UnLeadership E-Book

Scott Stratten

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

You don't know what it's like to work for you.

Wanna know how to datamine your way to winning your employees' hearts and minds? Or how to use personality profiles to leverage business value from your workers? Then buy another book!

In UnLeadership: Make Building Relationships Your Business, you'll learn how to use old-fashioned, authentic, and raw humanity to lead your people and build connections. Authors Scott and Alison Stratten deliver their signature combination of business snark and timeless advice, drawing on dozens of interviews with finance, entertainment, tourism, and hospitality leaders to show you how to ditch the spreadsheets and remember how to be awesome! The book is full of case studies perfect for brand-new business leaders, solopreneurs, as well as people who run bigger teams.

You'll also find:

• Interviews with recognized business leaders loaded with invaluable wisdom and unguarded, human moments
• A fun and authentic reading experience direct from the people who run UnMarketing.com, a world-leading viral marketing company
• Unfiltered and engaging commentary on what actually makes your followers, employees, and team members tick, and what they look for in a kick-ass leader

There are plenty of books out there trying to reduce leadership to boring stats and sterile profiles. This ain't one of 'em. This is a book for leaders looking to make real and honest connections with their people so they can build an agile team that gets results. A book by humans, for humans. Grab a copy today!

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1 Leadership in the Age of Disruption

2 What Is UnLeadership?

3 Leadership Is a Creative Profession

4 UnLeadership Begins with Awareness

5 What is the Archetype of a Leader?

6 Heroic Leadership

7 Full Thought Leadership

8 Leadership Has Your Back

9 Game-Changing Leadership

10 Leadership Closes the Gap

11 Leadership Is a Group Project

12 Leadership Is a Mindset-Based on Practice

13 The Leadership Gap

14 UnLeadership, Trust, and Community

15 Rising Leadership

16 Leading for Impact

17 An Ear for Leadership

18 Leading with Our Best Friends

19 Leadership When Push Comes to Shove

20 A Note on Hiring

Notes

21 Leading by Example

22 Unorthodox Leadership

Note

23 Leading with Content

Note

24 A Note on Mentorship

25 Leadership Is More Than a Label

26 Leadership That Outshines

27 Planting Leadership Seeds

Note

28 Serious Leadership

29 Leadership Is a Compass, Not a Map

30 A Note: A Workplace Is Not a Family

31 UnLeadership Is Driven by Values

32 Leadership Momentum

33 Be the Change Leadership

34 Leadership Practice

35 Leading in Beauty

36 Leadership Hospitality

37 UnLeadership Pathways

38 A Note: Work-Life Balance

39 Leadership and Influence

40 A Leadership Franchise

41 Gold Record Leadership

42 Leadership, a Founder's Story

43 Leadership Resilience

44 The Ingredients of Leadership

45 Leadership and Communication

46 Leadership Is Telling the Right Story

47 Mostly Money Leadership

48 Leadership and Education

49 Gaming Leadership

50 A Note about Burnout

51 Leadership's Greatest Challenge

52 UnLeadership and Transformations

53 Change Enthusiasm

®

54 Transformative Leadership

55 Leadership Is the Killer App

56 Executive Leadership

Note

57 Leading through Innovation

58 Thought UnLeadership

59 Leaders Intervene

60 Demystifying Leadership and Innovation

61 UnLeadership Is Flexible

62 Leadership and Human Resources

63 Leadership Sucks, and How to Fix It

64 Democratizing Leadership

65 UnLeadership and Crisis

66 Crisis Leadership

67 A Note on Curiosity

68 Principled Leadership

69 Leadership Goes Big

and

Goes Home

70 What We UnLearned

A Final Note

References

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

A Final Note

References

Index

End User License Agreement

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UnLeadership

Make Building Relationships Your Business

A Guide for Thoughtful Leaders Like You.

Scott and Alison Stratten

Copyright © 2024 by Scott Stratten. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

ISBN: 9781394223381 (cloth)ISBN: 9781394223398 (ePub)ISBN: 9781394223404 (ePDF)

Cover design: Paul McCarthy

To those who do the work, pave the way, connect, nourish, welcome, and inspire.

Thank you.

