The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in (13 page)

“What you’re telling me does make a difference, Ty. And you’re welcome,” I replied quietly.

“So c’mon right in, Blake,” Ty said as he motioned for me to have a seat in the corner of the shop. “Maybe I’ll be able to repay you a little by sharing some really powerful ideas and tools that will continue to shift the way you work and live. Tommy told me you both were coming so I picked up some salami and cheese sandwiches for us. Did you take him to see Anna this morning?” Ty asked Tommy.

“Of course,” was the pleasant reply.

“Quite a woman, isn’t she, Blake? Beautiful, smart, and awesomely good,” noted Ty joyfully.

“She’s pretty special,” I agreed. “She taught me some really fantastic things this morning—starting with the first principle of the Lead Without a Title philosophy:
You Need No Title to Be a Leader
. I left that meeting changed. Without a doubt. I just feel really different.”

“Great on you, dude. I guess the pressure’s on me to perform now. So you’re learning all about what it means to Lead Without a Title. And that leadership is a sport for every person
alive today—not just CEOs, generals in the military, and heads of state. Pretty fun stuff, man. It’ll transform your whole life if you let it. I only wish more people were aware of our method. Businesses would not only be a whole lot more profitable, but they would also become much better places to be. And every community in this big world of ours would improve. Man, I so wish every single one of us understood the power we have to lead in all we do and use our lives at peak.”

“You can feel better knowing that the philosophy is already making a big impact on me, Ty. Like I said, I feel changed now. And I know I’ll be working at BIW and behaving as a FMOB as a result of what I’m learning today,” I said with a smile.

“The kid’s getting it, Tom. I like him already,” Ty passionately replied as he faced Tommy. “That’s the power of good ideas, dude. One good idea is all you need to break through to a completely new game. A single big thought carries with it the ability to shatter all your barriers. One intelligent insight can inspire you to make a decision that shifts you into a revolutionary new way of performing. My man Oliver Wendell Holmes said it well: ‘A mind once exposed to new idea never regains its original dimensions.’

“So listen,” Ty continued, getting focused as he handed me a thick sandwich on multigrain bread and a cool bottle of water. “My job here today—as part of your schooling on Leading Without a Title—is to entertain you.” With that, he shot up to his feet and grabbed a ski that had been leaning against the wall. He pretended it was a guitar and started singing the old Aerosmith song “Dude Looks Like a Lady” at the top of his lungs. Tommy began to laugh. Seeing the startled expression on my face, Ty burst into laughter, too. He then put the ski down and high-fived Tommy. Clearly these two had become great friends. And I could tell they respected each other enormously.

“No, just kidding, Blake. Just havin’ some fun. Gotta find
ways to have a good time in all you do. But seriously, my job today isn’t really to entertain you, although I do hope you have a great time in our hour or so together. And I think it’s true that no matter what we do in business, we all need to be entertainers inspiring our customers to love doing business with us.
Anyone in business is in show business
, as far as I’m concerned, and when we go to work, we’re onstage. We need to perform and dazzle the audience. No one cares if you’re having a bad day. They just want to get the show that they’ve paid to see. But my real goal here is to share the second leadership principle of our philosophy with you so that your inner leader awakens from its sleep even more and you get to express your absolute best even faster. And that principle can be stated in five simple words:
Turbulent Times Build Great Leaders
. Skiing just happens to be the perfect metaphor to bring that point home to you. And so that’s why you’re here with me today.”

“ ‘Turbulent times build great leaders.’ I like that line, Ty. It’s sort of like the cliché, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ ”

“Yeah,” agreed Ty as he passed a hand through his blond hair. “Look, I run a business. You work in a business. It’s incredible what’s going on in the business world today, dude. It’s all so chaotic. Everything’s changing. Harsh uncertainty blended with deep negativity. All the rules of the game are different. Competition is more fierce than ever before. Customers are less loyal than they’ve ever been. Technology has totally altered the way we work. And globalization has leveled the entire playing field so that only organizations made up of people showing Leadership Without a Title will be left standing. It’s stressful and it’s confusing and super-scary for most of us, bro,” he shouted, waving his arms for dramatic effect.

