Leading in Turbulent Times

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today, we're really delighted to be speaking to Steve Farber. And Steve is the president of Extreme Leadership, which is a leadership consulting group. And he is a speaker and the author of actually three books, Radical Leap—which is, Steve, how I first discovered you—The Radical Edge, and then the current book, which is hot off the presses, it's really quite terrific and very, very timely, called Greater Than Yourself.

Steve, thank you so much for making the time. I know you're extremely busy.

Steve Farber: Oh, it's my pleasure, Anita. I'm happy to do it.

Anita Brick: So there were a lot of questions submitted by students and alums. Obviously, leading in the times that we live in can be very, very challenging. Also, lots of opportunity. What do you think are the core differences for leading in quote unquote good times versus turbulent, volatile times?

Steve Farber: I'm chuckling because the question itself is interesting. Because the question—“How do you lead in these times?”—only comes up during challenging times. You never hear, “Things are going great!” It's interesting, in that I don't know that there's anything significantly different about leading in turbulent times, other than everything becomes much more important. So it's kind of like turning up the volume switch.

For example, one of the classic attributes of a leader that we're all well aware of is the vision thing. You know, a clear and compelling and inspiring picture of the future that we can all work towards so we can really engage and understand what our day-to-day work is all about. You know, how do we contribute to getting us there? That question of where are we going and what does the future look like becomes much more pronounced and much more important when times are turbulent, because it's harder to get that picture.

So a leader has to be even clearer about his or her vision, and even more vocal about where we're going. It doesn't mean that it's not important during good times; it just becomes more of a need that we feel in our gut when we begin to feel uncertain about things. Any attribute—and there are lots of them, certainly, but any attribute that's important to leadership just gets magnified during times like these.

Anita Brick: OK, so one of the Exec MBA students asked the question, and I think this is a good place to take us to the next step: what do you think are some key skills and personal characteristics that someone needs to be an effective leader?

Steve Farber: You know, again, that's a huge question because there are lots of them.

Anita Brick: Let's step back. And so vision was one. It sounded like that would be on your list. What are one or maybe two or three others that you would say if you don't have these or you're not able to cultivate these, you probably are not going to get to that very senior level?

Steve Farber: Yeah. So let me boil it down, you know, for the sake of conversation, to two things. And these are going to sound like broad categories. And they might even sound like oversimplification, but I don't believe they are. The two categories are, number one, a deep burning desire to get better and better as a leader, and the other is a deep burning desire to develop the people around you.

The reason it sounds like a bit of an oversimplification is because if you have a deep burning desire to get better and better as a leader, you're constantly going to be asking for feedback from the people around you. You're constantly going to be deepening your education. You're going to be more and more of an expert on your business and your marketplace and your company's culture, and then the people that work for you and your shareholders. It drives everything that we do.

What it ends up looking like, basically, it's a combination of intellectual competence and emotional competence. Right? It's that balance between being really good at your work, you know, good at your strategy, good at your knowledge of your particular marketplace that your company's operating in, and at the same time, a deep love—and I believe that is the right word. And you know that I believe that's the right word.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. Yeah.

Steve Farber: You know, it's at the core of everything that I talk about: a deep burning love for the business that you're in and the people that work for you, with you, and around you and the customers that you serve. Because that's where the motivation really comes from, is the desire to constantly make things better for everybody whose lives you touch.

Anita Brick: So do you think, one—because one of the alumni asked this question, I thought it was an interesting question, and I think it was maybe more of a statement than a question—he or she said, don't you think the increase in turnover rate of senior management is also growing because the recession unveils management mistakes and then competencies more rigorously?

Do you think that it's that or that people have lost the connection to why they're doing it in the first place?

Steve Farber: It's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, isn't it?

Anita Brick: Oh, good point.

Steve Farber: Yeah. I mean, you could argue that one of the reasons we're in this deep recession is because of the incompetence of certain supposed leaders and managers in certain industries. But sure, I mean, when things get tough and that bottom line gets squeezed, the degree to which, you know, we look at the quality of our leadership obviously increases.

I mean, there's much more scrutiny that happens. I mean, if you look at the studies that have been done recently … Harvard, the Kennedy School has … there was the center for Public Leadership and Leadership Index every year. The confidence that we have in the leadership of business is just shockingly low. So if we don't have confidence in the category of business leadership, it tends to cast a shadow or cast a pall on everybody who operates in that arena.

