um full disclosure, I had fairly easy children. So, you know, I didn't have to parent in a huge challenging situation. But one of the things I think I was really good at was seeing they are not me.
00:22:35
Speaker
They are not me. One of them has a little more of me. And I parented her the way I wish my parents had parented that part of me, but they are not me. And one of the challenges that so many leaders have is they try and tell people, do it just like me. And there's nothing like a teenager to look at you and go, what if I don't want to be like you? What if you're the opposite of what I want to be like? And so I think if more people were humbled by their employees' honesties the way we are humbled by our teenagers, they'd be better leaders. um And the second thing that i thought about was...
00:23:08
Speaker
You know, in terms of treating your people like children, I actually think that most people should treat their children with a little more dignity and respect. So I think you should treat your people the way you would want someone to treat your children if they were in the workplace. And that means treat them with respect. Think about what they're really good at. Put them in the right place. But don't give them a pass.
00:23:32
Speaker
You know, call them on their stuff. I don't, you know, want my kids to have some mamby-pamby boss that... is too afraid to say anything. And so I do think this notion, and we're seeing it more as we see people who ah one, leadership has become more mixed of men and women, and women tend to be the more active parent, and they've given more thought to the parallels. And two, more men are becoming actively involved in fatherhood.
00:23:59
Speaker
Interesting, if you look at some of our great leaders of all time, they will talk about their parents and how their parents train them to be leaders. And so I think the idea of treating your people with the respect and nurturing that you would want a boss to give your children is a really good model for leaders.
00:24:24
Speaker
So really, in a broad sense, we're really talking about transactional kind of leadership versus maybe leadership that's more intentional, right? Where you're doing things at arm's length and you're doing things that tend to be what's best for the company.
00:24:37
Speaker
And I'm wondering if you think that is mostly an intention because of a bias towards efficiency, or is there something in organizations that's more systemic that promotes that type of transactional type leadership, or is it just difficult to do do it the way you described it?
00:24:53
Speaker
It's difficult to do it the way I describe it. It's difficult to parent. As someone who tried to, it's difficult to parent the way i describe it. In a
Evolution, Passion, and Purposeful Endeavors
00:25:00
Speaker
business, you have the overarching pressure of profitability that but is the lexicon and narrative of the business.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yet, if you look high-performing organizations that have huge pressure on them, you look at elite athletes on teams, you look at the military, Navy SEALs, people like that that have huge pressure on them.
00:25:25
Speaker
They do the pre-work of figuring out who's good at what. They do the encodings to use the Jim Collins that we've talked about in his new book. They do the pre-work of shared values and how do we behave and what it do we believe. They do all that so that when the time is right, it's all there.
00:25:46
Speaker
That's the foundation. The problem in business is we're not in an environment like the Olympic volleyball team or the Navy SEALs trying to rescue somebody.
00:25:58
Speaker
But we are in a daily pressure environment that doesn't seem to let up where the pressure for numbers is there, or is there, is there. But we know that the leaders who can, at the same time operating in that pressure, also put their eye towards the development of their team.
00:26:18
Speaker
And who are these people? And if your team is the whole company, if you're the CEO, You know, you could go into a reasonably successful organization if you're the CEO and probably increase the earnings pretty quickly. If you want to cut here, cut there. And you could do that and then you could leave and you could take another CEO job. And certainly people have done that. But you look at some of the CEOs that are very well regarded. Like I mentioned Hilton earlier, Chris Nassetta the CEO of Hilton and he is really clear. The whole child connection there is really a ah whole other level, right? If you really want, because what is your true north with your kids?
00:26:55
Speaker
people who will outlive you and outperform you. And whatever you mean by perform, you probably want them to out-earn you. You probably want them to you know be better at their relationships than you were. You probably want to be better, more physically fit than you were.
00:27:08
Speaker
I mean, maybe that's just me. But if you think about your employees, how would I want my child's boss to treat them? If you will get away from this molly coddling parenting that you know the kid's always right,
00:27:23
Speaker
If my kid's late, call them out, call them out. Cause that means my parenting on this subject did not work. They're going to have to learn this lesson from somebody else. It's going be a little less forgiving. But if I think if I treat all my employees the way I want someone to treat my child, I develop them.