1Leadership in the Age of Disruption

GOOD LEADERSHIP HAS NEVER BEEN more important, but for too long we have imagined leaders as visionaries and risk takers—those out front, with their backs turned. We think about leadership as being “ahead of the game,” but we can't effectively lead others without connection and awareness. When we turn our backs to the audience, employees, or fans behind us, we lose the opportunity to truly improve not only ourselves but our products, content, and companies. For the past 15 years, we've written about business in the age of disruption, sharing stories and best practices, what to do and what not to do, in marketing, sales, and branding. Our answer has always been relationships, that if you believe business is built on relationships, you need to make building them your business. The lightning speed of technological innovation, the proliferation and evolution of social media, and a global pandemic have impacted everything, every person, every company, every industry. Everything has changed and nothing is different—people still buy from those they like, know, and trust. In business, relationships matter more than ever. Adding the prefix UN to leadership means putting relationships at the heart of your leadership. You can't effectively lead others without connection; in fact, without relationships, you aren't leading at all.

None of you need a fancy study to know that the majority of people are not thriving and engaged at work (See fancy study: Gallup 2023). Employee stress is at a record high. Even when we are physically present or virtually connected, disengagement (or quiet quitting as the kids old folks say) is leaving our teams unmotivated. One in 10 workers consider their workplace toxic, and even companies with relatively healthy cultures can have pockets of toxicity within teams. The pandemic revealed disparities, and today many managers and executives have the flexibility to continue work remotely, as they call employees back to the office. Employees are fighting back, giving less, and looking for work someplace else. At the same time, there has been an increase in available jobs, meaning employers have to work harder to retain talented employees. With disruption becoming the norm, leaders need to be agile, able to move, connect, and motivate in an increasingly fluid work environment.

Adding the prefix UN to marketing, sales, and branding was also about thinking beyond silos, and leadership is no different. Regardless of title or position, leadership can happen from anywhere. UnLeaders recognize that no company's success is a one-person job. It is about motivation, both the kind that keeps us on our paths and the kind we give to others, our teams, companies, and communities. Leadership is a verb, not a title; it is embodied in our decisions and our relationships. It is a balance between confidently communicating your vision and remaining open to transformation. It's sturdy and nimble, dependable, and flexible. It's navigating uncertainty guided by values, knowing when to hang on and when to let go. Leadership requires connection and awareness because without them, you have no idea what it's like to work for you.

2What Is UnLeadership?

WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT LEADERSHIP, what do you imagine?

Confidence, charisma maybe, authority perhaps, or accountability. The person with the biggest platform. Your favorite artist or creator. Your grandparents. Your boss. Your high school art teacher. Yourself. Leaders take ideas and create action. They look over the horizon and guide practice. They see gaps and often make tough choices—those that run counter to a “what we've always done” mentality. Leaders are motivators. They make rough waters feel smooth. Leaders lead with their actions, not just their words. They take responsibility. Leaders are brave and bold but sometimes also the quietest people in the room.

When we set out to write UnLeadership, this is where we started, and for every person we've asked, our definition of leadership has only grown; there are many kinds of leaders and many ways to lead. None of us achieves anything alone. There's luck, timing, and hard work of course, but there are also leaders and relationships that teach, guide, open doors, and break barriers. This book includes leadership lessons we've learned along the way, but it is also so much more. Inside is a collection of stories about leadership and what it means to be a leader from people across industries including finance, entertainment, tourism, and education in both for-profit and nonprofit spaces and those who have built and led teams, companies, and communities and taken their vision from idea through implementation. We spoke to entrepreneurs and executives, founders, and advocates, many of whom are well established and some just getting started. They've created movements, inspired followers and fandoms, and led companies through transformation and change.

In a series of interviews, we asked what leadership means to them and the lessons they've learned along the way. We spoke about their leadership journey and the lessons and people who've inspired them. We set out to learn their stories and maybe get a few quotations about leadership within their industries—but we ended up with something more. After listening to the interviews, reviewing the transcripts, what revealed itself was a collection of narratives on what it means to be a leader. These stories serve as the antithesis of a “Top five ways anyone can be a better leader,” revealing lessons with nuance, complexity, beauty, and inspiration.

