Adversity and Leadership

I recently went one on one with Joseph Michelli. Joseph is the author of numerous national bestsellers, including The Starbucks Experience, The New Gold Standard and the New York Times #1 bestseller Prescription for Excellence. Joseph’s latest book Stronger Through Adversity: World-Class Leaders Share Pandemic-Tested Lessons on Thriving During the Toughest Challenges will be released next month.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Joseph: Thank you Adam for providing this opportunity to spend time with you and your audience. I am an adopted, only child raised by a father who operated heavy equipment in a cement quarry and a mother who was a police dispatcher. Having been put in a trash can by my biological mother at three days of age and rescued by a police officer who I met later in life; I have been blessed by so many amazing opportunities, starting with my adoptive parents. Not having money to go to college, a benefactor paid my way through the University of Denver, and I continued on for a Ph.D. at the University of Southern California. While working on my degree in clinical and systems psychology, I met and worked with the owner of the Pike Place Fish Market (where they throw fish). That work led to a book about his company, which created an opportunity to work with and write two books about Starbucks. Since then, I have consulted with and written books about leadership and customer experience creation at brands like The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Mercedes-Benz, Zappos, Airbnb, and UCLA Health.

Adam: What do you hope readers take away from Stronger Through Adversity?

Joseph: What a great question. Stronger Through Adversity is my ninth business book. All previous books captured leadership skills and customer experience improvement efforts at a spotlighted company. This book, however, was born in late February 2020 when a client trip was canceled. I was heading to GODIVA's chocolate factory in Pennsylvania when out of an abundance of caution, my access to the plant was restricted. I was also scheduled to write a book about GODIVA, and that book was put on hold. While things were coming to a halt for me at GODIVA, I was on COVID-19 taskforces in the C-suite with other clients, and it was clear that leaders were struggling to get their arms around this monstrous challenge. How were those leaders going to steward themselves, their teams, and their organizations to survive a microscopic organism 1/1000th the width of a human hair? That prompted me to ask my clients, and about 130 other leaders, what they were affirming or learning about leading in a pandemic. Those discussions led to the book. I hope that the insights of amazing leaders (such as CEOs of Target, Verizon, Mercedes-Benz, Farmers Insurance, and Dairy Queen, as well as C-suite officers at businesses like Marriott, Microsoft, and Southwest Airlines) will serve as tools and inspiration for current and future generations of leaders - in good times and bad. Also, a portion of my royalties go to an international relief organization, Direct Relief. I hope that contribution will have an impact on those on the frontline of the COVID-19 battle.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Joseph: Adam, if you type the search phrase 'leadership books' into Amazon you will get more than 137,000 results, and that's just what is currently available in book form - not all writings on the topic. In essence, people have been trying to get the source code for leadership success dating back to hieroglyphs scrawled in stone. For me, leadership is relatively simple and can be reflected in the acronym LEAD. L stands for listening to those you serve, E stands for empathizing, A refers to adding value, and D involves striving to delight. By that definition, you don't have to be conferred a title to be a leader. You can lead in your family, your community, and your workplace. Obviously, there are other competencies to effective leadership (visioning, expressive communication, moral decision-making, etc.). However, foundationally leading is serving, and serving begins with listening to the stated and unstated needs of others. In business, others involves all stakeholders - customers, team members, shareholders, and vendors/business partners.

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Joseph: It starts with highlighting a keyword in your question – the idea of leadership being a skill. Leadership, like emotional intelligence, is not an innate quality. The idea of being a born leader is a fallacy. Some people may have been born with more leadership talent than others, but talent can either be squandered or developed. I've worked with some vastly different leaders. For example, Tony Hsieh, the architect behind the Zappos brand – which sold to Amazon several years ago for about 1.4 billion dollars - is an introverted, deep thinker who developed his ability to inspire and demonstrate care for his team in a gentle way. Howard Schultz, the visionary behind Starbucks, can walk into a room with gravitas, charisma, and the ability to paint vivid word pictures of the future. Tony and Howard are extremely different people, but they both have bolstered their strengths, surrounded themselves with leaders who had different strengths, and view leadership success as a journey, not a destination.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Joseph: For all the groups you referenced, my first tip is to maintain your professional growth focus. It's easy to get so absorbed in business productivity that you lose sight of your development. So, continue to engage content like that provided by Adam and develop a network of colleagues for honest discussions and sharing best practices. My second tip would be to track how much time you are spending on business tactics, organizational strategy, and self-care. Leaders, by nature, are doers. As such, they can jump to solutions and action without dedicating sufficient time for contemplation and strategy. A mentor of mine and someone I interviewed for Stronger Through Adversity (Howard Behar – former president of Starbucks) puts it this way, “Think like a person of action and act like a person of thought.” In essence, leaders must strategize, implement, and balance across those two domains. They must also take care of themselves if they are going to nurture their teams. My third tip is to take the time to define the legacy you want to leave as a leader. Once you have drafted that legacy statement, share it with someone you trust and have them help you stay accountable to your long-term objective (revising it as needed along the way). 

