264: Navigating the Treacherous Ascent to Leadership with Ron Carucci

Pete Mockaitis
Ron, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Ron Carucci
Pete, great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think the first thing that we’ve got to cover head on is that you possess a doorknob collection. What’s the story here?

Ron Carucci
Gosh, you know, you never know how to answer the classic question interviews ask you about, “What’s an interesting fact about you that nobody would know?” And, you know, I was looking around my office and I looked at these big jars I have of these beautiful antique knobs, “Oh, I’m going to put that,” knowing that it would bait somebody to ask.

So a long time ago, as an art endeavor to give a gift to somebody whose life is about opening doors, I created this beautiful sculpture, this sort of glass sculpture which is basically a beautiful tall glass jar filled with, you know, all kinds of antique doorknobs from hundreds of years ago, 50 years ago, every era. So you see decades and decades of stories.

And the metaphor for me was imagine all of the hands that touched these knobs over the years, and the entrances people made into rooms, and all the conversations that ensued. And so I made them for people whose life was about opening doors, was about creating access, creating doorways for people. And then people started asking me to make them.

And so probably, for people where I felt like it was more than I made them, and then I made a giant one for myself because, I thought, I want one of these. But I made it so large that the glass jar broke and exploded and I got really impressed over that. So then I made three little ones out of that same set of collection. So those are sitting in my office on the coffee table by the couch.

And so they’re just a wonderful reminder of, you know, the stories of our life came long before us, and they will go on long after us, and many people had to open doors for us and there are many people relying on us to open doors for them. And it’s a great reminder to think about being part of a much bigger story than the one we just see.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is cool. And you got me thinking, you know, I spend a lot of time looking at doors recently because we just bought this home and we’re doing some renovation. I want my home office to have some sound blocking, you know, studio-esque and did all this research and looking at different doorknobs and their impact on the blocking of sound which is funny, it’s like the opposite metaphor, “Do not pass through here. I need the quiet for a good recording.” And so I’m intrigued. So do you have a preference when it comes to an appearance, a finish of bras or copper or satin nickel, or polished chrome?

Ron Carucci
There’s glass ones in there, there’s crystal ones, there’s leathers, there’s ones that came right, you can tell, right out of the ‘50s, the houses I grew up in. There are door knockers in there. There are skeleton keys. Yeah, there’s just all kinds of…there’s wooden ones from the 1800s in there. There’s ones from fancy large doors. There’s ones from cabinet doors. So, yeah, it’s quite a variety of collection.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. Well, thank you for sharing. That is intriguing and it kind of sets up a cool metaphor here. So I want to talk mostly about Rising to Power, the book. But could you maybe orient us a little bit, what’s your company Navalent all about? And am I pronouncing it correctly?

Ron Carucci
You are.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good.

Ron Carucci
And I’m glad to tell you about us. So I and my colleagues at Navalent get to spend our days traipsing through the hallways of all kinds of organizations: small ones, startup ones, mid-cap ones, large global powerhouses, alongside the journeys of leaders on some pursuit of change, some pursuit of transformation, some pursuit of something better, improved, or get out of some ditch, and helping them construct very complicated journeys of change whether those are strategic or organizational or cultural or their own personal leadership. We help carefully curate the journey with them so that they could actually be successful and reach the aspirations that they dream of reaching.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Alright. Well, it sounds like my kind of place. Well, so now, I want to dig into your book. It’s called Rising to Power which is a juicy title. So, first tell me, what is the main idea and what is it not? Is it about a dictator’s upcoming into their own?

Ron Carucci
No, it’s not about that. We thought we might find them in the research. It’s based on a ten-year longitudinal study of about 2800 people who are all pursuing positions of broader influence in their lives, mostly at the higher ranks of organizations, but it’s a variety. So I know your audience is mostly in their mid-30s and professionals, and so I think that the point in the book certainly apply to all of us in that all of us are pursuing greater influence. We all want to have greater impact. We all want to reach more people and leave positive things behind in our work and make a difference.

And we’ve known for a long time that more than half of those who take on positions of broader influence in organizations fail in their first 18 months. And we’ve known that for 20 years, and it’s just become the new normal. Recruiters love it because it’s an annuity for them but for everybody else it’s a tremendous amount of carnage and wastes in our path and unnecessarily so.

