Ego Free Leadership

by Brandon Black

  When Amy received her “shocking” 360-degree feedback, she justifiably could have focused on these unfair impediments: “They don’t understand; they don’t value me because I’m not like them.” Or she could have beaten herself up, or shut down and withdrawn.

  In doing this, however, she would have missed the gift for her life. She wouldn’t have discovered the unconscious ways in which she was co-creating stress, pain, and solitude for herself and others. Amy believed she could show no weakness, so she rarely asked for help or feedback, or invited mentoring. Her relationships with peers were guarded transactions instead of partnerships. So, although she excelled at delivering high volumes of work in her zones of competence, she wasn’t yet leading down or across the organization.

  This was, in her own words, her “internal glass ceiling”— unconscious barriers to success that she herself was erecting. “I wasn’t just holding myself and my career back,” Amy explained. “In trying to hide my insecurities, I was actually hurting other people. Realizing that was very powerful.”

  Amy had the courage to move to a learning mindset. By looking inside herself, she gained leverage in a complex situation. “Amy reached a point of being ‘fed up’ with the costs of her reactions,” her coach Carole said. “By letting herself feel sadness about her impact on others, without hedging or deflecting, Amy connected with what she deeply wanted to create in her relationships. This clarity became her compass.”

  When Amy opened up to her team, the results were outstanding. Her work relationships blossomed, and she created a trusting environment where issues were surfaced early and people became a source of support for each other. Her organization’s performance, and her effectiveness as a leader, took a leap forward.

  The key lay in why Amy took the risk of being vulnerable: to mentor others; to leave space for people to grow; to foster openness and honesty. Her sense of purpose allowed her authenticity to create a safe space for her team and deeper connection with people. She was just as committed to delivering results for the organization, but not to prove her worth. “Amy didn’t try to be nicer, less assertive, less direct, or less decisive,” Carole remarked. “She wasn’t willing to sacrifice her competence or performance to appear more likeable. She focused on being more human, vulnerable, and competent in order to create more authentic connection.”

  But did focusing on her personal responsibility mean pretending there was no external glass ceiling? To the contrary, self-awareness is the highest act of leadership. It gives us courage and creates receptiveness in others. Amy’s willingness to look at her own limitations gave her tremendous credibility to bring up the discrepancies that women were facing at Encore.

  The “How” Makes the “What” Possible

  AMY

  I felt energized to transform my leadership style and create a positive impact on people around me. I was committed to creating a safe environment so that my team and colleagues could be honest and open with me without feeling judged or criticized. To do this, I needed to show more of my human side: to be vulnerable, to ask for help, and to let others know my fears and anxieties. Most of all, I wanted to share more of my world—to let people in.

  It felt great … but the first step was telling Brandon I was pregnant. The LaL seminar had a number of role-play exercises where we practiced difficult conversations. I did all of mine on the conversation I needed to have with Brandon. I rehearsed it again on the way to the office my first day back at work. I was ready.

  I walked into his office, fully prepared to have a poised dialogue, sat down, and … started crying. This is not the plan! Through my tears, I managed to spit out the words “I’m pregnant.”

  “Congratulations!” Brandon exclaimed. “That’s amazing! But why are you upset?” Even through my blurry vision I could see the confusion on his face.

  “I don’t know how this is going to impact my career,” I told him, trying to regain my composure. “I know you just promoted me, but I promise you this won’t impact my performance. I’ve got everything under control.”

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “I have no doubt your performance will be fine. And no, you may not have everything under control, and that’s OK. We’ll figure this out together.”

  “I’ve already decided I only need two months’ maternity leave,” I said, knowing he must be worried about me being absent, and Encore not being able to purchase enough portfolio. Don’t take this away from me! “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “Stop worrying, Amy. This is your first baby. You have no idea how much time you’ll need. Please promise me that you’ll figure that out as it goes, and ask me for help.”

  I nodded, feeling stunned.

  He stood up and gave me a hug. I couldn’t remember Brandon ever hugging me before. It was the first time I felt a personal connection with him.

  Now that my secret was out, I used it as an offering to my team. I shared my story; my fears, anxieties, and goals. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I quickly saw evidence that being vulnerable and authentic had a positive impact on others. My team began telling me what was going on in their personal lives, which made our relationships more meaningful. From a performance perspective, I had been begging them for years to tell me any bad news early so we could deal with it proactively. When I showed my humanity, we started building trust and it finally happened. As a group, we began to get ahead of problems more consistently.

  One cloud of frustration still hung over me. It was customary for vice president promotions to be announced to the entire company. When Brandon gave me the VP role, however, he mentioned waiting a little before making it public. Weeks became a month, and then several months. The longer it went on, the more I lost my courage to ask him about it. I was afraid what I might hear. Maybe I’m on trial, or maybe Brandon is hearing from the board or other executives that I can’t handle the job after all. I had worked so incredibly hard to get to this point, and now I felt deflated. I was the only woman on the executive team, except I wasn’t “officially” a full member. When my promotion was finally announced with all the other annual promotions six months later, it was a non-event.

