Responding In Pivotal Moments

Episode #308 Responding In Pivotal Moments

PIVOTAL MOMENTS OFTEN DON’T FEEL BIG AT THE TIME

It’s pretty rare that you are faced with a decision that’s either irreversible or final. And when one does come along, it’s normally pretty easy to recognize. You can sense the gravity of the moment and the potential consequences that lie ahead.

But, as I look back on my experiences, some of the most significant decisions that I’ve ever made in terms of my life direction, just didn’t seem to be that big a deal at the time. I made them using a liberal dose of gut feel, not suspecting for a moment how consequential they would ultimately turn out to be.

I recently had occasion to think about one of the most pivotal moments in Emma‘s life, which also had a profound effect on mine. For those of you who don’t know, Em is my oldest daughter. She’s also the producer of the No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast and CEO of our business, Your CEO Mentor.

I was reflecting on the path that led us to where we are now, and it took me back to a brief but pivotal moment that could have gone either way.

This newsletter is packed with examples, including Em’s story. I hope that it helps you to recognize these unexpected moments when they arrive in your career, and to respond accordingly. You can never know at the time how critical these decisions are going to be, which is why you have to be prepared for every moment.

I begin today’s article with a story about how this podcast almost never came to be; I give you a step-by-step walkthrough of how I took a germ of an idea about my book, and allowed it to completely uproot my life; I look at how the principle of pivotal moments plays out in your day-to-day leadership work; and I finish by giving you four mastery principles to help you prepare yourself for the moments that you’ll one day look back on as being pivotal.

EMMA, THE ALMOST-TV-STAR

Occasionally, moments come along that have potentially life-changing implications. Some of them are obvious, like making the decision on whether to take a job that’s been offered to you – you know that’s going to be a potentially path-altering moment.

But others are much more subtle, and it’s not until years later that you reflect and realize how pivotal they truly were. The fact that Em and I were able to start this business together had more than a small measure of luck and timing.

After she finished high school, Em left our home in Brisbane and moved to Sydney to study at The National Institute of Dramatic Art. NIDA, as it’s more commonly known, has turned out some of Australia’s finest actors and actresses – Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson, and Sam Worthington amongst others.

Em wanted to pursue her dream of being a television presenter. She studied hard and did all the right things, and she made quite a few personal sacrifices along the way: she left the warm, easy, comfortable home that we lived in; she was living a meagre lifestyle; she took pride in being independent, supporting herself, and making something of her career.

So, armed with her NIDA qualifications, a modest portfolio, and a bunch of professional headshots, she set out to launch her career in television. Over the next 6 to 12 months, she came close to landing a couple of major roles, but narrowly missed out each time.

And then, one day, came the turning point…

Em was shortlisted with one other young woman to be the face of a major advertising campaign for a brand that was a household name in Australia. The decision went right down to the wire, but at the end of all that, the company decided to go with the other actress.

When Em called me to tell me this, I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday exactly where I was. It was a beautiful spring day in Brisbane, and I’d left the office to go out and grab a bite to eat. I was walking through the city, and I was standing on one of those pedestrian overpass bridges on Adelaide Street when Em’s call came in.

I remember standing there watching the traffic come and go beneath me as Em tearily explained her situation. And at the end of it, she simply said, “Dad, I’m done with this and I want to come home.”

It wasn’t until much later that Em and I spoke about how significant the words that came out of my mouth next actually were. Without even thinking, I said to her, “Sure Em, I’d love you to come home, but not until you have a plan.“

I knew she had to get through this tough moment, regroup, and work out what was going to come next, not just run away from it all to a warm, familiar, safe environment.

As it turns out, she never did come home. Instead, she put her head down and pulled out all stops to build her career as a marketing director. That completely changed her path… and mine!

Had I let Em just jump on a plane and come home, she wouldn’t have had to push through that painful experience the same way… she wouldn’t have given herself the opportunity to learn, and to earn her credentials in the cutthroat world of marketing agencies… and she certainly wouldn’t have had the credibility and confidence to convince me to give up my highly-paid CEO job to build this business up from a blank sheet of paper.

Imagine if I’d said to her, “Sure darling, come home, I’ll send you a ticket”?!