I mean, it's not fair, but it's true. Again, our level of scrutiny increases greatly. Our forgiveness factor drops significantly when things get tough, you know. And rightfully so, right?

Anita Brick: Sure, sure. It seems that in part, some of the confidence gap is because the direction or the focus was more self-preservation and maybe it's more obvious now because of very challenging economic times, but it seems like it's more of a focus on self-preservation than really—and this is sort of the core—I mean, having read Greater Than Yourself—than raising someone beyond where you are. If I go in and I raise someone beyond where I have been and whatever field that I'm in, I could theoretically be eliminating the need for me.

Steve Farber: Yeah.

Anita Brick: OK. So how do you balance this? If I'm going to lead, I'm going to have a desire to be a better and better leader. But ultimately my goal is to raise people who surpass me. So how do you coach leaders to do that?

Steve Farber: Yeah. Well, so there's a couple of things there. You could argue that one of the reasons we're in this mess that we're in is because the ego-driven, self-serving approach to business, which is I'm going to do whatever I can so I make as much money as possible, consequences for everybody else be damned …

Anita Brick: I get that. I agree.

Steve Farber: Obviously that's a model that doesn't work for all of us. It may work for some of us, but not for all of us. Right? So what I'm suggesting, and you know, the whole principle of this greater than yourself approach is admittedly counterintuitive at first. I mean, if you really do the analysis of it, at least maybe it's because I'm so close to it, but it becomes less and less counterintuitive, and it just makes much more rational sense.

So what I'm suggesting is this: the greatest leaders that I've seen over the years are the ones that never, ever shine the spotlight on their own greatness. They were never people that demanded to be recognized for being great. These were the people that focused their efforts on making the people around them as great as possible. They shine the spotlight on the accomplishments of their team.

They sing their praises. They look for opportunities to help them grow. And what happens as a result of that is that those leaders that do that—and again, it's a seeming paradox—end up becoming the greatest leaders of all—really kind of the creators of masters. And what happens … What I mean by that is they get a track record for developing great talent, and they never ask for the credit themselves, but they always end up being given the credit by other people, including the people that they raise up, and especially from the people that they raise up.

Anita Brick: And that kind of answers one of the weekend students' questions about how does it help me to advance someone else? Can you put it in context for us? Can you give us a real example?

Steve Farber: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, it was an interesting thing. This is kind of an ongoing developing story. OK. So it's a case study in process. I get a lot of emails from people, as you can imagine, because I've been at this work now for 20 years. And some consider me to be, you know, a so-called guru on the subject, although that's not a label I’m particularly comfortable with.

I don't claim to have all the answers. I'm not the guy that's got it all figured out. But that doesn't stop people from thinking that I am the answer man. They write to me, oftentimes just to share a story, but oftentimes to ask for advice, which I'm always very reluctant to give, frankly, because, you know, I don't know the person, right?

Anita Brick: You don't have all the facts.

Steve Farber: I don't. And, you know, when you hear somebody's side of the story, you're hearing their side of the story. So I got an email a few months ago from a guy named Ken who works at a technology company in San Antonio, and he wrote to tell me he had read The Radical Leap, you know, which came out in ’04. He read The Radical Edge, which came out in ’06, and he’s a young guy—in fact, he just turned 30 years old.

So when I heard from him, he was 29 years old, and he said, listen, he said, I've been using these principles to build this tech support team that I'm responsible for. And we built this amazing team that we, you know, we got these incredible results.

So we worked really hard and we loved each other. And, you know, we'd work 20-hour days when necessary. And my wife would cook food and bring it in and feed the whole team—it was like this family. And then one day they had a shift in management. A new vice president came in, took a look at what Ken was doing and how he was leading his team, and for some reason didn't like what he saw.

And demoted Ken, and for all intents and purposes, disassembled the team, took their spirit away. They just fell apart. So Ken wrote … he kind of gave me the scenario, and the question he had for me was, how do you get back up? Which was a really heartbreaking question. Here's a guy who put all these extreme leadership principles into practice and had done very well. And then it was all taken away and he was decimated. And a lot of us are experiencing some variation of that nowadays.

Anita Brick: Right, right, right.

Steve Farber: For all kinds of reasons. Even though I'm reluctant to give advice in a situation like that, I don't know if it was instinct or intuition or because I was just finishing up the manuscript on Greater Than Yourself. I thought I had an idea for him, so I called him, which kind of blew his mind.

