In this empowering episode, Deborah Coviello, Founder of Drop In CEO, shares shares strategies for CEO leadership. If you struggle with chaos or burnout, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– How to evolve people processes to unleash potential
– Why prioritize peace of mind before pursuing results
– How to define your purpose through self-reflection
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the start, scale and succeed podcast. It’s the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder. Now I’ve got a question for you founders listening today. Are you the CEO of your business, or for those of you in the nonprofit space, are you the executive director or senior pastor. Now I’m not asking about the title on your email signature or the name the title next to your name on the org chart. Instead, what I’m asking about is whether you are doing the things that a CEO should do for the reasons that a CEO should do them. Because just having the title doesn’t mean you’re doing the job or even understand what that job is. But if that’s you, if you’re not ultra clear on what it means to be CEO of your organization, don’t worry, because you’re absolutely in the right place. Here with us today is Deb Coviello, who is known as the drop in CEO. Her superpower is lowering the temperature and elevating conversations with empathy and patience. As a speaker, author, podcaster and consultant, she teaches C suite leaders how to establish a lift light, lead environment and create calm amidst chaos or crisis. She’s the author of the book The CEO’s compass, your guide to get back on track and the new CEO playbook, stop chasing results and start pursuing peace of mind. Her long running podcast, the drop in CEOs in the top 1.5% of podcasts globally, among Apple podcasts. She’s here with us today. Deb, so excited to have you. I was going through your book, the CEO compass, and one of the things that I noted as I was reading through is you start off with peace of mind. And as like, weird as this sounds, I can’t think of a founder who didn’t want peace but I also can’t think of many who actually have it. Peace of mind is so important, if so like, why is it so rare?
Deborah Coviello
Well, I mean, first of all, Scott, thank you so much for the opportunity to share my insights around that. One of the reasons there’s two things that I want to say to founders about peace of mind is, one is you have to be able to see it, feel it, and know what peace of mind looks like. And then the second thing is to change your playbook, because we are rewarded. We are celebrated. Stakeholders, shareholders, all depend on us to get results versus peace of mind, but it is a disciplined leader that can visualize and articulate what peace of mind is, not only for themselves, but also for the teams that they lead. Because ultimately, if they can define what peace of mind is unleash the potential of their people and do the CEO work, versus being down in their business, they are going to reach peace of mind and have sustainable results and also, quite frankly, be able to sleep at night. But it’s really about undoing that playbook that’s always worked for us, whether they’re in corporate or what have you. And think about what is it that the CEO should be doing is removing all the barriers to ultimately achieve peace of mind.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love even the metaphor of the playbook, because one of the things that I see for folks at this stage is, as founder, they’ve moved from being that like player slash Captain slash hero, to save the day on the field, you know, where they could just jump in and make it happen. And usually, because the organization is just so big and complex, they can’t quite do that. They can’t throw the whole organization on their back anymore. And so it’s kind of like being a coach on the sideline, having depend on others to make it work. And if that’s the case, that playbook is all important, because it is the way that you orchestrate. It is the way that you create success, not just for the team, but for yourself. But there’s a real tension on that, and you opened up right out of the gate with it beautifully. But there’s some folks listening like, I don’t get paid for that, right? Like, or I don’t make more profit for that. How do you help folks to reconcile the short run tension between profit and peace.
Deborah Coviello
Well, we have people that count on us, people that we have to make sure the business is running so that we can pay people and they can still enjoy their livelihood. So you will always be somewhat in the weeds and some what involved in the day to day to assure that we are getting those short term results. That’s what keeps business in line. But what we have to as a CEO is make sure that we have trusted partners within our organization that can execute the day to day, so that you can parse out enough of your time in that day, week and month, and continually move the lead needle when it comes to that strategic work in case in point, I have one CEO right now that is doing the CEO work and is hands off from the operations and without having a clear vision of what peace of mind is, what we’re trying to strive for, the operations is in constant chaos that CEO needs to actually relearn what the role is set the vision. Vision, set the direction and make sure that that information is cascaded down and understood in two way, understanding, not just one way, communication, such that the people who are operators, integrators know exactly what the mission is with periodic check ins, trust, but verify. Because it could be fun selling, be outward facing, but you need to actually be comfortable and confident that the people are executing on your vision. So it’s this little bit of a shift of being in the game which does give you a lot of satisfaction, but wouldn’t it be more satisfying if your people had your back? Your people were taking care of your customer, and you could continue to build more and more relationships and set that vision again, a little bit of a shift on what that CEO needs to do.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, for sure, another one of the compass points that you you lay out in the book, and you’ve kind of already connected us to here, is purpose. And so the thing that was really interesting to me as I was reading through the book, is, why purpose followed peace and not the other way around. I thought that order was intriguing.
