Susan Credle of FCB
How Being Vulnerable Has Made Her A Better Leader.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 302: Susan Credle
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business.
Welcome to Season 3, which we’re calling, “Leading The Future”.
We’re living in an unprecedented time. An epoch in which the collision of science, technology and humanity is changing everything we thought we knew.
How do leaders lead when none of us have ever been here before?
This episode’s guest is Susan Credle, the Global CCO of FCB.
2020 blew up the leadership playbook. Suddenly there were no rules. There was only you and how you chose to lead.
It was the year when it became obvious who the real leaders are and who had just been wearing the robes.
The leaders that have risen from the experiences of the last 12 months have done so because they showed up with openness, with honesty and with courage. They were vulnerable. They were human.
Being human is an element of leadership that often gets lost in the conversations about missions and strategies and metrics. You need those things. But you need to be human first.
Leadership that has the power to unlock creative thinking and innovation starts with that.
What does human leadership mean to you?
Here’s Susan Credle.
Charles: (01:29)
Susan, welcome back to Fearless. Thanks for joining me on the show today.
Susan Credle: (01:32)
Thank you, Charles. It's good to be here as always.
Charles: (01:35)
Tell me how you look back at 2020?
Susan Credle: (01:39)
I think it's been a year to learn and to have permission to try new things and to break out of how you show up and habits that become routine way of approaching your work. I found it interesting.
Charles: (01:59)
How has your leadership changed over the last year at a macro level?
Susan Credle: (02:03)
Well, I think some of it has remained the same, which is I've always been committed to building culture and taking care of people and asking what they need to do their job. So I guess it's been amplified because as we're all trying to figure out how we show up, we need more guidance. But I also have found that I've been more involved with the work and I've had more exposure to clients and meetings because we aren't flying all over the world as global leaders. And so we're spending more time, I’ll be it on Zoom, but really thinking about having strong conversations about opportunities and problems that businesses and brands face. And that's been exciting. And I've heard that from a lot of executives that there's less handshaking. There's no handshaking, but there's a lot of head-thinking and I just made that up. But anyways. Yeah, I think we've gone from handshaking to head-thinking in this time and I think clients value it. It's like they want us in there a little more.
Charles: (03:13)
And I'm assuming you feel like you're getting to know people, clients especially differently because you're seeing them through a radically different lens?
Susan Credle: (03:20)
Yeah. And I think we're seeing humanity again. And I don't know when we lost that, but people can't show up perfect and people can't suck oxygen out of a room and people can't walk in and intimidate very easily as you've got cats running behind you and children running behind you and heaters and a laundry room. Suddenly I don't have my high heels and my fancy clothes to hide behind. You kind of show up raw and that's a good thing I think.
Charles: (03:56)
And are you conscious of that? To your point, it's an interesting point. The theater of how we all used to show up was such a big part of the dynamic of a meeting or a moment, wasn't it? I mean where you sat in the room and whether it was your office or somebody else's and what you were wearing and all of those things. So this is much more, I don't know whether democratic is quite right, but, but you feel you're showing up in a different way and you see people in a different way?
Susan Credle: (04:20)
Yeah. I think the energy's placed on a better part of the business, which is the work and the people. And I think instead of concentrating so much on me, by virtue of only having to take care of about this much space, I can concentrate on others a little more. It's a lot of energy we spend just showing up.
Charles: (04:49)
Yeah. And are you conscious when you're on a... I haven't asked anybody this actually. I'm fascinated to hear your answer. Are you conscious when you're sitting on a Zoom call about the amounts of screen real estate you occupy and how to utilize that effectively? What's your mindset on a Zoom call that's different than it used to be when you were in the room physically?
Susan Credle: (05:09)
Well, it's interesting because I think we naturally look at ourselves when we're on Zoom calls. I don't think you can help. A lot of times I minimize me so I can concentrate on the person. But there is something interesting that you learn. I've been like, what is that face I'm making? I don't look like I'm concentrating, I look like I'm constipated. It's like, what is that face... So, I think there's a lot of analysis about something that maybe if you were just sitting in an office, you wouldn't realize what you were doing. And I think it's been an interesting time to sort of reflect on how your facial features and how your body language can actually come off saying something you don't mean to say. And I've been watching it.
I did an interview with someone the other day, just an informative interview, and for some reason, their frame was... They were like this talking to me and I'm like, this is so weird. Why are we talking like this? And for people that are listening, basically all you can see is the top of my head, or you'll do a Zoom and all you can see is someone's nostrils. And I'm like, what is going... I think we can't just randomly throw away caring about how you're engaging with people, but I do think it's different and I think it is more authentic because you have so little airs to put on.
