What does courageous leadership actually look like in a world of nonstop disruption? Cindy Solomon, founder of the Courageous Leadership Institute, brings fire and clarity to a conversation about leading when conditions are uncertain, expectations are high, and change is constant. With insights on resilience, perception vs. reality, and why women are uniquely equipped to lead in times like these, this episode is a wake-up call for anyone ready to lead with more boldness, skill, and intention.
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The Skills Of Courageous Leadership: Building Bold, Resilient Leaders To Thrive During Uncertain Times With Founder Of The Courageous Leadership Institute, Cindy Solomon
What does it take to lead when the ground keeps shifting and the stakes are high? For my guest, Cindy Solomon, the answer starts with courage. As a leadership expert, Author and Founder of the Courageous Leadership Institute, Cindy has spent decades helping teams of executives of Fortune 500 and beyond navigate in certainty with clarity, competence, grit and courage. There’s no wonder and you’ll see at the end of this episode why she’s been recognized as a guru on the subject.
In this episode, we explore what it means to have courageous conversations, especially in times of chaos and what the difference is between those times versus constant disruptions, how to focus on what would control in a situation as a supposed to what so many do, which is have a knee jerk reaction to perception versus reality. We look at how thinking behind the question, what’s the worst thing that can happen to what’s the best that can happen?
From high stakes boardrooms to everyday moments of truth, Cindy does share how leaders can build trust, speak up powerfully and yet vulnerable and stay centered when everything around them is in flux. The result, workplace cultures that thrive versus survive regardless of the world around them. Read and let me know what you think. Don’t forget to stay to the end of your KB takeaways. Believe me, there are many. Enjoy.
I’m so excited to be introducing one of my favorite people who I’ve met throughout my career and it is none other than Cindy Solomon, who’s the Founder of the Courageous Leadership Institute. Cindy, thank you so much for joining us.
My pleasure, Kate. Always.
Will you for just two seconds also share with folks the guru acknowledgment that you just got?
This is a global Guru institute that every year makes a list of who are the global gurus who are making the biggest difference in different categories. Over the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to be in the Top 10 of the Top 30 Global Gurus for leadership, which has been fantastic and such an honor. I love it. I’m sharing the list with people like Daniel Pink and Brené Brown and all those folks. I feel thrilled with that.
From Corporate VP To Global Guru: Cindy’s Unconventional Path
As you should. I just wanted everyone to appreciate how fortunate I am. I am so excited that you’ve agreed to join us. Let’s dive in, my friend. We’ll get into the coaching, the courageous, the chaos and how to manage and all of that. I want to start first with you. How did you even begin? How did this come to pass that this was going to be life’s calling as it were?
I wish I could say there was a master plan, I had it all thought out or I took these five steps. It was very random to be honest with you. I’m a recovering corporate executive. I spent the first sixteen years of my career inside organizations and left Corporate America as VP of Sales and Marketing for a large package goods company that was in the Fortune 50. When I left, I was just going to take a year off and then decide whether I wanted to go back inside. I was fortunate enough that in my corporate career, I had always done main stage work for every organization that I worked for because I loved speaking.
I had been speaking all along for various corporations and all the roles that I held corporately. The day after my last day of work, my former company called me and said, “We screwed up. Can you please go do this keynote down in Arizona for us? We’ll pay you.” I said, “Fine. I’m happy to do it.” I go down and it just so happens I’m following the number one business speaker in the world at that time. A gentleman by the name of Gary Heil. He gets up and does his thing then they feed the audience baked pasta for lunch then I get to go on.
You can imagine what baked pasta does to an audience of, let’s just say older men that happen to be in this particular audience because this was a long time ago in the ‘90s. I had to wake them up, so I did a ten-minute comedy routine about Gary Heil’s speech and all the things that I disagreed with in his presentation to wake them up and then launch into my presentation. Unfortunately for me, Gary’s flight had been canceled and he was sitting in the back of the room unbeknownst to me.
He came up the aisle at me and said, “Who do you work for?” I looked at my watch and I said, “As of 24 hours ago, nobody.” He said, “You need to come work with me.” I was like, “Doing what?” He said, “Speaking.” I was like, “Somebody will pay me just to speak? Okay.” I twist my arms. That launched my speaking career. He took me under his wing and taught me the business.
