Charles Day on Creative Leadership
How You Can Unlock The Potential Of Others.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 308: Charles Day
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.
This is Season 3, which we’re calling, “Leading The Future”.
How do leaders lead when none of us have ever been here before?
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be talking to some memorable guests.
Dave Gilboa, the co-founder and CEO of Warby Parker. Charlie Cole, the CEO of FTD. The futurist, Faith Popcorn. Andy Nairn, the founder of Lucky Generals and Jenny Just, the co-founder of Peak 6 Investments and the founder of Poker Powher.
This week, I’m going to do something a little different.
Some people have suggested that every few weeks they’d like me to put a broader context around what I’m learning about leadership, both from these conversations and from my own work. How do the leaders who are best at unlocking creativity and innovation in the people that work for them, do that?
So, let’s start here. What is leadership?
My favorite definition, and the one that I’ve witnessed having the great impact in the real world, is simply this: the desire and ability to unlock the potential of others.
There is more to that definition than you may think on first hearing. It requires context. You have to know what it is that you want to unlock the potential of others to do.
Which sounds obvious, but in my experience, isn’t. Many leaders, far too many, can’t define the difference they’re trying to make. They can point to a financial growth plan or a market share target or a set of awards they want to win. And for a long, long time that was seen as enough.
But today, it’s not close to being enough. And in any business that depends on innovation and creative thinking for its success, I would argue that those kind of top-line (or I guess bottom line) definitions, have never been close to enough.
“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir the blood,” to quote Daniel Burnham with a slight modification in the pursuit of gender equality.
In my world, there are three parts to becoming the successful leader of a relentlessly innovative, brilliantly creative, value generating company.
Do you want to help people change? Do you have the ability to help people change? And what do you want to change?
What do you want to change?
The best leaders that I’ve come across have a meaningful answer that is based on a compelling view of the future. Informed by financial reference points, for sure (revenue, profitability, growth, margin, valuation, shareholder return, whatever matters most in your industry and situation). But steered by a conviction and powered by the determination that what comes next can be better than what we have experienced so far.
Leadership is above all else, a human condition. Because while leadership exists in some parts of the animal world, it does so in service to order, to the preservation of the species, and in protection of the status quo.
In our species, leadership is the antidote to the natural decay that occurs when we stop moving. The old adage - you are either growing or dying - is old for a reason. It’s true.
Whether as organizations or individuals, we use the present to create the future. It is how we survive and thrive as a species. It is why we live longer. Why we expand our horizons to new planets, why we are fascinated by and in some cases open to new planes of existence. It is why we are relentlessly asking why. The eternal optimism of humankind fuels our curiosity for what comes next. It is why we have a hard time living in the moment. Because we want the next one to be better.
Great leaders take responsibility for shaping that future. They step forward and declare. In doing so, they confront their fear. The fear they might be wrong. The fear they might be found out for the shortcomings almost all of them think they have. The fear they will fail.
But they are much more afraid of the status quo. More afraid of not trying. More afraid of a future in which they have not made change happen. In that sense they are not fearless. They fear less. They relegate their own doubts beneath their commitment to make a difference.
So if you want to lead, or if you are already leading, the question I always come back to is what is the difference you’re trying to make. What is the change you want to create?
It’s hard to define the unknown. Harder still to declare what you hope you’re capable of when you’re not sure you are. And no matter who you are, or what you have achieved, these questions and doubts exist far more often and far more deeply than any of us want to admit.
Those human challenges are what draws me to the work I do. To watch someone gain the capacity to confront the beliefs that hold them back, to be able to meet those misconceptions on their terms, to become aware that they are good enough, that they do deserve the responsibility they have been given, that even though they might sometimes be wrong, they will be right much more often. When they gain the confidence that comes with all that, the power they can unleash in themselves and others can change the course of a business or a life in a moment.
That is not hyperbole.
Which brings us to the second part of my definition of leadership. The desire to unlock the potential of others.
Do you want to help other people change through the discovery of what they are capable of?
“Give me a fish, and you feed me for a day. Teach me to fish, and you feed me for a lifetime.”
Leadership is measured in significant part by legacy. Is your DNA infused into the business long after you’re gone? Does what you did yesterday (or last year or last century) still matter today?
If the action I take satisfies your need in this moment, that's management.
If I give you the ability to solve the problem and the problems that come from that problem, that is leadership.
When I was actively leading businesses I had a simple goal. To make myself irrelevant to the day to day performance of the business as fast as possible. To teach others what I did and to help them do it better than I ever had. I’m a big believer that the most senior leaders in any organization should spend as much time as they can up and out the business - by which I mean looking up at what’s possible and looking outside the organization for ideas on how to do it.
Leaders who stay down and in, who are worried about their own relevance, about how to keep their jobs, are usually not very interested in accelerating the development of others. Which makes self interest not only one of the greatest threats to impactful leadership, but ironically one of the surest ways to accelerate your own demise.
If you’re genuinely interested in unlocking the potential of others - and if you’re good at it - your personal value proposition is many times higher than the leader clinging to power for the sake of power. You can’t build sustainable success by putting yourself first.
Which brings us to the third and final piece of my definition of leadership. Do you have the ability to unlock the potential of others?
People reach and exceed their potential when they trust you. When they are emotionally ready and able to invest in you as a leader.
I’ve learned that trust, the kind of trust that brings the very best thinking from very talented people, is built on a combination of human and practical components.
The practical foundation of trust is built on the concrete and steel of having a clear set of standards. How do you measure performance and progress? How do the people that work for you know that? Those are really important questions that the very best leaders have answers for. Original thinkers want to make one thing more than anything else. They want to make a difference. If you want them to trust you, you need to be able to show them when they are making a difference and help them when they’re not.
The human foundation on which trust is built is empathy. Knowing them well enough to have instant access to the answers to these questions. What matters to this person? What are they capable of? What’s getting in the way of that? What can we do to help?
If those questions don’t matter enough to you, then leadership is not for you.
Palliative care nurses tell us that when most people regret, once they understand their death is imminent, is that they never discovered what they were capable of. They spent their lives in pursuit of things that they came to realize didn’t matter much to anyone, especially them.
Life goes by fast. And it’s easy to forget in a self centered quest for success that all the moments we spend not finding out who we are and what we are capable are also the sands in the hourglass of life. If you spend your life trying to leverage the talents and passions of others in the hope of reflected glory at the expense of taking your own journey, then that choice, and those decisions, will one day come back to haunt you.
Leadership is a deeply human practice. It happens in real time, under enormous pressure and in the brightest of lights. There are no rehearsals, no practices, no dry runs. You step on the ride and the music starts. And it only stops when you get off.
The very best leaders learn to see themselves - kindly and honestly. They come to nurture their strengths and to trust others with their weaknesses. They emphasize the needs of others before they worry about themselves.
Leadership is not for everyone. But the people who learn to lead, to truly lead, change the world and everyone around them.
Thanks for listening.
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Thanks for listening.