00:27:43
Speaker
I guarantee them some grace, but I have very high standards. I have very high expectations. And to your point of treat your employees the way you want them to treat your customers, I would say,
00:27:58
Speaker
the way you treat your employees is going to be the way they treat your customers. And so this isn't just an aspirational long game, the way you treat them today. And then one of them my favorite, quoting myself in the book, is if you treat your employees like a number, they'll return the favor with your customers and your customers will return the favor right back to you. And you will have a transactional business that where nobody cares about anything but money.
00:28:23
Speaker
And your customers and your employees will leave you the second they get a better deal somewhere else. One of the other concepts that comes out to in the Collins book is the idea of flipping the arrow of money. good And I was wondering if there's a a way to relate it if there's a parallel to the idea of in the book, selling with no more purpose, essentially,
00:28:43
Speaker
There's a lot messages in there, but one fact thing I took away is that if you sell with an over-purpose, if you're doing it well, you're going to earn the money you need to earn. And that's the personal level of it. Does that work on a more global level? Or if a company says, listen, we're going to we're got to earn money. We have to do that. It's an objective. But right can you treat it the way they're flipping the money on a personal level?
00:29:03
Speaker
You absolutely can. so I'm gonna give you a couple of statistics and a couple of examples. So we, number one, we create a false dichotomy between the money and the meaning that's in our minds.
00:29:14
Speaker
Number two, statistic. Companies who have a purpose bigger than money, whose true north is to improve life for customers. And this is really important, not just to make the world a better place or to have a greener planet. All those things matter.
00:29:29
Speaker
But I'm talking a publicly traded company. When they make their true north improve life for customers, they outperform the market by over 350%.
00:29:39
Speaker
So the data could not be more clear. And the reason why, if you and I sit in a room and go, how can we make more money? We're going to cut stuff. We might say, hey, maybe we could sell so-and-so this. But if you and I sit in a room and say, how can we make life better for our customers?
00:29:55
Speaker
That's where the innovation is going to come from. That's where the special thing that differentiates us is going to come from. And so what we have to understand, the money matters. and we've worked with these, we call them the noble purpose companies over the last decade.
00:30:11
Speaker
They were not immune to bad times. They sometimes had to cut people. They had to make tough decisions. But I'll give you one example, and I've got 15 more since we've been talking about Hilton.
00:30:25
Speaker
Hilton was already a successful company. After they implemented Selling with Noble Purpose and they implemented it all around the globe, Chris Nassetta, the CEO, went back to Conrad Hilton's original teachings and Conrad Hilton said, in this crackly hundred year old audio, our purpose is to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality.
00:30:47
Speaker
I mean, oh, what a visionary. And Chris Nassetta said, I'm gonna get that in the hearts and minds of every Hilton employee. And we did. And all around the world, and the year after that, Hilton broke record earnings and was voted a best place to work by the employees, which is highly unusual in the hospitality industry. If you've ever worked in hospitality, it's hard.
00:31:15
Speaker
And what makes it great for you and me to go stay there makes it really hard for employees. But those are the two lanes. Did you make money? Because the money says your customers love you.
00:31:28
Speaker
And what do your employees think about working here? And you don't create those two lanes without bringing them together around some higher purpose. And so this idea that we can only have noble purpose on the days when things are good,
00:31:44
Speaker
or that having a noble purpose means that we reduce our margins. That's not true. It is about how are we improving life for customers.
00:31:56
Speaker
And we want to do it in an ethical, good citizen way. But the end game is improving life for customers and the ripple effect that it has on them. But thinking about Hilton, I know you've worked with a lot of different companies, but I also see that you are working on a lot of different things. Is that consulting and outside ah project stuff? Is that still an ongoing part of your work?
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah, it is still. And I'm very fortunate um in that I'm in a spot where a lot of things come to me. So I'm not out there usually marketing myself in any way, but things come to me.
00:32:32
Speaker
I have been aware that your daughter joined your operation there but gu a couple of years back. I'm not, I don't remember exactly. Many years, actually. So given the way you've talked about raising kids, and I would imagine she's not a slouch in this particular frame and in codings, if that's where work.
00:32:47
Speaker
I'm just wondering what were some of the things that you have found that made that a natural thing for you to be doing? It was natural, it wasn't easy. um In some ways it was easy, because she's easy. So she worked for me off and on in college, and she ah had a part-time job for me, beeping up my social media back in the day. She's in her 30s now, so this is a long time ago, it's over 10 years ago. And she's why I have so many LinkedIn followers, because she was an advertising major, she worked in digital media, she said, Mom, you really gotta get on this. And she said, you know, 20 hours a week, I could get this thing right for you. and boy, she did.