Deborah Coviello
Well, you can have purpose of you know, we’re here, and here’s one particular favorite statement I have. It’s not to be number one in the market, but be the favorite of our customers. It’s a slightly different purpose that I want people to really think about. But you can have your purpose, and you can run people ragged trying to get the results to be the favorite. But unless you have that vision, unless you have peace of mind, again, that is a state of being, that is an outcome of the work that you’re doing, you can have purpose and get results and burn the people out, and you’ll never achieve peace of mind. So I always make sure that the leaders when they’re feeling stuck, when they’re feeling off track, when they’re looking out the window and not losing their confidence because they don’t know how to get out of their current state, I start with the first is your mindset. You need to take time to understand what is peace of mind. Start with the leader. First get them in a better place, and then lead with your purpose. Lead with your purpose, and around that purpose then goes to the other compass point. Then how do you unleash the potential or performance of your people en route to that purpose? Again, this very strategically, I put these compass points in certain places and in the area of importance.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that, because one of the things that I see folks where it starts to unravel at this stage is they’ve kind of, I would say, borrowed visions for their their organization, right, like that. It’s like, from their dad to their buddy to the business group that they’re in, like, who knows where it comes from, but there’s this, like, preconceived notion of what our vision needs to be, and because it’s not ours, we have no peace with it. And and so you just pursue it and pursue it and pursue it. And then you realize, like, hey, businesses get bigger, they don’t get better. And, and so let me ask you this, because I think you’re about this, but let’s keep going. Yeah, no, it’s actually this that I want to talk about. Like, why is it that we’re so prone to borrowing other people’s visions for our organization?
Deborah Coviello
Oh, my goodness, because maybe we don’t even know how to do self reflection. We don’t even know how to look inside of ourselves and take that time to understand what is my reason for being, what is my value? I mean, honestly, I was in a role that, you know, I was trying to burn the people out and work harder and smarter, and I wasn’t getting the results. But once, I took some time to self reflect and realize the only reason why I’m here is to help my people struggle less so they can spend more time doing the things that they love to do. I don’t want them working 10, 1214, hour days, but wouldn’t it be much better if they could get what their work is done? I remove help, remove the barriers, so they can spend more time with their family. That is really the purpose of what I was doing. It wasn’t necessarily increasing stakeholder value or anything like that. That’s important, and leaders need to take that time, because if you don’t take that time for that self reflection, you’re going to be leading a ship to God knows where?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, 100% now, one of the things that that drives us, and another one of your compass points is the past, and I know for me, as when I was in my kind of early founder days, really, first decade, it was always the next hill. It was just like we’d conquer. It was next hill, next hill, next hill. And I remember leaders coming to me, and it’s like we never celebrate anything, let alone reflect on anything. And so when you have these kind of type A Vision oriented, future oriented folks, what’s the cost of not dealing with the compass point of the past.
Deborah Coviello
So we bring new people into our fold. We hire new people. We acquire people. And these visionaries, these a one personalities have a lot to their credit. They get results. But what happens? And I had this happen to me once when I failed to appreciate the past of the people on my. Team, or where they came from, I actually shut them down. I never recognized their full value. So while it is a superpower to move forward and fast, we need to be disciplined and slow down to get to know our people. Because maybe there was something about this past team, this senior leader in your organization, that was of men’s value, and you never know like you’re having problems with the customer, but maybe this person, 20 years ago had a really tight relationship with that customer. If you took the time to understand their past, you could bring their value forward into the current state and become a hero. Otherwise, we don’t get full potential from the people if we don’t spend time understanding the past.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right, right, Well, I want to keep moving through this, because I think they’re excellent points that you make here in the book. So the next one was pride, which, which struck me as like that we’re getting we’re getting somewhere now, because pride is not something we like to talk a whole lot about. It has both very positive connotations. It has very negative connotations. It’s a really tricky word, and can be really tricky concept in the workplace. So how what start with a definition for us? I think that’d be helpful. Like, what does a pride? What does pride mean to you? And then how can we use that to navigate being a CEO?
