#1: Building your leadership drumbeat

Happy Sunday Everyone

In 1991 I headed to Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. I knew three people out of the thousands on campus. It was overwhelming. I felt lonely. A week ago, I decided that I would explore whether a newsletter that consolidated key insights out of my coaching work would be welcomed. By the end of the week, I had received dozens of emails and phone calls giving me invaluable input. I am filled with gratitude for the community that I have been able to build over my life. Thank you to all of you for helping me shape this letter. I appreciate your generosity.

In my coaching work, I work with my clients to identify and achieve their personal and business goals. In achieving their goals my clients are always developing, refining, and implementing strategy. They work to strengthen themselves – intellectually, emotionally, somatically, relationally. They seek inspiration from being connected to a deep purpose. They work soulfully. In short, we work with strategy, soul, and self. And so, these are the themes of this newsletter.

The newsletter shares the very best of my research and experiments It gives enough context so that you know ‘so what’. You can follow the links if you wish to go deeper. It will always be less than 800 words. You’ll be able to read the newsletter in under 5 minutes and scan it in under 2. It’ll come out on a Sunday when you may have space to reflect.

Here is the first formal edition of strategy, soul, and self…

STRATEGY

Building culture: Lessons from Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn

Jeff Weiner has been CEO of LinkedIn for more than a decade. He has had extraordinary success in scaling LinkedIn from 33 million users to over 500 million. It now has >$6billion in revenue.

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and host of Masters of Scale, says in the introduction to a late 2019 interview with Weiner:

“I believe every leader has to create a drumbeat for their company. The more irresistible that cultural drumbeat is to you, the more naturally your team will follow.

There’s no one “correct” drumbeat for a leader or an organization. Your drumbeat depends on your temperament. Your experiences. Your company. Your drumbeat might be efficiency, innovation, competition, or work-life balance. Or perhaps a mix of all these.

No two drummers will play the same beat in precisely the same way. And this is actually key. Your cultural drumbeat needs to authentically match both you and your team. Why? Because it needs to inspire those around you. And a drumbeat that doesn’t inspire is worse than no drumbeat at all.”

It is a phenomenal interview. It covers topics from how Jeff built credibility when he took over at LinkedIn (a must-listen for anyone starting at a new company), to how he instills culture and values, to his commitment to compassionate management and inspiring those he leads. Listen to it here

SELF

Identify your own drumbeat

Jeff Weiner shows that successful leadership takes great self-knowledge. To inspire others, you need to know YOUR drumbeat.

Here are two simple exercises that you can use to deepen your self-knowledge. Do one or both.

Find a photograph of yourself at 13. Choose one that you like the most. Then find one for every seven years thereafter. Again, chose the images of yourself that make you happiest. At the end of this, you should have a photograph for 13, 20, 27, 34 etc. End the sequence with a recent photograph of yourself that you like.

Take time to study each photograph and for each one answer (preferably by writing in a journal):

• What were you doing in that year that made you happiest?
• What were the highlights of that year? What made them so special?
• Who were the people in your life that you most enjoyed spending time with? Describe them.

Depending on your age, this exercise might be best done over a few days. Once you’ve got notes for each photograph, read through them and let them settle. After a day write yourself a letter identifying the themes that have emerged. They are the enduring elements of your life. They are your drumbeat.

Another way to do this is to ask people, who you respect and who were close to you at each age, to describe what they saw as your core strengths. So, for example, a respected teacher from when you were 13, an admired colleague from when you were 27 etcetera. Ask them for examples of what you did to demonstrate the strengths they identify. (you don’t want to fall prey to flattery – make sure its real). Again, write about the themes that emerge.

If you do both exercises, you can explore the differences and points of connection between the two. The deeper your self-knowledge, the stronger is the foundation of your unique leadership style.

If you have any questions about these exercises, email me.

SOUL

Michael Meade, a renowned storyteller, describes soul as ‘the connective tissue of life’. So, in this last section, I will always share something that has inspired me to be more connected to life.

This quotation came to me via The New Yorker’s Instagram account. It resonates deeply, as in the past fortnight two dear friends each lost a parent, a highly respected former colleague passed on and it was the one-year anniversary of the passing on of a much-loved aunt.

“We are never finished with grief. It is part of the fabric of living. It is always waiting to happen. Love makes memories and life precious; the grief that comes to us is proportionate to that love and is inescapable.” V.S. Naipaul

I hope that this week’s drumbeat is one of love. Until next week.