Episode 83: How to Overcome Fear and Find Your Way as a Leader — with Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina began her career as a secretary for a nine-person real-estate business, and eventually became the first woman ever to lead a Fortune 50 company as the CEO of Hewlett Packard. Her amazing career even includes running for the U.S. presidency in 2015.

Now, Carly is the founder and chairman of Carly Fiorina Enterprises and of Unlocking Potential, a nonprofit organization that helps local leaders increase their leadership and problem-solving capabilities.

Carly is also a best-selling author. She shares her amazing leadership journey and lessons learned in her third book, “Find Your Way,” which was released in early 2019.

During this podcast episode, Carly shares:

• Examples of how she learned to problem-solve early in her career
• How she faced her fear and overcame bullies in the workplace
• Why she wrote her latest book, “Find Your Way”
• How she helps leaders build and practice their leadership skills
• How she selects the leaders who she interviews on her podcast, “By Example”

You can find more information about Carly’s work on her website, www.carlyfiorina.com, and learn more about “By Example,” her podcast where she interviews extraordinary leaders about their experiences and lessons that listeners can learn from.

 

The full episode transcript is below.

Today, on Beyond 6 Seconds,

Don’t get overwhelmed by huge abstract problems that are way beyond you. Get inspired by the problem that is right in front of you, because that’s your problem to solve that will help you flex your leadership muscles so that next time you’re able to do more.

Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six seconds first impression to share the extraordinary stories and achievements of everyday people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel. On today’s episode, I’m speaking with Carly Fiorina. Carly is the founder and chairman of Carly Fiorina enterprises and of Unlocking Potential, a nonprofit organization that supports local leaders who are solving problems in their communities and workplaces by helping them increase their leadership and problem solving capacity. Carly and her team also host by example, a leadership podcast, which features interviews with extraordinary leaders who share their experiences, stories and lessons that listeners can apply to many of their own challenges. Carly’s amazing career spans from Secretary to CEO, from public to private and from for profit to nonprofit. Her career even includes running for the US presidency in 2015. She started her career as a secretary for a nine person real estate business, and eventually became the first woman ever to lead a fortune 50 company Hewlett Packard, which under her leadership grew to become the 11th largest company in the US. Carly is also a best selling author. She shares her amazing leadership journey and lessons learned in her third book, “Find Your Way,” which was released earlier this year. Carly, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much, Carolyn. It’s great to be with you.

It’s great to have you here. I had the opportunity to meet you in New Jersey when you on your book tour back in April when your book first came out. And I’m so excited to be talking about your book now that I’ve had a chance to read it, in the meantime and really found it to be just a wonderful inspiration. So to start out, I’d love to know more about what inspired you to write your latest book, “Find Your Way”?

You know,What inspired me is I see so many people who are struggling to solve really difficult, really important, really festering problems. I see many people frustrated by a lack of problem solving they see all around them, I see a lot of people who feel maybe hopeless or helpless. And what I know from experience is that everyone has more potential than they realize, that each of us have the capacity for problem solving, which is actually the essence and the purpose of leadership. And so I wanted to share the things that I’ve learned along the way, in hopes that I can lift up more people to solve the problems that are right in front of them, and learn that they too can lead.

That’s wonderful. I think sometimes people get totally overwhelmed by some of the problems that we see. I mean, some of the problems in society just seem so big and it can be hard to even know where to start. But really, leadership, as you say, in your book and demonstrate over and over again, is about solving problems.

Yes. And it’s important. One of the things that I say in the book over and over again, and that I’ve learned in my own life is you have to start with the problem that you’re meant to solve. And what I mean by that is, yes, there are huge overwhelming problems. I mean, homelessness, hunger, conflict, climate to pick the problem that you care about, it seems huge and overwhelming. And yet, each of us have problems that are in front of us every single day. And those are the problems that we’re meant to solve the problems that actually impact us personally, the problems that we understand best. Those are the problems that we’re meant to start with, and things can start small and turn into something much larger over time. Those are the kinds of leaders that I bring on my podcast, for example. And so among many pieces of advice, I hope I pass on in this book from experiences don’t get overwhelmed by huge abstract problems that are way beyond you, get inspired by the problem that is right in front of you, because that’s your problem to solve. That will help you flex your leadership muscles so that next time you’re able to do more.