00:33:26
Speaker
And then she graduated, went to work for an ad agency and ended up leaving there and coming to work with me. And when she first joined me, i was in a crisis it it was going to be temporary. i was on a deadline for leading with double purpose. It was behind.
00:33:43
Speaker
And I had just accepted a big project with Google where i was a little bit over my skis. you know that expression. And so I said, if you can help me with these two things, it's going to take about six months because I have to finish this book and I have to do this project. And so she did and we clicked and it was off to the races. She now has written her own book.
00:34:01
Speaker
She wrote a book called Leading Yourself. And one of the things I'm really proud of, and it's probably more due to her than me, is you talk about your daughter. And we do get fixed in time around how we see someone.
00:34:16
Speaker
And I always saw my daughter, Elizabeth Lortado her name. I always saw her as a very smart person and a very capable person, smarter and capable than more people that were older than her.
00:34:29
Speaker
But I still did see her as the helper to me. And we had that had to change over time where I had to see, no, she's a leader in her own right.
00:34:42
Speaker
She's older now. She's got experiences that you don't have. And I always knew she had knowledge I didn't have, but I started to see she may have some insights on this,
00:34:53
Speaker
that are better than what you're thinking. And so I had read a lot of stories and it's usually men that take over for their father. And I had coached a couple people in that scenario and I consistently saw the elder person undervaluing the younger person.
00:35:10
Speaker
And so I did not want to do that. So Lisa, one of the things I'd like to explore here is your journey, whatever you let the public see, is in itself, I think, really impressive.
00:35:22
Speaker
ah No one's watching me do what I do. My wife said to me a year after I started a podcast, I didn't know you were working on a podcast. And the reason she didn't know was partly because she was trying to take care of her mom, live with us, and was living with us in dementia. And that was a full-time job. And there's no reason she needed to pay attention to me. The podcasting, along with a few other things, became my way of saying, OK, I'm going to try these things in the expression of what I'm doing. So whether I intended to evolve or not, I started to e evolve into this format. And then i related that to what you've been doing with the screenwriting.
00:35:54
Speaker
And I'm wondering what is it that enables individuals, if enables the right word, to start to reinvent how they're going to proceed to deliver their message to the world.
00:36:04
Speaker
And i don't know if I have a clear idea in my mind on why I'm doing it other than I like it. I wonder if you had some thoughts about but reinventing yourself. So you and I have a shared understanding reading Jim Collins' book, What to Make of a Life.
00:36:18
Speaker
And I had the experience reading his book that some people have told me they've had with mine, which is he put words to my inclinations.
00:36:33
Speaker
And one of the things that I saw in his book was that the people that had really robust and and successful lives, and he's really clear to couch this, it's not just how much money they make or what they did, really robust lives on multiple fronts, was they were still excited.
00:36:51
Speaker
They died excited about what was next. And i have not had a traditional career where worked for Company Forever and then retired. I have not even stayed in the same lane on my writing, but I get excited about what's next.
00:37:11
Speaker
And part of it is i have a vision for the world and it's not really very close to that right now. And and I feel like it's really kind of pissing me off. And I don't mean just American politics or that, but this idea, there's a number of ideas around higher purpose, around empathy, around being part of something bigger than yourself that continue to drive me. And so I continue to find ways to put those out in the world
00:37:46
Speaker
And the creative challenge of writing a novel and the creative challenge of screen playing, because I could go around just talk about them. And, you know, maybe that would be helpful. But for me, the creative challenge of putting them forth in a way that people can absorb them, that is fun, like to Ted Lasso, you you like every minute of watching it and you're baking things in. i liked every minute of reading and watching Gone the wind that I'm baking stuff in. And so i think the idea that Jim Collins put forth was that we have encodings and that you do discover some of your encodings later in life.
00:38:29
Speaker
And it really galvanized me to think that I might have a really creative third act. And that he talks some about flipping the arrow of money, meaning that money is not the thing you pursue. It's the fuel for what you want to do. And he's very candid. Some people did that by living very meagerly.
00:38:52
Speaker
Some people were lucky, it had inheritances, had a spouse. Some people went out and made a bunch of money so then they could do what they wanted. So there were a variety of ways that people did that. But I really challenged myself to think whether I can do it or not remains to be seen. But if I flipped the arrow money, if I took money off the table,
00:39:12
Speaker
what What would be the thing that I want to do? And I think a lot of people might say, well, I want to retire. Well, I want to not work.