He retired 3 or 4 years later, then I started my own company. I started the leadership development piece years ago when I had people coming to me saying, “Your keynote was great but now you need to teach our leaders how to do what you’re talking about.” That’s when we started to scale and that’s when we became a global leadership development company.
The Enduring Power Of Courageous Leadership Skills
Now, you’ve coached and trained all these thousands of leaders across every industry. We talk a lot about when you were one of the first who talked about this whole notion of courageous leadership and courageous conversation. How has courageous leadership in your mind evolved over the years?
It’s interesting because you would think with so much difference. I’ve been doing this work for two decades. Now, you would think that in two decades that definition would have changed a ton, but it hasn’t. Courageous leadership, to me, especially now, is simply a set of skills that you can choose to nurture and build if you want to be more courageous. Whether it’s in your work or in your life.
While those skills changed a little bit, most of them haven’t changed a lot. We talked about the first step to courageous leadership is taking a pause. Is that harder to do now then it was in 1996 when I started this? Absolutely. We didn’t have phones, watches and everything communicating with us constantly. Is it harder? Yes. Is the skill the same? Yes. Interestingly, it hasn’t changed a lot.
To that end, you’ve talked a bit about courage and how it’s not a trait but it’s a skill. As you’ve had to make decisions, changing and shifting and all of this and even frankly, probably taking the company once Gary handed the keys over. What’s a moment in your only leadership where he had to walk the talk and it wasn’t easy?
The best example is COVID. When I had a global live leadership company on March 11th and then on March 13th, I had to figure out how to be a virtual global leadership company. We talk a lot about any leadership, whether it’s courageous leadership or other things that you do. That you practice your leadership skills so much that it becomes muscle memory. When the chaos does hit, you’re able to start doing things automatically. You don’t fall back into old habits and panic and just react.
I’ll tell you. It took every ounce of my being and let’s be clear, I panicked. I’m sure we all did. The first two weeks, I don’t even remember them. They’re just a blur, but after that, I had to take a breath and apply my own learning. I even did things that we teach in our courageous leadership 101 class like what are my true strengths? How can I apply those to what’s happening now? How can I take a pause every single day and make choices about how I’m going to spend my time that day? I’d be sitting here sweating with the effort of not simply reacting and going back to old ways of doing things.
I was just thinking because up to that time I would think, the fact that there was so much in real life and being in the same room and that playing such a big role. Clearly, though, moving forward because you’re very successful, it was a surprise. It had been a surprise. People are so getting what I’m saying. It’s still landing.
I had to teach myself entirely different techniques to have it land in a virtual setting from the technology, to the logistics, to my delivery, to teaching all of my facilitators, how to deliver differently and how to structure the exercises and the training differently. It was changing the tires on the car as it was flying down the highway.
You probably had to bring up your own question and bring up a lot of self-compassion you had to have while stretching the synopsis and making it and learning because to your point, it’s so easy to just stay where you are and fall into the same groups and patterns.
You know because you do public speaking as well, you get so much energy from the audience. I had to find a way. I did 72 keynotes in the first twelve months after COVID hit virtually. I had to figure out new ways to keep my energy up to be able to get energy from that little blue dot of the camera rather than from an audience that was relating to me. It was a fascinating time. Had it not been honestly for me being able to have some tough conversations with myself about how to approach that, I don’t think the company would have survived.
I would bet that would be the case, especially if there’s so much challenge taking place. One of the things when we were talking about what we wanted to cover and all of this, is life is so crazy. Not just one little bit of life but all parts of life. You mentioned the word chaos earlier and it’s not new but we know it sure as heck is getting louder and cropping up so much. What’s the difference between leading in a crisis and leaving a steady constant state of disruption? I would even think that’s probably relevant. It’s relevant for entrepreneurs but it’s probably for corporations as well.
It’s relevant for both groups completely. I’m an entrepreneur myself and I can tell you it’s constantly relevant. The only difference is the skills are the same but the difference is in making a choice about what’s truly a crisis and what’s simply a disruption. Even just go back to the COVID example for a second. That’s when I started to feel in my bones that in order to be successful, whether its corporately in a leadership role or as an entrepreneur or as a parent even, is controlling what you can control and taking a pause, taking a breath and thinking through, “What is it that I can control?” We can control whether it’s during a crisis or during constant disruption. That’s just business now. I don’t care what industry you were in.