Yeah. And that’s it’s a profound understanding, and it has such an impact on your leadership. I’m curious, how did you discover this? It seems like you discovered this connection between leadership and problem solving relatively early in your career. What were the events that actually had you discover the importance of problem solving in advancing your career and your leadership?

Well, it’s interesting, I think I discovered it at first because no one had any expectation of me for leadership. I didn’t have any expectation for myself of leadership. I mean, I was a secretary from a nine person, real estate firm. And eventually I go on and get an MBA, but I land in this enormous company with a million employees. There aren’t very many women who look like me who have the background that I have, there weren’t that many women in general. And so nobody expected me to have position or title. And that’s what I thought leadership was. That’s what most people think leadership is, you know, whoever has a big office is a leader. And one of the reasons I think people feel frustrated is they see so many people with the title. And yet they don’t seem to be making a positive difference. So here I am, I No one expects me to be a leader. But everywhere I went, I found all these problems. People talked about them, people complained about them, people analyze them and in the course of finding all those problems, I also discovered that people who are close to the problem really understood it, well, and because I didn’t know very much, I asked a lot of questions. And as I asked questions, people would tell me things that would make the problem better. And so together, we started solving problems. I did it not to get ahead, I did it because I was trying to figure out honestly, how do I add value and not get fired at the end? But the more I did it, the more I wanted to do it. And the more I did it, the more results we produced. And in most situations, when problems get solved, people pay attention.

Yeah, that definitely has a great impact on the business. You know, some people get upset or frustrated, like, why doesn’t this work and why, you know, why do I have this problem? Why do I have this challenge, but you’re approaching it from the sense of, all right, here’s the challenge. Here’s some sort of problem. Who do I need to talk to in order to get a better perspective on it and get it solved. And you even say something really interesting in the book about if you’re, you have a group of people together, and you’re not able to solve the problem that you basically have to invite more people into the conversation as well.

Yes, I mean, if there’s a problem that you think you’re impacted by, and you understand that, well could be a business, could be a family, could be a community, could be a nonprofit could be any team at all. And somehow you’re not able to solve it one of two things is going on. Either you’ve picked the wrong problem, meaning it actually isn’t your problem to solve. It’s too far away from you, or it’s beyond you at this time. That’s one possibility. The other possibility is you just don’t have all the right people in the room that you’re missing a perspective and understanding a point of view, that would help you actually wrestle this problem to the ground. I had a guest on my podcast, who, you know, a lot of people are concerned about homelessness, right? I mean, it’s this big, huge enormous problem. And one of my podcast guests, was a five year old boy. And his approach to this problem was he got interested in homeless people. He wanted to go see them. And when he saw them, he said to his Dad, can I feed them? And so what he started to do was hand out chicken sandwiches to the homeless person that he saw, and he would give them a hug. Now, that seems like a really small thing. But it turned out to be life changing, at least day changing for a lot of these people. And over time, this led to national publicity, and a foundation, and national TV appearances. I use that very simple example because he didn’t say, Oh my gosh, I have to solve the entire homelessness problem. What he said was, I can use my allowance to buy a chicken sandwich to feed someone That I see right in front of me.

Hmm. Anyone can be a leader in that way, as long as you have an understanding of how you can solve the problem within your realm what you have the power to do. And even if it’s just something as simple as a chicken sandwich, you know, it’s certainly profound and sounds like it’s not a lot.

Well, I asked this wonderful little boys. So what do you do when you have a problem? And look, we all have problems, right? We all have problems, and we spend a lot of time talking about them, and worrying about them, or gossiping about them or complaining about them. And he said, You face it, is so true. And it’s so simple. And it’s so profound. And that is what leaders do, not by themselves, with others, but they face problems, and they get about making them better

Yeah, wow. That’s a profound statement from a five year old. Such a deep understanding.

You know, sometimes we lose the simple truth as we can get older in life.