Let’s face it, I’d had dozens of phone conversations with Emma before, but that seemingly insignificant moment turned out to be pivotal. Had I said something just slightly different, I might not be doing what I’m doing now – and instead of listening to my voice, you’d probably be absorbed in a true crime drama as we speak!

PUBLISHING MY BOOK UPROOTED MY LIFE

Another great example of a pivotal moment was the decision I made to publish my book in the USA. So many things are wildly different today as a result of that one decision – and it came from a relatively innocuous conversation.

As many of you would know, there are a lot of ways to skin the writing and publishing cat. These days, the most common path is self-publishing. You sit down, you write a book, and you print a few hundred paperback copies to see what happens.

It’s fast, it’s relatively cheap, and it has no barriers to entry.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can pursue the traditional publishing approach. In this world, you start by writing a proposal for the book concept; then, you take that proposal and try to secure a publishing agent; then, if you do manage to get an agent to represent you, they go and shop the book concept to publishers in the hope of securing a publishing deal.

And if all that goes to plan, that’s when the work begins and you can start to embark upon the easiest part, which is writing the book.

Of course, there are a bunch of options between self-publishing and the traditional publishing model that I just explained. When Em and I decided it was time to publish the book version of No Bullsh!t Leadership, I went to the experts for guidance – I had a coffee with Heather Linaker, who used to run Wiley’s Australian publishing business.

Heather’s experience enabled her to ask me the perfect question, “Marty, what’s your purpose for writing the book? What are you trying to achieve?“

Like everything else we do in our business, it was about maximizing impact – getting the greatest exposure we possibly could to the concepts that we believe help leaders to lead better. Once that was clear, the subordinate decisions flowed from there.

As Heather told me, “If you publish in Australia, the book never leaves our shores. If you want real impact, you have to publish in the US.“

So, decision number one, we’re going to publish in the US.

This led to the next decision: if we have aspirations to publish in the US, we need to find an expert in the publishing business over there. Enter Dr. Nick Morgan, who’s been my guide and mentor for the last five years.

And then, the next decision. The US publishing scene is massively overcrowded, with more than a million new books published each year through various channels. If you want to rise above the noise, you need to go through the traditional literary agent and publishing channel to get some visibility. So Nick and I set out to secure an agent.

Through Nick’s connections (and a well-written proposal), we secured one of the top literary agents in New York, Jim Levine. Jim was able to field three good offers from big publishing houses. So, we chose the one that best suited us and kept moving forward.

And then, the next decision. With a publication date set and me working feverishly on the manuscript, how would we get visibility for the book? Let’s face it. It could be the best book in recorded history, but if no one knows about it, the pages are never read. That’s when we set our plans up for a serious marketing campaign and secured a public relations company.

The next decision was even tougher. You can’t just hope to swan in a few times a year, be a guest on Good Morning America, and pick up prime speaking engagements. If you’re serious, you need to be in the US market. So guess what? We are moving to America.

And that’s how you produce a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

RESPONDING TO DAILY MOMENTS

Just think about it for a moment. That seemingly innocuous conversation one morning over coffee at the Brisbane Club with Heather Linaker set the whole chain of events into motion. Before that conversation, there was no way I could have possibly imagined the implications that would follow as a result:

• Uprooting my comfortable life in Australia at almost 60 years of age to move to the other side of the world;

• Investing a few hundred thousands of dollars;

• Managing an almost total change in routine and lifestyle as I learned to work the global time zones from my new home in Boston; and

• Marital stress that I never would’ve anticipated.

But it also brought incredible upside: the opportunity to test myself in the big game; access to a speaking market where the fees are three times higher than they are in Australia; and getting out of my comfort zone in the most extreme way.

So, think about this from your own perspective. How do you recognize these moments? Not just for you, but for the people you lead. You never know what’s going to change someone’s path.

I released a podcast episode a little while ago, which was one of my favorites from last year, Ep.268: How to Get Through to Your People. This episode hammers home the fact that every… moment… counts… you need to stay alive to the possibilities that unfold before you. There are no ordinary moments.

For example, consider the many ways you influence your people: the conversations you choose to have (or not to have); the hiring and firing decisions you make; your choice to either go with the flow of consensus and conventional wisdom, or instead, to listen to your inner voice and then challenge.

