Leadership can be a lonely place on top, but it need not be. It is a place of personal power, but also of tremendous personal responsibility. Today, we take a closer look at leadership from a leader’s perspective as Dr. Tracey Jones interviews Dan Silberberg, a true visionary who has been engaged in personal transformation and development for more than 40 years. Together, they unpack loneliness, weariness, abandonment, vision and other concepts that leaders wrestle with on a daily basis from their place at the top. At the end of the day, leaders are humans too and there is a price that they have to pay to be called true, authentic leaders. Dan also emphasizes the need for leaders to create their own narrative that sets them up for success. Listen intently and watch out for value bombs – they’re everywhere.
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Dan Silberberg – Leaders On Leadership
Our guest is Dan Silberberg. Dan has been engaged in personal transformation and development for more than 40 years in companies of all sizes in the US and in Europe. He's a true visionary, and I cannot wait for you to know what Dan has to share about what it takes to pay the price of leadership.
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I am excited to talk to Dan Silberberg. Mr. Silberberg has been engaged in personal transformation and development for more than 40 years in the United States and Europe. He is a true visionary, which is awesome because that’s one of the things we're going to talk about. Dan’s mission is to nurture, inspire, and impact every individual with whom he comes in contact. Each of us has a gift for the world where everyone can thrive. Dan has a Master's degree in leadership and coaching with core expertise in social/emotional intelligence, attachment theory, educational principles and philosophies, humanism, existential principles, and neuroscience. Dan, thank you for being on our show.
It's my pleasure, Tracey. Thanks for having me.
For our readers, I like to explain the context of how two tremendous people came together. Dan is one of my cohorts in the C-Suite Network. I’ve talked a lot about that. I love that group whenever I meet tremendous people there, which is every day. Dan has graciously agreed to let me pick his brain on leadership. Dan, I appreciate your being here. Everybody loves learning about leadership but it is often misunderstood. My dad wrote a speech called The Price of Leadership. He was pragmatic and he was an experiential man and talked about the price of leadership that you're going to have to pay in order to truly be calling yourself a true authentic leader.
I'd love to unpack each of those concepts with you and get your input and your vast experience and studies what this means for you. Dan, the first thing my dad talks about is loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. Can you explain to me from your experience or your lens what does loneliness in leadership means for you? Maybe a time you've been through it, and maybe a word of input or exhortation for our readers out there.
One of the things that happen is there's a thing called situational leadership. Situational leadership is when you get to be promoted to CEO and all of a sudden, you have moved from peer-to-peer to the top of the pyramid. What that does if you let that happen is it excommunicates you from the community. That's one form of it. Another form is a company is not doing well and they bring in a CEO from the outside. That CEO has no institutional knowledge. He has no root system of relationship. Already, he's got a team of people that are unsure and some of whom don't understand why they didn't get the job. There's a lot of external things that go on.
Loneliness is the self-inflicted wound. If I choose to take my title, distance myself, be up on the 35th floor with glasses and closures, and I have security guards, am I lonely because I'm lonely or am I lonely because I've created it? For me, it's all about, can I over-communicate? Can I be a CEO and at the same time, see myself in this community to the extent that I'm leaving, if I’m authentic and I walk the talk, people will find me attractive and approachable? If I choose to separate by my actions, my communications, I only talk to my top five people. That command and control dominator culture top-down is not where the future is going. I know we're going to get into vision. That game is coming to an end now. If you're one of those isolated, take a look in the mirror.
Can I unpack two things you said? I love the fact that you talked about self-inflicted. I'm sure a lot of our readers have maybe been in the same situation if you were brought in from the outside, as I always was, to fix things. You have to deal with that initial, and I should have been smart enough to know, why wasn't somebody from the inside? How did it get like this? You realized it until you prove yourself in the community.
Do you have any tips for people? It's unsettling when you get brought in to do a job and realize, “I'm not trying to make myself an outsider,” but you are viewed as that because you came in. I always think of office space with the headhunter that comes in to do the downsizing. People know you're being brought in because the house is in disarray. Can you talk a little bit about that? Any words of advice or if you've been through that?
I've been through it on multiple occasions. I did most of my career going into companies where the chairman would say, “It's not that bad, but you would be a good guy for the job.” You come in and find out COVID-19 isn't even close to what you inherited because you're already on the respirator. One of the things that I found to be particularly effective was understanding two things. One, could I create a compelling vision for the opportunity? Number two, to what extent was it a culture match to who I am when I'm authentic?