Charles: (06:42)
I think it's such an important leadership lesson too, because I've been conscious for a long time about the impact leaders have through body language, to your point, and facial expressions. If a leader rolls their eyes in a moment, it sends a flurry of anxiety through the entire organization. And I think leaders are not always as aware of that as they might be. So to your point, this era actually might be the making of a lot of people in terms of understanding how they're connecting and communicating.
Susan Credle: (07:10)
Well, it works like self-coaching. A lot of times in coaching, which you do. Early on, they would film you talking and then go back and talk about what kind of signals were you giving off and maybe you shouldn't do this as much. And so we have some self-coaching film that we can just watch right there on any game day and do a self analysis.
Charles: (07:33)
How do you handle all of that scrutiny? And given the fact you are aware of it and given the fact you're now watching yourself and scrutinizing yourself. How do you handle being scrutinized? Whether you're on the Zoom, in fact. And there's also scrutiny about why you're not on the Zoom. People are always thinking about where's the leader and how are they showing, how they feeling about this? How do you deal with all of that attention?
Susan Credle: (07:53)
I don't know. In some ways I feel... And I don't know if this is just an individual reaction, but I said early on because we all represented in the same amount of space in a Zoom, we all have equal rectangles. I feel like the hierarchy is flattened. So I find that I'm actually looking at a group of people that have been gathered together to have a discussion. And I don't see the junior to the senior people as much. And I do think there's more of an inclusive, collaborative space. And I feel like I'm less intimidating this way than when I walk in a room and have a stage to play on.
Charles: (08:48)
And do you get a sense that people see you that way? Are you aware of people being opening up differently, volunteering ideas and thoughts?
Susan Credle: (08:56)
Yeah. We laugh a lot. We make jokes. I’m much more… I think for the last 10 months, we've been talking about vulnerability in the office and I think it's a bit of COVID has made us all a little more vulnerable. We're all feeling like we could get hurt by it and it's not class conscious or title conscious. It's like we're all equal when it comes to fear of COVID. And then I think the continuing important conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion. This vulnerability word has been really important to me. And I only think those two situations have allowed that conversation to come up because I think it feels like a soft conversation, not a hard, let's go get them. Vulnerability is an interesting word.
And what I found is or what I'm thinking is that vulnerability manifests in two ways, fear and courage, and you can be vulnerable and be afraid or you can be vulnerable and feel courageous. You can be vulnerable and have anxiety or you can be vulnerable and have excitement. And what I found is that what divides those two directions is are you in a place where you have trust, respect, and support. And I feel like the way that we meet up in these Zoom calls, there is an element of trust that has more. And I don't know whether it's because we're in people's homes, there's an intimacy. You're seeing more of the whole of a person. I think the respect is if you don't respect the space, it just becomes chaos. So people have to be aware of who needs to talk and who's talking too much. And I think the support has come because we're all in a little bit of a new era area or space that we need to support each other. So, I think that this vulnerable space is starting to push into exciting, encouraging, let's go do things with each other. And I don't think that would have come with those two subjects, COVID and inclusion and equity, weren't top of mind.
Charles: (11:27)
And how do you think we maintain that? Because obviously those characteristics, those qualities make for better companies, they make for better places to work. And as we come out of this, whenever that finally happens, as people start to return to being able to be together, how do you think companies will go about maintaining as much of those kinds of attributes as possible?
Susan Credle: (11:48)
It's a very good question because when you don't have to fight geography and physical space, more people can show up and more different people can show up. Everybody said this, but we're going to see a mixture of when we think this kind of conversation is appropriate where everybody gets an equal share and we can invite more people in. And then where we have physical meetings together. And I have a feeling that the physical meetings will be more in the making and the more thought conversations will probably remain in situations like this, where geography doesn't become the gathering point. Because it's been a blast to be able to hand-pick around the world people I want to work on a project, that I know and I know would enjoy it and love it and then like each other. And that's not possible if you're not thinking about this virtual world. So I hope we hold onto some of that. But then there is what I have heard across a lot of people, especially creative and even in strategy where you want to just throw things on a wall and look at them and move them around and physically interact with what you're doing. People do feel stymied by this space, this virtual space with those kinds of things when you're actually making and having material stuff that you want to move around.