And I said, listen, man, I've got an idea for you. It's going to sound a little bit counterintuitive, but what I'm going to suggest you do is not focus on yourself. I mean, I know that you're in pain, and I know that you're really distraught. But for a while, focus your attention on somebody else around you at work with the express purpose of raising that person up, making that person greater than you are at this job that you've done, and this expertise that you've amassed for yourself.

And see what that does for your own frame of mind. And he said, OK, fine, I'll try it. You throw a drowning man a life preserver, and they're going to grab on. Think it's a life preserver or might be. So I said please, you know, keep me posted. Let me know how it's going. And I actually … what I did was I sent him the galley copy, you know, the uncorrected proof of the book. It hadn't even been published yet. And I said, here, read this. You know, it'll help you to understand what I'm talking about and just give it a shot.

So I asked him, essentially, to find somebody at work to be his greater than yourself project, as it were. His GTY, as I like to call it, project. Somebody he can invest in to raise that person up. This is where it started. And the story just goes on and on and on ...

Anita Brick: And what happened?

Steve Farber: Well, let me try to capture it for you. First thing that happened was he said to me that he realized that in order to really help somebody else, he better make sure that he really learned the right lessons from what had happened to him.

Anita Brick: Good point.

Steve Farber: So he went to the vice president that demoted him, sat down with him for what ended up being a three-hour conversation. He went to ask this person, why did you do this? Why did I lose my position? Help me to understand what happened. And what he learned from that—the feedback that he got was that even though he had gotten tremendous results with his team, the way that he acted with everybody else outside of his team was completely different.

He was seen as belligerent, you know, kind of a bulldog, just kind of pushing his agenda through not having any care or concern for how anybody else would respond to it. So essentially, the goodwill that he created within his team, it completely evaporated outside of his team. And he said that was a golden lesson for myself. He learned something about how he communicates and how he tried to enlist people instead of run them over and the whole thing.

So he said, once he got that lesson, he felt better about himself and clear about where he wanted to go. And the first update I got from him was that conversation, and, he said, I've taken on a young technologist who really wants to go into management. I've taken him on as my GTY project, and he said, I'm feeling great.

So I got my energy back and I'm trying to be an example for my kids—this whole thing was really kind of a cool turnaround, right? The next thing that happened was he started to make a practice of this. So he made this transformation on himself that it wasn't just a matter of taking on one GTY project.

He was going to do whatever he could to be a great resource to the people around him, to go out of his way to help people, to boost them up and boost them up and boost them up no matter who they were. So he told me what started to happen was people started to come to him for advice—including, by the way, senior management.

He was given another leadership position on the night shift. It's a 24-hour operation. You know, the night shift—or the second shift, which is kind of the euphemism for it—is typically, they're the forgotten stepchildren and, you know, the whole thing. But he brought this whole approach to the forgotten part of the company, and he started leadership discussions and mentoring programs.

And, I mean, he just really brought life into it. And the next thing that happened was he had a meeting just maybe three weeks ago. He had a meeting with three senior vice presidents, including the one that had demoted him. And they essentially said to him that the next director position that opens up will be his. And they offered him 5,000 shares of stock vested over three years because they want to keep this guy around.

Anita Brick: Oh, that's great, that's great.

Steve Farber: And it goes on and on. But the point is that he has raised himself up by not trying to raise himself up. Well, more than that, he's raised himself up by raising other people up.

Anita Brick: Well, and way beyond where he would have gotten before from what you said, because there was an arrogance that was going to kill him eventually anyway. And it sounds like he—not everybody has this, but he had the courage to say, give me the feedback.

Steve Farber: It's a very courageous thing.

Anita Brick: Very courageous thing to do.

Steve Farber: A very courageous act. Whenever something is counterintuitive, whenever you're asking to do somebody that appears to be counterintuitive, you're asking them to be courageous. Because if it's counterintuitive, then everything in—he was firing off saying, this is bad. This is going to hurt me. Frankly, Anita, it could hurt you.

Anita Brick: What do you mean?

Steve Farber: It's entirely possible I would be completely starry-eyed and idealistic if I didn't acknowledge this. It's entirely possible that you could really invest yourself into somebody, share everything that you have, share all the context that you have, all the knowledge that you've amassed, all the experience that you've acquired, and pour it into this person, only to have that person turn around and stab you in the back.

Anita Brick: It's a really good point, because there was an alum who asked actually three questions related to being in an environment where self-promotion is the dominant mode of expression. It's not collaborative. He really doesn't like the fact that it's not collaborative. How would you even employ a Greater Than Yourself in that environment when everything is about self-promotion? I mean, whether it's done wittingly or unwittingly.