I have two different examples. One, I was brought in into a company that was sold by Goldman Sachs to an investor group. I had eleven vice presidents, and within 60 days, five of them had resigned because I brought in a meritocracy where I expected results in a paternalistic organization. If daddy puts his arm around your shoulder, park your brain at the door and do as you're told, and you'll get a bonus. When I asked my admin who'd been there 25 years, “What's with that?” She goes, “They already know they can't compete in that environment.”
They never even gave me a chance to put my arms around them and say, “I see greatness here. Let's go.” As a CEO in a new environment, for me, the first thing you have to do is interview your team. When we say that leadership, everybody is leading all the time. The only question is to what. There's a group of people that want to be sycophants and there is a group of people who want to be obstructive. There is a group of people who are two-faced and there's a group of people who are in the gossip game.
It's important right away to understand, who is your team? Who's going to sync with you? It's not that people are bad or good but if you're driving an organization, it's like scull rowing. If all the rows are in the water and they're all synchronized, you get a beautiful row. If they're out of sync, you're a mess. What I found, and this might sound harsh, is to get rid of the waste as quickly as possible so that you can stabilize.
Value the people that are going to remain and bring them up in terms of what you see in them that they haven't seen in themselves. Because for the most part, if you're inheriting something where it hasn't been working, there's probably a moral problem. There's probably people questioning their own capability. People want to be in a friendly thriving environment. I always viewed my job as how do I get them to see that they can thrive rapidly and achieve and grow into what they want to become?
I appreciate you saying that because in my studies, I get a lot of followers. It's neither good nor bad. Is it a good fit? You have to be picking up what the leader is putting down. I love that you talked there are sycophants and obstructors. Everybody's like, “No, everybody is intrinsically good.” I'm like, “Maybe not for your leadership style.” Also, as a leader, you need to know what kind of follower brings out the best in you.
Leaders On Leadership: If you're a leader, you can't delegate to anybody else because the situational title gives you a status.
We talked about A Message to Garcia. I'm like you. My ideal follower is Colonel Rowan that just went out and figured it out. If I get followers that are like, “How do you want me to do this?” that triggers me as a leader. I know you said it sounds harsh, but in the end, you save everybody. They resonate with who they're going to resonate with, and if it's not you, then find who you're going to resonate with. I appreciate your input on that.
When I took over this middle-market company and I brought in a team of eleven new people, for the first month, people would show up in my office and they'd go, “Why don't you come and tell us what to do?” I'm paying these people reasonably good six-figure incomes. I'm like, “That's not my job. I hired you because you're brilliant and what I want is for you to do your job. I do walk around and I do ask questions but I'm interested in you.” It was the first time for many of them that they got to step into their brilliance and be responsible. That's important to me. Jim Collins would say, “Put the right people on the bus in the right seat.” The other is, “Knock on the door, have you got a minute?”
I started with that and I realized that if I had a minute, I never had an hour so I shifted it. I said, “Here's the deal. I have a minute if the house is burning. If it's a decision that you can make and it's a mistake and we can learn from it, make it. If you come three times with decisions that you should be making and you're wasting my time, then the got-a-minute will move away from you.” Do you know how empowering that was to a team? We had our weekly meetings and I did walk around during the day to find out what was going on. All of a sudden, people were making good decisions, and then they were making more of them. They built their confidence. That to me is the leadership. I don't want to solve your problem unless I have to.
The other part I want to unpack where you talk about loneliness is when you talked about the leader only keeps the top five people. I’ve got to tell you that I'm glad you hit on that because the boys club or even the girls club where you just look at Bob's four horsemen. As a leader, you need to know what's going on at all levels because you're putting all your stock in that. The other thing is, yes, you have your trusted advisors. I get that. I was in the military. They've earned their rank and they're in my in-crowd, but you also want to make sure that it's not an exclusionary thing where other people feel that their voices can be heard too. I missed that out as a leader in my earlier years, and that's an important point that you brought up.
I'm not sure if it's a book or it's a saying, but there was a sergeant who went to one of the generals in the tent and said, “Sir, generals eat last.” Whereas they thought because of their rank, they should eat first. It’s the other way around.
For leaders too. Just because you have your core that is your team, the whole unit is your collective, so they can still feel alienated. If mom and dad go on vacation all the time without the kids, it's going to be like, “They don't care about me anymore.” I'm glad you brought that up for loneliness too, because even if you're not alone as one, you can isolate yourself.