Deborah Coviello
So one of the things that’s interesting through my conversations, I also talk about the pride of the CEO. It’s one of those things. And again, I’ll come back to the pride to compass point. But I want to get this in to the CEOs and founders out there. You may have a lot of pride based on your past successes, and you get to a place of being stuck, whatever it is, the conditions change, the customers change, et cetera. But it is that pride that is wonderful again as a superpower, but over utilize that pride is your detriment because it holds you back or you’re not willing to bring in external resources. So that’s where pride may have a negative connotation. And I suggest to you, you check your pride at the door and be open to other inputs, or possibly external resources to get you through the challenge. Now going back to pride, from a positive perspective, the pride compass point was something that I learned in my corporate career, and what I call pride is one’s intellectual property of the individuals. When you have intellectual properties in a company such as tech, etc, you put patents on that, but when it comes to the people and their knowledge, often these a one person leaders will go straight ahead, let’s conquer that hill, and don’t spend time understanding the unique value and gifts of those people. They think just in terms of, here’s a body that fills a job function, that’s all I need. Leaders need to form closer human connection with the people on their teams to understand that unique value that maybe they had 510, 15 years ago. Maybe they developed a platform, et cetera, by recognize that we pay respect to those individuals. And you may not need that intellectual property now, but at least you’ve taken the time to get to know it, and you may need it sometime in the future. It’s an important compass point. When we skip over it, we lose the horsepower of our people.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, there’s this interesting dynamic that happens for a lot of our founders at this same stage, which is where they find themselves kind of both over reliant and under reliant on their people. There’s this sense of we, we’ve got bigger problems. We need bigger heroes, like, I’ve relied on Jeff all my life. I’m gonna rely on Jeff all my life. And it’s kind of like everything is bottled up in one or two people, but at the same time, we’re missing that in the whole rest of the staff. And so how do you, especially in like, a tight knit group, right? Those who were there who’ve got the battle scars together. How do you bring other people into that from a pride perspective?
Deborah Coviello
Well, again, it’s a conversation with that leader. I can give you all the tactical ways to do it, but often we have to say, Well, why then do you not trust distributing the work to others in your organization? I mean, you brought these people on to perform a task, to add the capacity, and when you don’t trust or take the time to how can I leverage the legacy of my go to people, capture their intellectual property for a sustainable effect, and then Casca document and cascade that ultimately, as a leader, it is about leaving Our legacy, not relying on those go to people, because those go to people, unfortunately might go away, right? And then where is that intellectual property that you didn’t preserve? Our leaders, not just are not just about getting results, but think about what legacy Do you want to leave, and those people that you hire afterwards will remember you because you trusted them and you trusted your senior go to people to pass on that knowledge, because ultimately, we’re in business to stay in business, yeah, and the only way we can do that is to trust and leave a legacy by transferring that knowledge. If you don’t again, you got to burn the people out. If something bad happens to one of those people, you’re up the creek. Yeah. Think about it, your job is risk management. And how can you mitigate that?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, and so one of the primary mechanisms that we use for kind of capturing that institutional knowledge is processes. And this is another one of those words that I feel like has about 1000 different definitions. It seems very simple, but the way we think about, talk about and use systems and processes is very, very different. So within the context of the CEO compass, what does process mean to you?
Deborah Coviello
Oh, my You are well read, and I really appreciate that. But this is a distinction, you know, in my upbringing and training as a quality engineer, we talk about fixing people, process and tools or platforms, and we think about, oh, let’s write a procedure. Let’s have a workshop. And if people don’t follow the rules, we, you know, write them up. No. What I say as a leader, and this goes to the tactical side of the compass, is our role is to observe not only the individual, their confidence, their capability, their capacity, to be able to coach them and build the essential skills, because we bring in very talented people, but sometimes we just leave them alone and never fully develop them to take on more and more responsibility. And then when we talk about process, it is the dynamics and the interaction of these people. You may have people that sit on the sidelines and hold knowledge. You have other people that don’t know how to have Crucial Conversations. Our job as a leader is to have a radar up and evolve the people processes to unleash their potential talented but the barriers when they’re there and they don’t know how to communicate decreases their efficiency, and you don’t get full utilization out of them. That’s what I mean by process, is an area where leaders or designees need to unleash that potential.