  I worked through my feelings with Carole and didn’t let it derail my focus. I continued to share my fears and my experiences with my team and others. I noticed how this broke the cycle of fear and judgment and instead generated understanding, learning, and connection. Dramatic change happened. Only the deeper tensions and struggles I felt as a woman at Encore stayed bottled up. They felt too raw and dangerous to divulge. I knew, however, that these fears and beliefs would limit me. At some point, I needed to resolve these issues.

  Part of what I learned at LaL was the importance of telling authentic stories of change. In the safe setting of my next seminar, I shared my uncensored story for the first time. I couldn’t believe the positive response I received from the other participants. Afterward, Shayne pulled me aside and urged me to share my story with Brandon.

  When I returned to the office, I took what seemed like the ultimate risk. I walked Brandon through my experience as a woman at Encore: the comments, the missed promotions, and my questions about titles and compensation. I did my best to separate my interpretation of each event from the facts and circumstances. I also told him what I saw as my part: not asking questions, being afraid to know, being guarded.

  To my surprise, Brandon just listened. It was the first time he had heard about any of this, and he didn’t try to explain or justify.

  “I totally get how you felt,” he said. When we talked about not announcing my promotion to VP, he was upset by how I’d experienced it. “I was getting pushback from the leadership team on intra-cycle promotions, and I had just agreed not to do any more outside of our formal processes in February and September. We made your change in March, and if I’m honest, I optimized for myself. I didn’t want to deal with the team telling me I’d violated an agreement we’d just made.

  “I didn’t stop to think about it from your
perspective. Honestly, it never occurred to me that anyone would doubt that the position was really yours. Also, while I knew we had an underrepresentation of women in senior management, I didn’t equate that to a broader gender diversity problem. I’m disappointed that this could be seen as another example of a lack of recognition for women at Encore. I totally missed that, and I’m sorry.”

  We discussed what else had been going on during each of the incidents. His openness really helped debunk my conclusions. Something also seemed to click for Brandon. We talked about the perception gap between men and women at Encore, and how similar things might be holding other women back. We began bouncing around the idea of a diversity initiative. Neither of us knew what that would look like or where to start, but it was exciting. I wanted to improve the experience of women at Encore. I wanted people to help other Encore employees feel safe about being authentic in their leadership in a way I hadn’t let myself be for years.

  Brandon and I decided to let things evolve naturally, but the following year, at our annual management conference, it was painfully obvious that we needed to do something more proactive. Now a senior vice president, I was the only woman at that level. Of the twenty-five leaders in the room, only two were women.

  Brandon noticed too. “It’s obvious we’re not making progress on our overall diversity,” he said. “We’ve talked about it in prior meetings, and I thought it would change organically. It hasn’t, and we need to figure out why. Amy, I need you to lead a diversity initiative.”

  At first I felt annoyed. Of course, he is asking the only female executive to run the diversity initiative. Nonetheless, what choice did I have? Noticing my pinch, I thought about the ways in which my fear of being judged or appearing weak had held me back. There were external barriers to my success, but I needed to break through my own internal glass ceiling to increase my influence within the organization. Brandon was offering me the opportunity to help others succeed.

  “I’ll do it,” I told him.

  That was the easy part. Despite the fact that I was a woman, I didn’t know anything about promoting diversity. Where do I start? For the next couple of months, I explored ideas and worked to identify Encore’s specific opportunities. I met with diversity scholars, who eventually convinced me that a good start would be addressing the specific challenges women faced in our organization. Women@Encore, Encore’s Women’s Leadership Program, was born. An essential part of the program was to help women recognize both their internal glass ceilings and the external ones—and to give them the tools and insights necessary to begin to dismantle both.

  The experiences and developmental opportunities we created are among my proudest professional accomplishments. I cherished this work even as I often put it aside for the high-pressure demands of leading Business Development. Progress was slow; some days I felt great hope, others great frustration. But wherever I could, I worked to bring these internal and external barriers to light.

  SHAYNE

  Learning as Leadership was cofounded by Claire Nuer. I want to briefly refer to her life in order to illustrate one of her most important insights in creating this methodology.

  Claire was born Jewish in France in 1933. She was a hidden child, experienced persecution and separation, and lost her father in Auschwitz. After the liberation, she became a feisty young woman who was committed to righting all wrongs and fighting all injustices. She demonstrated, signed petitions, and decried anyone who didn’t “get it.” She angrily fought any bias or inequality through blaming and shaming “the bad guys.” Because she believed herself to be just and righteous, the end justified the means.