Yeah, that’s true. Absolutely. So solving problems facing problems facing that fear is a big part of leadership, the fear of the unknown of, you know, new circumstances. And you talk in your book a lot about the ways that you’ve faced fear throughout the leadership journey in the career journey that you’ve built, even in the case of standing up to bullies that you encountered in your career. And I know you had one story about a particular lawyer who was giving your team a very hard time and you as a leader decided to face the fear and confront this person. And I think it’s something that a lot of us deal with in the office, you know, in office dynamics in terms of people who are seemingly difficult or challenging our teams. And I just love that story. Because you as a leader stood up for your team and faced this person. Yeah, we’d love if you could talk a little bit about how that particular incident came about and what you did to shut that bad behavior down.

Yes. Well, you know, sometimes people behave badly not because they’re trying to be bad people, but because they’re thoughtless or clueless or careless. And in those circumstances, I think sometimes we have to find a little more empathy and figure out what’s going on with this person that’s causing them to behave badly. On the other hand, some people are actually behaving badly, and they’re trying to be hurtful or counterproductive. In this particular case, the story you’re referencing, I was a young manager. I was doing work for a very powerful lawyer in the company. He was several levels above me. The work that this lawyer was spearheading was very important work. I had been told by all my bosses you have to cooperate with this guy. He’s really important. His case is important dadada. And so I in my team, were helping him gather information that was necessary for him, but he was unbelievably abusive to my team. He was disrespectfu.. He was abusive, he was acting in a bad way. And it was part of our code of conduct, part of our values as a company that we treat people with respect. And he wasn’t. And so I thought about that for a long time, and I was afraid to confront him. But then I thought, okay, if I don’t confront him, then no one believes that we actually care about the value of respect. And my team won’t believe that I care about them, so I have to confront him, and I was terrified. And I said, Glenn, you can’t treat people this way. And I explained to him what he was doing and the impact it was having in a very calm way I thought, and he sort of blew up, because he wasn’t used to being challenged in this way, particularly by somebody like me. And he said, Well, what are you going to do about it? You know, after a few profanity laced expressions, and I said, until and unless you change your behavior, we’re not going to do any work for you anymore. And I was terrified, I hung up the phone, I burst into tears, I called my husband, I walked outside and told my team that I was going to get fired. But I also told them, we’re not going to do any more work for this guy until his behavior changes, and you let me be the bad guy. Now, he came back after a week, and he apologized, and we figured out a way to move forward. But there are two points to that story. One is that we’re all afraid of something. And most of the time, we have to figure out how to get over our fears. And our fears can be something like, I’m going to get fired. Or they could be I’m going to look stupid, or they could be I’m going to get criticized, I’m going to make a mistake. I’m going to fail. People are going to laugh at me. All those fears sort of stop people in their tracks and cause people to be be less than who they can be. And so you have to learn how to get over your fears. And we talk a lot in the book about how to do that some simple steps, I have a lot of practice. But the other point of that story is about character in a way. And especially in a team, you know, you can have all kinds of statements of values and the kind of behavior that you want people to exhibit. But no one ever listens to the talk. They watch the walk. They watch and see how people behave. And if people behave counter to your stated goals of conduct and behavior and nothing happens, then nobody believes what you say. They only believe the behavior that they observe.

Absolutely. As a leader, your words and your actions have to match in order to have that credibility and truly be a leader.

Exactly right. Exactly right.

So definitely in that story, you faced your fear by confronting the lawyer and taking a risk that that worked out and undoubtedly bought you the respect of not only the lawyer but of your team who you stood up for. And I imagined the working relationship going forward, improved after that. And then know there’s another story that you tell in your book, and you’ve told it on your podcast. It’s the one about Carl, the boardroom aficionado, which is also another way that you confronted fear, although your actions and your reaction to him was different. You didn’t march in and confront him, but you were able to still stand up for yourself but in a very different way. I would love if you would share that story and just share your thought process around when you’re facing your fear and you want to stand up for yourself. How do you know the best for the most effective way to do that in a situation like that?