“I have to agree, Ty. Even at the bookstore, I’m feeling more pressure to get things done more quickly than I’ve ever felt. And
everything really does seem to change pretty significantly every few months. My managers change. The way we process inventory changes. Our IT systems constantly change. And we’re expected to stay on top of it all—while we do better work. I feel overwhelmed a lot of the time.”

“I hear you,” noted Ty, now looking thoughtful and serious. “And the pace of the deep change in business that’s happening across multiple industries has no plans to slow down, dude. It’s only going to speed up. And if you stick your head under your desk and hope the avalanche of change will all go away, you’ll end up suffocating, just like some poor soul caught unprepared under an avalanche of fresh mountain snow. No real hope of survival.”

I was struck by his powerful metaphor on managing change in business.

Ty continued. “If you fight against it all, you’ll end up in trouble, man. That would be like resisting the pitch on some crazy ski run that brings your heart up into your throat when you peek over the edge from the very top. The only way you’re ever going to make it down to the bottom in one piece is to commit to the fall line and embrace it versus resisting it. The only way to reach safety is to lean into the mountain.”

“Commit to the fall line?” I questioned, unfamiliar with this term.

“All it means, Blake, is that to ski down the tough runs, you need to do the very thing that it seems you should most avoid doing.”

“And that is?” I wondered aloud.

“You need to actually lean into the steep slope in front of you rather than try and lean closer to the mountain for protection against falling. You need to actually move closer to the place you most fear instead of pulling back from it. Yes, it’s completely counterintuitive. But unless you adopt that technique, you’ll definitely
be in trouble. And some ski patroller might find you frozen on the mountain after everyone else has gone home.”

“Your metaphor applies to me working at the bookstore, doesn’t it, Ty? If I don’t
lean into the change
that’s coming at me and instead try to protect myself by pulling back into my old way of operating, I’ll end up frozen on the mountain, so to speak. And suffocated under that avalanche of change you spoke about, right?”

“Dude. That’s exactly right. But when you just relax into it all and embrace all the fear that comes up when you don’t know all the answers and exactly where you’re going, the same way I skied some of the most treacherous runs on Earth, some remarkable things start to happen. Out on that razor’s edge, where you feel your greatest discomfort and all your limiting beliefs start to scream through your brain and you think there’s no way you’ll ever make it down, buddy, that’s when you’re most alive. And that’s the place where your biggest growth happens.
The fear you move through when you go to the edge of your limits actually causes your limits to expand
. And that expansion not only translates into far better work but much greater performance in every other area of your life, man. When you consistently move closer to what you are resisting, rather than push it all away, you’ll become not only way more confident in the way you do business. You will also become far more powerful in the way you lead a life. And you really get to see how strong you truly are. Being bold and embracing opportunities that fill you with fear actually turns that fear into power and introduces you to your strengths. As Nietzsche said: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ ”

“Amazing insights, Ty. Definitely helpful for where I’m at professionally and personally. So change is actually a good thing?”

“Most definitely. And turbulent conditions can actually elevate your skills, show you your hidden talents, and boost your game. Look, when it comes to skiing, anyone can look like a pro
on the easy runs. The true test of your ability is how you ski on the hard ones. When the going gets tough, that’s when you get to see how good your technique truly is. And how great a skier you really are. And it’s precisely the same thing in business. Anyone can be a star when the economy is strong, the competition is weak, and your customers are loyal. Difficult times are the ones that
reveal
what you’re made of—and what kind of a leader you actually are.”

Ty paused and took another bite of his sandwich, chomping hungrily as pieces of bread fell onto his sweater. After taking a gulp of water, his insightful discourse on leadership using the metaphor of skiing continued.