Have you ever watched the show Undercover Boss?
Yes.
It’s one of my favorite shows. Invariably, what happens to the CEO is he goes out to do the work, which he's incapable of doing but more importantly, when he deals with those individuals who “aren't in his little group,” all people want to know is that you appreciate what they're doing. They want to be seen and they want to be known and they want to know they matter. If you're a leader, you can't delegate to anybody else because the situational title gives you a status. In business, a lot of leadership is status. Do you want to hold the status or do you want to make it more like, “It's not peer-to-peer. We're not equal but we're both human beings and we both have stories, lives, families, and issues?” When someone can listen, it's amazing. All of a sudden, you build loyalty. Isn't that what a leader should be doing, to build loyalty, capacity, and capability of its people?
I love how you put that because there is a hierarchy. It's life. In everything, there is an order and a structure. People are like, “We're a network.” I get that. I love how you put that we’re not equal but we're all human beings. The buck stops with somebody. Somebody's social is tied to that EIN. Somebody is ultimately responsible in a court of law if something bad goes down so we can’t all just be in this network where there isn't some form of hierarchy. That's where we network as a collective as seeing the value everybody brings. Sometimes, people take it too far and go, “There should be no boss.” I'm like, “We're not ants. We're not wired like that.” Somewhere, somebody's sending out the design of what gets done. That's interesting because I struggle with that sometimes when I hear it.
For entrepreneurs, let me give you the perspective when somebody comes up to you and says that there should be no boss. “Tracey, I agree with you. It's just that I have this $250,000 personal guarantee with the bank and I'm happy to transfer that ownership to you, and then I'm good with it.” All of a sudden, the reality of it sets in, but what that person is saying, “I don't feel valued. My mission here isn't fulfilling me.” That's the opportunity to have the conversation.
What's missing? If there were a magic wand and no boss, what would that look like for you? If you could define that job, what would that look like for you? It's probably not that far off from where they already are but they have power now. Here's the analogy. When you want to get your four-year-old to school and you put their outfit out. “I don't want to wear that today.” “You have to wear it. We have to get going.” The war starts.
If you put out two outfits, “Johnny, which outfit do you want to wear today?” In three seconds, the kid picks what he wants. This is about personal power. If we empower people to make their choices within the framework, we have more buy-in. With 69% to 72% of people saying they're not engaged in their work, that's a leadership problem. Part of that is how is the job defined? Is the work valuable? How many times do we go to companies and they go, “This has no value,” and it's 70% of my day? There's that opportunity there to empower a workforce.
What would you say then to them if it's not a good fit for the work? Doesn't that then somehow fall on them to say, “I need to find something that I'm a better fit for and I can get all behind the mission?” Sometimes, don't you feel it's not just empowerment, but it's a value non-congruence? I always found power with everything I did but in the end, I'm like, “I don't want to make these widgets anymore. This doesn't do it for me.” I was empowered but I was like, “In heaven, am I going to be able to look at the legacy of my life and say I shipped a bunch of chip-making devices that were valued at this?” I don't care anymore for that.
If all of us are leaders and we accept our personal responsibility, one of the things that I did is I would get resumes to hire people. I would scan it for ten seconds and I would never use it in the interview. If you have a vice president or a manager or a managing director, somehow, if you are capable of getting the title, I'll give you the table stakes. What I'm interested in is, “Tell me about culture. Tell me about where you thrive. Tell me about what matters to you not in the business but outside of it. Do you have any interest in where you're committed to something for yourself? Tell me about integrity.”
Leaders On Leadership: You can't have empathy or feeling, belonging, understanding of your company and your team to a degree greater than you have it for yourself.
Everybody said, “I have it.” I said, “I know, we all do. What I'm more interested in is where did it slip? I know we're all authentic but we're not authentic until we can admit where we're inauthentic.” I don't spend a lot of time on the skillset. By the time I'm done interviewing with my attachment theory and everything else and the questions I have, I know you well. I probably know you better than you know you. I can now know, “This is a person who's a maintenance player. If you put them in the seat, that's where they want to stay.”
I know there are other people that are ADD, ADHD, or whatever, and that might be great in a place in the company. It's part of the leader’s role to ferret out what you're bringing in. Most people hire 50% wrong. That's ridiculous. As a leader, learning how to interview is where social/emotional intelligence comes in. When I'm sitting having this conversation, I knew what the energy was and I knew if there was attraction and connection. I knew if this was going to be off. You stated where you wanted to go and I said, “This is a great fit.”