Well, how do you You know, that’s partially about finding your way. But the first step is to figure out what you’re afraid of. And in fact, the step by step, lessons I have in the book is name, your fear. Name, your fear, what am I afraid of, Say it, say it out loud, because fears are at their most powerful when they’re just sort of rattling around in our head. But in this particular case, I was brand new to the company, I was an entry level, nobody. I had been sort of paired with this guy who wasn’t really thrilled that he had to be working with me. And we were supposed to be meeting customers. I was supposed to be meeting customers for the first time and he came to me the day or the day before the meeting and said, I know you wanted to meet these customers, but you’re not going to be able to come because they want to go to the boardroom and you can’t come and he walked away and I I said to my colleague, what’s the board girl while the boardroom was a very famous strip club in Washington, DC where I was working, and it was famous for the fact that these young women dressed in see through baby doll negly shades and danced on top of the tables, or on the stage. And so I mean, I was terrified, I had no idea what to do. I had never been confronted with such a situation. So I went in the ladies room and I sort of sat in there for a long time. And had to kind of get come to grips with what am I afraid of? And what I was afraid of in the here and now was, I’ve never been in such a situation before. I am going to look like an idiot. I don’t know how to deal with semi nude women and a bunch of men. It was a totally new circumstance to me, and I thought I would not be able to handle it. But then as I worked myself through that, I thought to myself, okay, what’s the worst thing that can happen here? Well, the worst thing that can happen here is I look like a fool. I am very uncomfortable. But actually an even worst thing that can happen is, I’m never taken seriously again, that somehow this guy manages in the very first meeting, to shut me out, and scare me away. And so, going through that assessment, that analysis, if you will, I thought to myself, the worst thing that can happen is I look like an idiot, and I am deeply uncomfortable. But the best thing that can happen is he doesn’t scare me away. And somehow, I make my point that I’m going to do what I gotta do to do my job. And what was interesting about the end of that story, so I put people through that exercise all the time. Name your fear. Speak it out loud, write it down for extra credit. Talk yourself through what’s the worst thing that can happen? And most of the time, not all the time, but many times, what’s the worst thing that can happen is some version of, I’m going to look stupid. I’m going to screw up, I’m going to fail. I’m going to make a mistake, someone’s going to criticize me, those can be debilitating fears. What’s the best thing that could happen? Honestly, it was better than I had ever imagined. And that also frequently happens. The best thing that happened in this particular case is when my colleague kept at I mean, I did look like a fool. Mike was deeply uncomfortable. But when my colleague kept asking these young women to come dance on the table while we were eating lunch, three times, three different women came over, and looked at me and this group of men and said, Some version of not till the lady leaves. And that was just this gift, this totally unexpected gift, that somehow these women and I had had this moment of empathy and mutual understanding of what was going on. And that they sided with me, it was this amazing thing. And when I got back to the office, everything had changed just a little bit. My colleagues started to say about him, Hey, he’s got no class. And people started to say about me, you know what, you know, she’s got some backbone. That was a subtle but important shift.

Wow. And it’s an important point that you know, naming and facing your fear and confronting a situation that you’re afraid of, that potentially you’ll go through the situation and still be afraid or still be uncomfortable or embarrassed. So it won’t necessarily be A perfect situation. But by facing that fear, the result can often be that, you know, things will be better or will start to course correct in the long term. At least that’s what it sounded like happened in this particular circumstance.

Yes, exactly. And I think you’re making a really important point, realistically, naming your fear thinking through the worst that can happen and deciding you’re going to move forward despite your fear. It doesn’t make your fear go away. It doesn’t necessarily make the situation easier. But what does happen is you make progress. And what also happens is the more you do it, the easier it becomes so that the little fears that are debilitating, become less debilitating and you’re able to tackle bigger things. I remember, you know, on a totally different note, but our younger daughter suffered from addiction and they took her life. And I remember, I never wanted to speak about it publicly. And finally I concluded I had to it was part of my life. It was part of my experience. I was terrified to start speaking about her because of what people would think about me. I was a bad person. I was a bad mother. Why hadn’t I been able to do more? As I am speaking about her for the first time, I still feel all of those things. I’m still afraid of how people are thinking about me. But when it was over, all these wonderful things happened that I hadn’t imagined. People came up to me and said, Thank you for sharing that I too am going through this. You’ve given me courage to keep going. The point is, facing your fears doesn’t make your fears go away, but it cuts them down to size. So that you can move forward and face bigger fears on another day. And that’s how we all move forward in life.

