The Secret Ingredient to Exceptional Leadership with Adrian Koehler
Are you ready to unleash the potential of yourself and others? In this episode, we reveal the secret ingredient that sets effective leaders apart: fear. Learn how embracing your fears can be a powerful tool in becoming an exceptional leader - one who unlocks immense possibilities for transformation.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
The secret to exceptional leadership
Common breakdowns in corporate teams
Embrace your greatness despite fear
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About our guest:
Adrian Koehler is a leadership engagement expert and senior partner at the executive coaching firm, Take New Ground. He coaches executives and entrepreneurs in the art and science of leadership for themselves, their teams, and clients to create new, unprecedented results and experience fulfillment in their work.
He is the Founder and Senior Partner at Take New Ground, a leadership coaching, training, and consulting firm based in Los Angeles. TNG partners with select executives and organizations to get the results they want by creating the culture they need. He is the co-host of two engaging podcasts: Raising The Bar with Drybar Founder Alli Webb and The Naked Leadership Podcast with TNG Sr Partner Dan Tocchini.
Drawing on his background in philanthropy, ministry, activism, and medicine, Adrian thrives in extreme environments and finds comfort in difficult conversations—in fact, his passion for human performance has taken him around the globe, serving people in times of crisis, transformation, and stalemates. Over the last decade, Adrian has trained and developed leaders at NIKE, Virgin Hyperloop One, Jeni’s Ice Cream, Herschel Supply Co., Oprah Winfrey Network, Gavin DeBecker & Associates, Siegel & Gale, UCLA, and elsewhere.
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The Key Qualities of an Exceptional Leader
From your experience in working with CEOs, business owners, and individuals, what do you find to be the secret to transformational leadership? Exceptional leadership? What are those key qualities that you see?
If I were to connect to what's an essential one? The first one really is honesty. And I don't mean like do they tell the truth, but are they committed to being truthful, which is telling the truth, a component of being truthful?
Exceptional leaders, of course, they gotta be smart. Of course, they gotta be skilled. Of course, it's good if they have some people skills. But if you're gonna lead other people, especially in this day and age and where we're headed. I mean, it's been that way for the last 10 years. The least gonna be that way at an exponential level is do people wanna follow you? I mean, we're no longer in this top-down culture, which we know for sure now. People question leaders more than ever, and that's not gonna go away. Which I think is great because it's actually gonna require integrity and leadership.
And I don't mean, most of the time when people talk about integrity, they actually mean perfect. Are you honorable all the time and do you have this impeccable record? I hope that as a species, as a culture, we get over the idea that everybody's got their head together because we don't, and we might want to be angels, but we're just a mix. We're angelic and demonic simultaneously, at least I've known that for myself. We're a mixed bag and we judge other people by a standard we'd hate to be judged by. And that might be just human, it might be just normal for us to do that, and maybe we do it so we can aspire or whatever.
Are they committed to living a truthful life? Are they both really honest about where they're headed and are they clear as a bell about the future? Great exceptional leaders better be that. And are they willing to be rigorously honest with current reality? About what's happening and what's working, what's not working, and what's wanted and needed. That's how we think about it.
But also exceptional leaders are really great at paying attention to the people around them. The anecdotal condition is that a leader will build a team, but then use the team. And treat them like tools like they're, I'm paying you to get this thing done. Instead for exceptional leaders, we're trading results for salary or results for commission, we are doing, that's true. But exceptional leaders get the fact that it's always a volunteer army. If somebody works for me, they'll go work for somebody else immediately. And what's it take to keep somebody, especially keep somebody that's great? They better believe that I become the person I want to become while working here. Exceptional leaders can set that vision for themselves and really align the personal interests of the employee or of their team with corporate interests, and they do that methodically and continuously. And so they know what's going on for someone. They know what their background concerns are, both in the workplace and at home.
You know, thank God we're moving much more towards like an integrated view of work and life instead of, we went from not talking about it at all to talking about this work-life balance thing, which is a zero-sum game and a fool's errand. It's a work-life integration that's necessary. And if you do it really well, where it's like I do have a home life that I care about and I'm unapologetic about my commitments to my wife and my kids, and that's real for me.