If it wasn't a great fit, do you know what I would have said? This may not be the best for either of us. I wouldn't have wanted to embarrass you, but a lot of people are like, “I got this opportunity to do a podcast. I'll do it no matter what.” That's inauthentic. We need to know what we're feeling emotionally. We can't have empathy or feeling, belonging, understanding of our company and our team to a degree greater than we have it for ourselves. That's a big deal. If you're an angry guy and you have a short fuse, whatever those things are, rest assured, that will trigger and do other things in the company. This is where this authenticity is important.
Dan, we need to do some scheduled interviews. I love how you hit on the personal power, but I love how you also hit on the personal responsibility. Not everything is just one-sided. Everything has this dual dance. The good, the bad. The light, the dark. Even the shadow side of leadership, the shadow side of ourselves. My empowerment can go off the rails to an obsession if left unchecked. Weariness, how do you stay refreshed? You're talking about the leader and the role of leadership. Can you tell me how you define weariness, different types of weariness for a leader, and what your recommendations would be for addressing that?
I have a life force that's dynamic. My belief is simple. I do things that enhance my aliveness and I stop quickly things that diminish. For me, aliveness, play, and intention are the three things that I focus on. I'm quick to move people away or things away that don't do that. As a leader, part of my skillset is what do I love doing? What would I like to delegate and follow up on? I happen to have both a left/right brain polarity that's integrated but the truth is, I'd much rather play in innovation, envisioning, and creativity. I can do the other stuff well.
That's why I have a CFO and that's why I have a sales guy because I prefer to play up here. I don't necessarily want to be the salesperson. That doesn't mean I don't go meet with customers but I'm not the guy to put in front of somebody who can't make a decision because I don't suffer fools well. I know this about myself and I tell my people. I don't hide it and I explain it. I get put in the right situations. Those are enhancing. There are people like Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins plays at this high level of energy, but he steals the energy from the crowd. I don't. I put my energy out. I don't steal it from you.
If I'm going to do that for any length of time and it's not enhancing my aliveness, play, sense of humor, and my own world, I'd end up in bed half of the day. You won't believe this, but I'm an INTJ and I'm introverted but I have learned to be a situational expert in terms of being external. When we're done, I can't wait to go and be by myself for half an hour. Knowing that, do you need to take fifteen-minute meditation breaks and be mindful?
One shift also, there are two words. One is phenomenological and the other is ontological. Phenomenological leaders are people who think they're still out there to achieve and prove themselves. Ontological leaders are internally being with themselves. I'm at a stage of life where I already was the CEO for many years and I'm not interested in chasing that anymore. I'm now interested in legacy, give back, leaving a footprint, and knowing how to do a combination. There's no reason for a leader to be weary. That's poor self-management. A little judgmental on my part.
You keep hitting on it. Know yourself. Many people know what's draining them, but they won't stop it. Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again. That's why I want to get into the next term, which is abandonment. We need to stop what we like and want to think about in favor of what we need and ought to. It sounds like your weariness, by not suffering fools gladly, you abandoned the toxicity, the drains, I call them the time sucks to get a theory, love with yourself, and your resources. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Can you unpack abandonment for us, Dan?
For me, when I hear the word abandonment, what I'm hearing is I feel I've lost my dominion and my agency. That's what comes up for me. Things are out of control. The analogy is you're driving down the highway and you hit an ice slick. All of a sudden, the car starts doing donuts. No matter how hard you grab the wheel, it's almost like it takes on a life of its own. At some point, you either hit the guardrail and it stops you, or somehow, the donut stops and you're going the wrong way but you can turn the car.
That's where we lose agency and dominion. The easiest way for me is that you don't feel that you can manage and you can put your arms around an issue. We've all seen this. The CEO goes in and he doesn't get along or she doesn't get along with the board. There's all of this tension and at some point, he or she goes, “I'm done with this.” They go to their office and the board goes to their office, and there's this thing going on, and eventually, the person is fired. That's the abandonment. That’s the, “I can't get in touch with my internal self in a way that I can speak authentically to my board to get to conflict resolution.” That's how I would look at it.
