Herb’s premise has always been to look for that which is not so easily seen—our potential. He found a way to see that potential within us.
Interestingly, for those of us who are sighted, what we see can get in the way of what really is. Sometimes our preconceived notions can color our judgment. Other times, as they say, “Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear.”
What Herb intuitively understood, as Bill George shared in his book True North, is that the journey of authentic leadership begins with a deep understanding of the story of your life.
In Herb’s story, there are certain motifs, certain themes that repeat themselves like the chorus of a song and resonate and connect with force, clarity, and consistency. These themes come alive through stories, helping to define him in ways that he and others can easily connect with, recognize, and admire.
For Herb, of course, his story starts in Brooklyn. From there, the Bridge took him to places he could have never imagined. The Dodgers, the trolley cars, and the street vendors all add color to the story of a young boy growing up with the notion that “there will always be next season.” We hear about him losing his sight, and his parents refusing to allow him to be sent away to a school for the blind. We see him with a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead in the Dodger’s dugout, and fade to him touching his cheek where Betty Grable kissed him or trading statistics and opinions with Red Barber about their team. We see a close-up of him being beaten up on his way to school, then other bigots attacking him at summer camp. He takes to heart his father’s message that he had to be “just a little better” because some people might not give him an equal chance. Fast-forward to him writing his dissertation about people who are disadvantaged, yet not able to get a college teaching position because he is blind. There he is finally teaching in Texas, telling his students that instead of class today, they are all going to listen to history being made as the Brooklyn Dodgers would win their first and only World Series against those damn Yankees. Fade to him discovering a way to assess sales potential, then being told that the company that wanted this assessment has no need for it anymore. We see him on the brink of losing his fledgling company because he could not come up with a single client, then holding his first contract with the Buick Division of General Motors. Now we see him expanding his psychological understanding of what it takes to succeed across all professions and helping welfare recipients find their first jobs, then helping professional sports teams with their draft choices, and finally taking his company international. He empirically proves that women bring to leadership qualities that are ideally conducive to today’s global marketplace. He almost loses his company in the Great Recession, then creates a new paradigm, helping his clients develop top talent among their current employees, which puts his company on solid footing for the future. Throughout, we see him openly and honestly reflecting on his accomplishments, doubts, fears, hopes, and dreams, while gazing as far as he can into the future, doing everything in his power to position his company to be carried into the next generation.
Woven into Herb’s stories are qualities and values that come forth and themes that connect with each other, creating a consistent and authentic worldview. First, there is the prejudice he encountered and overcame. Then there is his sheer moxie. Coupled with this is his natural connection with anyone who was not given an equal opportunity. Then, of course, he is never quite satisfied, always knowing that there is something more to do. This leads to his fervent belief in wanting to make a difference—his feeling fortunate and wanting to give back. Throughout, there is the constant drive to take a shot at a new opportunity. And that constant drive is always immediate.
These are the themes that reside and resound in Herb’s story and that make him so intriguing. Throughout his life, he heard the thunderous sound of unmistakably negative messages, alongside the resoundingly compelling sound of positive messages.
Fortunately, he paid more attention to the positive messages.
Along the way, adhering to those positive messages helped Herb sense opportunities, be provocative, and thoroughly enjoy what he was doing.
In addition to accepting the positive messages, what is equally compelling about Herb’s story is that he was never willing to accept the stigma or the limitations of being blind. His unwavering, determined, positive attitude in the face of challenges, adversity, disappointments, and failures is what we marvel at—and find truly inspiring.
As Herb’s daughter Holly says so succinctly and so beautifully about her father: “He is this person with all those advanced degrees and all those amazing accomplishments, while, at the same time, my father is still a 10-year-old boy who has just lost his sight.” Inside of that seeming paradox is part of what makes Herb and his story so interesting, so deep, and so compelling.
That is why—beyond inspiring you, hopefully Herb’s story will also help you see the significance of understanding your leadership story and realize how important it is to be able to convey your story in a way that is clear, meaningful, compelling, and authentic.
Your leadership story is what illuminates you, making you known, understood, and worth following. Ultimately, your story defines you as a leader.
Your story expresses who you are. Where are you from? Where are you going? What do you stand for? What will you not stand for?
These are some of the questions you need to answer—convincingly.
To the extent that your life’s stories reflect your values, others will lean in and be interested. After all, the fundamental reason others will follow you is because they believe in you, they believe in who you are, and they believe your story.
Your leadership story is much more than just a recording or recitation of the facts of your life. It is your personal narrative. What is the essence of your story? What are the themes that are important, consistent, and true to you?
Once you know these themes and are able to convey them convincingly, others will listen to your vision, your goals, and your hopes and dreams. First, though, they need to know who you are, that they can trust you, and that you are there for them and always will be.