This feeds into so many value-creation opportunities. Like the split-second decisions you make at the negotiating table. You have to know when to push back, and when to accommodate your counterparty’s requests. To do this requires a highly developed EQ and a belief that pivotal moments often hide in quite innocuous details.

We tend to value the status quo a lot more than we should. This puts us in a mental frame where we are naturally tuned to seek consistency and predictability. It primes us in a way that leads us to ignore pivotal moments – we simply don’t recognize them, because we instinctively discard anything that we might find unsettling.

This often leads us to avoid the hard work of leadership because we don’t value the potential impact of these seemingly small events that we come across every single day.

FOUR KEY UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

Responding in pivotal moments is instinctive and reactive. It will come to you much more easily if you work on a few foundational elements.

I want to finish today by pointing you in the direction of four underlying principles that are going to underpin your responsiveness and openness to seeing those moments when they arrive.

1. Know what drives you.

Are you driven by the fear of failure or the challenge of being better? Are you confident, or tentative in your approach? (Last week’s episode Ep.307: Building Confidence Quickly should help you in that regard).

Are you consumed by your own perfectionism or are you focused on the drive to achieve results? Are your interactions with your people driven by sympathy for their plight, or unshakeable belief in the better future that lies ahead for them if you manage to stretch them? Do you let unconscious biases rule your reactions, or have you learned how to make them a conscious part of your thought process?

Understanding yourself better is the first step in preparing for pivotal moments.

2. Learn to reflect.

At the end of each day, it’s a good habit to get into, to debrief yourself and think about the actions you took and think about the things you avoided. This will lead you to insights about yourself, especially if you push yourself to question your motives and intent.

For example, the act of giving someone feedback can have a very different meaning depending on what your intent was at the time (and I’ve been through many of these different iterations). So try to ask yourself the deeper questions:

• Was I trying to help that person to improve?

• Maybe I was just angry because they didn’t do what I wanted them to do?

• Was I enforcing a minimum acceptable standard?

• Was I helping them to get a better understanding of their objectives?

3. Learn to engage in unconstrained thinking.

Imagine if I’d allowed myself to be constrained by my current circumstances when I was planning to write my book. My initial reaction to the conversation I had with Heather would’ve been very different. Instead of following the breadcrumbs from “I want to maximize my impact” all the way through to hitting the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, I would’ve subconsciously limited my options.

Instead of thinking to myself, “What would I need to do to make that happen?” at each decision point, I would’ve been thinking, “Well, I couldn’t do that because…”.

As you can imagine, that would’ve produced a completely different result. The concept of unconstrained thinking is that you free yourself up from the barriers that hold you back. You think about what might be possible instead of why you can’t do something.

It’s a completely different mindset.

4. Believe in the guiding hand of fate.

When Em chose to walk away from her burgeoning career in television, she leant on the guiding hand of fate. The attitude she adopted was, okay, this has happened for a reason. What am I meant to learn and take away from all this? Why is this the path that’s revealed itself to me? How do I move ahead? I know there’s probably a good reason for it, so I’m going to be alive to the possibility of positive outcomes while I walk along this new path. If you adopt this approach, you’ll be surprised how many great hands you get dealt.

YOU’VE EITHER DONE IT ALREADY… OR YOU HAVEN’T!

Preparing for pivotal moments is largely about your individual growth and development. So much of it relates to those split-second decisions that you’re faced with many times every day. Get used to asking yourself the question before each decision, no matter how trivial that decision might seem to be:

“Am I going to do what’s right, or am I going to do what’s easy?”

It really is that simple. All of those seemingly insignificant moments accumulate so that you are prepared when the pivotal moments actually arrive.

Constant preparation for the big moments is just as relevant to leadership as it is to parenting.

Many years ago, I was at a family gathering in Boston and a good friend asked for my advice. His daughter, who at the time was a sophomore at Villanova, was being courted by an older and very wealthy musician. I won’t mention his name because he’s pretty famous but, needless to say, he was pulling out all the stops – the extravagant dates, the private jet – the whole shooting match.

My friend asked, “Marty, you’ve raised daughters, what do you think I should do?” I’m pretty sure that my answer surprised him. I said, “Mate, just relax. There’s nothing you can do. You’ve either done it already… or you haven’t!“