Ron Carucci on Constructing Transformational Journeys
Ron Carucci is co-founder and managing partner of Navalent, where he works with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders and industries. He has a 30-year track record helping some of the world’s most influential executives tackle challenges of strategy, organization and leadership.
Tune in as Ron explores:
- The importance of picking and constructing the right journeys.
- How having an orientation to learning makes for a good client partner.
- Why coaches should offer information without expecting something in response.
- The need for coaches to replenish their own resources.
Resources
Also mentioned in this podcast:
- Rising to Power: The Journey of Exceptional Executives, by Ron A. Carucci and Eric C. Hansen
- “Deep Connections like These Will Make You Very Influential,” by Ron Carucci
- “The Very Real Dangers of Executive Coaching,” by Steven Berglas
- “Beyond Bad Coaching”
- The Navalent Quarterly
Full Transcript
Michael: Yes, this is The Coaching Habit Podcast. It’s lovely to have you back. Thank you, dear listener, for tuning in. This is my chance to talk to interesting folks, people who’ve got a point of view in this world, people who are showing up with a perspective on how to be more coach-like in the world.
My guest today, Ron Carucci. Ron is the co-founder and managing partner of Navalent, and works with CEOs and executives pursuing transformative change for their organization, their leaders, and their industries. He has a 30 year track record for helping some of the world’s most influential executives tackle the challenges of strategy, organization, and leadership, which is a nice way of covering everything that’s hard and difficult about most organizations. He’s worked with start-ups. He’s worked with those top 10 companies in the Fortune 100, from turnarounds into new markets and strategies, really overhauling leadership and culture, and redesigning for growth. He’s worked in more than 25 different countries across four different continents.
He is, and this is how I discovered him, he’s the best-selling author of eight books, including the recent Amazon number one, Rising to Power, a book that I really enjoyed. He’s a regular contributor to HBR, and to Forbes, and has been featured in assorted various other magazines like Fortune and Business Insider, and Business Week, and the like. So, we’re lucky to have him. Ron, welcome.
Ron Carucci: Michael, so great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Michael: My pleasure. We’ve talked a little bit about the path to here, but I’m curious to know, these days, where are you focusing? At Box of Crayons, we talk about the quest to do more great work, work that has more impact, work that has more meaning. I’m wondering how you think about, and talk about, great work for you right now.
Ron Carucci: It’s such an interesting question, because I think every day I’m so privileged that I and my colleagues at Navalent get to wake up and make the world better. We get to partner with some of the most impressive executives on their journeys of change, that are often turbulent. I think where I’m leaning in a little bit harder these days. is picking the right journeys. Sometimes I’m not the right fit or I’m not the right person to accompany some leaders on their journeys. Frankly, there’s a lot of sociopaths out there who want more.
Michael: And increasingly, I think, as you move up the corporate ladder, the ratio of psychopaths to normal person increases.
Ron Carucci: That’s become devastating to me. I feel like I’d rather … God bless them, somebody should help them. I just don’t know that I want it to be me. I think trying to find the good-hearted, good-natured, smart, curious, open leaders who understand that leading a journey of transformation is as much about their own formation as it is the formation of their organizations and around them, and how much they have to be transformed as much as they have to transform what’s around them. I think the leaders who understand that that’s a real part of what they’re doing, are the best fits for us.
Michael: How do you find those people? I work closely with Marshall Goldsmith, and he’s said as much, the success he has in coaching comes down to smart client selection, as much as anything else. He’s really particular about who he chooses to say yes to. It’s good to have that clarity, but when you’re sitting down and you’re meeting somebody for the first time, and they’re like, “We’re going to hire you, and we’re going to pay you a chunk of money for it.” How do you have the discipline to figure out, yeah, I think this person’s a good fit, or you know what, we should step aside.
Ron Carucci: There’s a couple of things I look for. One is how hard can they be pushed? The sales cycle for one of our engagements can be upwards of six months to a year, because you’re risking a very large and intimate relationship, and a large and not inexpensive journey. Sometimes the journey to get to closure on an engagement is not a couple weeks. Over the course of a journey, at some point, our belief is consult and help first, sell later. At some point the meter just turns on.