00:39:23
Speaker
Well, I want to sit on a beach. And it's taken me a while to realize I don't want to do any of that. I mean, I might sit on a beach for a week. That'd be great. But I want to make something. I want to create something. I want to do something.
00:39:36
Speaker
One of the takes I had along this theme was the concepts of simplex stepping is what he referred to. And it's the idea of, you know, people are in a fog and then they realize, well, listen, what you do is you start doing things back and forth. They're iterative and you're working your way through this fog and you're just doing the things that seem to make sense in the moment. And if you got to back up, you got back up. But it almost strikes me that with the simplex stepping, that was helpful because, but it was more helpful In terms of the way you articulated it, he put some verbiage to the inclinations that I had.
00:40:10
Speaker
I'd say to myself, well, yeah, that's what I was doing. But now I feel like the next level of that is if you're going to reinvent yourself, you're almost manufacturing the fog, right? You're saying, all right, I'm not in a difficult situation. i don't have a a life's moment where i don't know what to do.
00:40:26
Speaker
Here's something out there that I don't know what to do, and I don't have to do that thing, and it's not going to kill me if I don't, maybe. But I'm going to try it, but theres the fog is still the same. You're not quite sure what to do. You start taking steps.
00:40:38
Speaker
And so for me, it was those incremental steps of saying, if I see that vision, I'm going to try it, and maybe I'm going to back up, but maybe I'm going to go forward. And I'm just wondering if that process might be also part of the reinvention process.
00:40:51
Speaker
You know, I think it is because we tend to see the finished product of other people. We don't see the machinations and the internal trying this and trying that. And, and I think.
00:41:03
Speaker
The thing that really struck me in that book when he talked about people and that probably the two that were the most inspirational to me that he did these match pairs were Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, who was the president. And he talked about, I never thought about it this way, they both got fired from their job.
00:41:23
Speaker
They didn't just get fired by some errant boss. The population of America said, no thank you. both and And I knew, you know, I live in Georgia and a lot of what Jimmy Carter did was very public, you know, in the world and certainly here in Georgia. But I didn't know what Gerald Ford did and that they had kept this lifetime friendship.
00:41:48
Speaker
and that how much Carter had given appreciation to Ford for trying to bring the nation back together when we'd been through a really difficult time and his sincere gratitude and his friendship that they had. But the thing that was interesting was that back to that same theme, they both died excited about what comes next. Even though Carter lived to be so old, he'd probably know there wasn't that much coming next.
00:42:15
Speaker
And, you know, he's very religious. So what came next for him was, you know, he probably already had something in mind. But this idea that I would still be excited about things and that I would still be excited about things that I was part of, not just excited about what my kids are doing or, ah you know, a vacation, but that I would still have an enthusiasm for my own passions.
00:42:42
Speaker
I agree with you. That was the most fascinating pair to me just because I know what I know about Jimmy Carter. Of course, the message you take away if you don't read more deeply is, wow, if you're a nice guy on a high profile job, it's too bad.
00:42:53
Speaker
You're done, you know, but nice guys finish last. It's just too bad. yeah But I didn't realize that Gerald Ford, all that experience that he went through was very similar and very interesting. Right. And the thing that was interesting, well there's a lot interesting about Carter and I've studied him a good bit, but when he talked about, he was supposed to be raising money for his presidential library and was just like grown. I had to call people up and ask for money. i don't even want to do this. And he went to sleep one night and he started thinking about it.
00:43:20
Speaker
What if it was a center? And if you live Georgia, you know, that's what he did. And it was a place where people came and you held peace talks and how it changed the whole thing in his mind.
00:43:31
Speaker
he became on fire for it. And from the outside, it might not look that different if you don't know much about it than a presidential library. They all do them, whatever. But his when the vision shifted from, i got to do this presidential library, I don't want to do it, to, oh my God, what if it could be a place? It shifted from, it's about me, to what if it could be a place where people could do this and we could...
00:43:57
Speaker
educate people and do this And I've been to several events there, like nailed it, Jimmy, nailed it. But reading his own words about how he went from a slog to being completely on fire and animated about what seems like the same thing, that was exciting for me.
00:44:20
Speaker
Because it says, okay, if I've got to do this thing, what's another way to do it or another way to think about it? So you don't have to, you know, take up novel writing. Yeah. when you're 60 years old, or you don't have to go on some trek to China and go to the top of a mountain. It could potentially be the thing that you're already doing just to animate it differently.