We can be pretty cynical around here; that happens when you build a brand off snark. But the truth is, leaders are those who inspire—and we've been inspired. Leaders teach, and we have learned. Leaders make impossible things feel possible—and this book would not be possible without them. We hope their stories will be a compass, that you'll find reflections of your own experiences and lessons you can use today to become a more impactful leader in your company, industry, or community. We believe that business is personal, and we're excited you're here. Taking time to read a book is no small thing, so thank you. Whether you are an entrepreneur, executive, or an aspiring leader with a big idea, we hope you'll find something that speaks to you, informs you, challenges you and travels along with you in your leadership. There is no wrong way to read the stories in this book - skip around, see what resonates, skip as many as you like, and (we hope) read others until the pages are worn. We hope these stories challenge you to see leadership in a new way and that you find lessons to help you grow as a leader.

3Leadership Is a Creative Profession

In my presentations, I use art as a catalyst—a universal way for an audience to experience art being created, together. It isn't really about the art; it's about the emotional experience when art happens. We tap into the emotional side of the audience, who are oftentimes caught off guard. When you realize that you're sharing an emotional experience with the person next to you, you feel connected on a human level. Through art, the audience becomes an engaged participant. I want to shift the notion of art as a noun, something that hangs dormant on your wall, into an active verb, a process. Similarly with leadership, we must take the notion of leadership as a title and turn it into a verb that is dynamic and adaptable. The definition of a leader will continue to evolve over time—it's on us to be mentally curious and agile.

We often mentor students in their painting and use what we call the contemplation room. It's a space where you can sit and look at your art and wait. It isn't about the finished product; you can go back and change it. Art is never finished, music is never finished, and neither is the process of growing and learning. Leading is a creative profession; it's not a delivery system or automation channel. Leadership is a way to provoke, encourage, and affirm the people around us, to create a bigger picture, a painted picture of the future. The question is, How do we keep our employees and communities aligned to that greater, painted picture—the vision of what we're all trying to accomplish?

—Erik Wahl, internationally recognized artist, inspirational speaker, and bestselling author of Unthink: Rediscover Your Creative Genius, from our interview, recorded May 30, 2023.

4UnLeadership Begins with Awareness

AWARENESS IS CRITICAL FOR A leader. Whether you recognize it or not, you bring your emotions and past experiences into work every day. Awareness moves leadership beyond a title and makes it a verb. It begins with self-awareness, understanding that as the boss, you have no idea what it's like to work for you, and recognizing you don't have all the answers and that your position may or may not affect communication and therefore understanding. Beyond even their team or company, UnLeaders focus outside their line of sight; they work toward industry awareness. They see gaps, are curious, and feed that curiosity. They ask questions: Why? How? And most importantly, Why not? They create resources, share their knowledge, and create an easier path for future leaders coming up. Awareness moves leadership beyond title and makes it creative process rather than something you arrive at.

Gerald Ratner inherited a chain of jewelry stores and in less than a decade, turned them into a billion-dollar enterprise. He flipped the industry script, turning away from elitist marketing and focusing on working-class customers, and it worked. Ratner disrupted the industry and became well known as a democratizer—and a very successful one at that. His strategy grew the company from 120 to more than 2000 locations, capturing 50% of the jewelry market in the UK. Ratner's success seemed unstoppable, until April 1991, when he gave a speech that destroyed his business. Advised to put in a few jokes (enter social media manager anxiety here…), Ratner called his products “total crap,” and insulted the very customers he should have been thanking for his success. “Ratner doesn't represent prosperity—and come to think of it, it has very little to do with quality as well. We do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, ‘How can you sell this for such a low price?’ I say, because it's total crap.” Awareness brought Ratner success, and a lack of awareness took it away. Within a few days, his company shares were down 80%. Awareness is something you have to work at. It cannot end after one success or another. Rather, leaders work to actively maintain connection and keep their ears to the ground.