Charles: (13:21)
Have you found it easier? You talked a little bit about creating a sense of democracy or sort of equality on a Zoom call, but also being conscious about how, because you're looking at 15 faces or 10 faces or whatever, you can see how people are doing. You have a sense of, is somebody struggling? Is somebody leaning into this? That I think is an important aspect of leadership obviously, the ability to take care of people around you in different ways. Do you think that gets easier as you come back together or do you think that the ability to see how people are doing in a more distributed way is going to go on being part of how one leads?
Susan Credle: (13:59)
You know, it's interesting. We were on a call at the end of the year and I was upset about something and I'm not very good at putting on a show or putting on a face. And so I was sitting there quietly just reflecting on something that was bothering me and it had to do with work. And it was an end of the year celebration call and I wasn't in the mood to celebrate, I had something else on my mind. And it was amazing how many people were DM-ing me just saying, are you okay? Is everything all right? I'm like, I'm fine, I'm fine. But you do realize that you can really pick up the emotion. The problem is you can't do anything about it. In the real world, I would say, “Hey, let's go grab a cup of coffee,” or “Come into my office and let's have a chat.” You can immediately get close to somebody. I think that the virtual world, you can recognize it, but it's much harder to be a salve in those situations.
Charles: (15:05)
And it's also the physical dynamics of that, because once the Zoom call is over, you're by yourself in your house. And that's a private space. And so people can try to, to your point, knock on your door electronically, but you can also choose just to say, no, I don't want that involvement and help, right? And so I think you're right, it's very much more difficult to push through that moment when somebody is resistant or reluctant to want help, to actually accept help, right?
Susan Credle: (15:30)
Yeah. And it's interesting because I think some of the milestones we made at FCB were in the physical space. I know for me, there are a couple of people on our team that I am very close to because I experienced a trust, respect, support situation where it couldn't have happened virtually. It had to be physical. It had to be, get in here, let's have a moment right now. You're going to open up, I'm going to open up, you know? And I just don't think you could do it virtually. I think it's too easy to shut it down.
Charles: (16:08)
The flip side of this is, it always surprises me how often people tend to forget that leaders are human beings too and have their own lives and dynamics and pressures. And obviously one of the great responsibilities of leadership is to always be looking out for how your people are doing. Are they happy? Are they being supported? Are they just okay in their private lives, in their personal lives? But there's a flip side to that, which is that you have a life as well and you have your own pressures. In your case, your husband is fighting cancer and you've had to deal with that battle alongside everything else. How do you put yourself in a position whereby you can receive the help of other people when your primary focus is on helping everybody else?
Susan Credle: (16:53)
Well, when you sign up for leadership, you sign up for leading and helping people and lifting people up. When you're in a leadership position, you have to handle things a little bit differently. I had some great advice from Cindy Augustine who runs our talent at FCB. And I think she has a nice way of thinking about this, is that if I share something about Joe and what Joe's going through, quite frankly, I'm not looking for support from the company in my personal life. What I am looking for is an understanding of, if I feel a little despondent or if I'm not quite there in the way I'd like to be there, that you understand and don't misplace that as something an employee's done or a situation has been caused.
So it's not so much that I need them. It's nice, it's really nice to get support from colleagues, but I'm not looking for empathy or sympathy or even kid-glove care. I just want them to not misinterpret how I show up. And it's interesting because it's been a very interesting time because out of care, a lot of people have tried not to bother me. I keep saying, that's not helping. And I was talking to someone this morning. I said, it's actually the opposite effect. I will only bother you if it's an emergency. Well, that means that every time you get a call, it's an emergency. So you get all the hard stuff and none of the fun little quirky things that are the part of the job you love. So, actually, since Joe was diagnosed, I feel like every call is the hard call. We wouldn't bother you but this is really important. I'm like, oh no. It's been kind of funny, in a way.
Charles: (18:57)
That's so interesting. That's such an insight. I think this whole notion of being a human being as a leader, it's an evolution of how leaders are seen and need to be seen, at least from my perspective. I think to be seen as I'm a whole person, I'm going to have up days and down days. My job and my responsibility is to be interested in you, be focused on you, making sure that we're doing everything we can to give you the opportunities to succeed. But there may be times where I need a little bit of context around that. I think the willingness to be honest about that is very important going forward. As you say, not because you want sympathy but because you just need to understand, sometimes I might be looking past you as opposed to at you and it's not personal.