Steve Farber: I totally understand the spirit of the question, but let's put this in the proper framework.

Anita Brick: OK, Go for it.

Steve Farber: We're talking about leadership. And to say … whatever the idea is, that's a great idea. That's a great leadership act that you're describing. And as soon as the culture changes, that allows me to do it, I will take on that leadership act. That's the same thing as saying I choose not to lead.

Anita Brick: Well, how do you lead when you're not in the leadership role?

Steve Farber: Well …

Anita Brick: Which is … this person is not leading their department. This person is being led by someone else. So how do you lead without having the authority?

Steve Farber: The act of leadership has got nothing to do with your position or title. Nothing. And what I mean by that is we've all known people that are set in positions of authority, and certainly they have influence. And, you know, no question about that. We've all known people in those positions of authority that are terrible leaders, and we've all known people that have no position of authority at all.

They don't sit anywhere prominently on the org chart, and it says nothing fancy on their business card, if they even have a business card. But they're great leaders, so it's by virtue of who you are and what you do and how you approach your work and how you approach your life and the people around you. The question becomes, what can I do regardless of what anybody else is or is not doing around here?

What can I do to make this a better place, regardless of what my boss or my boss's boss or the C-suite or whatever is or is not doing? That's the leadership question. It's not “I will lead as soon as those people up there change.” That's not leadership.

Anita Brick: I know, I get it. So then how do you proactively put that in practice?

Steve Farber: Well, let's go back to that particular example. I'm in a culture that's self-promoting. OK. That doesn't mean that you have to be, right? So it comes down to who you choose to develop this kind of relationship with. So in other words, if you invest in somebody and they do turn around and stab you in the back, or they take the first opportunity to step on your head and crush you in their climb—we can use all kinds of dramatic language, right?

It doesn't mean that the idea was bad. It means that you didn't choose well. It means that you chose a person that you shouldn't have trusted. This is a very trusting, intimate act, this GTY approach.

Anita Brick: How do I know who to choose?

Steve Farber: There are a number of things. And by the way, you could go through the whole process and still make the wrong choice.

Anita Brick: All right. So what will make it … What will increase the probability and reduce the risk?

Steve Farber: There are a number of things. So let me—and I'm not saying this is a complete list, but it’s a start. You want to choose somebody, first of all, that you believe in. You want to choose somebody that you trust. You want to choose somebody whose goals and desires line up with your skills and abilities so you know what they want to accomplish.

You know where they want to go and you happen to have the experience and knowledge and connections, etc., to help them get there. And it should be a person whose values are congruent with your own, as much as you can determine all of this right now. You can make all those determinations and still be wrong. But that's where you want to start.

And then you invest in this person. You know, this actually kind of goes back way to the beginning of our conversation. There are those two categories that I suggested. One is a burning desire to get better in yourself and the other is a burning desire to raise other people up. There are three what I call tenets to Greater Than Yourself.

It's expand yourself, give yourself, and replicate yourself. Right? There are a couple of metaphors, you know, as I was really exploring this idea and trying to put into words what I'd seen over the years. The first metaphor that I got caught up in that seemed to be a problem was—the fear is that if I'm going to raise somebody else up, it would be like, we're both standing in the bottom of this well, and my job is to boost you up over the top so you can get out and get up onto the ground. And then I had this vision of, you know, so here I am, I push you up over the top and I'm stranded at the bottom. And you know, you're up in the daylight. That's not a good scenario.

OK. What I realized is that it's actually the wrong metaphor. The right metaphor is that it's more like you're boosting somebody up out the top of an elevator, and you're making sure that your elevator is constantly rising as well. A big part of making others greater than yourself is the constant, relentless focus on expanding your own capacity at the same time.

Anita Brick: I mean, obviously we can learn more and challenge more, but are there specific things that you've seen work that facilitates the GTY process?

Steve Farber: Yeah, Ken gave us a great example. The most powerful tool in all of this, I believe, is the constant seeking out feedback from the people that you work with and influence them and lead them, you know, etc. It's the old Ed Koch approach, you know, a former mayor of New York, quite former now, but he was famous for walking around New York and asking the question, how am I doing?

And he’d literally go up to somebody on the street and say, you know, I'm your mayor. How am I doing? When you ask a New Yorker, “How am I doing?” You're going to get an honest answer. So I think it's the same way for us. I've always advocated for this in all the work that I've done over the last 20 years.