The book began in a personal level when somebody that I had been working with called and I was assuming point of check in, and I was going to hear about great things they had done, and they had been fired. They had started much bigger job 10 months earlier and, yeah, everybody saw them as having great potential and was going to go the distance and could make great impact. And so I couldn’t imagine why it was we could’ve misjudged his potential so greatly, and that I wanted to go back in and find out what happened.

And that investigation led us to the 10-year study to find out that he was really just one more statistic. I thought, “Gosh, we can do better. This is insane that we just accept this as normal.” Why is it that people who look so breathtakingly wonderful in the middle suddenly become disastrous when you move them up? Makes no sense.

And it turns out, after 2700 interviews and a lot of digging, and we sort of stopped about 100 leaders in mid-ascent to see if we could watch in slow motion what was going on to find out what’s causing these people to go tap dancing in these landmines, and how can we up and not do that. So it was a wildly instructive study, difficult in some of the things it revealed in that it’s a wonder any of them are succeeding given all the landmines companies put in their way, and it was inspiring to see that there are many leaders, not only rising and thriving, but sticking a landing and having great impact when they get there, and begin to isolate what it was they were doing that enabled them to be successful.

So it was a pretty robust experience to study all that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Ron, this is so juicy and I’m so intrigued. And so I’d say, hey, just take us there on the story in terms of, with particular emphasis maybe on kind of the most leveraged forces both in terms of what we see in the organizational landscape, and in terms of the actions folks are taking, the mistakes that seem to trip folks up again and again.

Ron Carucci
One of the most common ones, Pete, is right in the very beginning when we start beginning to prepare people or invite them to bigger jobs. And this is any one of us who go on job interviews or who conduct job interviews, can fall under this trap. So the two most common devices we use to make decisions about people’s jobs are the two least reliable: the resume and the interview. Right? But we’re still using those mechanisms to make choices, and people walk through their resume and we tell them stories.

But one of the most dangerous parts of that conversation begins to sound something like, “Wow, look at that great team you led to that result. That’s what we need.” Or, “Look at this brand you built. That’s what we need.” Or, “My gosh, look at the sales team you’re able to drive such results through. That’s what we need.”

And whether you’re on the asking or receiving end of that question, a red flag should go off. The minute someone starts implying that there is this past set of successes that you’re meant to come and repeat, because the implication is that you have a formula, you have a recipe, you have some tried and true approach that you should come apply here, and that is almost always a setup for failure because it’s devoid of any context, right?

And so somebody comes in, starts slapping on their formula, it starts not to work, I start slapping harder, then I get frustrated, people start backing away and failure set in motion. And so never assume that any success you had is repeatable. Never assume anybody else’s success that they’ve had is something you should want repeated. There may be wisdom, principles, ideas, things that gave me experience that they might apply to the next chapter, but it is never a formulaic recipe that they should just simply repeat.

And so how you ask the question and how you help them adapt or how you help yourself adapt, successes or experiences, to the environment you’re going to is critical. And that starts with you understanding that you have to adapt yourself to the environment as much as you have to change it. It’s a two-way process, and most people who believe they have this mythical mandate to repeat some past success skip the part of their own need to adapt.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, wow. That’s fascinating. And it’s sort of intuitive like as you were speaking, it’s like, “Okay, I’m not seeing the problem, I’m not seeing the problem. Oh, okay,” you know? Because it’s just so sort of natural to do just that. It’s like, “We’re looking for someone who had done this. You have done this. Therefore, you will do this and we’re excited.” And so you’re saying that that is by no means predictive, and you’ve shared some stats earlier. In fact, the majority of the time it’s not going to work out the way you had hoped.

Ron Carucci
Just having done it in and of itself is not predictive. If you isolate what competence, right, and that’s what more scientific parts to interviews are showing that if you show a demonstration of competence, tenacity, problem solving, collaboration, working with difficult people, you know, if you can help people extract what was good about what they did but contextualize that to the situation they’re going to be in, that’s predictive.

Just having checked the box off, even if they’d done it three times in their career, is not at all predictive that they can do it again in your environment or your context or in your particular culture, and send them the implied message that you believe they can and, in fact, that’s what you’re hiring them for, is in fact almost always a setup for failure.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Intriguing. Can you speak more about this? That message is a setup for failure in what way and how?

Ron Carucci
In that I’m telling you, “Just come here and repeat what I’ve done.” So I don’t come in looking to learn, I don’t come in looking to understand, “How did the problem you’re in even get here? How did the situation that seems to need what I bring arise? Who caused it? Who are the people here? What have they tried? And how do I need to build credibility with them, build respect with them? How do I need to adapt in this environment in order to be credible here, in order for my ideas to prevail?”