It’s just annoying. I agree.
It’s just the everyday craziness. That is the world that we’re living in, and none of that’s going to change. This is what it is now going forward. It’s making the choice about what you can control in that moment in order to make progress. The trap we fall into is when a crisis hits or what we see is a crisis. Whether it’s a real crisis or not. When a crisis hits, if we simply react to it, if we simply have go after our first nature reaction, I would bet 50% to 80% of the time will fail because we haven’t taken that pause to think about, “Instead of just reacting in this moment, what within here can I control to make progress?”
I started asking myself that question when we were trying to revamp the company over those two months after March 13th of 2020. I can’t control a pandemic. I can’t control my corporate clients pulling back. I can’t control them canceling contracts. What can I control? When you were at Watermark, we did this with you guys. I just reached out to all my former and current clients and said, “I know things are nuts. You don’t have to pay me. Would you like me to do a courageous leadership webinar for your people? What are you struggling with? How can I help?”
I was something I could control. I couldn’t control all this other stuff, but I could control my own actions in that moment. Doing that when things settled down, led to keeping my business going. The difference between crisis and constant disruption is primarily in our own minds. A crisis is something to react to. Constant disruption is something that you strategically plan for and take action against. You handle it. It’s making that choice.
A good friend of mine taught me a very valuable lesson many years ago. We might not be able to stop our first reaction to something, but we can always make a choice about the second. Even if you’ve already started to react, you still can take that pause. Take a stop, step back and say, “I didn’t mean to do that. Now, I’ve done it. That’s okay. Let’s make a choice about what I do next.”
We might not be able to stop our first reaction to something, but we can always make a choice about the second. Share on XWhat it also makes me think about, do you see a difference of multiple generations that we work in the workforce? Is that a hard thing for a CEO of an established company versus a founder? I would think that for founders, they are always in a state of disruption but I could also get panicked.
I’m working with a couple of founders like a very large billion-dollar founder-led organizations and what’s interesting about it is when you’re a startup founder, there’s no rules. There’s no wrong. There’s just, “We’re going to try it. If it doesn’t work, that hurt. I’m not going to do that again. Let’s do something else.” They act from what we call blind courage, which is a type of courage we’ve identified. They don’t attach emotionally to the failures. They just move right through it and go, “That didn’t work. What do we do next?”
They call them learning.
Exactly. You either win or you learn. Those are the two choices. What happens is, the larger the organization becomes and the more the founder is committed. You can’t lead a billion-dollar company through blind courage or through just jumping through or running through the fire. You have to be more strategic. You have to slow down and be simple. You have to make small changes before you can make big changes.
What happened is, those founders hit a point where they are no longer the right person for the company. They need somebody else who can slow it down, be more deliberate, take the pauses and make the choices. It’s very interesting. The irony is, corporate leaders think they want to be more like founder-led organizations but that doesn’t work inside of corporations because of all those reasons.
Blind courage means not getting emotionally attached to failure. People who have it move right through, asking: “Okay, that didn't work. What’s next?” Share on XThe context is so different.
What is interesting, don’t be confused by being entrepreneurial because being entrepreneurial is a totally different set of skills. It’s making smart choices, taking small risks, trial and error and all those things. Corporations do need more of that. What mistakes are leaders making now? How are they reacting to that chaos? What I see in both large and small organizations now because we have clients across the spectrum. I’ve got $50 million clients to $100 billion clients.
Everybody’s making this same mistake, which is their reacting to a perception first versus a reality. They’re reacting before they need to because they’re panicking based on perception and all the influx of, “There’s tariffs. There’s no tariffs. We’re all going to die. We’re not going to die.” They put change in place before they need to. Now, there are some industries that have been hit hard. I know I have traveled with leisure clients. They’re just getting slammed.
I have one client who will go unnamed who has 30% of their business comes from Canada that stopped overnight. In those companies, there is a business reality that they are reacting to with these layoffs. I think, though, based on my experience across the 30 different industries we’re working in. People are reacting before the need exists because they’re afraid. The uncertainty has created that fear.
I always call that preaching pre-freaking.