You constantly need to seek out the most difficult feedback from the people that are most important to you, which is the very people that you're leading. And then based on that feedback, you determine what you need to do to get better at the things you need to get better at, which is very different for all of us. A lot of this is conventional wisdom, professional development, personal development. Stephen Covey called it sharpening the saw, right?

Anita Brick: Right.

Steve Farber: Whatever you want to call it, it's more true now than it's ever been. We constantly have to be developing our own capacity, competence, connection, etc. There's an important twist in this, though. OK, what I'm suggesting here is that the conventional wisdom says that we should be doing that in order to give ourselves the advantage, in order to give ourselves the edge over the competition, what I'm suggesting is that it's important to do that in order to give ourselves a greater ability to boost other people. The more that I learn, the more that I have, the more connected I am, the more I have to give to somebody else.

Anita Brick: And I get that. I'm there with you on that. I think one of the challenges, and it was reflected in some of the questions that were submitted, is how do you balance that if you're in an environment like one of the Exec MBA students, he has a manager who likes to keep everyone slightly insecure.

Steve Farber: I saw that, yes.

Anita Brick: And he believes that it's in the best interest of the team. And so the question is, if you're in that kind of environment and maybe you don't have a lot of flexibility to move somewhere else—maybe the ideal would be to go somewhere else—how do you, number one, cope, maybe insulate yourself from that negative environment, and at the same time expand yourself and expand other people?

I mean, how do you manage all of that?

Steve Farber: That one really jumped out at me. Let me paraphrase the question, OK? Because you sent me some of these questions ahead of time.

Anita Brick: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Farber: The way it was written here is, “I have a manager who does his best to keep us slightly insecure so that we don't get big egos. He believes this is in our best interest long term.” First of all, I'd like to comment on the thinking behind that. To me, that's insane.

Anita Brick: Well, it is insane.

Steve Farber: And the reason it's insane is—insane is a strong word, but, you know, I'm a fan of hyperbole.

Anita Brick: Yeah, I've heard that.

Steve Farber: I'm the world's biggest fan of hyperbole. What he’s suggesting is that when you praise somebody for work well done, you're damaging them because you're inflating their ego. And that's crap. The bottom line is, you know, I've never met anybody that left an organization, quit a team, hated their work because they got recognized too much. Never seen it happen. “You know, I couldn't stand that place. They recognized the hell out of me. I couldn't take it.”

But you hear over and over again of people leaving and being distraught and being disengaged from their work because they get no recognition for what they do. There's always a balancing act here. I don't think you should give anybody a sense of false security. I don't think you should tell them everything's OK when it's not. That's not what I'm suggesting. But you don't keep them off balance just because somehow you think that's going to be that's going to be good for them. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Anita Brick: OK.

Steve Farber: So if you're in that situation, you have that kind of boss, again, it comes back to the leadership question. I can't over emphasize this enough. And I know I can't because the question comes up everywhere I go in every company, in every industry, which is a lot of companies, a lot of industries for over 20 years.

Some version of that question comes up every time. Which is: my boss acts one way. The culture acts one way. How can you expect me to act a different way? And what I'm suggesting is that because your boss acts one way, you should be acting a different way. If the way your boss is acting is wrong, that's the only way that’s going to change things—just through your own influence, through your own example, through challenging the status quo by doing something different.

And the bottom line, of course, is the proof is always in the pudding, as they say. And you know, business is about getting results. So if you want to prove that there's a better way to do things, then do it differently and show the results.

Anita Brick: Yeah, but maybe you also have to think about what are the repercussions? You may pilot it, in a sense ...

Steve Farber: Yeah.

Anita Brick: Show that it's working so that … if you try something new and it doesn't work, you could lose your job.

Steve Farber: Absolutely. I'll give you an example. This is one of the finest examples that I've seen over the last couple of decades. I did some work, quite a bit of work at Bank of America years ago, and this was before the merger with NationsBank that was still headquartered out of San Francisco. And it was a bank, right? It had that history of being very hierarchical and top down and all of that, and, of course, risk averse, which banks were kind of known for being back in those days.

Anita Brick: Yeah, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Anyway, never mind.

Steve Farber: Right. But the culture was risk averse. So in other words, it was a culture where people were not inclined to speak up with contrary opinions, were not inclined to do the proverbial thinking outside the box, let alone acting outside the box. But there was one guy there, his name was Dick Nettell, and he still to me is one of the greatest leaders I've encountered.