I think the determination of whether or not to turn it on comes from, can they take feedback? Are they open to challenging their assumptions? Is their opening posture one of I already know, or I don’t know? Is there a sense of humility and curiosity there? How do they talk about their people? Is there a sense of, however they’re describing their pain, is there insight? Is there a naiveté? Is there a dismissal of others’ views? What have they tried before in terms of solving the challenges they’re facing? What experience do they have with consultants and coaches? What is their orientation to help, to receiving help, and what is their orientation to learning?
I think once you begin to size up those kinds of things, I think you’re getting a picture of what kind of journey is this going to be. How do they make decisions? How do they construct choices? Are they hyper-impulsive? Are they overly reflective and overly data driven? Is there a blend of how they include others and trust their gut?
Michael: What are you looking for as red flags? For me, if you’re intuitive, or you’re data driven, I’m not sure if I’m in the process of selecting a client that’s going to influence me one way or another. It’s good data to know the impact they’re having, but is it going to influence whether I say yes or no to them as a client? Not for me, but there’s other things that you flagged, where I’m like, the way you’ve just been dismissive of your team, or your boss, and you’ve shown up with a kind of cynical sarcasm around that, that may be a red flag for me. Are there two or three particular red flags that’s like, “Oh, I see that. Let’s slowly back out of the room at this stage.”
Ron Carucci: Sometimes I actually run out of the room. The presence of pathology. Am I seeing a real, undiagnosed, deep sense of narcissism here? How many questions did they ask versus how many declarative sentences do they make? Are they trying to tell me that they already have the answer? How fearful are they? Is there levels of fear that reach neuroticism or paranoia? If there’s any kinds of pathology, then I’m going to refer them to a clinician.
Michael: Nice. That’s super helpful. Thanks, Ron. Let me shift the focus a little bit, because I’m always interested in talking to smart, accomplished people like you, but I’m also interested to know how they got there. I’ve got a hypothesis, which is, there have been moments on the journey to get here where you’ve taken a left turn instead of a right turn, and it’s made all the difference. The quote, I don’t know who said it, but I love it, “Inspiration is when your past suddenly makes sense.” If you look back on your journey so far, what have been the crossroad moments for you that have taken you from wherever you were to being author, writer, influencer, coach, now?
Ron Carucci: It’s funny, because sometimes I think of those crossroads as more like hairpin turns. There’s been a couple. Actually, there’s probably been dozens, truthfully. When I think about in the context of being in the advice business, one that comes to mind is understanding that every brilliant insight I have isn’t meant to be shared, and more, probably isn’t meant to be shared now. Sometimes I may discover something about a leader that they’re six months away from being ready to hear. Just because I observe a pattern of behavior or have some pithy, revelatory observation of what could make them a better leader, it doesn’t mean I need to share it ever, or right now.
Part of my learning is how do I construct the journey. If I believe that leader needs to understand this about themselves, how much do I pick at the scab? When do I rip the scab off? What’s the way I construct the path to make sure that the relationship and the intimacy that I have with them, that the relationship that I’ve constructed can hold what I’m about to impose on it. Often, consultants and coaches fail to measure the strength of the intimacy they’ve built commensurate with what they’re trying to get.
Michael: I can almost see, because we’re both consultants, a classic two by two matrix happening out of this, which is degree of challenge and degree of intimacy. What I think I’m hearing you saying is, it’s only a certain level of intimacy that you’ve gained the permission to push people in a certain way.
Ron Carucci: Yep. And I think you have to sometimes accelerate that intimacy, or presume it, and then let the relationship catch up to it. It’s like learning to swim in the deep end of the pool. Sometimes that’s good. Learning the art of where to put that line and where to move it, commensurate with what you need to get the leader to accomplish, I think, for me, was a very important recognition. To not treat every conversation as if it were the last.
Michael: How do you accelerate intimacy in a way of working with somebody? Because it’s a fascinating phrase, and I totally see that piece around moving from transaction to relationship, and from relationship to intimacy. There’s something very powerful about moving up that hierarchy, that elevator. Are there tools or ways of being you have that you think can help accelerate that?
Ron Carucci: Yeah, I wrote a piece in my Forbes column called, “Deep Connections Will Make You Very Influential”, and it’s really about the theory of attachment. It looks at six dimensions of how do you measure attachment to somebody you’re advising. For me, first of all, do you even know how you attach, and can you sense how others attach? How do you use your own vulnerability and disclosure? How do you push against the resistance and the natural defenses of not wanting to be vulnerable, in a leader? How authentic do you invite them to be? How do you use feedback and data? How do you avoid hiding behind content, because too many coaches hide behind content.