Adam: What are your best tips for leaders on the topic of customer experience? 

Joseph: Customer experience is the sum of perceptions shaped across the journey with your brand. Those perceptions are formed based on your people, process, products, and technology. So, here's my tip, perceptions are shaped by key moments in the customer journey. The most salient moments occur at arrival, pain points, peak interactions, and endings. The more you understand the role emotion plays in perception and memory formation, the more effectively you can improve your customer experience. Also, the better you understand how certain interactions drive customer satisfaction, engagement, loyalty, and referrals, the easier it is to identify which moments you should target.

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?

Joseph: My main tip about sales, marketing, and branding is that they all should focus on value creation, not profitability. To make my point, I will assume you have taken the time to understand what your target customers want (the first element of marketing – consumer research), which led you to create a valuable solution or set of products. Marketing then seeks to communicate the value of your offerings to your target audience, so they will enter your sales funnel and learn how that solution brings value (e.g., benefits and attributes). Those prospects reciprocate value in the form of a purchase. Branding is about communicating the value of your products AND the overall value proposition of your business. It essentially involves telling the marketplace, this is what we value as a company. This is what you can expect when you deal with us. This is what we stand for. In the end, brands are what people say about us when we are not around, and we should be in business to create customers, not profits. Without customers, no profits come. Conversely, the pursuit of profits can cause leaders to make choices that reduce customer value and result in customer churn.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?

Joseph: To be an effective leader, you need to vary your position with regard to your team. In Stronger Through Adversity, I state this in the context of a principle I refer to as 'Move Front, Middle, Back' and use wild horse herds as an example. An alpha mare leads from the front, and an alpha sire leads from the rear. The mare sets the direction and alters course as needed in keeping with her strategy to reach the desired destination. The sire keeps the pace and ensures the herd moves forward in support of the mare's direction. There are also horses in the pack that demonstrate leadership and shape behavior alongside other horses. As leaders of people, there is a time for us to lead from the front and share our vision. We should also inspire and encourage others to follow us as we take the next hill. There are other times when we should lead from the middle. We need to say, 'I am no different or better than you. I will not ask you to do anything I wouldn't do myself.' Finally, there are times we need to fall back behind our team. We need to keep quiet as they identify problems and solutions. We should help them maintain pace but not intervene before they have had a chance to ideate and innovate.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Joseph: Whatever I have learned is the result of so many teachers, but a transcendent theme has been to embrace my imperfections and shortcomings. As a young leader, I feared that no one would follow me if they knew how flawed I was or how little I knew. My insecurities were in keeping with an imposter syndrome. Fortunately, several mentors helped me appreciate that people don't like or follow leaders who try to look perfect. Intellectually and emotionally, we know that people aren't perfect. When someone acts like they are flawless, people enjoy looking for that person's shortcomings. The more I accept and admit my limitations, the more permission I give others to recognize and acknowledge their limitations. The guidance I received on this front has been liberating and has proven to empower me and others. We can stop investing time in hiding and spend more time problem-solving. My favorite words as a leader are "I don't know," followed quickly by "Where or how can we get an answer for that?" 

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Joseph: I just want to thank you because I think gratitude is an invaluable component of leadership. I fear that we all too often take people and acts of kindness for granted. Adam, you have a surplus of people who want to share content on your platform. Your readers have an inordinate number of options for whom they trust to curate content for them. In the case of this interview, both you and your readers made this opportunity possible for me. That is extremely important, and it warrants heartfelt appreciation. I also found that the more I practice gratitude, the more I see a world filled with things for which I am grateful. I become a spotter of what is good and right in the world. Those observations, in turn, energize and inspire me to maintain optimism along my journey as a servant leader.