He was … at the time I met him, he was a VP in the check-processing operations—almost like a manufacturing floor that he ran, and Dick embodied a personality that was so countercultural to the rest of the bank, it was actually funny. He was a risk taker. He was very vocal. He was outspoken with his ideas, and he had such a deep love for and commitment to his employees.

You know, he'd run interference for them and he would, he'd just—he would shake things up in an environment where you're quote unquote, not supposed to do that. And he just got promotion after promotion after promotion. This is a guy who, I mean, he literally started in the motor pool in the beginning of his career.

When I met him, he had been at BofA for 25 years, but he started as a mechanic in the motor pool and worked his way up. Since then he retired, and last I heard… We exchanged an email recently, but I haven't talked to him in a while. Last I heard, he actually came out of retirement and went back to work at BofA because he missed it so much.

But always challenging the status quo. To him, the idea that you can't do that here, because that's not the way we do it here, was literally laughable. And, you know, I was doing a whole series. This is in my time at the Tom Peters Company. We were doing a whole series of workshops for all their leadership team, and the support circle was at the time called Support Services.

It was a little exercise that we would do to kind of get the conversation going about what great leadership is, and we just ask people to, first of all, start off by describing leaders that they admire. So typically you heard these historical leaders, you know, your Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Lee Iacocca was a popular one back then. You know, all these people. But in this particular group, at BofA, every time we did that exercise, at least one person in the group would say, Dick Nettell.

Anita Brick: Wow. And he wasn't like …

Steve Farber: Mother Teresa, you know.

Anita Brick: Right.

Steve Farber: Dick Nettell. And so people just absolutely loved him for his authenticity, for his willingness to challenge the status quo and for his—ultimately, bottom line, for his incredible results. He didn't change the culture of the bank, but he completely changed the culture of the part of the bank that he was responsible for.

You know, we get so caught up in this “culture” word. I remember I had this discussion with an international technology company a while back. They were given a culture assessment and it depressed them. They said that our culture is stagnant, that our culture is risk averse, and our culture is all these things that you don't want a technology company to be.

Anita Brick: Right.

Steve Farber: And the discussion that I got into with them, which I think they found helpful, was, listen, there are cultures and there are microcultures. So there's the culture of the company, but there's the microculture of whatever it is that you have influence over—again, whether or not you're in a position of influence. But what about the culture of your team or the culture of your project, or the culture of your department, or the culture of your division, or the culture of your business unit?

Work on that culture and get the results that you want there. And then show—it's like the little prototype that you were just talking about, Anita. You know, show this is the way that we get through these results here. And maybe through your influence, you can encourage other people to approach their microculture in a similar way.

Anita Brick: Well, it's interesting, it sounds like from the question an evening MBA student had asked about how do we get C-suite executives to learn the thinking paradigms, processes, terms, etc. for leading change and that project management collapses into it and not the more strategic focus. But it sounds like the answer is very similar to all the things we've been talking about, that you have to find a place where you can demonstrate these things rather than expecting someone to change just because you tell them.

Steve Farber: That's right. Exactly. I mean, people are—listen, we're all human. So what I'm asking people to do is difficult, in terms of, for example, seeking feedback on ourselves. Right. It's very tough because we don't want to—we just want to hear the good stuff. And frankly, if all you're getting is the good stuff, then you're not getting the whole story because none of us is perfect.

So the other side of that coin is it's easy to to look at, say, for example, the senior executive team, the C-suite, and say, you know, these guys really need to change. These people need to change. How do I get them to change? That's the question we're always asking.

Anita Brick: It is! I mean, we ask that question probably at home too.

Steve Farber: Yeah. And, you know, and again, it's a perfectly natural question. It's human nature.

Anita Brick: You can say it, Steve, go ahead.

Steve Farber: I guess the answer is—maybe the most valuable answer is, you don't. Don't waste your time thinking about how you get them to change. Prove that there's a better way to do things. Prove it through your own actions.

Anita Brick: So how do you make the chance to do that? Because I still am not clear about that. So if you're in an environment that doesn't really support what you want to do, of course you can leave. But if you don't want to leave or you can't leave at this time, how do you make the opportunity to prove that a different way of thinking of things can work?

Steve Farber: So that is an overly general question. And let me let me say why.

Anita Brick: Thanks, Steve.

Steve Farber: So we have to make it a little bit more specific.

Anita Brick: OK. That's fine. Go for it.