Yeah, absolutely such an important lesson and one that I’m sure we have to keep reminding ourselves of, because it is, you know, it is uncomfortable and frightening to face our fears. But, you know, depending on what the issue is, good things can come out of it. So we can create new connections by sharing our stories about things that were uncomfortable or scared to share. Or we can become more respected and build those other relationships in the workplace and other parts of our lives too.

Well, and I also think, Carolyn, sometimes we don’t even know we’re afraid, you know, when I think about how much time people today spend on social media, with their tribe, or curating their photos or, you know, people would volunteer. I’m doing this because I’m afraid but in fact, there’s this fear of not fitting in. There’s this fear of being judged that most of us carry around with us all the time. We don’t even know it. But it causes us to look away from opportunities. It causes us to settle in and accept the way things are. Even if we know that the way things are isn’t good enough, it’s what causes people to say, I’m just going to manage and do the best I can with the way things are, as opposed to lead and change the order of things for the better because they can be better. That fear of not fitting in that fear of rocking the boat that fear of getting judged or criticized. A lot of people don’t even know they’re afraid of that. And that’s why taking the first step and saying what am I afraid of is so important.

Absolutely. It’s a lesson that we we can all take to heart and would apply to really anyone in their life or career. Wow. So you know, find her way it’s been out since April. So it’s about six months, going on six months now. What kind of feedback? Have you heard from your readers about the impact that the book has had on them?

Well, you know, it’s very gratifying because I wrote, Find You Way to, in essence be for the individual. the kind of work that my business and my foundation do for teams. I wanted it to be a handbook, a guidebook, if you will, for anyone who is struggling to unlock their own potential or struggling to solve a problem that is festering in front of them. For anyone who feels like I can make a more positive difference. And I say it that way because I wanted to have this be a set of stories and lessons that apply to anyone, in any circumstance, and that are accessible by anyone, in any circumstance, that I tell stories of all kinds of people, I mean people in the slums in India children. This isn’t, while it certainly applies to business, and much of my life has been spent in business, it’s not about business, or big organizations, per se. It’s about people trying to find their way and unlock everything they can bring to their circumstances, whatever those circumstances are, and make them better. And so what people tell me is I’ve achieved that goal. The best thing people say to me is, I’m changing how I do things, or I’m approaching something differently or I felt like you were talking right to me.

Yeah, that’s definitely the impact. Because it’s one thing to read, to read a book and read the stories. But it’s another thing to really say, I’m going to change my behavior, I’m going to change the way that I approach things in my life and put that advice and that guidance into action. And you also work with leaders in person through your nonprofit organization, Unlocking Potential, how do you help them strengthen their leadership and their problem solving skills?

So let me say first, just like the book, Find Your Way, we work with leaders, you are correct, but not as defined by their position or their title. Which is to say that we work with literally everyone in an organization. It doesn’t matter what their title is. Because everyone has a problem they know something about and everyone has the potential to change the order of things for the better and changing the order of things for the better is Purpose of leadership. And so we have a number of models that we use. We deal with businesses, and teams and businesses. Through the foundation. We work with mostly the social sector and the nonprofit community. And in some cases, we work with an organization. So for example, we have done work with Easter Seals. When we work with Easter Seals, we have everyone from the van driver who brings the adults or the children to the classroom every day, all the way up to the CEO, because all those people have the potential to lead. In other cases. Another model is we gather organizations or people or teams who are in a community working on a particular issue. So we have gathered multiple organizations or multiple teams are multiple individuals who are working together in a community on the issue of homelessness. A third model is we have corporate sponsors, American Express, for example, Massmutual for another example, and our corporate sponsors will bring us into a community and sponsor us to work with a variety of nonprofit organizations in a particular community, Salt Lake City, Springfield, Mass, and bring all of those people and organizations together to identify and then work on the problems that they think are most pressing. And however we do this, and this is the case in the book as well, whether it’s an organization or teams or people collected around issues or an individual, we focus on two kinds of things. One is what are the characteristics and disciplines that every leader must have? So we’ve been talking about one of them, overcoming your fear is a discipline. Every leader must learn and we think there are four of them courage, character, collaboration and seeing possibilities. And we talk about all those have workshops around all of those and talk about each of those in the book. And then we talk about tools. Tools that I have used for decades that are very practical in their application that actually help you with the how to, how do I go actually solve a problem? How do I collaborate with others? How do I change the order of things for the better?