00:44:44
Speaker
Right. I'm trying to put the words in my head, Lisa McLeod and the novella. I'm looking forward to seeing what that looks like. Well, the novella, so I told you about my two scripts. The novella is actually kind of depressing.
00:44:58
Speaker
um But it is, um so I'll tell you the first line of it Let's hope a bunch of really skilled fiction writers don't listen to your podcast, much so your podcast is good, um because I don't want someone to steal this, but I will go ahead and say it.
00:45:13
Speaker
So um when I was in high school, my younger brother died of meningitis very suddenly. And there's something that people don't realize that anyone who's lost a sibling knows.
00:45:27
Speaker
And it's the day you lose your sibling is also the day you lose your parents. That's interesting. Because your parents fall into such a deep hole of grief, they cease to be your parents. So the opening line is, if you lose a sibling, and you lose your parents on the same day. And so it's a novella about a girl, fictional girl. um I've now stepped her away from me. She is true fiction, whose brother dies and at this very vulnerable time in her life when she's trying to establish her identity, she's trying to figure out who she is, she suddenly becomes the girl whose brother died and has an identity thrust upon her that she cannot escape anywhere she goes in the town that she lives. All right, so I'm not gonna encourage you to say any more about that, but I will testify at the trial if somebody tries to steal that from her. That was my idea.
00:46:19
Speaker
Well, I think where it's relatable is obviously if it's happened to you, but like, you know, if your dad's ah the town drunk, if your younger sibling does some crazy ass thing, like you can't escape it. And people can certainly relate to having an identity thrust upon them that they did not choose.
00:46:45
Speaker
We can all relate to that in some way. And how do you create an identity for yourself based on who you are instead of some stereotype that was stressed upon you or some event that caused you to be defined a certain way?
00:47:02
Speaker
Well, Lisa, we're going to go ahead and wrap things up. I absolutely just really enjoy talking to Likewise. I know we've got at least five to 10 more hours of stuff. We can save it for the next time. So I guess to wrap up, I give you the last word. Is there anything out there you want to communicate that you think the audience might be interested in hearing?
00:47:21
Speaker
So I don't think there's anything from my work. You know what I want to communicate? I want to repeat a quote from Margaret Mead. never doubt that a small, thoughtful group of committed citizens can change the world.
00:47:39
Speaker
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. and i I want to say that because I'm needing to draw on it myself. We're in a time where our politics seems hopeless.
00:47:51
Speaker
um Jobs are being replaced with ai Six people control 80% of the wealth in the world or so it seems. And It's not a good place to be, and it would be easy to feel hopeless.
00:48:09
Speaker
But I also looked through the arc of human history, and those are the times when things actually changed. When the pressure got so great and things got so bad that the average person became aware of it, and they said, we're not going to do it this way anymore.
00:48:27
Speaker
Well, this might be a nice, rich subject for the next time we talk in whatever format, because I'm kicking around in my mind. I definitely don't have an aspiration on getting rich doing a podcast. But I have tried to be more thoughtful about, look, if want to put my energy into something, it's one thing that gives me joy and pleasure. But it has to do something more than that. And it has to do it for a million people or one person.
00:48:50
Speaker
but it needs to improve the circumstances. However, and I've got some thoughts on that, but I think at some point in the future, maybe we'll get a chance to talk about some of those things. That'd be great. Let say again, this has been fantastic. I've really enjoyed it, and I'm going to look forward to the next time ah we can talk some more about things.
00:49:05
Speaker
Excellent.
00:49:12
Speaker
Over the course of these two conversations, Lisa and I explored questions that began in organizations but ultimately found their way back to people. The subject moved from the question of what are we measuring to a focus on what we're becoming.
00:49:26
Speaker
But the thread running through both conversations is that our lives are rarely built all at once. They typically emerge over time through the stories we inhabit, the questions we continue asking, and the choices we make about what deserves our attention.
00:49:41
Speaker
I thank Lisa not only for her work over the years, but for sharing where that work is continuing to lead. The Leaders Community Podcast was produced by Acuity Business Consulting.
00:49:53
Speaker
Acuity demystifies the challenge of transforming talent and resources into exceptional and sustainable organizational performance by surfacing actionable clarity in the areas of strategic design, financial management, operational excellence, and leadership development.
00:50:10
Speaker
You can catch a new episode every couple of weeks wherever you enjoy your favorite podcasts. Thank you for your thoughtful engagement. And until next time, i am Jess Villegas, and you have been listening to the Leaders Commute podcast.