Steve Farber: Because the bottom line is you can't always do that. I mean, you can't—I'm not suggesting that you should just go do whatever you want. That's not what I mean.

Anita Brick: OK. So how do you locate an opportunity?

Steve Farber: But with some things, like with GTY, for example, it's got nothing to do with what your culture is. It's a very personal one to one act. There's nothing in your culture that says you can't help somebody else. I mean, show me the, you know, employee manual that says, do not help or share information with anybody else. It doesn't exist.

Anita Brick: No, but you're right. And then—but it doesn't mean that if you are in a quote unquote lower position, lower in the totem pole, that you can’t have a Greater Than Yourself person or project who is at the C-level. I mean, you could, you could … It doesn't …. It's not like mentee/mentor, one is below the other. I mean, it could be peers, people who are lower in the food chain, so to speak, and people who are at a more senior level. That opens it up tremendously.

Steve Farber: Absolutely. It does. Yeah. That's a great point. There's nothing in this Greater Than Yourself relationship that implies that I have to have, you know, a higher position than you in order to raise you up.

Anita Brick: Got it. No, I think that's a good point. Do you have time for maybe three more questions?

Steve Farber: I certainly do.

Anita Brick: OK. And this was actually the same person. It's a senior exec—and I'm assuming this person is, just from some other things, is maybe at a PE firm—but a senior executive. And he had two questions. One is should I try to reduce executive turnover, or is destructive change good for my organization?

Steve Farber: This comes back to that … the reluctance that I have.

Anita Brick: I know, we don't have all the context, I understand.

Steve Farber: We certainly don't. So let me answer it in general terms: sometimes turnover is the best thing that can happen for your company. So yeah, you should try to reduce turnover if you're losing the critical talent for your company. But on the other hand, if there's somebody who's ill fitted or whose values are conflicting with what the company is trying to do, you know, then saying bye-bye is a great thing.

Anita Brick: I mean, if the organization isn't getting anywhere, it may be time for a change too. You're seeing a lot of that right now.

Steve Farber: I always take it as a compliment when somebody—which has happened, shall we say, more than once over the years—when somebody comes to me and says, listen, I read your book or I heard you speak or I was in your seminar, or whatever it was. And the conclusion that I came to was that I was entirely in the wrong company, in the wrong place. So I quit, you know, I got an opportunity somewhere else, or I started my own company. I think that's a wonderful thing when that happens.

Anita Brick: Yeah. That's true.

Steve Farber: I've got to be stating the obvious nowadays. But there is nothing that says that because I work somewhere, I should work there forever. Or because I work here, I'm perfectly suited for this place. Because I work here, I should stay here. That makes no sense to me. It comes back to the heart; comes back to really loving your work. The fact of the matter is, you know, I can be prosperous and make a lot of money and be totally miserable in my job.

Anita Brick: Oh, true.

Steve Farber: But you know, life's too short. And the question becomes, then, can you lead? Can you really lead and inspire other people to do great things if you're miserable in your job? And I really believe the answer to that is no. I might be able to make a lot of money, but I'm not going to inspire people to accomplish great things, which is ultimately what leadership is about.

So therefore, if I choose not to lead, that's a perfectly fine choice too—just understand that that's the choice that you're making. To encourage other people to leave, to turn over, to go somewhere else when they're miserable, or they're making others miserable, or they can't really lead effectively, for whatever reason, I think is a great thing to do.

On the other hand, if they are the right people for the company and we really do need them, then, you know, let's do whatever we can to keep them.

Anita Brick: Two more questions. One—and I think it's sort of interesting, whether it's from the vantage point of a board or it's the vantage point of an investor—as you are engaged, what are some things that you would look for or you would recommend that people look for to see if the team is actually being managed and lead effectively? Like what would you look at almost from the outside?

Steve Farber: Well, you know, from the outside looking in, there's really not a lot that we have to go on other than the, you know, the performance of the company.

Anita Brick: Right. That's true.

Steve Farber: Yeah. And if there's any kind of information on, you know, how they rate like for example, and they’re one of the top 100 places to work in Fortune magazine, you know, best 100 companies to work for—those kinds of outside-looking-in metrics. The best way, of course, is to try to get the perspective from people inside the company.

For example, one of the guys that I use in terms of my own, you know, financial management—he trades stocks for me, but he invests in a very small portfolio. He's got very strict criteria for what he looks for in terms of who he's going to invest in. And one of the things that he does is, you know, he and his and his partner go and spend a week or so on site with the management team and with the employees of the company.