I see. So really a whole combination of practical tools and lessons and experience in practice with what’s important for being a strong leader and how to put that into action. And you also have, I think, for nonprofit leaders, especially you have a leadership lab, a special event on top of the workshops and other trainings that you do with leaders. Can you tell me a little more about that?

So the leadership lab is an intensive, if experience, it can go anywhere from one day to two days. But it is a very intensive experience. We just completed one last week in Springfield, Massachusetts with our partner Massmutual. And in these intensive experiences, nonprofit leaders come to the table with whatever their problems are. And they spend two days in a combination of conversation with me. And then work groups with expert facilitators that we bring in with us, who are on our team working those problems. And at the end of that intensive two day experience leadership lab, we then provide six months of coaching, because, you know, you can read a book, but then you have to put it into practice and sometimes you fall back you can go to an intensive experience and get inspired and learn some new techniques. Sometimes you fall back and so we found that having a six month coaching regimen really helps people practice the tools and practice these newfound disciplines so that they are stronger and better at doing so.

I say, Now, I was just thinking about how you are talking about bringing different leaders together. And also about bringing everybody in the company together with the types of workshops that you do. And it reminds me a little, I used to do some culture shaping work for another company and like that, you know, leadership, it’s essentially a type of a culture change. So it is important to bring everybody into that room and involve every single person in the organization because they need to see one of the leaders need to go through it and practice, and to sometimes the other people in the organization who may not have leadership titles, also have the opportunity to see that their leaders are going through this. So it’s sort of a mutual accountability and a journey together.

Yes, absolutely. And oh, by the way, somebody times the people. The other people, as you say, in the organization who don’t have leadership titles, actually are leaders. They actually can help solve a problem. And one of the things that we stress very much in our leadership labs, but I also stress it in the book is nothing worth doing ever happens with somebody acting alone. And that’s just a fact. Nothing worth doing. ever happens with somebody acting alone. And it’s particularly true with problem solving. So if you’re a leader, you can order people, if you have a position, a title, you can order people around, but you’re not solving the problem, actually. The only time things actually get better is when people who need to collaborate, effectively collaborate. And that is a whole workshop in itself. How do you collaborate with others maybe the others are different organization. Maybe the others have different titles, maybe the others are different from you in other obvious ways. But the truth is we’re all most effective when we collaborate with other people who bring something to the table that we don’t.

Yeah, absolutely. And you’re right. You know, a lot of people, you know, think of, now I’m the leader, I’m in charge, and I have all this power, I can tell people what to do. But even if you have that power on paper, that’s, not usually the most effective power to be able to exercise, you still need to be able to influence and collaborate, and build relationships and, and listen, and all those important things that go into solving problems.

Exactly. I mean, if you really, truly want to change the order of things for the better, as opposed to just, for example, execute the decision that’s in my head. You can’t just order people around. It depends what your purpose is. There are a lot of people who get into a corner office. And their purpose is to show that they’re in the corner office and throw their weight around, and manage. But that’s not the same thing as saying I am going to use the position I have attained to change the order of things for the better and solve the festering problems that we all know are here. That takes collaboration.

And that’s definitely what we need more of both, you know, in business and in in other parts of, of our lives and careers. Absolutely. As I mentioned before, you know, you have a podcast called By Example, I’m a big fan of that podcast and

our thank you yeah,

I love it and and your season one you interview somebody extraordinary leaders, many whose names we know, like Colin Powell, Bob Dole, Tony Dungy, and then others whose names aren’t as familiar to us, but probably really should be more familiar to us because they are extraordinary problem solvers, and people who face fear and, make difficult decisions for the good of their companies, organizations of the people around them. And I’d love to know how do you decide who to interview on your podcast?