“What you resist will persist, but what you befriend you begin to transcend, Blake. Look, when the terrain changes on a ski slope, your technique needs to change with it.
You need to adapt
. Otherwise you’ll fall and get hurt. The way you ski a nice groomed run isn’t the same way you’d ski deep powder. Same thing applies to the way we work right now.
New conditions call for different technique
. You need to adapt.”

“Otherwise I’ll fall and get hurt,” I reiterated, fully focused on the lessons this fascinating former ski pro was revealing to me.

“Right.
And the single best technique you can apply is to Lead Without a Title
. This simple idea is what’ll separate the best in business from those that fall as we head into the future. Any organization that builds leaders at every level will easily move through the change caused by these uncertain times. Actually, any enterprise that adopts the Lead Without a Title philosophy will actually find that these challenging times are a blessing, while their competition goes the other way and gets buried.”

“A blessing?”

“Sure. It’s like I was saying: anyone can look good in easy conditions. So when the business environment was safe and predictable, it didn’t take a lot for an organization to make money
and grow. But now we’re in the messy snow, so to speak, and onto some wildly steep mountains. Only excellent technique will work. And that means Leading Without a Title. The organizations that understand this will find that they have a lot less competition and a lot more opportunities for far more growth in these turbulent times. Companies that are made up of clusters of leaders will actually
accelerate
their growth by speeding up their rate of innovation as their competition pulls back, build better teams by investing in people while their rivals shrink training budgets, and pick up top talent as their industry peers lay people off. And so fast companies get that unsettling times are actually gifts for them and periods to get so far ahead of the competition that they can never catch up.”

“Cool,” I replied.

“So to adapt to this period we’re going through, I encourage you to seriously embrace the chaos, Blake. Welcome the danger. Take some intelligent risks and have the courage to concentrate your greatest abilities on your largest opportunities, even if that thought frightens you. The more you lean into your fears and move toward your challenges, the more staggering the rewards that will come your way. The more you do the things you’re scared to do, the more you’ll be showing real leadership. And the more you give to your work—and to life itself—amid deep change, the more you’ll receive. Life’s pretty fair like that,” Ty noted, sounding a little philosophical. “You get back in direct proportion to what you give it. All the disruption out there will take you to some beautiful places, man. It’s all a gorgeous gift—all of it.”

Ty added, “And the real idea to remember from this time we have together is that
Turbulent Times Build Great Leaders
. It’s the most difficult terrain that creates the best skiers. And
it’s the most uncomfortable of conditions that can be the crucible that forges the best leaders
. That’s really the key piece to our conversation,
dude. But because it can be so frightening to stretch beyond the runs we’re used to skiing, we generally avoid the scary stuff. And in so doing we miss a glorious chance to reclaim more of our buried potential. Resisting what makes you feel uncomfortable at work might seem like a way to stay safe in these wild times, but in the long term, it’s actually a very dangerous maneuver. What made me a fantastic skier was my pure love for hunting down the most treacherous of chutes and the deepest of snow.
I learned early on that the only way I’d get good at skiing super-hard terrain was to ski super-hard terrain regularly
. That willingness not only brought out the greatness within me. It also gave me the experience I needed to win all those world championships.”

“And all those lovely women that came with them,” Tommy interjected with a wink. “Blake, you wouldn’t believe some of Ty’s stories. This guy’s
really
lived the days of his life. But let’s leave that for another time.”

“Another time,” agreed Ty. “Wouldn’t want to overload our young friend here, Tom. What I’m trying to get at, Blake—and I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself, but good coaching does involve the repetition of the laws of success—is that these turbulent times in business actually carry with them incredible opportunities for each of us to become remarkable leaders. And to build even better businesses. Most people hide in their shells when the going gets rough. They retreat into their bunkers. They push away anything that pulls them the least bit out of their comfort zone. And sadly, in so doing, they also push away their chances for growth, mastery, and lasting achievement.
The brave don’t run
. Never forget that, dude. The brave eat their fear before their fear eats them.”