Leading to Inspire and Engage

I'd known about the promotion since June of that year, but since it required a move from Los Angeles to Houston, I needed time to transition my clients, find an apartment, pack my bags and make the 1,500-mile trek half-way across the country with my husband. I walked into the office on the 18th feeling unsure of myself. I'd been told I was a "natural leader," but when the rubber hit the road, I wondered if my "we-can-do-it" approach would be enough. And was my leadership style even relevant in the new, post-9/11 era?

I found fairly quickly that my team and colleagues appreciated my big thinking, bold vision, and ability to empathize and collaborate. But they also wanted a confident strategist and decision maker. The world wasn't a kind place, and they needed more than a cheerleader to help them win the game.

I learned that being an effective leader required a lot of employee-facing EQ and just as much behind-the-scenes strategic analysis and planning. Over the years, as I've grown into more visible leadership roles with larger teams and learned from other leaders--both within the organizations I worked for and those of my clients--I've discovered how to strike the right balance. You can, too.

Great leaders have a clear and compelling vision that delivers an attractive and meaningful benefit to everyone: employees, customers, shareholders and communities. They're masters at crafting a narrative that has the power to reach, engage and inspire.

One of my favorite TED Talks of all time is by Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action. In it, Sinek challenges leaders (and product developers) to start with "Why." People are looking for purpose and meaning, and leaders who understand how to create an environment (or product or service) that fulfills that desire will stand head and shoulders above the rest. It's all about winning hearts and minds. And where the heart is, the feet will follow.

Oprah Winfrey learned this early in life and used that knowledge to launch one of the most successful careers and business ventures of all time. She used The Oprah Winfrey Show as a platform for education and self-help guidance, a forum for inspiration, constructive conversation and change. Her vision was to connect with and inspire people from all walks of life, and that vision guided every one of her endeavors, from O, The Oprah Magazine to the Oprah Winfrey Book Club to OWN, the network she launched in 2011.

"The choices Oprah’s making are purpose-driven," Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav told J.J. McCorvey in an interview for a Fast Company article in 2015. "Oprah’s very clear on her vision and direction."¹ So clear, in fact, that when her team is confronted by a new business challenge and ask themselves, "What would Oprah do?," they know the answer. Oprah's vision is a beacon that guides the way.

"I have been privileged to live this exquisitely inspired life," Oprah told J.J. McCorvey for the Fast Company interview. "Daily, it continues to astound me that I’ve come from where I come from, and I am where I am. I feel that my role here on earth is to inspire people, and to get them to look at themselves. My genuine wish is to do better and be better to everybody. That’s not just some kind of talk for me. That’s who I am."²

1, 2. The Key to Oprah Winfrey's Success: Radical Focus, Fast Company, October 15, 2015.

A vision statement can sound nice, but it's just a pipe dream if it's not backed by a thoughtful strategy. How are you going to delight your customers? How are you going to beat the competition? How are you going to drive higher sales or revenue or profit margins?

Knowing the answers to those questions, communicating them throughout the organization, ensuring employees understand the role they play in executing on the strategy and inspiring and motivating them to do their part is critical to success. If any one of the links in that chain is broken, results will be sub-par over the long term.

When designing a business strategy, the world's most successful leaders know listening to the voice of customers is a good place to start. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, explained the Group's strategy in an interview with Forbes in 2014: "Our strategy has been to screw business as usual. To look at what it is our customer wants, and what it is the industry needs, and to go in and exceed their expectations. And we’ve been successful not by wasting time scrutinising our competitors but by looking at ourselves from the point of view of our customers do and seeking feedback through listening."¹

Great leaders enlist the help of trusted advisors to design the strategy and execute on it. "I try to surround myself with people who really know what they’re doing and give them the freedom to do it,"² explained Oprah Winfrey. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon's approach: "Act like a student and surround yourself with people who 'get it.' Digital natives need to be part of your management team as well as your board."³

Branson's philosophy is similar: "The best bit of advice I think I can give to any manager of a company is find somebody better than yourself to do the day-to-day running, and then free yourself up to think about the bigger picture. By freeing myself up, I've been able to dream big and move Virgin forward into lots of different areas. And it's made for a fascinating life."⁴

It's equally critical to invest in programs that equip, enable and motivate employees to support the vision and strategy -- for example, learning and development programs to help employees build and hone skills needed for the future, career management and coaching to help them achieve their potential, and incentive programs that give them skin in the game and the opportunity to share the rewards of success. As McMillon put it, "To attract the right kind of talent, we need to make some investments. And that will result in better stores."⁵

1. Richard Branson's Three Most Important Leadership Principles by Dan Schwabel, Forbes, September 23, 2014.

2. The Key to Oprah Winfrey's Success: Radical Focus by J.J. McCorvey, Fast Company, October 15, 2015.

4. Why Richard Branson is So Successful by Richard Feloni, Business Insider, February 11, 2015.

3, 5. The HBR Interview: We Need People to Lean Into the Future by Adri Ignatius, Harvard Business Review, March-April 2017.

Great leaders have a message, a passion and a world view they want to share. Over their careers, they find like-minded people and build organizations where those core beliefs and ways of working will find fertile ground. They transform that passion into a platform for business success, and use their personal stories and convictions to connect with others, build trust and create a loyal following.

Jack Ma, founder and CEO of Alibaba (known today as the "Chinese Amazon," with more than 440 million users) launched his company in his living room in 1999 by giving an impassioned speech to 17 friends. His bold idea: Build an internet company that enables small and mid-size businesses find a global market for their products and support the globalization of China.