Well, first of all, thank you for listening to it. And I just love doing those interviews. We call it by example, because I want to lift up people who are leaders by the example they set, not necessarily by the title they hold. And so you’re right some of the people are famous, but for example, we have a little five year old boy I told you about or we have a woman on Kayla who is the first registered lobbyist with down syndrome. I mean people. These are people who have decided, and in the end leadership is a choice. They have decided, they have made the choice I am going to change the order of things for the better. I’m going to make a positive contribution here. And so we, sometimes people will send us an example of an amazing person, oh, this is an amazing person, you should talk to this person. But I have been trying to both find people that, as you say, are perhaps famous, but maybe shed a slightly different light on what is it that makes them a leader. Colin Powell, for example, is a leader, not because he’s famous. And it’s not because he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Colin Powell is a leader because every day that he is associated with other people, he makes things better. And so we’re trying to pick people whose stories will show by example, the essence of leadership problem solving.

Yeah, that’s wonderful. And another amazing thing about your podcast is that during the interviews that you have, it really shows me It shows how difficult leadership is. So even someone like Colin Powell and Bob Dole, who and Tony Dungy who, I’m used to just sort of seeing them on TV and reading about them in the news, but, when you really delve into the way that they face challenges and try to problem solve through really difficult circumstances, it just shows their humanity. It shows how difficult leadership really is. And I think that’s something that we forget about, we think that being the leader, sometimes is, is easy, because you have power and you have information and all these resources. But true leadership is extremely difficult. And, you know, sometimes there’s not a clear right or wrong answer. It’s just so much ambiguity in the world, too.

Yes, it’s so true. And, you know, it’s one of the reasons in the book, I tell the story of this woman in India, who decides to change the order of things for the better for her family by overcoming her fears and ignoring the advice of her husband, and her parents, or her in laws of her entire community, and taking a small micro loan, becoming an entrepreneur and starting her own business. And the business succeeded to the point where all of her family members who had told her no, worked for her. However, the decision, the choice to ignore everyone around her, her family, her culture, her upbringing, and to say instead, I am not going to put up with unimaginable poverty without doing anything about it any more. And so, whether it’s colin powell making a life or death decision, or it’s this woman making a decision that would change her life forever, her fear was ostracism. It’s very difficult. And it’s why I said earlier leadership is a choice. It’s why so often people choose not to lead, because they’re afraid of the consequences of it doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them human people. And it’s why getting over our fear as we were talking about earlier, in order to take the first step towards problem solving and leadership, every single one of us have to get over a fear.

Oh, it’s so many amazing stories to tell. And you know, I’m looking forward to season two of the podcast. What can we expect for for the next season? And when is that coming out?

Well, season two will be debuting this fall we tend to get a bunch of interviews in the can so to speak, perhaps you who also have a very wonderful podcast, perhaps you do it the same way. We tend to get a lot of them done so that we can roll them out smoothly. And we’re not having scheduling glitches in the middle of it. So stay tuned and go on to Carlyfiorina.com. For announcement of the first one, but we have a couple really good ones in the cam.

Right, awesome. Well, I can’t wait to hear those. Carly, thank you so much for being on my show. How can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about the work that you do, about your book? And I already talked about your podcast, but if they want to buy the book and learn about your work, where should they find you?

Well, they should find me at Carlyfiorina.com. It is their source for all things so they can find out more about our work. They can join our coaching network if they like, we train up people to be coaches and facilitators, they can find out how and where to buy the book. They can find out about the podcast, Carly fiorina.com and couldn’t get more simple. And we’d love to have people let us know they’re out there so that we can stay in touch.

Perfect and I’ll put that link in the show notes so that people can find it there two.

Fantastic!

Wonderful. So yeah, thanks again, Carly. I’m so honored and grateful that you came on my show and shared more about your story and all of the great leadership lessons that you have to share with me and my listeners, as we close out, is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything that they can help or support you with?

I guess what I would say just as a last thought here is, we have in our heads, I think, all kinds of preconceived notions about who leaders are, and what they look like and what they do. And most of those preconceived notions are wrong. Leaders look like all of us. Leaders rise up in all kinds of circumstances. Leaders face all kinds of problems. If you’re listening, you can be a leader. We just each of us have to start.So choose to lead.

Very good. Thank you so much, Carly.

Thank you, Carolyn. It’s been great to be with you.

Right. Great to have you here.

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