The Ripple Effect: How Small Moments Create Extraordinary Leaders

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No, this is great.

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I'm thinking about your career, right?

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And being SVP at 30.

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I wonder who that ripple effect leader was for you.

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I'm sure there's a point in time or a person maybe that you can point back to in your career and say, man, if it wasn't for that conversation or that interaction or, you know, that thing, you know, maybe my career goes into a different trajectory.

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There's, you know, I think I was fortunate to have a lot of really, really good managers.

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But there's also, it's just the accumulation of those moments is what I think helped me kind of keep finding that path.

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And by the way, I, you know...

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whatever rose through the ranks pretty quickly in corporate America, but got to a position that I thought I always wanted and realized, geez, this isn't actually where I want to be.

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So, you know, I, and I think part of that is like being committed to this self-reflection of like, who do you want to be in the world?

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What kind of impact do you want to have and how do you want to bring that to life?

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And I was always asking myself those questions and certainly working with other people to have them reflect back to me, you know, what their perspective.

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But mentors, managers, coaches, friends, parents are all people who can create ripple effect moments in our lives to help shape, you know, our careers and who we eventually become.

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Are ripple effect moments created by luck or intention?

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Ooh.

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Good question.

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What I like to say is that, you know, you don't... Ripple Effect leaders don't curate extraordinary moments.

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They just let their humanity show in the ordinary ones.

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So...

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when you can bring your humanity into ordinary moments, you can create a ripple effect moment for somebody else.

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And so there is absolutely intention that is required in this work because the ripple effect mindset is I define it with five qualities, vulnerability, vulnerability,

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kindness, curiosity, empathy, and humility.

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So these are not new things for anybody, but they are really hard to implement.

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They're really hard to practice.

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And so that's why it's a practice.

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And that's why it takes intention to put those into practice.

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I'll tell you a quick story I mentioned just before we got on this call.

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I lost my brother in May just a couple months ago.

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He had stage four colon cancer.

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Also a big golfer and golf was a big part of his life and journey through that process.

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But back in April, I was standing on the jet bridge in Tampa.

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about to board a flight to New York City that I had just booked a few hours earlier because I got a call that he was going into the ICU.

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And I didn't know if I was going up there to say goodbye or what the case may be.

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So obviously I'm very emotional, but I'm standing there just about to board the flight and I feel this hand rest on my shoulder and I turn around

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And there was this woman, she's like in her mid-60s.

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And she just like strikes me as very motherly.

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And so I look at her and she asked me, she says, what's that blue ribbon on your backpack for?

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And I start getting emotional.

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I say, it's for my brother, Markham.

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You know, he's got colon cancer.

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I'm actually on my way to see him right now.

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And she says, well, how old is he?

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And I said, 41.

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And then I completely lose it.

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I like am bawling my eyes out, having a breakdown, and I don't know what to do.

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So I just literally fall into this woman and I give her a hug, like a long five second hug.

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And I pull back and I'm just like, thank you.

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I really, really needed that.

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And it was such a small moment that I don't think she...

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There was something in her that prompted her to say, let me check in with this person or let me...

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There's like a curiosity that she was following.

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But I don't think she was trying to like create a ripple effect moment.

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I think she was just letting her humanity show.

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This person's carrying a blue ribbon.

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I'm curious what that is.

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I want to connect.

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And that small moment has stayed with me for months.

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And it will stay with me forever because we experience a ripple effect moment together.

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And I think the more that we can let our humanity show in these moments, we're going to create extraordinary impact that's going to help.

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That's going to stick with people in a really positive way.

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Yeah, sorry for your loss.

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Thanks for sharing that story.

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You talked about sharing your humanity with others.

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I think it's Brene Brown, maybe, who has a quote about vulnerability.

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It's like vulnerability is sharing your humanness with others.

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Why do you think vulnerability is so hard for leaders?

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I think it comes back to what I was saying earlier about sort of self protection.

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There's, there's a, I don't know, I think there's a, there's a desire to protect one's self, one's job, one's career, one's reputation.

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And I think the narrative is that vulnerability pokes holes in that protection and makes me feel less or be less protected, safe.

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But I think the truth is when you do show more of your humanity and more of your vulnerability, you're...

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you're creating more safety for other people.

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And that has a much greater ripple effect than holding that closer to your chest.

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Yeah, I agree with that.

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I think one of the tough parts about vulnerability is you if you want that from other people, you have to be the first to give it.

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And when you're the first out there, man, it feels scary.

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It feels like you're exposing yourself or, you know, something bad is going to happen.

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All the negative thoughts that you could have in your your brain pops up.

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And I had a leader share with me like I can't tell them I don't know that because then they won't believe me or they won't think I'm credible as a leader.

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But.

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when I think about the stories that I've heard or the experiences that I've had with people being very vulnerable, it doesn't make me want to push them away.