In that piece, if you want to put it in your show notes…
Michael: I don’t mean to make you hide behind content, but I don’t know the theory of attachment. When you said, “Do you even know how you attach?” Could you just share maybe one or two or three options that I have? What are the different ways people do attach, or not attach?
Ron Carucci: I think there is the how do I use bold feedback without needing to be admired. Sometimes leaders will be very use some bravura in their feedback because they want the response of, “Wow, you’re so brave. That’s such bold feedback.” Knowing that there’s a way to offer information without needing something in response. How I use vulnerability. Sometimes coaches will use vulnerability to manipulate intimacy. They’ll over disclose. There’s a curiosity. How do I express intrigue, or wonder, or observation about you, without ignoring boundaries?
Michael: That’s interesting.
Ron Carucci: How I use empathy. Am I empathic without creating a need for me to rescue you? Am I so over-empathic that I’m turning you into a victim rather than responsible to your own problems?
Michael: I like this. I think where you’re pointing me to around this is going, look, there are various skills that you can use to create a sense of intimacy, and there’s almost a way where you cross the line and it becomes A, less effective, and B, more manipulative, at the same time.
Ron Carucci: One of the most insidious ones is delight. How do you I use my natural fascination in delight in somebody that doesn’t become idolatry. I’m so sucking up, I’m so delighting in them that they can’t wait to get around me just to feel good about themselves.
Michael: Most leaders have more than enough people being sycophantic to them without needing somebody else to do it for them.
Ron Carucci: Much less, paying for it.
Michael: That’s a great focus on serving the people you work with, the leaders.
Ron Carucci: Michael, let me just leave it, for those who are not clinicians, I would encourage them to read, because your own proclivity to attachment starts in your childhood, starts with how you attached to your parents. It’s the earliest part of our social development that shapes our own understanding of attachment to others, and if you don’t know yours, if you don’t know what your predispositions are, you’re not going to do a good job of creating that with others. You’re either going to be paid for expertise and become a transactional person, or you’re going to become somebody who’s very co-dependent.
Michael: I feel like I should just hang up on you now and go read your article just to go, “Who am I?” Or, “How do I show up? What do I do?” That’s super useful.
What I want to do is shift the focus to you, Ron, because my experience with the people who are at the top of their coaching game, are people who have done their own work, shop in their own store. One of the things that I see, myself, is that as I get older, I seem to have realized that I have a limited number of lessons to learn. I’m just going to spend the rest of my life having to learn them. It shows up in a different, subtle way every time, but it’s like the same damned mistake, and the same a-ha moment I get. It’s like, “Oh, that again. I’m reacting like this another time.”
One of the questions that I love to ask is, for you, as you’ve grown, what’s the hard lesson that you’ve had to learn along the way, and perhaps you have to keep learning, you have to keep coming back to, going, “That’s my grindstone that I need to work with.”
Ron Carucci: Oh my gosh. Do we have five hours?
Michael: Just lie down on this couch for me.
Ron Carucci: I think one of the things I think that, maybe this is overly universal, because of the work we do, where there’s a tremendous amount of psychic, emotional, and psychological depletion of what we do, and how I go about replenishing that, and what it is … Sometimes I think I have agency addiction. We love to have impact, but sometimes the highs and lows of when you are or aren’t having impact, or when something you do doesn’t work, or when somebody rejects your advice, how do you personalize that enough to learn from it, but not so much that it can be debilitating, or discouraging, or frustrating? You get triggered. Do I know when I’m triggered enough by an experience that doesn’t go how I wished it would go? And flip-side is, when things go exceptionally well, when you have tremendous impact, how do you learn to enjoy that enough without overly indulging it and attaching so much of who you are to it, that you can’t separate it?
Michael: I love that. I empathize with that, that whole piece around, look, when things go well, I truly want to take all the credit for this. When things go badly, I want to blame somebody else for it not working. That’s not a really mutually compatible stand.
Ron Carucci: I may blame myself. I may get very self-contemptuous when something doesn’t go well, and sort of become overly indulgent in my own inadequacies and shortfalls, and wonder what I could have done differently, or go to it’s not fair. How come that person gets that much influence when I’m better, and all that horrible comparison thing we do in our brains.