And, also, I'm really committed to work. And this is what this looks like, I'm committed to my teammates. I'm committed to these results. I'm committed to this industry or these clients or whatever. And all those are a concert that overlaps. I gotta train both sides of that aisle to honor what's needed on both sides. Great leaders get that and they actually want humans to work with them, and they are vulnerable about their own processes and share what's really going on for them. And can inspire beyond the challenges, which I'd probably say maybe is the third point, is that they want to see the challenges.
They want to see them early, they want to know about them in hyper-color detail. And they've got this grid about them. They wanna take on a challenge, like bringing it on is how they come into the world.
There's an example of exactly what you're saying. I was working with an organization recently and they took some of their top performers, some of their newer performers, or the newer employees that they brought into the organization and they brought them into this mastermind group. And they said, "We want to know everything, the good, the bad, the ugly. What are the resources that are working? What's not working? What resources do you need?" And they sat them in this room for several hours and just let them have at it. There were sticky notes all over the walls.
And then what they did is, the next day, that evening, the executive leadership team came together, wrote down all of the notes, and then the next day presented to them and said, "Okay, we've heard you, we're listening. We acknowledge the pitfalls and this is what we're gonna do about it." They even said they took three different kinds of whiteboards on the stage and they said, here are the challenges that we hear from you that are not working right now. Here's what we're going to do about it, exactly what we're going to do, and here's our plan of action. Here are the resources that you guys say you need. This is what we're going to create and this is how we're going to prioritize each of them. I thought that that was such a powerful exercise of truly listening to what.
Challenges in Becoming an Exceptional Leader
But we wanna hear from your perspective what's not working. And that goes down to honesty, integrity, and being crystal clear of what that future action's gonna look like.
In that scenario, I'd be working with the senior leadership team and I'd say, I wonder why you chose not to notice it up until now. What was more important than asking this? I mean, how long have you known? Because here's the fun part about it. Why have people asked me to come in and work with them is that I asked the pain-type questions? You challenge them. I'll say, "Well, okay. You learned all these things. How long have you actually known about it and been avoiding it?"
That's what's curious because that type of thinking, first off, I applaud the effort, that's for sure. But there will be another one, a year later, where I'm curious about the mindset in which, as a leadership team, how do we set ourselves up to not have to wait and have these long drinks of water in the desert. How do we actually flourish the road between now and the next time we do a big check-in? And what weren't we paying attention to that created such a breakdown between leadership and employees.? If you wanna have something sustainable, it's like, what was the thinking behind how out of touch we've been?
Well, you said it exactly. It's not gonna happen once a year. It's continuously having these conversations on a consistent basis. And I was just talking with somebody the other day because they're gonna be taking on a VP role and they were talking about some of the challenges and we were saying, "Well, would it be beneficial to put together these advisory teams?" On a consistent basis, they meet, and they talk about what are the challenges that are going on. They're saying exactly the leadership team, these are the solutions that we're proposing. Here are the resources that we need. Then that team spearheads that project. because a lot of times it is some organizations will see leadership as here's leadership, this is what we do, and kind of a dictatorship on, you're gonna follow these steps. But reversing it and saying the people that are on the ground level, the ones that are interacting with the customers on the most consistent basis, the ones that are doing in the day out and day in of what the roles are within there. They know exactly what's needed. They know what resources they want. They know what some of those challenges are, and it's for executive leadership to really be in tune with that and have that constant communication and as you said, challenge, challenge those questions. In a very good, healthy way because it's solution focused.
It sounds like we've both noticed the same thing too is that, the takeaway from it was, here's what we're gonna do as a leadership team. I think the beauty of it is this, what a great opportunity for those that are like the lower ranking folks to actually solve things and lead up. And what I mean, you know what? People who make the loudest noise ought to be a part of the solution to it. Those passionate about it.
Overcoming Fear in Leadership
You also talk a lot about fear and leadership. When stepping into a leadership role, there can be a lot of fear, especially when you're imposter syndrome and I'm gonna be challenging the status quo in particular situations. What advice would you give to somebody who is, you're encouraging to push through that fear?