“If I simply come in and start doing, well, my first thing is always that I, you know, start with assigning these taskforces, or I’ve always gone out and just gotten this customer segmentation data, or I’ve always gone out and this is the technology I use. I’ll bring this technology in.” And without any sense for the havoc I’m wreaking, how others are metabolizing this, what ideas they might have, without any sense of the people who I have to live with what I’m building, why would they want to—because now is an indictment, right? All you’re doing is judging and indicting.

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, you did it wrong. Let me show you how it’s really done. Watch and learn, guys.”

Ron Carucci
Exactly, Pete, that’s the posture. And how often the one thing you hear that people get most sick of new people is when they begin every sentence for the first four months, “Well, when I was at Johnson & Johnson what we did was…” or, “…the change we did was…” So you got hired because you came from this iconic brand, “Well, at Microsoft what we did was…” and all I hear, and the minute you say that name I stop listening.

But within 10 weeks, you can almost bet casino money on this, people in the break room saying, “If I hear Microsoft one more time, if I hear Johnson & Johnson one more time, I’m going to throw up.” Now, it could be that anything that followed that statement is brilliant. It could be that the idea is perfectly suited. Nobody is going to hear it.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And so I guess I’m more diplomatically suave astute way to even if you wanted to share that it just maybe have a bit more of a Socratic or curious questioning approach in terms of, “Have you tried to do this?” Or, “What are our thoughts around that?”

Ron Carucci
Exactly. Absolutely. Ask questions, be curious, find out what they’ve learned, and if you have to offer an idea, offer an idea. The origins of the idea are irrelevant.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Ron Carucci
Let the idea start its own narrative. If you think that talking about the last big company you came from as the place you saw the idea worked is the basis of its credibility, then why do I care about the idea?

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect.

Ron Carucci
As I say, that’s great. We’re not J&J.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Ron Carucci
That’s great. We’re not Microsoft, right? And so all I’m telling you is I’m judging you because you’re not.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Okay. That’s very instructive. So there’s a whole sort of cluster theme associated with, “Hey, you did that there. We want you to repeat it.” And then you tried to repeat it and then all sorts of havoc can unfold with regard to you’re annoying people because you keep mentioning that you’re not having a posture of curiosity and learning and adaptation, so that’s sort of one cluster of trouble that emerges there. Are there some other findings that are noteworthy in this study?

Ron Carucci
Well, so the other thing is that, you know, when you start getting frustrated with your brilliant ideas not working, you start to judge people. You start to walk around and saying things like, “How did these people made any money here?” Or you go to your hiring manager and you say, “You didn’t tell me it was this bad,” right? And then the halo becomes a noose, you start hanging yourself.

And as people are backing away from you, you don’t realize you’re becoming isolated, right? And that is sure signs of death. And, of course, then the classic statement we all hear when they had to boot your butt out is, “Well, he just wasn’t a fit.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Ron Carucci
Right? I mean, it’s almost so cliché at how predictable this is. The other one is when your whole relationship landscape changes. So let’s imagine you rise up to a position where the people who used to be your peers now report to you, the people who used to be your bosses are now your peers, people who used to report to you aren’t anywhere near you anymore.

And the entire relational landscape changes, and people either treat you like you’ve changed or they try and treat you like you haven’t changed, right? And so all those boundaries, if you don’t intentionally renegotiate them, they become really awkward. And so people either start expecting to create favor with you, or they start withholding information from you because they’re not sure they can trust you now, and you feel really alienated, you feel like an alien.

You feel like you’re this guy who just arrived from a different planet and people are looking at you funny, or you walk into a room and they stop talking, or they walk into your office and they start asking really innuendo kinds of questions, trying to get information out of you, or leverage a level of intimacy they had with you before to try and get special treatment.

Or that relational disruption, for some people who aren’t ready for it, can really be paralyzing, can be really uncomfortable, can feel really off-balancing, and people who do it make the mistake of going native and getting all in, or they pull away from people and severe relationships rather than saying, “Okay, how does this relationship need to be redefined in my new world? What parts of how we used to interact can we keep?” And what parts have to change and really having healthy honest forward-looking conversation so that you don’t unnecessarily severe relationships or unnecessarily go native and get exploited.