Ma earned a following by helping his customers succeed. "What is important in my life is that I can do something that can influence many people and influence China's development," he says. "When I am myself, I am relaxed and happy and have a good result."¹

Ma saw the "good result" in the early days. Though he made "zero revenue," he was getting noticed. He remembers going out to eat and when he tried to pay the bill, restaurant owners would say, "Your bill was paid." As Ma describes it, "There would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'"²

Today, Alibaba is the world's largest online retailer and enjoys an enviable 50% year-over-year revenue growth. Jack Ma is one of the world's richest men, but remains well-grounded in his vision of connecting consumers and businesses worldwide and sharing his success.

1, 2. Davos 2017: An Insight, An Idea With Jack Ma, World Economic Forum (video on YouTube, 32 minutes).

The world's most successful business leaders recognize the power of great communication. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, paired his "no rules" entrepreneurial spirit with his exceptional communication and branding savvy to build an empire that put the Virgin name on more than 60 companies that serve more than 60 million customers worldwide.

Branson claims "communication is the most important skill any leader can possess,"¹ and as journalist David Henderson reported in a recent interview, Branson "...has no surrogate, no ghost writer" for his blog, Twitter posts or any other communication that goes out under his name. "He knows that communicating the image of his business empire is far too important a job to delegate. Too much is at stake."²

Great leaders like Branson craft a compelling corporate narrative and align the customer and employee experience to deliver on the brand promise. At Virgin, that promise is part "let's break the rules and have fun" and part "let's do something good for the world." It's a narrative and experience both employees and customers buy into.

Creating a two-way dialogue and equipping leaders and employees to communicate with clarity and purpose are also key. Great leaders build an environment where great communication is everywhere.

1. My Top 10 Quotes on Communication, by Richard Branson, on Virgin.com.

2. 7 Tips from Richard Branson for Effective Communications, by David Henderson at david henderson.com.

It should come as no surprise that many of today's most well-respected and influential leaders started their careers sweeping floors, shuffling mail or driving a delivery truck. They knew they wanted more and had to work hard to get it. Along the way they saw the inner workings of the business and learned how to relate to people up and down the chain of command and across cultures.

Doug McMillon worked in Walmart warehouses during his summers in high school. Jack Ma brushed up on his English and learned to connect with people across cultures by providing free tours of Hangzhou to foreign travelers. Oprah Winfrey honed her skills in a radio station before she made it to TV.

But is it necessary to start at the bottom? No. Leaders who recognize the need to develop in this area can gain valuable insights and experience by meeting a wide range of "constituents" -- customers, employees, community members -- listening to their stories and relating to their experiences.

Successful organizations do a good job of listening to the voice of customers, partners and suppliers. Great leaders turn the microphone inward, too, and proactively seek out opportunities to listen to the voice of employees -- to invite them to innovate or identify business challenges and develop solutions, to determine if key messages about the vision and business strategy are making their way through, and to determine if employees have the motivation, tools and support they need to feel engaged and give their discretionary effort to the organization's success.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon understands the value of listening to employees. He spent one of his first days on the job as CEO of the world's largest retail company on a three-and-a-half-hour road trip across Mississippi, from Brookhaven to Magee, with one of Walmart's truck drivers. They talked about the future of the company and making "Walmart.com No. 1."¹

McMillon still spends time on the road and in the stores, talking with employees to build connections and gain insights. But he spends time with employees and leaders from other companies, too. "I'm trying to leverage the collective perspective, wisdom and experience of everyone I've been talking to and to lead Walmart as if it were a brand-new company on day one," he explained in a recent interview for Harvard Business Review.²

1. The Man Who's Reinventing Walmart by Brian O'Keefe, Fortune, June 4, 2015.

2. The HBR Interview: We Need People to Lean Into the Future by Adri Ignatius, Harvard Business Review, March-April 2017.

Great leaders know when to use the power of persuasion to bring people along and when to exert their authority to take a stand, get people or the organization "unstuck" and move ahead. It's a daily balancing act and can be difficult to get right.

"There will be times when strong and decisive leadership is necessary, to make sure the right moves are made," said Branson. This is especially true when an organization is facing a significant crisis. Most of the time, a lighter, more collaborative touch is required.¹

Knowing the difference takes time and is learned through experience. Great leaders surround themselves with a core of trusted advisors inside and outside the organization who can serve as a sounding board, identify blind spots, and "tell it like it is" to the boss.

1. 9 Leadership Skills from Sir Richard Branson, posted by Robert Half on October 21, 2016.

Whether an organization is undergoing significant transformation or simply trying to maintain its edge in an evolving competitive landscape, change management is a core competency and critical to success. Successful leaders recognize this and invest in a core team charged with leading and managing the organization's change agenda.

Effective change management strategies identify the process, programmatic and behavioral changes required to support the corporate vision and strategy and outline a plan to lead the change, communicate with and involve key stakeholders, mitigate and manage risk and measure progress.

The importance of getting it right can't be emphasized enough. "Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change," said Branson. "A company that stands still will soon be forgotten."¹ Make sure you equip your organization to manage change successfully.

1. My Top 10 Quotes on Change, by Richard Branson, posted on Virgin.com.

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KATE VAN HULZEN

I was promoted into my first leadership role on September 18, 2011. The timing couldn't have been worse. Exactly one week earlier, on September 11, 2001, the U.S. experienced the most destructive terrorist attack on its soil in its 225-year history. The entire country was in shock.

lead with vision

execute with strategy

Lead with authenticity

execute with communication

lead with empathy

EXECUTE WITH A LISTENING STRATEGY

lead with authority and influence

execute with change management

WHO TO FOLLOW

Leaders who know how to captivate, engage and inspire.

BILL GATES

MELINDA GATES

RICHARD BRANSON

OPRAH WINFREY

SIMON SINEK

ADAM GRANT

DR. TRAVIS BRADBERRY

SHERYL SANDBERG

KATE VAN HULZEN

HOUSTON, TEXAS, USA