Susan Credle: (19:37)
Yeah. And I do think that that's important because I remember when I was younger, I would go home at the end of the day, back when I had a brain that could do this, I can remember almost every word of every conversation that I had that day with people above me. And I would go home and analyze everything. Well, they used this adjective. Well, they used this word, they had this... And I think we forget that as leaders that old megaphone thing. It's like you're talking out of a megaphone so be careful what you say and just understand that people are listening hard and they're putting their personal, wherever they are in their personal journey. They're putting into that story.
Charles: (20:23)
Yeah. I had that lesson come home hard to me very early on. We were running our own business and a woman who worked for us came up to me in the hallway one day and she said to me, “I've got a problem with a client. This is the issue. What do you think they should do?” And I said, “Oh, I think you should do this.” And she looks at me quizzically. And I said, “Doesn't that make sense?” And she said, “No, it makes sense. It's just it's exactly the opposite of what you told me a year ago.” And I said, “You remember what I told you a year ago?” And she looked at me like I was crazy. And she said, “Of course I do.” And I think we forget that when we're in leadership roles. But I think to your point about being willing to be open and human and acknowledging the fact that I've got my own things sometimes that I'm going to be dealing with that I may not be able to completely put to one side in this particular instance. Just have a little context for that.
Susan Credle: (21:08)
Yeah. And it's a fine line because... I've always said, I think leaders that come in and go, I'm so tired. My job's so hard, blah, blah, blah. I think that is a terrible thing for a leader to do because, one, it says that people underneath you aren't. And by the way, they are. I remember my less leadership-like jobs and they were as hard or harder than, from a physical exhaustion standpoint, than how I have to show up these days. So I think how you share is really important. And leaders need to be very conscientious of why they're sharing, not just to be open and... Will it benefit who you're sharing with? Will it help them? If you have empathy with something they're going through, is that empathy good for them or is it denying their feelings?
Because sometimes when we go, “Oh, I know what you mean,” can be the worst because it's like, no, you don't. It's meant to be a good response, but it's not. I think we're seeing that a lot with some of the training we're getting in our DE&I work is that trying to relate to an impossible situation to relate to can actually be more offensive and hurtful than just listening. And that's something that I've learned in the last two years, I guess, is that I think most of us like to try to be fixers, especially leaders when it's like, we got a problem, let's fix it. And sometimes the situation doesn't call for fixing as much as it calls for listening.
Charles: (22:59)
Yeah. That's beautifully put. What do you think are the stories that we'll take away with us from what we've all lived through?
Susan Credle: (23:07)
I hope that balance stays with us because before COVID, if I read all the social media complaining is, I have no work-life balance. And I know people say it's horrible now too, but I do think that there are things that are happening that are gifts. Not the Giphy jiphy things, gifts with a T. But I've had several fathers that have had children during COVID or have watched a child go from one to two during COVID. And they realize that before COVID, this would have never been something that they would ever experience in their life ever. They would have seen chapter headings, but not the chapters of their child's life. I've had parents say that we have to put routine back in our lives. So we all eat dinner together and you show up for dinner.
Well, thank goodness. To get back to the family comes together, special part of the day. That had been eighty sixed out of a lot of people's structure. And I hope that we hold onto those kinds of things and say, no, we will make time and they're important and they're meaningful. I know for me, I was working in the city five days a week and then coming and living with my husband in the country two or three days a week. And I don't think I'll go back to that. I think that there is time to be spent in a home environment and there's a time to be spent in a office environment. And those need balance.
Charles: (25:05)
Last question for you. What have you learned about yourself over the last year?
Susan Credle: (25:18)
I would say that I probably have realized that I can handle things that are new and bizarre and weird and not get too thrown, but to push forward and look for what's good coming out of situations. I'm sure the history books when you look back, it will be this horrible time. But I... Joe’s watering the plants.
Joe, we're recording. That was not a bathroom break, it was just some watering some bay leaves. Yeah, I think that the challenges force us to come together and reach out to people. Again, that word vulnerability. Maybe what I've learned is when you have permission to be vulnerable because you're in some kind of crisis, that vulnerability gets very exciting. And I think I've learned that vulnerability should not produce anxiety, it should produce something that feels exciting and new that you want to get the best out of.
Charles: (26:34)
So well said. Thanks for sharing and being vulnerable today. And thanks for coming back on.
Susan Credle: (26:39)
All right. I highly recommend it. Just you have to be surrounded by people that you trust, respect and will support you.
Charles: (26:46)
Yeah, that is so true. Susan, thank you so much,
Susan Credle: (26:50)
Absolutely Charles. Bye.
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