The importance of awareness to leadership isn't some new concept; in a 1998 study of 200 leading companies, psychologist and best-selling author of Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman found that effective leadership is distinguished by emotional intelligence (Goleman 1998). Without it, a person can have training, curiosity, and endless ideas, but they won't be a great leader. His research found direct ties between self-awareness, empathy, and motivation that links emotional intelligence with measurable business results. “Every businessperson knows a story about a highly intelligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail at the job. And they also know a story about someone with solid—but not extraordinary—intellectual abilities and technical skills who was promoted into a similar position and then soared. Such anecdotes support the widespread belief that identifying individuals with the “right stuff” to be leaders is more art than science. After all, the personal styles of superb leaders vary: Some leaders are subdued and analytical; others shout their manifestos from the mountaintops. And just as important, different situations call for different types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensitive negotiator at the helm, whereas many turnarounds require a more forceful authority. I have found, however, that the most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. It's not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter but mainly as “threshold capabilities”; that is, they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. But my research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but they still won't make a great leader” (Goleman 1998).

Self-awareness also allows us to understand our own leadership style and then how that might impact those we work with; it is the difference between confidence and arrogance. If leadership is our goal, we have to be able to communicate and create structures that call in other people. We've seen a lack of awareness from leadership displayed in some pretty wild ways over the years, like terrifying team building exercises, planned with absolutely no feedback from employees. (No, I would not like to be immersed in a tank of water or touch a tarantula, thank you very much.) Even if you aren't literally risking their lives, what classifies as team building often involves alcohol, athletics, or other social activities, sometimes outside working hours. While we love team building done right, for a leader, it's pretty unlikely the challenges facing your team can be solved by pickleball. The first step to team building is getting to know your team, their challenges, and their strengths. To embody leadership, we have to have organizational awareness, awareness of the needs and wants of those we seek to lead.

5What is the Archetype of a Leader?

Jonathan Fields, the Good Life Guy, makes things that move people, delivering insights that spark purpose, possibility, and potential. On a decades-long quest to discover what makes people come fully alive, Jonathan is an award-winning author, Webby-nominated producer, business innovator, and host of one of the world’s top podcasts, Good Life Project. His newest company, Spark Endeavors, is built around intellectual property that helps people explore the intersection between meaning and work.

(Highlights from our interview, recorded May 31, 2023.)

IN MY EARLY YEARS I built anything and everything, from bicycles to houses. In high school and college, I started building businesses, and from there, it's been a series of companies, books, brands, experiences—anything where I can step into a creative process, preferably a co-creative process. It's more fun when we can build with other people, make things that go out into the world, make a difference, and make a ripple in the fabric of the human condition. I work with my wife, Stephanie. We run both companies together. She's an amazing human being and an incredible partner in life and in business. We're very complementary in what we do. I focus more on the big vision, the impact and narrative, and product development. She's an astonishingly gifted experience designer who loves to craft magical moments and interactions that let people feel safe, seen, and celebrated. And, Stephanie is the empathetic and organizational heartbeat that holds our day-to-day operations and teams together.

Most of our team have been together at the Good Life Project for years. They do the work that makes things go into the world and affect millions of people, which is pretty cool. I'm an introvert, a more sensitive human being. Making things that move people allows me to do what I want and creates a healthy buffer for me to have the solitude and the peace that keeps me feeling nourished and comfortable. A big part of why our team has been rolling together for so long is because we model the behavior we want our team to exhibit and invest in their growth, professionally and as human beings. We want everyone we work with to evolve as a person. If you realize this is no longer what you want to be doing, that's okay. I would rather have that happen, bless you on, and find the person where the work makes sense. We look first and foremost at everyone as people, not as cogs in a machine or productivity units. At the end of the day, it's a huge competitive advantage to treat people like human beings.

In leadership, there is an interesting dance between vulnerability and boundaries. All the research shows, if you want to build genuine connected relationships, you have to have mutual progressive vulnerability. That means it has to be two-sided. It has to slowly invite people deeper into it, and it has to be open. You actually have to share things about yourself that you may be uncomfortable with, be open, authentic, and vulnerable. At the same time, part of the role of a leader is to create psychological safety. There's an interesting dance that happens on the razor's edge of vulnerability and safety because you can step over the line where you're being too vulnerable. You think you're connecting with people because you want them to see you as real, but in fact you're breaking the seal of safety in the relationship. Instead of them being willing to open up and share more, they actually start to pull back. It's important to understand the sensitivities and boundaries of those you lead, what is appropriate, and what feels good not just to you but to them. Vulnerability sometimes becomes manufactured. I think the most powerful vulnerability in leadership is when someone admits they don't know the answer, the next step, or the solution, when you admit you don't know and call on your team to collectively work together to figure things out.