Getting at the heart of your story starts with knowing the sound of your own heart. It takes deep reflection, coupled with the ability to tell your story in a way that connects your heart with the hearts of others.
To clarify your story, you need to start by asking yourself the kind of questions that Herb did of himself and that others will want to know about you.
What experiences transformed you? What did you learn about yourself by facing a particular challenge? How did you handle your doubts and fears? How have your transformative experiences shaped a consistent pattern in your life? How did those experiences enable you to understand the deeper purpose of your leadership journey? Can you articulate what you have learned about yourself and others in a way that is open, honest, approachable, credible, meaningful, and inspiring?
Keep in mind that while you, no doubt, have heroes and, hopefully, mentors, your story is not about them. Your story is no one else’s but your own. Others have certainly influenced you, but this is not the time for emulation or imitation. This is the time for you to be honest and real. This is where you open up. No one wants to follow an impersonator. What people are looking for is you. As a leader, people need you to be clear about and demonstrate a passion for your purpose. They want to know that you practice your values consistently. And they absolutely want to know that you lead from your heart as well as your head. People are not looking for you to say the perfect words. They are looking for you to show up, being absolutely real and believable. They are seeking to believe.
This is not an easy process. Developing your leadership story will not happen overnight. There are many approaches you can use to help develop and refine your leadership story—including self-reflection, meditating, journaling, asking the right questions, and sharing your insights and stories with your high-quality connections.
You might find that an easier place for you to enter this journey is to consider the key qualities and values that are consistent throughout your life. Is it your perseverance? Your courage? Your self-awareness? Your resilience? Your optimism? Your empathy? Your competitiveness? Your willingness to take a risk? Your persuasiveness? Your confidence? Your passion? Your integrity? Your creativity?
Consider which quality you personify at your very best. Getting clear about your foundational qualities and values will help you understand who you are at your very core.
With that clarity and understanding, you can start to weave together the transformative stories that have helped define you. Why did you take one road rather than the other? Can you describe the transformative effects of a personal or professional loss? Was there a challenge that you rose above, and in that rising, discovered your true purpose and passion? These are the stories that get at the heart of who you are as a leader.
Keep this in mind as you consider some of your favorite, most memorable and formative experiences. When have you felt you were most yourself? Or when did you wish you were more of yourself? How did certain experiences express your core values and your key qualities? What did you learn about yourself from those experiences? How have you changed?
The answers to those questions will start to create the narrative for your leadership story. Authentic leaders, as Bill George underscores, are able to trace their inspiration directly from their life stories. Then, as Herminia Ibarra, professor at INSEAD and the author of Working Identity, says, your story can provide the inspiration for others to create their own futures.
Those who will want to follow you are also looking for what psychologist Erik Erikson called generativity, or the ability to look beyond your own immediate future to something that is bigger than yourself. In his book The Life Cycle Completed, Erikson notes that after fusing a sense of identity and establishing long-term intimacy bonds, we are all looking for our leaders to nurture, teach, lead, and promote the next generation.
To the extent that you can frame your own story as connecting your past with a present and future that engages our hopes and dreams, you can position yourself as a leader worth following. Others want to hear your stories—resulting from key events from your past, fused with a clear perception of the present and an inspiring view that makes us anticipate the future. That is what will define your leadership identity. As Dan McAdams, professor at Northwestern University and the author of Stories We Live By, says, “Through our personal myths, each of us discovers what is true and what is meaningful in life.”
When all is said and done, we become engaged when we hear stories about individuals who have overcome adversity and transformed themselves, learning something about themselves and carrying on with a positive attitude that we can only admire and wish to emulate. We cannot help but wonder if we could do the same in those circumstances. And inside of that wondering, a connection is formed. Within that inspiration is where the leadership journey can begin.
Ultimately, the message is, if you are intent on becoming a leader, you have to start by being clear about who you are, so that others can have that same clarity and be compelled to follow your lead.
Most significantly, you will find that as your story unfolds, you will gain insights and clarity into your values—and how you have lived them. You will know what is really important to you and what qualities in you come out when you are at your best. Once you are clear on the values and qualities that are core to your beliefs, and how your experiences have challenged those values and qualities, you will know what you are made of. Then you will become ready to tell your leadership story. And with that story, you will be able to connect with others in ways that were previously unimagined.
At the end of the day, what you want to do, as Herb did so very well, is to identify how your personal stories connect who you are in the most direct way to your core values and your key qualities. That connection is where your leadership journey will take shape. Inside of those stories is where a deep realization will take form (for you and for others) of the leader you were always intended to become.
Then, as Herb notes, “Others will follow you because they sense that you are genuine, they know who you are, and they can believe in you.” What they need to know, in order to follow you, is that you care about them; that you are real, open, honest, and insightful; and that, together, you are ready to help them discover a new future.