Pete Mockaitis
Ron, this is so good. You know, it shows that you’ve had a lot of conversations, a lot of people, and have zeroed in on patterns, and there’s a real realness and practicality to it. It’s so good. Is there more?

Ron Carucci
Well, sure. So I think the last one I’d offer, and this maybe for some of your listeners who maybe are aspiring to bigger jobs, or maybe who just got one. But the problem becomes when you’re leading a large organization, so that everybody that you lead is not directly touching you or near you or physically with you, where you may have people you lead in other locations, around the country or maybe even around the world. Or there’s several levels between you and everybody you lead.

The biggest alienation from many leaders there is that now their life plays out on the Jumbotron, right? They’re now this bigger than life version of them. I tell these leaders, “Just assume that there’s a megaphone strapped to your mouth 24/7. Everything you say and do is amplified. Everything you do has meaning attached to it. If you walk down the hallway fast, ‘Oh, she’s angry.’ If you walk out of a meeting scratching your head, ‘Oh, my gosh, she’s upset.’”

The best people would just read cues. They could be wildly irrational and inaccurate but just know that you’re now on the Jumbotron and a way for people to concoct to you, people to create versions of you, people that you now have folk-loving told about you in the hinterlands and places you’ve never been before, people are going to quote things you said you never said, “Well, John said…” “I never said it.”

And for many leaders that just can be so off-putting and disorienting because they don’t understand, “How is this happening?” It’s just the price of leadership. It’s the price of walking in organizations where people have to make up a story if they don’t know the answer, and so they have to interpret reality in ways that makes sense to them even if it’s not rational.

And there are ways to counterbalance some of this with how transparent you are, how you communicate, how you choose to be accessible and how you make people know you in ways that mitigate their need to make you up. But you can’t get away from all of it. And, to me, leaders try and set out on making sure that they neutralize all of that stuff. And, of course, it’s can’t be done. It’s a full-time job.

So just getting used to the higher altitude and the thinnest of the oxygen up there, you need to take more breaths just like climbing a mountain, you have to get used to the fact that there are some elements of how you lead and how you’re perceived that are simply out of your control.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well, so maybe we could get sort of one hopeful note within that. You said there are a number of things you can do. Do you have a sort of 80/20 prescription in terms of, “And this is probably one that has a lot of bang for the buck when you find yourself there”?

Ron Carucci
Well, I think the best defense is a good offense, right? If there’s important messaging you need to get out, if there’s important influence you want to have, be vulnerable. Your vulnerability and your humanity are your two greatest assets. Let people know you and let people know that you know you’re flawed.

Talk about the places you know you’re not good. Talk about the things you’re working on. Talk about your own personal values, what you want for the group. Be accessible in a human way to people, that way you’re not having to, you know, so we have people in countries around the world, or locations around the country that you can’t always get to, and obviously use video conference when you can so you can be seen versus just written communications. Do whatever you can to create cohesive intimacy, acknowledging the distance that’s there without having to be physically present and down the hallway and be able to pop in to everybody you lead.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. And I can recall in some of the early days of my career, I remember I was working at Bain, starting a new case, you’ve got a manager who’s almost a partner and you’re working alongside, and you sort of talk a little bit about professional development goals, and I say, “Oh, yeah, I’m kind of looking to work on this, this, and this.” And then he just said, “Okay, yeah, great. Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind. And here’s some things I’m working on.”

And it’s like it’s so… it was like my mind was blown in the sense of that level of humility and vulnerability, just made me go, “Whoa. This person is real.” And I just felt instantly like, “Oh, I can talk to this guy about stuff,” instead of having to worry about the things that are permissible and impermissible to be shared with them.

Ron Carucci
Yup. Well, that’s one reason why Bain continues to get voted in the top three companies to work for, right? You have leaders who are really people know they care. And impressionable service where you can have all kinds of cutthroat rivalry and all kinds of horrible individualistic cannibalistic behavior. It’s wonderful that they have worked so hard. I’ve always thought, “Gosh, if I didn’t have my own consulting firm, Bain would be one of the places I’d love to work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it was a great experience in many ways

Ron Carucci
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
But I want to touch based on, so, I think a number of listeners will say, “Okay, not yet an executive. Those sound like interesting and problems that I hope to have some years down the line.” What are some of your pro tips for what can just convey this guy or gal is a rising executive and can set folks up for success in seeing that altitude sooner rather than later?