Well, first off, fear isn't the problem. And usually fear is an indicator that you're headed in the right direction. You need to change your definition of it, I mean, we naturally, well, let me do a little bit on the front end. Fear is wired into us. It's not an accident. We've been around for a long time as a species and have been developing, and fear is meant for a specific purpose. It's meant to protect us, that's what it's meant for. Thank God, that's why we don't step into it in front of a bus. That's why we don't jump off a cliff, because we've got fear. And fear tells us that's dangerous.
Now, we need to like put fear in the right context. It's a gift to us and it's gotten us to where we are now. It doesn't do the trick. It actually is an anchor if you want to go somewhere faster if you wanna take on a risk. And this is a volitional risk. I'm deciding that there's something in the future I want beyond what's safe. I'm gonna leave the known territory and go venture out into the wilderness and here's what I want to go do. I'm gonna be at stake, I'm gonna be vulnerable because I'm leaving the known territory. Things I think, and things I know, and where I'm an expert in the people I know and whatever.
If you're doing that, if you're taking a venture like that, you're fear is coming with you. Let's not, let's stop being surprised that I'm scared, of course, I'm gonna be scared. Now what am I scared of is an important question for us to get clear about. Because I can be scared of the dangers out there, like other people or situations or whatever, but that's not usually where the fear really is. The fear is in more of what I think about myself and my view of myself. Like we've got these four major survival needs that we don't get a vote on. This is gravity. We wanna look good and we wanna feel good and we wanna be right and we wanna be in control. These are the four major survival needs. At least we talk about it that way. And you know, fear comes up when one of those things is threatening. They're important to integrate. They're just not worth following, like looking good, feeling good, being right, and being in control. So if you're a control freak, that doesn't work. If you're a dogmatist, that doesn't work. If you're committed to comfort, that doesn't work. And if looking good, like having a self-flatter view of yourself, that also doesn't work in the context of striving and creating something new.
If you feel like we've become really fascinated with this imposter syndrome language, and the way I get through that is I realize, yeah, I'm an imposter, that's it. If I'm striving to do something new and I've never done it before, of course, I'm gonna feel like an imposter. I'm actually writing checks. I don't know if I can cash. I'm throwing myself at it and I'm believing that I can. I can learn whatever I need to learn. I can resource how I need to resource. I can ask for help. I can courageously take action. I don't know if it's gonna work or not. I'm naturally gonna feel like an imposter, so just own it. It's okay.
There's a distinction between feeling like an imposter and being a fraud. That's different when I know I'm running a con on myself or other people. That's being a fraud. If I'm striving, I'm gonna feel like an imposter. And that's an indicator light on your dashboard. It doesn't mean there's trouble though. It just means you're right where you ought to be. I think if you feel like an imposter, that means you're striving towards something good for you now. To get to your question, what to do about that first is to see it rightfully, I mean, to see it in the right way, and then to embrace it. There are a lot of those indicators that, I don't know what I'm talking about. I've never done this before. Those are for most hard-charging people. Our problem is, is that we always need more help than we want. We'd rather do it on our own and be able to have credit for it and look good and all those types of things. But if I can realize that the quicker I ask for help, which can be asking a mentor, finding a mentor, or asking somebody that's in the organization that's been there before to help give me information. Obviously, Google things, YouTube things all day long, and read 10 books.
There's like lots of things I need to do to really prepare myself for the next venture. That's part of embracing it. And it's just like, we call it hugging the cactus. Like we're gonna be insecure all the time. At least I am, I'm a pretty gregarious guy. I'm a pretty ambitious guy. I'm a pretty gutsy guy, but I'm insecure all the time. It's like, I wonder if I'm making an impact or not on people that are listening. I'm wondering if I'm being of service or not, and I think that's a good indication. I'm in a self-inquiry around results. Am I generating results or not? I think we just tend to treat ourselves so preciously. If I'm in fear that means something's wrong, it might mean something's right.