It's when we're in our drama, and part of it's when we're being triggered. All of those things. This is self-awareness. “When I'm talking to Tracey, she's not laughing with me. I can see she's stern and we're not connecting. I don't care. I'm going to leave it there.” No, that's when you end up abandoning the relationship, yourself, and the opportunity to grow as opposed to, “Tracey, what I'm thinking is I don't like you a lot. What I'm noticing is your face has changed from this smiling, warm, and inviting. I'm feeling fear that this isn't going well.”
If I had that conversation with someone, they would have to go, “This guy's being vulnerable.” In any conversation, there are what's called frames. Frames collide and never do both frames set equal. One frame always overtakes another. I changed the state by being vulnerable and inviting you now to be vulnerable. You go, “Dan, here's what's upsetting me. What I'm noticing is that I've got this shallow breathing going on and there's something telling me there's something being hidden here.” Now we have a chance to engage back. We're not in abandonment, but we're in connection. As a leader, are you willing to risk?
What you're noticing and what you're feeling, it's three dimensional. Your head lies. “I thought Tracey was angry with me. She just changed her mouth on her own and had nothing to do with me. She was enthralled.” I didn't know that because I'm not a mind reader but now we talk and I go, “This isn't a good person.” We make up stuff. When we just use our brains, we're not in our truth. Our truth is in our bodies. It's not up here.
Abandon the fact that you can read everybody's minds and motives. We're not God. I love that abandon that preconceived leap to conclusions and that, “It's over. It's done. This person hates me.” You've been a speaker and sometimes, you're looking at the audience and you're thinking, “Dear Lord, this is not going well.” In the end, they're like, “That was life-changing.” I'm like, “Of course, they're INTJs.” They're looking at me like, “Oh.” I'm always reminded to abandon that because I'm quick like, “What's going on?”
Leaders On Leadership: Culture and values are the biggest determinants to whether you're getting the right people and whether the people themselves are choosing the right environment.
People process differently at different speeds. What a great take on abandonment. Now we're going to talk about vision. We're not Nostradamus, Moses or Mark Zuckerberg. My dad would always say, “Tracey, vision is seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” You talked about A Message to Garcia, quite the visionary. Can you share with us what vision has meant to you and how you knew that you were dialing it in and how you amplified it?
This might sound a little woo-woo for normal people but I channel stuff. I don't mean I channel with a spirit who talks to me. What I was able to do from the earliest of my job assignments was to create a vision of this business. I'll give you an example. When I was 26 years old, I went to Levi Strauss. I got hired to a $7 million division. It's 1976. I'm making $85,000 a year plus a stock options bonus. I had just bought an Alfa Romeo and had a townhouse in Sausalito overlooking Tiburon. I'm in the women's part of the apparel sector in a 100 plus-year-old multibillion-dollar 501 men's jean business.
Between the time I'm hired and the time I get there, I get a new global vice president who came out of that jean business. The day I arrive, before I even find a desk and a phone, he tells me he wants to close the division. I'm like, “I don't think this is going to go well.” I said, “Can you give me a couple of days?” I went back to him and I said, “Here's the deal. This little $7 million business that you don't want, we have two options. One, I can take it to $50 million for Levi or I'll buy it today.” He was like, “What?” I was like, “Let me explain to you how I'm going to go from $7 million to $50 million.”
Three years later, it was $130 million and products were around $500 million. I have a skill of every company I went to of seeing the game. Those are the jobs I took. I had lots of opportunities where I couldn't get the vision going. Most people play to see if they win. Most companies have no idea if they've made the month until the last day of the month. I knew by the third day of the month if I was going to win the month or not. In 40 years, I never lost a bonus. I win, and then I play because if I win, I see the house built.
It's not that I'm 100% on, but my pivots are in 180. There are 3 degrees here and 5 degrees here. I have a skill innately of looking at products, markets, channels, geographies, and creating categories of one. I've done that my whole career. I took a $400 million business that had shrunk to $250 million over 5 years, and in 18 months, headed back to $390 million. I started the first all-natural, no artificial, sweetened flavored beverage in the United States. I got called by Coke, Pepsi, and Nestlé and they said, “How did you do this? You're not from our industry.”
I was able to bring aspirational lifestyle and style and design to a category that sees itself as the lowest common denominator. Part of my vision is the breadth of different industries and channels. I never got in the company that went from A to B to C to D to E in the same company. I've played in multiple industries, multiple channels, Global 2000, mid-market startup, consumer product, technology, and business consulting. One of my skills and vision is this ability to look at a million data points and synthesize it into something that can be expressed that people can either align with or not.