Storytelling is critically important, and as a leader, my role in the story is very meaningful to me. The story is the center of everything; it makes hard things possible, and if you get it wrong, it makes even easy things impossible. You need to invite everybody to step into the story and be the hero. This is especially true in the context of a start-up, which can be a pretty brutalizing experience. You're often pushing aggressively, sometimes for years, to figure things out and build structure, resources, and revenue. The story you tell about why you're doing the work is critically important to inspire people to raise their hand initially and stay when things get tough. I've never built a company where we didn't go through a season, if not multiple seasons, where I was at home, at night, shaking with stress and trying to revisit that story myself. It reminds me why I'm still here and not walking away. I have to show up for my team and remind them of the story, bringing us all back to the touch point. People tap out early when adversity comes if your story is just a business outcome. It isn't enough; there has to be something bigger that allows the people participating to derive a sense of meaning.

We've been producing media at the Good Life Project since 2011. Part of our production ethos has always been to record in person, in our own space. My last in-person conversation was in February 2020, with Macy Gray, and soon after that, New York City shut down. We had to make a big decision—shut down the company or take this moment of disruption and use it as an opportunity. We ran a series of experiments to see whether we could find our way to a new, virtual format. There were tough moments and a ton of reimagining. Thankfully it was “figureoutable,” and we fully transitioned over. Now I love recording remotely and do a lot less in-person stuff because many of the assumptions I made were wrong. I've had the chance to speak to childhood heroes who were never coming to New York. I sat down with Peter Frampton, whose album I had on my record player nonstop as a kid. It opened up opportunities that to this day remain incredible. Leadership means being open to change and shifting and reframing your horizon.

Spark Endeavors is based on the idea that we all have within us a set of fundamental impulses to exert effort in a particular way for no other reason than the feeling it gives us, a feeling of meaningfulness, purpose, energy, and excitement and easier access to that blissed-out state of flow of fully expressed identity and potential. We researched and identified 10 different impulses, and around each of these, an identifiable set of behaviors, tendencies, and preferences that form archetypes. We call them SparketypesⓇ, a fun shorthand to say the archetypes for work that spark you. We developed an assessment that helped people figure out what impulses are strongest in them, motivating them to work hard at something for no other reason than that feeling and the type of work that repels them the most. We launched and came out of beta after about a year in development at the end of 2018. Right now, about 850,000 people have completed it. We're sitting on a massive dataset of 40 million-plus data points with follow-up surveys showing that when people do their Sparketype'sⓇ work, they're more likely to feel energized and excited and have a stronger sense of meaning and purpose.

My advice to aspiring leaders is to spend more time developing your insides than your outsides. When we begin riding into management or leadership or start our own thing, we tend to be in a mad rush. We panic—what books can I read, what are the strategies, the processes? What are the tools, the ecosystems, and the spreadsheets? But even if you have all the skills in the world, if you're not self-aware, it won't work. You have to devote an equal, if not greater, amount of time to getting to know yourself and becoming self-aware. Focus inward, and understand who you are and what matters to you.

Then build the skill, craft, process, and strategy around that. If you don't do that, you show up as a bundle of skills without a heart and a core. People will feel your lack of self-awareness and alignment with essence because you can't align your actions with your essence if you have no idea what your essence is. Sometimes people can't distinguish between what's meaningful and what makes them happy. Although it's awesome to be happy, the thing that sustains people is meaning, especially when things get hard. Who are you? What triggers you? What brings you calm and peace? What are your values? What do you aspire to? What energizes you? What would you work nonstop for, for hours, weeks, months, and years, simply because it meant that much to you and made you feel that good?