What I'm hearing, is whenever there is fear, it's because we're willing to take the risks and understand that risk comes with risk comes a lot of uncertainty. It comes sometimes a lot of doubt in insecurity. And it's also when we grow the most, in those moments where we step into this discomfort and we really push ourselves into the fear and embrace it is when we grow the most. And those times where we question, are we doing the right thing, as you just said, am I making an impact, or are people listening to this? Are they taking something away with it? That is a source of caring, that is a source of wanting to make a difference. If you went in, if we went into this situation and we were just very flippant, we're gonna have a conversation and hopefully, it goes well, but we wouldn't care as much. But that kind of question that we have deep within our souls is because we want to make a difference.
I think about it, especially anytime I'm about to walk into training. I do a lot of one-on-one coaching with founders and special people on their leadership teams. And then we'll come in and do these two-day training. And I'm always really nervous or if I'm about to walk on stage, I'm always really nervous and I'm always shocked about how nervous I am initially. And I think that like my nerves are a, are a sense because they show up. Nervousness is like fear, and then the didactic for this is this: I'm nervous-am I nervous because I'm anxious about what could go wrong? Or am I nervous because I'm in anticipation about what might go right?
And I know that because every time it happens, I'm really nervous. And then I get in the room and I see the people. And I realized, oh, these are humans here. I'm not here to be on the stage. I'm not here to like, whatever. I might be paid to be "on stage," but I'm actually not here for me. Once I'm not here for me and I'm here for them, my own self goes away, goes into the background, and my ego starts to like not to be my chief goal. It's like protecting my own view of myself, my ego, and somebody else making a difference in your language or making an impact or seeing them and seeing some breakthrough for them that rises up in the priority scale and that once, that's my aim. I'm good. I'm alive, I'm back, back to reality.
I had a conversation recently with somebody who has been speaking for 20 years. She's a highly respected speaker within the National Speaker Association, and I was having this very candid conversation with her and I said, "You know, I still get nervous. I get nervous before I get on stage, and when will I ever break that?" And she says, "You never will. Yeah, because I've been doing this for 20 years and I still get nervous." Again, it goes back to because we care and if we went into this, if we went on stage and we had no nerves, then I would question if somebody was going in with the right intentions. And also flipping this script in our mind too, is when you're asking yourself, am I nervous because maybe I didn't prepare enough? That could be one reason. Am I nervous because I am scared of what people think of me if I do a good job? That's flipping the script to that aspect is making it less about us and saying, why I'm here is to make a difference. It's not about me. It's not about how others view me. It's about what can I do to serve the people that are here listening and who have taken the time out of their day to sit in this seat and to hear me speak it is about how can I serve them. So when we shift that mindset from me to them, it also does help relieve a lot of those nerves, because you're going in with a different intention.
Firing Our Ego in Dealing with our Fears
Well, we talked a little bit about this fear of pushing through our fears. How can we also fire our egos? Because sometimes that's also an element of when we're leading teams, we're getting on stage. Sometimes we have this ego associated with it, and that can get in the way of a roadblock when we're wanting to be an exceptional leader.
It's an important conversation. I think most people walking around as we're all just kind of in the midst of life, we're not that connected to what part of my perspective is clouded by what is commonly called ego today. What is really there to preserve and what's there to protect or what's there to generate?
My preservation or protection is usually, it's an ego function. I call it all the time and point out that when I'm meeting people or working with a leader, it's pointing out where they're playing not losing. And most of their complaints are about where in their life they're playing not to lose.
It's their aim, and they don't know it's their aim. They're just trying to make sure they just hit their quota, make sure they don't get fired, make sure they preserve the politics, they make sure and it's just this kind of Okiger had this quote that's troubling. He says, "People find a level of despair that's tolerable and call that happiness." If we're living to preserve ourselves, we're just living this ego-based lifestyle. It might be one looking to preserve our reputation, for example. We hold back, we hold back the extra 10% of what we want to say, and we don't say it because it's too risky or we don't know how they're gonna react or it might jeopardize the relationship or all that. We might even do it very kind of fake altruistically and say, "Oh, he couldn't handle that. She couldn't handle that. So I'm gonna hold back that feedback," which is actually for me, instead of for them. It's so condescending to say like, "Oh, she's having a tough day, so I can't be honest. Or he's going through whatever." And not that that stuff's not true, and there are certain moments in time where we're not conscious of that, but on a regular basis, if we don't think people can handle it, it's our own superiority complex. Firing my ego is actually, first off, I can need to identify it.