In the vision part, you have to get out of industry-think. Part of that is going to museums, theater, symphony, and these creative outlets that inspire something different. That's why I said in the interview, “If all you want to talk to me about is digital marketing, you're boring me.” I don't care. What I care about is what do you do outside that gives you a bigger life? What enhances your aliveness? I don't know how you teach vision. It's either innate or not. If I could bottle that one, that would be my new business.
You recognize if there's going to be different people, you still need the integrators, executors, and technicians. It's The E-Myth Revisited. Michael Gerber says that we can't be all things all at once all the time. We'll die in five seconds and the business will grind to a halt. Was there ever a time where you said you couldn't get the vision going? That entails the right people on the right team supporting you as a leader. Can you unpack any of that?
What I would say is in Hollywood, the people who have great careers from the ones who don’t are the best editors to know which movies they're best for. Few of those actors are geniuses that they can take a piece of crap and make it gold. If you're talented, getting an opportunity is not your challenge. Picking the right ones and editing is. That's the biggest distinction. I told you about this Global 2000 company that went from $400 million to $250 million. That was such a poor culture fit that in eighteen months, even though I took it from $250 million to $390 million, I was disruptive within their environment, I got fired.
I got fired three different times doing this with companies and three times, all those companies went out of business. In maintenance, they think, “Dan, fix it.” No, because they go right back to what they did. They lie also. They'll come in and say to you, “I don't care what it takes, get this to work.” That particular company never let me hire anybody on my own team. It was all the inheritance of five leaders before me over five years. When I left, the chairman asked me, “Why do you think it didn't work?”
I said, “One of two things. Either you're incompetent because you've hired five of us and all of us had great reputations before we came here or you have decided that the monkeys can run the zoo and leadership is expendable. Until you change the monkeys, no leader is going to make this work. Not even you because you all have tried it and put your thumb on the scale as well.” That's why culture and values are the biggest determinants in an interview of whether you're getting the right people and whether the people themselves are choosing the right environment.
First of all, you are my brother from another mother because I’m like you. I run two different industries and I grow my experience bag. I'm not kidding. I love looking for Malcolm Gladwell, the threads across everything. What are the generalizable that we all can learn from? I'm telling you, for our readers out there, you said a whole world of truth if you don't have the leadership above you when you're brought in.
Like you, I had left too, but I didn't get fired. It was clear that they loved my results, but they were never going to let me become one of them. I say that because there are leaders out there that are dealing with this. I get the pain point from calls all the time. You're going to come in, and it's the old Albert Einstein's, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” The mediocre minds are the monkey. They want you to come in and fix it because it's all about the money but they're only going to let you go so far.
Let me say one thing. Companies and cultures are systems. If you see what's going on in America, there's a system. The whole strategy of a system is homeostasis. A family system is homeostasis. “Tracey, you were the good girl. John was the bad boy. No, you don't get to play that role.” You could be excommunicated if you become the bad girl. It's your system. You'll see the extent to which a system will do what it needs to survive in homeostasis.
I always knew it. I know I'm not the perfect leader, so I got my PhD. I'm still learning. You’ve got to be able to look at it and say, “I’ll take what's coming,” but it's a beautiful thing to be able to look at it and say, “Here's the part where I need to never get near in touch with a 10-foot pole.” When I was younger, I'm like, “Let's go in. Let's make it happen.” When I left, those two companies that this happened to are no longer around either. It wasn't just because of me. It was because of them. I can only help you to do so much but I have no regrets about it because I fought the good fight. It makes good drinking stories, doesn't it? When we go in there and tell them, “Uhm.”
Leaders On Leadership: Part of the genius of any leader is being able to reframe. This is a real skill that you can acquire.
I'm a Boston Patriot fan because I'm from Boston and Tom Brady left. Now I'm a Tampa Bay fan and look at what he's doing versus what's happening to the Patriots. The Patriots, for twenty years, are the best franchise in the history of sports. Look what one guy could do through his own will and determination. Malcolm Gladwell is exactly right. It's 10,000 hours from the determination, dedication, and commitment to mastery and excellence. Those are the five things that I look for in people and that drives me. Mastery, excellence, commitment, dedication and determination.