When things to well, I can find a degree of humility to know that it wasn’t just me, but the psychic rush of serotonin and dopamine that comes into the moment of this was so fun, to recognize that isn’t going to be every single day and every single consultation. Would that just be okay? Should be in those moments. Enjoy them. Be grateful for the chance to have had impact, and move on.
Michael: I love it. Thank you. That’s super helpful. This is just a powerful conversation for me, reflecting on my own patterns and my own lessons around this, so thank you for that.
Ron, you’re an accomplished coach and a thought leader in the space of leadership and power and control. I notice that many experienced coaches tend to have a few really tried and tested processes, or tools, or methods that they use. They’ve got a range of different ways of supporting the people with whom they work, but often there’s one or two things that they go, “I just love this. I love this approach. I love this exercise. I love this,” whatever it might be. I’m wondering of what’s true for you around that. Do you have one of two favorite tools that you’re like, “This is one of my go-tos.”
Ron Carucci: One of my favorite tools is to have no tools. It’s because sometimes I see the extreme of coaches being so tool driven, so methodology driven, that they ignore … Rule number one in great impact is context. I see so many … If you’ll look at the failure of coaching engagements, and why they, it’s usually almost a failure, always a failure of context.
On our website, if you go to our website, we have a coaching model. We call it executive development intensive. What are the phases of work to guide an executive to a different place? A couple of the frameworks that I share, and we have a free e-book on this, as well, if folks want to download it, on leading transformation. Our code language for change is within, between, and among. As we are gauging a transformational journey, we are looking at three different layers of change. One is within. I’m examining within the leader their own narratives, their own triggers, their own transference. What are the places that shape their own behavior, and how aware of them are they?
The second is between. Who are the critical stakeholders to that leader, their bosses, their peers, their customers, their suppliers? Who are the critical adjacent organizations? If they’re leading a supply chain, who’s the head of marketing? If they’re leading sales, who is the head of finance? Look at the between spaces, the crevices where relational fungus and rivalry can grow.
Michael: I love that phrase, relationship fungus. That’s perfect.
Ron Carucci: Then I look at the among. I look at the systemic factors. What are the cultural influences? What are the industry influences? What are the technological influences? What we know about change, is that change, for it to stick, has to happen on all three levels, within, between, and among. And too often, coaches focus on the within, and not even that deeply. We all know Steven Berglas’ article about the very real dangers of coaching, because there was no clinical lens. It’s a classic every coach should read, but if you’re not anchoring that work with that. If you don’t have analysis is going to be the individual leader, it can never just be the individual leader. It’s got to be those they’re leading. It’s got to be their department. It’s got to be their strategy. It’s got to be what’s expected of them that year in their annual plan. It’s got to be their history in the organization. It’s got to be the bosses to whom they are accountable.
You have got to examine all that. You’ve got to anchor the engagement to their boss. Their boss has got to be a sponsor. There’s so many things about constructing a journey of change that are critical, that you won’t know. Should I use the LVI? Should I use Hogan? Should I use the ESCI? How much qualitative data do I need? What happens with that feedback? There’s wonderful assets out there, we have in our repertoire, and certifications of ways we assess and diagnose. I would say the first rule of thumb is to have a multiplicative repertoire of diagnostic tools.
Michael: I love that you’re pointing to tool number one is to understand context, so you understand what tool number two might be. That’s perfect. Ron, this has been a great conversation. It’s been really interesting talking to somebody who operates at a top level of an organization and has worked deeply in leadership and coaching for so many years.
You mentioned the free e-book. For people who want to find out more about you, about your books, about the work, in general, where can they go and find you?
Ron Carucci: You can come to our firm, Navalent. N-A-V-A-L-E-N-T .com. We’ve got a blog. We’ve got some great white papers. Go to the resource page and go to the articles and books pages, and you can find Rising to Power and the research behind that book. You can find a bunch of white papers … You can find a piece called “Beyond Bad Coaching”. A great piece that shows our framework for how we think about the journey. Go to the executive development intensive pages. If you go to navalent.com/transformation, that’s where you’ll find our free e-book on leading transformation in organizations, and you’ll find our framework for within, between, and among.
We have a free magazine, a quarterly magazine called The Navalent Quarterly, where we have all kinds of rich perspectives on leadership in organization and strategic challenges that you can sign up for, and we’d love to have you part of that learning journey.
I’m on LinkedIn. Twitter is at @RonCarucci. Let’s keep the conversation going.
Michael: Love it. Ron, thank you so much.
Ron Carucci: Michael, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