  Later in life, Claire came to a stunning and upsetting realization. She had suffered from aggression and hatred during the war. But her antagonistic behavior after the war reproduced similar dynamics of conflict, animosity, and incomprehension. Ultimately, she decided that the most important goal was not to right all wrongs, but rather to create an environment where people could learn to be better human beings. Being direct and clear was imperative, but that became destructive without empathy and respect. She realized that the “space” in which we raise issues matters as much as the content does.

  Claire decided to stop perpetuating “warlike” environments with her behavior. By fostering dialogue and mutual understanding, instead of fear, she learned to inspire people to raise their consciousness, and in doing so she became a more effective change agent and person.

  Amy’s journey offers an instructive example of this lesson. She reached the most senior roles at Encore and challenged the status quo for other women and minorities—all without alienating the leaders and staff. Amy’s biggest obstacle was learning to openly raise her concerns. If, like the younger Claire, Amy had stormed into Brandon’s office to tell him Encore had a diversity issue or that he didn’t treat women equitably, it probably wouldn’t have ended well. “I have a desired image of being ‘super inclusive,’” Brandon said. “If Amy had told me I was biased, I would have given her the ten reasons why she was wrong.” Amy and Brandon would likely have ended up in a heated debate over who had the higher moral ground.

  If Amy had raised her concerns in a productive way and Brandon dismissed her, she would have felt distressed. Such a negative reaction by Brandon, as an authority figure, would have conveyed to Amy that her experience wasn’t welcome at Encore. So the space in which Brandon responded mattered if he hoped to create a transparent, fully engaged culture.

  In all of this, Amy, through the quality of her goal, had a lot more “power” and influence than she realized. She wasn’t aiming to be vindicated, to extract an apology, or to impose a specific solution she knew was best. Her intention was to create a more authentic relationship with Brandon and to learn from her experiences. Amy took the risk of sharing her perceptions, despite her fears that doing so would damage their relationship and limit her career growth inside the organization.

  Amy—and Brandon in his response—also embodied the five core aspects of constructive communication: being vulnerable, empathetic, direct, exploratory, and caring (VEDEC). Amy shared her experiences in plain, direct, and personal terms. Such specificity was more uncomfortable than making intellectual or general statements, but her vulnerability made Brandon stop and listen more carefully and with more empathy. “I could tell what she was saying was really important to her,” he remembered.

  Amy also kept an exploratory mindset, knowing that her experience might not be the whole reality. This allowed Brandon to feel safe enough to search for his blind spots rather than defend his integrity. His vulnerable admissions—namely, that he hadn’t considered how Amy, as a woman, might internalize some of his decisions, or whether he might have promoted a man more quickly—helped Amy see him as genuine and open-minded. Later, when Brandon described factors she wasn’t aware of, she didn’t take it as defensive or justifying. She felt empathy for the complications of his position and was able to assimilate these elements into a fuller sense of reality.

  Unfortunately, our egosystem too often uses our feelings of caring for others as an excuse not to talk as opposed to providing motivation for how we talk. Amy and Brandon cared about each other as people, not just colleagues, and this intention to support and make each other good was infused throughout their discussions about this topic.

  There are no guarantees in life. No matter how effectively Amy broached her experience of being a woman at Encore, Brandon could have reacted unfavorably. But Amy’s simple, nonjudgmental vulnerability gave her the greatest chance of helping Brandon to see Encore through her eyes. Brandon’s willingness to listen without judgment or defensiveness allowed him to connect dots that changed the way he saw the world and inspired him to address an issue—how gender manifested itself in his company—that many executives would have shied away from.

  When we work on our ego triggers, any conversation becomes possible. Instead of treacherous conflicts, even discussions of race, gender, or other charged topics can be starting points of c
onnection, growth, and concrete change.

  BRANDON

  My conversations with Amy were some of the most impactful moments in my career. Her trepidation at telling me she was pregnant made me question many things, including how well I knew my team. I had other direct reports who were more reserved, and I thought they might be reticent about sharing personal news, but I was sure I knew Amy. I must have no clue about what it feels like to be a woman in the workplace! I thought. This experience, coupled with our many other conversations, helped me see Encore through a different lens. I’m eternally grateful for Amy’s authenticity.

  Initially, I didn’t act on a broad diversity program because I thought being aware of the issue was enough. None of us were ill intended, and we were working hard to become a more conscious and empathetic culture. I expected it to naturally evolve in the right direction. Several years later, however, the under-representation on both the U.S. and Indian management teams was the same. I realized that if we didn’t make it a corporate-wide priority, it would never change.

  Beyond Women@Encore, I took away something more important from Amy’s journey. Until then, I saw a sexist as a character out of Mad Men. I now realize how unconscious and invisible my biases and blind spots are. There is a lot for us as leaders, especially white men, to learn about the unwanted impacts our behaviors have on different groups. I can’t promise I’ll always see them, but I will be looking and hopefully gaining a broader view by relying on the perspectives of a diverse cadre of individuals.

  CHAPTER 8

  “THOSE” PEOPLE HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO TEACH YOU