Ron Carucci
Well, the reality is that the four dimensions that we found, in the data, these four patterns, no matter how we cut the data up, almost a hundred regression analysis, these four patterns were the continued hallmark of those whose influence stuck, whose impact was sustained, and their patterns of behavior and influence we can all use, it doesn’t matter where you are.

So the first one we call breadth. This was people who understood that the organization was made up of many parts, right? So when you get to the top you can glue it together. But even from where you’re at, you know, there are some border, there are some other department, there are some colleague, there’s somebody across a moat that you have to work with, that relies on you, you have to collaborate with. Do you understand how to bring cohesion where there’s fragmentation?

Organizations are natural fragmenting parts, they are naturally pulled apart with centrifugal force. Can you cross a border? Do you know how to create connections across boundaries? Can you appreciate the world? If you’re in finance, do you understand what sales has to do? If you’re marketing, do you understand what supply chain has to do?

Who are the counterparts around the organization who you tend to get annoyed with or you tend to be frustrated by and think, “Gosh, if they knew how much havoc they wreak in my life.” Well, the chances are you probably wreak the same havoc in their life. So how do you cross those borders and understood how you work this into a larger story? The more you can see how the whole organization works the more general a contributor you can be.

The second we call context. So this is the person who comes in and read the tea leaves, right? Are you curious? Are you asking questions? Do you know the trends to disrupt your industry? Do you know what the competitive moods are? Regardless of where you are in the organization, do you know why your customers are choosing you? Do you understand the landscape of which you sit? And are you seriously asking questions to learn what’s happening around you and why? Can you read context? Can you read the context of your culture, and why certain norms and behaviors are accepted and those that aren’t?

The third one we call choice. So this is the ability to make really hard calls. Leadership is being able to disappoint people, that’s what it means, right? So, can you say no? Can you narrow the focus of the organization? Can you prioritize people’s work so that you aren’t over-committing them?

You never walk around an organization and hear somebody say, “Wow, we just have too few priorities. Gosh, we’re way too focused.” Right? You hear, “My gosh, how many more things you’re going to put on my plate? How much resource do you think I have?” Over-committed, over-extended, under-focused, priorities du jour, changing priorities by the day. And so great choice makers can make hard calls. They can narrow people’s focus.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so powerful.

Ron Carucci
They can choose what to work on and choose to what to say no to. And it’s not about saying no to bad ideas. Any dummy can do that. But say no to even great ideas because other great ideas have to prevail.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. You know, we had Greg McKeown who wrote Essentialism back in episode 38, and he said that originally the word priority was never pluralized. There’s only one.

Ron Carucci
Yup. I love that but I actually interviewed Greg a few times for my Forbes column. Great guy and a great book.

And the last one we call connection. You know, not surprisingly these are the relationships that you have with people above you, alongside you, and below you. All around you, direct reports, peers and bosses, you build relationships of deep trust, deep credibility and reliability. And one of the key differentiating factors of these, they call the relationships, were not so much asking, “Who do I need things from?” But these people set themselves apart by actively seeking ways to help others succeed.

They actively ask the question, “Who can I help? Who needs what I have to offer?” And so if you haven’t done it, seek down a map of your stakeholders, the key relationships in your organization regardless of where you sit, and whose success can you contribute to. Who can you say to, “How can I help you be better at what you do today?”

And people who actively seek to put others’ needs on their agenda, those are the folks that are remembered and given opportunities to have greater impact.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is so good. That is so good. Ron, this is excellent overview which I know has a lot of depth underneath it. But tell me, is there anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Ron Carucci
No, I think we’re good.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, then can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ron Carucci
My mentor, she’s still my mentor, has been for 30 something years. Early in my career she said to me, “Nothing is irrevocable except death.” And the reminder is every day we get second chances, we get do-overs. Not on everything but on many more things than we give ourselves access to. And if we could free ourselves from the fears, the anxieties, the projections and judgments of others about us, if we could shed those we might make more courageous and optimal choices.

So, remember it’s okay to skin your knees. You get do-overs.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Ron Carucci
So my favorite Jim Collins book is actually one of his most extreme books but I love How the Mighty Fall. It was this interesting leftover bit of research about patterns on arrogance and failure. It’s a brilliant piece of work and it’s one of my favorite pieces of research.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, my next question is about a favorite book. Is it the same or you have another?