6Heroic Leadership

LAUREN MAILLIAN IS AN AWARD-WINNING marketer, prolific investor, advisor, entrepreneur, author, and board member. She has advised and invested in over 40 start-ups, and her portfolio represents over $5 billion in market capitalization. She continued the legacy of the groundbreaking ProjectDiane research, which has generated billions of media impressions globally for being the first-ever data report on the state of Latina and Black women entrepreneurs in the United States. The former board chair of digitalundivided, Lauren took the helm as CEO to evolve and grow the organization to further support women of color entrepreneurs, especially in the wake of the racial reckoning amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Lauren's career has been shaped by her ability to find opportunities, whether new lines of revenue, ways to squeeze more out of existing profit margins, or ways to enhance a product or deliver more value. That's just how her mind works. It's best summarized as seeing gaps and having the ability to identify and seize hidden profitable value.

When Alison sat down with Lauren to speak about leadership, she had just begun her new role as president of Digital Innovation for Hero Media Inc., where she now leads all lines of business for the company. Hero Media is a Black-owned media and advertising agency that has been around for about four years. The founder and chairman, Joe Anthony, had been a colleague of Lauren's, and she watched him lead some of the greatest campaigns of our time, including the most recent Lenovo campaign. Hero is doing incredible work across the gamut: financial services, products, services, tech, media, entertainment, travel, and health care. In her new role, Lauren gets to do a little bit of everything: running all lines of business, including content, creator partnerships, brand partnerships, agency partnerships, new talent development, tentpole events, upfronts, and their ad tech solution, as well as VC funding and dealing with investors. Lauren shared that her hope for the transition was to be entrepreneurial, to feel and operate like a founder and have the opportunity to build with resources: “I wanted to stay at the intersection of the culture and for the culture: standing up for women of color and using my experiences and network to open doors for people up against similar stereotypes as I have been. I love doing work that changes lives and providing opportunities to creators for visibility, amplification, and to create revenue and monetize their passions.”

Currently, everything you see at Hero Media has been built in-house by the agency side. The website, content, tech stack, ad tech solution, and app have all been built-in house the same way Hero Media does for clients. So, while it's still a startup in many ways, Lauren shared how they have more muscle and a foundation she can build on. There are several hundred billion dollars spent annually on global advertising. In the racial reckoning, there was a movement and a call to action for at least 10% of that to be spent with diverse-owned content creators, publishers, and media companies. Even if you take 10% of $200 billion, you get $20 billion. Lauren believes this is a massive business if even a fraction of that can be captured: “The opportunity is to play big in this space and prove why something is needed specifically for the culture. Our proprietary ad tech solution allows us to generate revenue and service advertising partners in a way that many of the bigger publishers can do. We democratize access by allowing diverse creators and publishers to utilize our ad tech software and platform.”

There are many ways to drive impact. Leadership within a for-profit business such as media and entertainment differs from the styles and expectations of people working in nonprofit, social justice, and other social impact work. Venture philanthropy is critical, and we often need private-sector talent to solve public interest problems effectively.

Lauren explains, “I gave a keynote speech at the first digitalundivided conference twelve years ago. This was before it was incorporated as a nonprofit, before we had a movement for Black people and women of color within technology, innovation, and the start-up ecosystem. From its inception, I was a cheerleader for the organization, chaired our board of directors until 2020, and then I was unanimously appointed to serve as CEO. Likewise, I inherited Project Diane, a biennial research report named for Diane Nash, one of the first Black female innovators. When I took the reins as CEO, I transformed it substantially, five X'd our revenue from $1 million to $5 million in less than eighteen months by bringing in more than 65 corporate, Fortune 500, and unicorn companies as strategic partners. I increased our programming and the research's frequency, breadth, and scope.”

When Lauren was with digitalundivided, she did well there because she didn't come up with a myopic nonprofit viewpoint. Rather than subsisting on grants, they did sponsorships. She rewrote the script in an entrepreneurial way. At Hero Media, Lauren can use different media of content to shine a spotlight and give voice and digital real estate to Black founders. For example, she invested in Partake Cookies, one of the fastest-growing allergen-free baked goods and cookie companies. The founder is a Black and Asian American woman named Denise Woodard. As her company grew, she realized a dearth of Black representation within food and food packaging. Concerned about food sources and our longevity, Partake started a scholarship at Howard specifically for African Americans who want to get into food and food science. This is where Lauren sees leadership heading: companies going out into the world and doing great things with their profits and presence. “Ultimately, I'm a Black woman still subject to the same stereotypes, hardships, doubts, and difficulties of the people I seek to serve. All of us, any group that has had their chance at ascension or success in the last couple of years, rightfully so, have to apply our oxygen mask first.”