They’re all pre-freaking. Unless, they’re in a directly impacted business already and I get it. I’m an entrepreneur myself. I’m thinking about it. How do I get more money in the bank? They’re pre-freaking but it’s understandable and I get why. That’s part one. How people handle the communication around this is so important. The hardest ask for a leader in a time of chaos is to be vulnerable and yet, that’s the time when it’s most important.
I was on the phone with a CEO. It’s a smaller company and he’s having to make some layoffs. These are people who have been with him for decades and they’re like family. He shared with me how he was going to position it and he’s a big feeler. You didn’t get that at all from what he was saying. He wasn’t talking about how it was impacting him for all the right reasons. I said, “How does laying these people off make you feel?” He said, “I feel heartbroken. I feel like I’m going to cry and I can’t get a full breath in my chest.”
I said, “That’s what you need to tell them. You need to tell them how horrible this is for them and you know it because this is how you’re feeling. In order to keep the company going, this is what you have to do and you know that it’s a sacrifice on the parts of those people that you’re having to let go.” He’s in retail and retail is just getting kicked around the block.
He emailed me and said, “It went so much better than he ever expected. Also, as hard as it was, everyone left the room while in tears feeling as though they were respected and cared for.” It’s about being vulnerable and being clear what’s the why behind it. It ultimately is always about the business and sadly, that eventually impacts people.
All leaders say it’s lonely at the top. It’s just one moment when you’re arm by arm, side by side and sharing a real human moment. In this day and age, that’s sadly so rare because people always posture or they feel that they have to be courageous. You have to have the big hard armor when in actuality not so much.
As a matter of fact, they don’t work against you every single time. One other thing that is important if anybody’s reading that has to lay people off. We spend a lot of time talking about the people that were laying off and how you handle that situation. There’s this whole other difficult situation of the people who are left. The survivors and not only they have survivor guilt, but their teams are all impacted. You’re going to have all of the whiny stuff that happens about, “I had two people on my team let go. Why did they only have one?”
One of the things that I’ve been talking to a lot of my clients about is not only do you have to make the people who you’ve laid off feel respected, cared for, heard and seen. You also have to do that while creating a new level of engagement with the people who are left. Give them a problem to solve immediately.
If you do the layouts on a Wednesday morning, on Wednesday afternoon, you meet with the people who are left. You say, “You are the people I have chosen to have in the boat with me. Here are the five problems we need to solve. Here are the teams I’ve created.” You immediately give them a future focused task to make them feel and create the new team that’s going to go forward.
Beyond Transparency: The Power Of Understanding “Why”
That makes so much sense because instantly to your point, it redirects and makes everyone again focus on, “Here we are. That was sad. That was awful.” We still have this thing that we need to run because, frankly, our customers and everybody’s depending on us. That’s what it takes to get to work. One of the things I am curious about because that’s showing vulnerability. It’s this whole notion and it comes up so often, especially across multiple generations but everybody say they want transparency.
Your laughing already tells me you know what I’m talking about. Everybody wants to know about the numbers of this or that. When I have often done that and shared that, I have prefaced it with, I want to make sure and not to be weird but that you’re ready for it. I’m happy to share these things but I need to make sure you’re going to understand it and you’re not going to be devastated when you say red ink. Negatively, you see more than one zero. What advice would you give to people as we want to provide clarity when there is none and transparency? How do we do that?
I feel like we need to replace it because I agree with you. The transparency thing is tricky. It can sometimes or many times create more havoc rather than less havoc. We need to reframe that idea. Rather than talking about transparency, talk about helping people understand the why of what’s happening either around them, to them, for them, or below them. Being able to help people understand why these actions matter to the customer, to the business and to them. I always believe that dopamine rules are life. Dopamine, the happiness hormone, that you get when you’re either winning or learning.
Those are the two states, where you get the biggest dopamine hit. It opens your mind up. It gives you energy. It makes you happy. It creates engagement. It does all the magical things. When people can connect their heads and their hearts, they get a dopamine release. The head-heart connection happens when they fully understand what they’re contributing or what they can contribute and the why behind it.
When people can connect their heads and their hearts, they get a dopamine release. This head-heart connection happens when they fully understand what they're contributing, and the 'why' behind it. Share on XIf you go to somebody and say, “I need you to work these numbers up.” “I’ll do it. I’m going to work the numbers up.” One of the most important things post-layoffs is that we find a way to increase X, Y, and Z and decrease X, Y, and Z over the next four weeks because if we do that, maybe we can hire some of these people back. Now, how engaged in working the numbers am I going to be?