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It actually makes me want to like bring them closer.

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And even as I hear your stories, I can follow a path of your career where there's a lot of vulnerability.

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There's a lot of courage.

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There's, you know, a lot of, um,

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just openness that comes with that, even to get on the stage and share the way that you do.

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It takes a lot of vulnerability.

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It takes a lot of courage.

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I wonder, do you see yourself as a courageous person?

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Um, you know, I, it's not the first word that comes to mind when people say like, how would you describe yourself?

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I courage is not one of them, but have I done a lot of courageous things in my life?

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Absolutely.

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Leaving my job and starting my business takes a lot of courage and a little bit of, um, I don't know, delusion maybe, um, to, to do that.

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Um, yeah.

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I think it takes a lot of courage to stand on stages and share my story.

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And I think that's true for a lot of people.

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You know, I've had people walk out of audiences sometimes in very conservative spaces when they hear my story and takes courage to show up the next time and do the same thing, you know?

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But to your point about vulnerability and

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you know, not wanting to tell people that you don't know something.

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I think a trick that I learned is, especially when I was managing a team of people in organizational development who had technical skills far greater than I did, was being really clear about what your strengths are and what your role really is.

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And empowering other people to do the things that like fill the gaps that you might not have and giving them the opportunity to step in and flex strengths that they have or help, you know, help them work on things that they need to work on too.

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And so, you know, if there are certain things that you don't know or you feel scared to admit that you don't know, yeah.

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Get really clear on what you do know and what you're really good at.

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Communicate that to your team and then say, hey, I could really use your expertise in this area and build a team that can support each other through your, you know, complementary strengths.

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And one of the things that I recognize when I work with leaders, especially those who are individual contributors and now they lead a team, they still have an individual contributor mindset.

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They still think that it's their job to get all the work done.

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And so they'll let someone else do it for now.

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But when we get busy or when things start going fast or when I get under pressure, it's like, OK, move out of my way.

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I'm going to do it.

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And they feel like and sometimes it's true.

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A big part of the reason why they got the job is because.

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They're the smartest in the room or they're the biggest technical expert.

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And I try to convey to leaders and I wonder how you do this as well.

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When you step into a leadership role, your job is not to do everything or even to know everything.

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It's to help drive results through others.

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So my question for you is if you're talking to that leader who is a technical expert, but now they're leading a team of technical experts, how do you coach them through being able to use other people's strength?

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How do you coach them through letting them know, like, hey, it's okay, you're going to bring value in a different way now?

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Well, I think so much of what I've learned about myself and my strengths and how I help other people is less on the...

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tactical here's like three tips that you can use tomorrow and more on the here's how to shift the way that you think about yourself and your impact on other people and how you know how almost more from a psychological standpoint and i think if we can shift the way that people

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again, like see their own influence impacting other people.

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Think about how to show up with these qualities of a ripple effect mindset.

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There are...

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automatically going to show up in a way that creates more trust and connection with other people.

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And I wish when I started leading people and managing people, that I had someone that was helping me get in the right mindset about, you know, how to think about myself, how to think about others.

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And, you know, the tactical stuff is important too.

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And we can talk about how to implement some of the ideas that I have.

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There is a very different mindset from going from individual contributor to people leader.

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And I think we have to get some of those things clear before we...

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you know, start getting into the work.

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Yeah.

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And some of your keynotes, you talk about creating those ripple effect moments.

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I saw one video that was really cool where you did it in the moment with the group, which I think is amazing.

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If I'm a leader at a company right now and I want to be more intentional about this, I wanna be more human, how do I create those leader, those ripple effect moments at my organization?

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What are some ways that I could do that?

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Maybe even this weekend or today?

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I think one of the biggest strengths of a leader, especially someone who I would define as a ripple effect leader, is someone who notices things that other people don't or notices things that often go overlooked.

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So one thing I would recommend is next time, I guess in the work context, if you're in a meeting or you're on a Zoom call, however people are gathering,

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Be really intentional about noticing people's body language, people's participation, people's lack of participation, and just maybe spend the first time doing this just noticing.

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And then maybe there's someone who's not speaking up as much, or maybe there's someone who typically is very chatty but is really quiet.

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Maybe there's someone whose energy just feels a little bit different.

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tuning into the humanness of the people that we're interacting with is going to create trust and connection.

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And people want to feel seen.

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They want to feel heard.

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And there's an amazing research study by Quantum Connections that was put out last year that said that organizations where people felt seen and heard by their leaders are 38.7% more profitable than organizations that are not.

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And so there's...

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You know, there's a sense that feeling seen and heard is sort of like soft and fluffy, but there's real research that supports this as a real business case.

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So just noticing things that other people would overlook, I think, is one thing that you can do immediately today, you know, as you're going through the world.