As you hone your unique leadership strengths and shape your personal leadership story, you will begin to get a clearer sense of how your experiences and aspirations connect.
And you will start to see yourself and the world around you differently.
In some ways, it might seem like an annual eye examination. As lenses are quickly switched in front of you, through a process of elimination, you will decide which lenses help you see slightly better than all the rest.
Is this clearer? How about this? How is this one? Is this any better?
This is how you can clarify your personal vision. Only this time, you are looking inside—as if simultaneously seeing your past, your present, and your future.
Start by eliminating the lenses that no longer work for you. Then focus on what does work for you.
Are you looking at life the way you always have? Are you adjusting your outlook? Are things a little blurry? Getting clearer?
It is the ideal time to have some real and honest conversations with yourself. Then with those you trust. Are they seeing things the way you are? Or slightly differently? Those conversations can help to bring your leadership story—and your vision of yourself—into focus.
Then reflect. It is a time for looking deeply inside, then widely outside. It is a time to look at what is and what can be. It is the perfect time to see clearly a world of new possibilities unfolding before your eyes.
Psychological Insights—Looking Within
Being a leader is about continually evolving. It is not a one-time deal. It is not just a place where you arrive. And it is often not for all time.
Some leaders are ideal at harnessing the excitement of the early stages of a start-up. Others are better at creating new standards, systems, and operational procedures as a company grows and becomes more complex. It takes a different kind of leader to go head-to-head with one huge competitor. And it takes yet another kind of leader to take a company through its most trying time.
Winston Churchill was the ideal leader to inspire and rally the British people during World War II. But his leadership skills were not what was needed to organize the country’s rebuilding after the war.
“We each bring unique strengths to different situations,” Herb says. “There can be elements of leadership in many jobs, as in many aspects of life. The key is to allow the leader within you to be expressed fully.”
As you pursue your leadership journey, some questions you will need to keep exploring are: Are you aware of your strengths? And your limitations? Are you able to connect with others and elevate their sense of who they can be and what we all can be? Are you facing a situation that brings out the best in you? Are you ready to be tested in ways you never have before? Is this your time to lead?
As Daniel Goleman points out in his book Primal Leadership, there is a new yardstick for measuring your effectiveness as a leader. “The new measure takes for granted having enough intellectual ability and technical know-how. . . . It focuses instead on personal qualities, such as initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness.”
Our emotional intelligence, Goleman notes, is based on five elements: self-awareness, motivation, self-regulation, empathy, and adeptness in relationships. And the importance of emotional intelligence, he has found, increases the higher you go in an organization. In fact, he notes, intellectual and technical superiority play absolutely no role in leadership success. His studies show that at the top executive levels, everyone needs high-level cognitive skills, but being better at them does not make a star leader. Rather, according to his studies, emotional intelligence accounts for close to 90 percent of leadership success.
“To be an emotionally intelligent leader,” Herb underscores, “you need to start with a strong sense of your own self-worth and a belief in your own capabilities. You also need to be keenly aware of your own emotions and their effect on others. And you need to have an honest understanding of your own strengths and limitations. Meanwhile, your empathy will help you sense others’ feelings and perspectives, while genuinely caring about developing them and bolstering their abilities.”
Herb adds, “To follow you, others need to know two things. First they need to know that you care about them, that you are in it for them. Then they need to know that they can trust you, that you are honest and have integrity.” He adds, “When they are sure that they can trust you and that you care about them, they will be open to your initiative, creativity, and drive to achieve. Then they will look to you to inspire and guide them, to listen openly, to convey compelling messages about what is going on and what will be, to manage conflict, to initiate and manage change, and to develop innovative teams.”
As a leader, no one is looking for you to score 100 on all of those responsibilities. But they are looking for you to score very high on most of them. And to be genuinely, rigorously, and continually trying to improve on all of the others.
Are you ready to keep getting ready?
Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Story
These questions are posed for you to consider as you create your own vision, tap into your personal strengths, and pursue your own leadership journey. Your answers to these questions will provide a starting point to consider how your personal story is the basis of your leadership journey. You are encouraged to consider these questions at different times, as your answers will undoubtedly evolve and change as your leadership journey unfolds.
1. When you encounter a problem, what is the first thing you look for?
2. When you encounter an opportunity, what is the first thing you look for?
3. What are you not seeing?
4. As a leader, what do you bring to the table that no one else does quite as well?
5. What do you absolutely love doing? What does it feel like when you are doing what you absolutely love? How could you do more of it?
6. What is your definition of success?
7. How has your definition of success changed throughout the years? Are you ready to change it again?
8. Are you realizing your potential?
9. What would you like a child to learn from your life?
10. How will you lead differently today than you did yesterday?
11. What do you want to do tomorrow?
12. What do you want to do for the rest of your life?