Ten to a hundred times more and you’re telling the truth which is great. Otherwise, people are just feeling like, “I’m slave labor just having to do this stuff to what end and will anything ever come from it?”
That’s what we should replace this transparency idea with because I don’t think it’s about showing people the spreadsheet and the numbers. It’s talking to them about why it is that we’re having to take the actions that we’re having to take. I’m asking you to do the things that I’m asking you to do and how can you help me win.
Women Leaders In Chaos: Built For Disruption
It’s also, honestly, making sure that everyone within the company understands that they’re playing an active role. Even if it’s big, you may feel like you’re just a number. You’re not. This is what your part is and this is why it’s crucial at all levels if it’s 3 or 4 deep. I want to take a little shift now to this whole situation of women in the workplace because that’s how we got to know each other.
The New York Times back in March revealed a list of words we’re not allowed to use. You’ve worked with so many topics across all the different Fortune 500s like senior women. Sadly, not as many as we’d like but nonetheless. How are senior women navigating this moment differently and what is shifting generationally?
What I’m seeing which I find fascinating is not necessarily what I would have expected to see. For those women and men in the audience who care about the women in the audience, everyone knows that to be a senior executive woman you have had to fight, negotiate, put your duke’s up, figure out which battle to fight, deal with the chaos and deal with unfairness your entire career. We are skilled at this much more so than our male counterparts.
We are also skilled at managing multiple levels of chaos in different parts of our lives at the same time. Again, which are many but not all. Many of our male counterparts are not. What I’m seeing and I’m waiting for the article to come out about this because somebody’s got to be looking at it. Companies with female executives of more than 50% C-suite or CEOs are performing much better even in hard hit industries. Fashion is a great example, retail and fashion. If you look across those companies, you look at Packed Fun, Southern Tide, Dilute, and a couple of others that are female CEO led. They are performing so much better than many of their counterparts.
It’s because we already know how to do chaos. We already know how to do this. Are the tariffs fair? No. Is anything fair now? No. We’re used to that. That’s our everyday life. Women leaders are dealing with it, and you see it at the board level. I was with a very prominent board member and she was talking about how the men are freaking out and the women are like, “It’s okay. Here’s what we need to be paying attention to. We got this. Step aside. We’ll take care of this as usual. We’ll clean up.” We’ve been trained for this moment and you’re seeing it in the company that are led by women.
One of my upcoming episodes is a conversation I sat down with a quantum leadership guru if you will, Danah Zohar. This is what she refers to, is the fact that these past decades, it’s all been Newtonian because men’s primarily men in leadership positions. They think their brain moves front and back. Women on the other hand, we are natural systems thinkers or quantum thinkers because our brain goes boop, boop, boop and boop. It only makes sense for us. A lot of what you just were previously speaking about in terms of responding versus reacting. Ironically, I would also argue not getting overly emotional.
We’ve dealt with this before. Again, a broadbrush stroke comment. We all love men. Most men have never dealt with an unfair world. You do not feel the winds of privilege when they are at your back. When you are met with unfairness, uncertainty or things that don’t make sense in a linear way. You are Lubbock’s and the only thing you can do is react because you can’t stop yourself. That’s what we’re seeing.
Shattering The Myth Of “No”: Persistence In The Face Of Rejection
With that done, as women are getting more and more into power. What is something that women have been told forever in a day regarding power? What’s something they’re told too often that needs to just go like a myth? It’s like, “Manage your expectations. Don’t get your hopes up,” thing.
The myth for women is that it’s about how good at the job you are. When you reach the senior levels, the job is a ticket to entry and in order for a woman to get to that level, she’s already great. It’s never about the job. What hurts women when they get to those C-suite levels or even I would say directors or senior directors and they can’t get to the C-suite. It’s because the unspoken thing that we’ve never been told that we need to be told is that it is all about the network.
It's all about your network: who you know, and if they know your strengths and what you want. Share on XIt is all about who you know and if they know what your strengths are and what you want. We have allies everywhere but because our allies don’t understand what we want, what our strengths are and how we can apply them for the betterment of the organization or a team or a company. They can’t help us as much as they would be happy to help us. Going back to how men’s brains work, give them a checklist. It’s not enough to say, “This guy is a mentor of mine or this guy’s an ally.” You need to turn them into supporters by telling them what you want, when and why you should have it so they can then in turn say that when you’re not in the room.