Scott Ritzheimer
I could not agree more with that, and it’s, it’s a little bit of a pet peeve for me when people talk about process, and you know that they think, SOP, right? Like that, that’s really what they’re talking about, is these literal steps on how to do something, and especially at this stage, not that those things are inherently wrong, but they’re not enough. There’s so much more going on between the people. And I love that you made such a big point out of that in the book. And I think it’s so underrated for most CEOs.
Deborah Coviello
Yeah, again, humans still run the world. I don’t care about AI being an efficiency tool. People have emotions. People interact with people. That’s how work gets done. That’s who your customers interface with. And again, the other thing you should be thinking about while you’re out trying to get new customers. If you people don’t have the confidence or capacity or capability to do the work and you haven’t evolved their skills, who’s going to feel the pain your customers? Yeah, and so pay it forward. Now, take care of your people. They’ll take care of your customers.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, if I remember correctly. And that’s not always a given, but So correct me, if I’m wrong, but performance was the last of the compass points. Is that right?
Deborah Coviello
Yeah, that’s that’s one of the things. And this is more on the strategic side. When we think about performance, often we think about the results. So are we going to make our EBITDA market share sales numbers, what have you, operational efficiencies. And yes, those are important. But the problem is, our thinking is that those are lagging indicators and not leading indicators of success. I propose to leaders that they rethink what performance is, and going back to the people dimension, can we look at the capability and capacity of their people? Are they living up to their capability and capacity. Mind you is confidence in the way of them being able to achieve. Think about what those leading indicators are. Who has been trained, who has a bit gone through, who knows how to do Crucial Conversation is everybody lined up with a mentor or coach when we invest in our people and set up those leading indicators of training, of evolving skills, etc. Those are what we should be measuring performance. Because when we can unleash the potential, how many risks are people identifying and mitigating? Those are all leading indicators of future success. So I propose we start setting up leading indicators of performance in addition to the lagging indicators of performance.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, we have only scratched the surface of the surface, and it’s already fascinating. And again, highly recommend the book. We’ll make sure folks know how they can get a copy of it in a second. But first, I have one more question that I want to ask you, that I ask all my guests. And that question is this, what is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Deborah Coviello
So it’s so simple, but I want to get inside every one of your founder’s head has said, have the courage to ask for help. Don’t wait too long. Don’t let pride get in your way. Don’t let your old playbook get in the way. When you start getting that uneasy feeling in your gut that something’s not working and it’s getting away from you, and you’ve not faced this challenge before. I ask of you, have the pride, have the discipline and the courage to ask for help. It is a source of strength. It starts with you.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, Deb, there’s some folks listening, and it’s just the right thing, the right. Right time, right season, read everything they where can they get a copy of the book? Where can they find more out about the work that you do?
Deborah Coviello
All right? Well, again, Scott, thank you so much for the opportunity. A quick way to get a hold of me is just go to my website, dropinceo.com and also, I’d like to emphasize forward slash gift, because there you can get a free chapter of the CEO’s compass in PDF or audio form, as well as a sample of some of my podcast bundles that you might actually enjoy. And there too, you can also find how to purchase the book. But again, Scott, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to your audience, your founders and CEOs.
Scott Ritzheimer
Thanks. Deb, well, it’s really a privilege and honor having here. Loved this conversation could have gone on for a very long time, but for those of you listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Deborah Coviello
Known as The Drop-In CEO, Deb’s superpower is lowering the temperature and elevating conversations with empathy and patience. As a speaker, author, podcaster, and consultant, she teaches C-Suite leaders how to establish a “Lift, Light, Lead” environment and create calm amidst chaos or crisis. She is the author of “The CEO’s Compass: Your Guide to Get Back on Track” and “The NEW CEO Playbook: Stop Chasing Results and Start Pursuing Peace of Mind.” Her long-running podcast, The Drop-In CEO, is in the top 1.5% globally among Apple podcasts.
Want to learn more about Deborah Coviello’s work at Drop In CEO? Check out her website at https://dropinceo.com/ and get a free chapter of her book The CEO’s Compass: Your Guide to Get Back on Track at https://dropinceo.com/gift