And they talk to people. That's how they do their due diligence. They don't just look—I mean, obviously the numbers are important in, you know, cash position and industry demand and etc. etc., all that's critical. But it's also, you know, who are these people? I mean, who are the people that are running this place, and what effect do they have on the other people that work here?

And how do their customers respond to whatever their product or service is, as best you can, do your due diligence by talking to the people.

Anita Brick: Well, just like any portfolio manager would do, you look at the numbers and you look at the team.

Steve Farber: Yeah, but even better than looking at it's getting in there and, you know, having a beer with, maybe.

Anita Brick: That's a good point. Yeah. No, you're right.

Steve Farber: So let me put it this way. If I want to find out if somebody is a good leader or not, I don't ask them.

Anita Brick: Well, yeah … True.

Steve Farber: I mean you think it's obvious, but you know, the real answer is going to come from the people that they lead. And if you can get them to speak to you in an honest and open way, that's the key also of course.

Anita Brick: Good point. I know we've talked about a lot of different things. When it comes down to it, there certainly are key things that one needs to have as a leader. And today, even more than in the past, understanding yourself, expanding your own capacity, and helping other people expand their capacity really helps a leader grow and develop—and, of course, a company to prosper.

If you're going to think of some next steps that people could take, say, in the next week, what are some things that you would suggest that they do, whether it's part of a Greater Than Yourself project or even something beyond that? What are the top three things you would recommend?

Steve Farber: Yeah. And I'm going to be fairly prescriptive about this …

Anita Brick: That's great.

Steve Farber: Which is kind of not the norm for me. First thing I would suggest is to sit down, in a quiet moment and think about yourself. And think of yourself this way: as if you were a storehouse. And within this storehouse you have this inventory of your valuable things that contribute to who you are. So the experiences that you've had, the people that you know, the competence that you've acquired, the values that are at your core, the characteristics of your personality—all these things that are really valuable.

And literally take an inventory, write your inventory of yourself. And then the question that comes out of that is, are the things that I'm doing and the way that I'm spending my time and the relationships that I'm developing and the projects that I'm involved in and etc., etc., etc. … adding to, expanding, and deepening what I have in my inventory?

The answer should be yes. And if they're not, then what do I need to do in order to make that happen? So that whenever I do this again, which I think a person should do with some frequency, maybe every few months, maybe twice a year, whatever it is, when you sit down and take your inventory again and compare the two, it should be broader, deeper, bigger, or richer, or whatever.

You know, all the good stuff. That's where I would start. Particularly nowadays, I think it's really important to take stock of who we are and what we have. And then the other is, begin to look for somebody. Who would you consider to be a candidate for your own personal GTY project? You know, who around you, ideally at work, but anywhere in your life—although I think at work is really where it's most provocative, which is why I like it—and begin to just kind of jot down who some of these candidates are.

And as we come back to the things we talked about earlier: somebody that you really believe in, somebody that you trust, somebody that you can really help, somebody whose values are congruent with yours. And then just start there and see where that takes you. And the reason I ask you to do that is because, again, you know, I'm seeing it.

I've seen it happen. I'm seeing it with our friend Ken in San Antonio. I'm seeing it in my own life. It can make a huge difference in, if nothing else, in your own frame of mind.

Anita Brick: .. which is really important today. If you listen to the news, it kind of gets depressing.

Steve Farber: Absolutely.

Anita Brick: So that's good. Yeah. I figured that you were doing it because in the book you made a vow that you would do it.

Steve Farber: Yes.

Anita Brick: Yeah.

Steve Farber: As you know, Anita, I write novels, I write business parables. Right. So I play fast and loose with, you know, fictional characters and real characters, and I mix them all together in Greater Than Yourself. I tell the story of my GTY project—a guy by the name of Tommy Spalding, who is as real as they get.

He is my GTY project, and I have and continue to pour everything, all the context that I have, the things that I've learned, into helping Tommy with his career and at GreaterThanYourself.com, I have a whole series of videos of just my sitting down and talking with Tommy.

Anita Brick: Well, I know that. That's cool. Good. Thank you so much. I know that the approach that you take really has proof and heart. And I think that combination is especially important today.

Steve Farber: Thank you so much. Indeed it is my pleasure.

Anita Brick: Well, thank you again. And in addition to Greater Than Yourself, there are also some other things at Steve's website, which is his name, Steve Farber, which is SteveFarber.com. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.