Even just the way you just spoke that, it’s making me think of it as a declaration and a claiming versus a nice request. A would you, could you.
One of the other myths that I want to talk about because I just heard this from a dear friend of mine who was a very successful CEO, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, and she has a new book out called Making Waves, which I highly recommend to everyone. She’s one of the most successful CEOs in the travel business and an amazing person.
She said, the other myth for women is that when somebody says no then it’s permanent. It’s not. If you go for a job and they say no. You go for it again and again until you get what you want one way or the other. I do think women here know, we take that as permanent and it is simply today’s decision. It might not be tomorrow’s.
It’s so true. To your point, context changes. Also, sometimes when you get that no, that person may have been just a weird headspace. I’ve had that happen to me where I reached out and said, “Thanks.” They’re like, “What? No. Let’s get back on the phone. I’m not done.” We have a different definition of no.
I think that’s true.
Gen Z And Emerging Leaders: Claiming Your Strengths
How do we help emerging leaders not just speak up but stand up and get comfortable with that? As you were just stating, its women not saying, “This is what I want.” There you go, and that’s vulnerable, too. How do we make sure that emerging leaders speak up and stand up and start claiming that too in a way and a manner because that’s the intergenerational conversation? There are a lot of senior leaders who feel like they are threatened by them. I get that. They’re not meaning to be threatening or annoying. They’re just doing what we probably should have done but we didn’t.
I looked at your questions beforehand and I wrote them down. You would ask about the multiple generations and you said, “What gives you hope in business?” Gen Z gives me hope because Gen Z is demanding, uncompromising, tech-savvy, resilient, and loyal when you give them a purpose. Going back to your question, for emerging leaders, we need to be clear that there is a myth in the workplace that when you ask for what you want and you talk about your strengths. It reflects poorly on you, especially for women.
Men are not taught that. Women are taught that and that’s what’s held all of us back. I honestly believe our habit of asking what’s the worst thing that can happen rather than what’s the best thing that can happen holds women in particular back. Literally, men do not have that in their heads. In my presentations, if I’m in front of a women’s audience, they say, “When you’re talking about your strengths, you feel like you’re in the whole audience. Say what?” Bragging.
Men in the audience will look around and I will ask them in the audience, “Men, how do you feel when you’re talking about your strengths?” They’ll be like, “Smart.” It’s like, “Yes.” Men feel smart talking about their strengths. Women feel like they’re bragging. That’s been societally ingrained in us. I think this is true for men and women now. If you’re an emerging leader, you need to get clear about what your strengths are, how they pertain to the business and how they move the business forward. You need to talk about them and share them.
Even expressing it through that lens of, “Here’s how I’m going to help your business.” That alone already emotes confidence and an understanding of the business. Thank you very much. It’s like, this is why I matter.
To put it in perspective for you, when we do our workshops in our courageous leadership workshops, we do a strength exercise about what are your greatest strengths and what does it do for the business. In that exercise, I am not joking, if it’s a primarily male audience, that exercise will take us about 30 minutes. In a primarily female audience, I give it three hours. They don’t know how to talk about it. They don’t know, “I’m a good communicator now.” Everybody’s a good communicator. They aren’t, but you know what I mean. “What is the greatest strength?” “My greatest strength is I’m great at, boom, boom.” It’s so difficult for women.
It’s funny and it’s so true. A friend of mine is turning 45. He sent out what he’s calling a happiness survey to a few folks and myself being included, to people who he’s admired and how they build their life. There was a whole litany of questions and how you got to worry and he’s in like so many trying to figure out what do I do now? What am I doing next? It says, “Have you figured it out? Yes, no or sort of. I said sort of and he goes, “What is it? What is your greatest strength? What’s your purpose?” I put that question off until the very end I procrastinated. I did all the other because it felt so weird talking about it.
I guarantee you the guys didn’t skip over that. They were like, “No problem.”
I can only do one?
How do I choose?
Debunking Leadership Myths: Courage As A Learnable Skill
Exactly. It’s very many. Cindy, in closing, I’m curious. What’s one myth about leadership communication you’d love to retire forever? I’ll close with the more personal one.