Reading about Lauren, it is easy to see why so many come to her for advice and mentorship. Mentees will sometimes ask her how to thank their mentors and reciprocate when they are just beginning their careers. Lauren's advice is that many experienced businesspeople need and want to stay relevant, stay in the know, and stay connected—and mentees are often ready to help. “I tell young people to share articles and highlight trends, areas within the culture, media, and whatever is hip and relevant. That's a lot more valuable than your coffee. I call that the Beyoncé effect. Why is Beyoncé still a fan-favorite? Why is she still such an in-demand artist? She stays around the youngest, hippest, up-and-coming rising star artists who write with her, write for her, collaborate with her, produce for her, keep her fresh, and keep her relevant. You can't live in a glass house and then stay connected to the streets.”

Leadership can come from anywhere because we all have different experiences that bring value. Lauren has never had one mentor because there's not one person whose life she wants to copy-paste in full. “There are people I admire for one thing and another, and I go to each for what I respect the most about them. Every relationship I've had that resembled a mentorship is, in fact, reciprocal. Many people, especially a lot of women, call me their big little sister or Auntie Lauren; they feel like I have an old soul or a lot of senior experience in the business. They've taught me how to reframe my expectations. They've taught me organization. They've taught me patience, and they've taught me grace.”

7Full Thought Leadership

Dr. Derreck Kayongo is an internationally recognized visionary, humanitarian and, founder of the Global Soap Project: a humanitarian aid organization that collects discarded and unused soap from hotels worldwide, reprocesses it, and then distributes it to in-need populations around the world. His passion for helping others and commitment to innovative thinking led him to the role of CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. During his time as CEO, he elevated the global visibility of the Center, showcasing stories of victims of civil rights abuse and the heroic actions that changed the course of history. Derreck currently serves on the board of advisors at Sharing Sacred Spaces, an organization devoted to building local, sustainable interreligious communities working together for peace and civic change. A phenomenal speaker and storyteller, Derreck is a leader in both global health and environmental sustainability.

(Highlights from our interview, recorded May 26, 2023.)

I'M FROM UGANDA, A SMALL country in East Africa, which prides itself on many things, especially being the source of the Nile. That's a contested space because Ethiopians also think they're the source of the Nile, but they're not here to talk, so I will take that one. I now live in Atlanta, where a good group of people, who have grown and moved out of the home, call me Dad. I founded the Global Soap Project about 12 years ago, which takes partially used soap from hotels, the ones you leave behind, and recycles them safely to be reused. I came up with a formula to do that safely and built an organization out of that idea. I'm now training other leaders to think through legacy—how to do things that change the world and leave it a better place.

The truth is we all see a lot of things every day. The things I see, you also see. But do you care about what I see? As a former refugee, when I saw a partially used bar of soap, it meant something to me. I asked the question, “Why are they wasting soap?” If I was wealthy, I probably would have seen used soap and had what my son calls the ick factor. I look brilliant because I picked up on something through the eyes of a refugee, something we can now all agree is a huge waste of resources. Before innovation, you have to see the eyes and who they belong to. I also was not the first person to understand soap was being wasted; my eyes could do something about it because they belonged to a child whose father was a soap maker. I had the tools to do something because I knew what soap was and how it was made. My eyes also belonged to someone whose parents were innovators and entrepreneurs; I saw entrepreneurship take place and be possible. And then, of course, my eyes are also shaped individually. My brothers, who came from the same family, never came up with the idea.

Sometimes ideas visit people who can help put them in place in this world. If you observe and listen enough, go back and spend time with your idea; with hard work and resources, your tool kit will come to life. The Global Soap Project wasn't invented in a day. There's an observation, an idea, and then a lot of time. The idea stuck with me, and I kept adding more tools to the tool kit until I was ready to implement.