I love your last point about also for leaders going in, you make sure the leadership above you is going to support you to do because I got in the same thing with you. I got to the point where, “Here's who I need to bring it in.” They're like, “No, you're picking this.” It was the exact same thing. Thank you, Dan, for sharing that. I know it wasn't just me but it's good to know it comes from you. I'm successful but from somebody like you, people are people. Buckminster Fuller, one of my heroes, he goes well into systems, what we can learn from the systems and what we should be aware of dealing with the system. Dan, we have unpacked loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. I am refreshed by this conversation. Anything else that we have not touched on that you would like to share with our readers?
Socrates said, “A life unexamined is a life not worth living.” I'll leave you with that. My favorite poet, Rilke, “There's only one journey. The journey inside.” The Oracle at Delphi, “Know thyself.” The most impactful is writing your narrative. Let me give you a brief story. I teach a group out of Norway in masculine archetypes. Here's one guy's story. The story is, “When I was born, the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck and I died but the doctor revived me. When I went home, my bipolar mother left when I was four years old and my father, needing feminine energy, doted most on my sister and I felt left alone.” That's his story.
Do you want to hear my story for him? I asked him, “Tell me your narrative differently.” That narrative is now your belief system. It's what keeps you stuck in not having this bigger life. He goes, “I don't even know what you're talking about.” I asked him three times and I could see the fear on his face. I said, “Here's the story. When I was born, I came out and the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck. There was a doctor who was brilliant that he knew the gifts in life that I was coming into the world with needed to be here and he refused to give up and he revived me.
When I went home, although my mother had this bipolar issue and although my father seemed to dote most, what became apparent to me was that the gifts in the light that I had were so blinding that they took it to mean that I could fend better for myself than my sister. What that did for me was to allow me to step into my greatness unadulterated.” Which life would you want to live, his or mine? For all of your leaders and all of your readers, tell your story mythopoetic. I just gave you a mythopoetic version.
This is the brilliance that you can see as a leader in your team. I'll give you one other. Viktor Frankl who's another one of my heroes. Viktor Frankl was 63 years old and as you know, he was a survivor of Auschwitz and wrote a phenomenal book on the meaning of life. At 63, he decided he hadn't done enough and decided he was going to be a pilot. He took flying lessons. When you're a pilot, they teach you a thing called crabbing.
Crabbing is that if you're going to fly from point A to point B and you go straight with the headwinds and the different winds, you will always fall below where point B is. What you do is you fly above, and then as you get closer, it will drop you down. If you choose to see your workforce as point A to point B, they will always be less than what you had hoped for. When you can fly up here, you will always see them better than who they are. That's the work that you'll do to have them in their greatness. For me, that's the game.
The audience knows my dad stuff and I'm going to send you some of his books. Eli Marcus from C-Suite asked me that. He’s like, “What was your dad's secret of success?” I said, “He saw the best in everybody and their greatness.” Not to manipulate them and not to con them. That was it. It wasn't that he sold millions of books. It's just that whenever he looked at you, you were like, “I'm the greatest thing in the whole wide world.” That is the most beautiful gift you can give somebody.
I'll leave you with one more. When I was eighteen years old, I lived in California and I was Bobby Kennedy's youth coordinator. I was at the Ambassador the night when he was assassinated. One of the things he said, “Most people see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not?” This is a frame. I was talking about frames. Part of the genius of any leader is being able to reframe. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos totally reframe. This is a real skill that you can acquire.
What is the best way for people to get in touch with you?
We could meet in the quantum field, but for those of you who don't fly up there, LinkedIn is probably the best, Dan Silberberg. Also, if they want, I have a calendar called GO, Go.OnceHub.com/1insight2thrive. I'm happy to give your audience 30 minutes of my best if that's of interest to them. We always want to be giving as leaders. Those two would be the best.
Dan, thank you for the gift to extend continuing with our readers. Please connect with Dan. To our audience out there, I know you have been inspired. If you like what you read, please be sure and ring that bell and hit the subscribe button wherever you're following us. If you would even do us the honor of a review, we would be thankful. Please share this far and wide. There are people out there that would love to know exactly what Dan was talking about. Dan, thank you for dispelling your wisdom. I'm thankful. I'm getting you back on for another one because there's so much to unpack.
This has been great. I appreciate the invitation and you're particularly generative. I feel warm inside and a lot of joy for being here. Thanks for having me.
Likewise, Dan. To our tremendous readers out there, thank you for being a part of our tribe. Never forget to stop paying that price to leadership. Thanks and have a tremendous day.