Ron Carucci
I think David Whyte’s book Crossing the Unknown Sea should be required reading for the planet. I love the notion of work as a pilgrimage of life.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Ron Carucci
In business, I’m a big fan of Zoom. I know we’re not on it but I just love Zoom. It’s all the cool things it can do to connect people, to communicate people, to capture great conversations. It’s really cool.

Pete Mockaitis
Agreed. And how about a favorite habit?

Ron Carucci
Gosh, my wife would say, “How are you going to answer that one?” You know, one of them is, I know a habit or a ritual, but down the hallway from my office in the conference room where our kitchen is, I have this collection of coffee mugs. People that are listening will say I’m a hoarder, my doorknobs.

But they’re mugs that I’ve gathered from all over the world, from different experiences with different trips and different people. But each of them is attached to a person or an experience I had with a friend or someone in my family or a colleague. And so when I have coffee in the morning, when I pick that mug, it forces me to remember somebody really important to me to grateful, and I start my day remembering that my life is bigger than just the one…the story I made up, whatever challenges I have that day, and to start by being thankful for the people in my story that make my life as rich and meaningful as it is.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Thank you. And do you have a particular nugget you share in your consulting, your speaking, your writing that really seems to connect and resonate, folks are maybe quoting yourself to you, that’s an authentic quote as opposed to a mythic quote that’s mistakenly ascribe to executives?

Ron Carucci
I’ve never said that. No, I think it’s a question that I ask people that it can be a little bit off-balancing. But I love to ask it when I’m about to start any one of our diagnostic works, when I’m about to go do my MRI on an organization. And I love to ask this, “So what am I going to hear?” Because I love to both test their predictive nature and their intuitive insight. But they love trying to guess before they get the data, “I wonder what they’re going to hear?”

And, of course, as they begin to presume what it is I’m going to hear, they’re forced to test the assumptions around, “Why do I think that? And I wonder what he’s going to hear, and how do I know?” And so I love to put people on notice to say, “Okay, let’s go see what actually you’re doing here.” But it forces them to test the assumptions they’ve taken for granted often of which is some of the reason they had to call me in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Ron, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Ron Carucci
I’d love them to come to do a couple of things. One, on our website, Navalent, N-A-V-A-L-E-N-T.com. We’ve got a great quarterly magazine on leadership and organizations and teams and all kinds of fun stuff we’d love to have you subscribe to. It’s free. We have a really exciting virtual summit coming up called Leading Through Turbulence and, wow, what a lineup we’ve got.

We’ve got Jon Haidt and Dan Pink and Dorie Clark and Whitney Johson and Nilofer Merchant and Mark Haughey and CEOs of big companies and entrepreneur CEO startups, and thought leaders of all kinds, but 25 speakers in all. It’s March 5 through 9, so come sign up for that. It’s also free for the week of March 5 through 9. You can also, for a nominal fee, buy an all-access pass for you that gets you a free coaching conversation with one of us from Navalent and get you a free e-book and all kinds of stuff. So we’d love to have your listeners join us for that. That’s going to be a great set of conversations and really rich content.

We also have a free e-book. So if you’re facing some change in your life, and leading change of some kind is important, if you come to Navalent.com/transformation we have a free e-book on leading transformation that you would find, I think, interest in and enjoyable. So I’m also at Twitter @roncarucci, and I’m on LinkedIn as well.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Ron Carucci
Yes, go ask five people for feedback on how they experience you, and make them tell you the truth. Some of them will go, “Oh, you’re great. You’re great,” and say what you want to hear. But say, “No, really. What’s one thing I could do better to help you do a better job?” Go ask people for how they experience you as a colleague.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I really like that. And so when you say how they experience you, could you give us a few articulations of that because my hunch is some folks would say, “Oh, what do you mean? I think you’re a cool dude, Ron. Thanks.”

Ron Carucci
So what’s the one thing I do that most annoys you?

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.

Ron Carucci
What’s the one thing I do that makes your life easier? What’s the one thing you think that if I improve could make my career better? What’s the one thing that everybody else is talking about me behind my back and rolling their eyes about that no one thinks I know?

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. I love it. Well, Ron, thank you so much for taking this time. This is thought-provoking. It’s powerful and I’m really excited to put some of this into action myself, and some eye-opening questions and things to go after. So I wish you tons of luck with the book, and your consulting, and the summit, and all the cool things you’re doing there.

Ron Carucci
Pete, it’s been a real pleasure. Thanks so much for chatting with me. Good to be with you.