I’d say the myth about leadership. Let me just make it a bigger question. The myth about leadership is you either are or you aren’t, you have what it takes or you don’t and none of that’s true. For many years, I’ve been proving this with our courageous leadership content. Leadership is simply a set of skills and courageous leadership in particular is simply a set of skills that you need to choose to go after.
You need to practice them and have the courage to practice them and fail at them until you get great at them and create muscle memory around them. Anybody can be an exceptional and courageous leader, should they choose to go after it. There’s a great quote by Ruth Gordon that says, “Courage is like any other muscle. It strengthens with use.” That’s the same for leadership.
That’s a great one. In closing, knowing all that you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?
Worry about only what you can do, not what you can’t. Only judge yourself on what you can do, not what you can’t. It’s going back to that, I wish I could have taught my younger self who was so frantic about doing everything well and control what you can control and do that well. That’s it.
Period, the end.
If only.
It’s pretty clear, everyone, why our friend here is a guru, but seriously thank you so much. This is a conversation to be continued.
I would love to. Thank you, my friend, for having me. I’m thrilled for all of your success as well. I’m excited that we got to have this time together.
Thanks so much.
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I could speak to Cindy Solomon all day long and you can clearly see why in fact she has been listed as one of the gurus of her time with regards to communication, specifically courageous leadership communication. Where to begin after that episode? Here I will say what my KB takeaways are. First and foremost, everyone can be a courageous leader. Why? It’s because leadership, especially courageous leadership, is a set of skills. It’s not just a trade, which means that it can be learned. What’s happening in these chaotic times is people are doing what I call pre-freaking. We’re reacting to perception, not reality.
A way to slow things down, take a breath. That’s a running theme, but it’s true. It does help you. You can take a minute to step back and figure out how and what I can control. Focus on what you can do to do the situation, not all the other things that are scrambling around you. Intergenerational leaders, listen up.
The best way to handle everybody, especially the younger generations, Gen Z and such is, share the way of wanting a specific task that you’re asking them to do. That is going to help you immediately. One, it’s going to help develop the up and coming leader because I consider most employees up and coming leaders. It’s going to get them more ingrained and understanding of the business, which will give them much more skin in the game as it were.
Also, just help them better keep their eyes open as they’re more interested in the business, the more they can help in a host of other ways. Be it from future talent that’s needed, the systems and processes that aren’t working, areas of potential problems in getting out ahead of them. For female women leaders, all of us, when we hear the word no, it isn’t permanent. It’s just not yet or just not now. If you get to no, go back and ask again. Not in an annoying way, but you’ll understand. I know you know because we’ve all been in that spot.
When we are and we do have the audience of someone who could help us because the network is everything. Be sure to have a clear understanding and purely simple explanation of what it is you want and what you are good at and get comfortable about saying both of those things, especially the latter. The more comfortably you are speaking your truth, and that’s what it is. You’re not bragging. You’re literally talking about a fact that I am good at X. Until we meet again, go practice saying those things and I’ll look forward to hearing how it comes about and what the changes are that you see. Until next time.
Important Links
- Cindy Solomon
- Cindy Solomon on LinkedIn
- Cindy Solomon on YouTube
- Courageous Leadership Institute
- Daniel Pink
- Making Waves
About Cindy Solomon
Cindy Solomon is one of the most sought-after leadership and CX experts in the world. Her extensive global experience includes work with 26 J.D. Power Award winners; 16 Best Places to Work; and industry leaders such as Google, Alaska Airlines, UPS, Oracle, Wells Fargo, Dow, the ABA, The Gates Foundation, and over 400 others seeking to build courageous leadership at scale.
As Founder and CEO of The Courageous Leadership Institute, Cindy works with her global team of facilitators to serve as the catalyst for organizations and individuals who want to cultivate greater professional courage, leadership skills, and performance.
Cindy’s accessible and hilarious Courageous Leadership programs are the fast track for organizations who wish to leverage their leadership potential to manifest customer and employee engagement through any disruption or challenge.
Cindy’s awards and accolades include the 2025 Top 10 Global Leadership Guru, Top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership by leadersHum, Fast Company’s Fast 100, Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies, and more. Cindy’s TED Talks have been viewed by over 3 million people and her best-selling books, The Courage Challenge Workbook and The Rules of Woo, are available on Amazon.