What about the way I'm looking at a situation is about me and my own self-preservation, the way I want people to see me, or the way really I wanna see myself and what's about preservation versus being willing to be used for something? I wanna be full, the word I'd really use is utilized. I want my skills and my talents to be fully utilized. Because we have this natural fear of death, as humans, we naturally want to preserve ourselves from that, but we bring that into our daily life where it's like anything that feels like a failure, seems like death to us.
Not to get too more, but in this conversation, it's like it really happens like that. I think like, I don't want to risk it. I don't want to fail. I don't want to be that vulnerable because I'm going to die to myself. And I don't know if I can pull myself back together. And people that have suffered really well in life and have really blown it are the ones I think are textured, human beings and like can integrate their failures in such a way that it's like at least I think about it that way. I don't want to look for safety. That's why I think the whole psychological safety thing is dangerous. If the world is a certain way, then I can be a certain way is really the read-through. Like if you're at a company and psychological safety is the goal, it means, oh, if this, then I can, which is, that's a three-hour conversation about the dangers of that.
But I want to generate security in myself. As I can look like a fool and I'm gonna be. And actually, my looking like a fool in front of anybody might endear them to me. Because we're real, I blow it all the time and just like this answer I go on for a really long time and I'm like, hold on Adrian, what's your point? But that's okay. Like, this is in real-time. We're just so the ego wants to preserve and I'm about life. So we can either avoid death or we can pursue life. I'd just rather pursue life and death is a part of that, right? So that's why I think I like that term, like firing the ego, because, my ego is going to try to talk me into pursuing satisfying mediocrity.
Accepting Critical Feedback for Improvements
And this is where I see it play out in the workforce because you had said, it's that ego that prevents, this holds us back from stepping into our greatness. And I see this play out in the workplace. There have been so many times where I am working with an individual and we're talking about these great ideas that they have for an organization.
And they say, "Yeah, and I don't know. I'll ask them, have you talked to the executive leadership team about this? Have you brought up this idea? This is such a phenomenal idea. Well, I don't know." And you just kind of hear this hesitation that they have, and if they took that step and fired the ego and said, well, what's the worst that could possibly happen?
The executive leadership team says, no, that could possibly happen, but what greatness could happen? You bring this idea, you step into your greatness, you step into this leadership role, you present this idea, they embrace it, and then you become the spearhead person to take this idea on, and then that can open the doors to so many career opportunities, within or without, or outside of the organization. But it's that willingness to fire the ego to take risks, to push through that fear. That's what makes an exceptional leader.
If you're listening and think about it, oh wow, that sounds like a big leap. I just start by becoming, what you wanna do is become proficient and hear what you don't want to hear. And meaning because I'm thinking like if somebody were to take a leap and do what you're saying to do, which I think is a wonderful step to take, there's vulnerability baked in that. Because I might get feedback that, oh, I don't think you're up for it. So I'm more apt to take a leap if I am unattached to outcomes, or even unattached to somebody's perception of me at the moment.
How do I get unattached then I gotta get really used to hearing bad stuff. So if you, if you haven't done this, it's a great exercise to do, which is to go around to people you're working with right now and get some feedback about, "Hey, what am I doing that's working? What's not working? What could I do, how could I be better?
You know, what's, what's wanted and needed is how we'd say it, but you know, what could be better "And get used to like hearing "critical feedback." It's only critical if I'm wearing it like shame like there's something wrong with me. I don't think there's anything wrong with anybody.
But if I can get used to hearing critical feedback and seeing it as fuel, then I'm more apt to go take bigger leaps down the road when talking to the senior leadership team and stuff. But if I can talk to my employees or talk to my peers in that way, then I'm much more, much more apt to lead up in a powerful way.
I agree a hundred percent with exactly what you're saying. When we're able to take into that, and I say it's almost when, when leaders do a great job at Feed Forward coaching, it's that possibility of saying, that's a great idea. Possibly let's work on X, Y, and Z to help get to that next step. It's not so much that shift from that feedback of, oh, well, I don't know if you're ready for this. Now let's also work on X, Y, and Z to get you to where you want to be or to where the idea is, and you call that feed-forward.
