Dave Carvajal

How To Make A Great Chief Inspiration Officer

I made the varsity swim team when I was in 7th grade. I was a scrawny kid that hit puberty late, so making the varsity swim team was less indicative of a personal achievement than it was the state of our high school swim team. And Coach Swenson was determined to turn things around.

At our very first swim meet, just a few weeks after training began, I witnessed a fully developed high school senior have what could best be described as a temper tantrum. It turned into him proclaiming that he would quit the team if Coach Swenson made him swim the dreaded 500 – the longest race in high school swimming, 20 laps. The memory of what Coach Swenson did next would stay with me throughout my life.

Looking around for quite possibly the strongest contrast with the fully developed senior, Coach Swenson asked me to come over and join him in his huddle with the Team Captains — some of the strongest seniors on the team. He gave me a pep talk, along with precise instructions on what I would need to do. With unquestionable resolve, he commanded that I achieve something that I didn’t previously believe was even a remote possibility for myself.

“Carvajal, I need you to swim the 500. We are spread thin and I’ve got no one else on the team for this slot. You just need to finish the race, even in last place. The team needs the 2 points. With your 2 points, we could win the entire swim meet. I know you can do it, Carvajal, I believe in you. The team believes in you. Will you do it?”

Before I could hit the “s” in yes, the huddle erupted in a celebratory burst. The sheer terror of what I had committed to was palpable. Yet, because he believed in me, I did finish that race.

As a leader, you have many responsibilities. One of the most under-valued is that of Chief Inspiration Officer. The best way to get anyone to do anything is to make him or her want to do it. A team that is positive, motivated and engaged can move mountains! You must be the motivating force that keeps that team excited, inspired, and moving together toward success.

Of course, in order to inspire your team, you need the right team. First, you must make sure that you have built a strong group, with the right players in each position. All of your team members should be intrinsically motivated by the system of values that is inherent in the company’s cultural DNA, established by the founders and CEO. They should also know that they have signed up for high performance, and that “good enough” isn’t good enough: They need to be great.

As the leader, your role is to always set the vision for a better world created by the development and delivery of your product. People are unbeatable when they believe they are working for the greater good: Communicate this vision for your team, and they can power through any obstacles.

Secondly, form a strong relationship with each player on your team. Help them to set an individual vision of a greater self, a self that will be built by learning and performing at a high level within your organization. Make sure each member of your team knows that you support their professional development and their quest to become someone greater than they are today through hard work and success.

It’s also important to celebrate the great achievements that do happen. Celebrate wins for the team, and individual wins, constantly. People will perform at a higher level when they are motivated by the promise of a celebration right around the corner.

One key tool for this work is the 5-to-1 ratio for positive and critical feedback. People are bombarded with negative information throughout the day. It becomes overwhelming, and can lead them to become demotivated and disengaged. So, offer your employees all the critique they need to improve – but remember to balance each piece of critique with 5 pieces of positive feedback.

So, instead of simply telling your employee John that he’s blown his last three deadlines and it’s become a problem, you might try this: “John, you’re fantastic and I love the way you work with the clients and team. I would like you to focus more on hitting your deadlines. The work you produce is awesome, just need to make sure it’s timely and we’re hitting the commitments we set out to and we’re holding ourselves accountable and to a high standard.”

That positive feedback also helps develop trust. Any business is a sophisticated network of complex conversations – the quality of those conversations determines the success of the business. By offering positive feedback and celebration of wins, you develop the relationships necessary for direct, honest, and open communication that makes your conversations effective.

Your work as Chief Inspiration Officer is more than hand-holding or “being nice.” By taking the responsibility to motivate your team, you are taking charge of their development. Your work will get your team moving together, in the right direction. That creates alignment and increases your velocity and operational excellence, making it possible for your business to soar to new heights.

Back to Coach Swenson. I did, in fact, finish the race — approximately 5 minutes after the second to last contestant. And as I pulled my fully spent body out of the pool, each limb feeling like a limp strand of spaghetti, the entire natatorium stood up to give me a standing ovation. We won the meet by three points.

In the years that followed, Coach Swenson would allow me to choose the race events that I wanted to participate in. Eventually, I developed a decent butterfly stroke and won a place on the starting lineup. He would retell the story of my 500 race whenever someone complained about race assignments.

Most importantly, Coach Swenson helped me create a greater vision of myself than even I thought was possible. His belief in me, as incredulous as I was about myself, allowed me to reach new heights.

Humility Is The High Road To Start-Up Glory

Humility is underrated. As a virtue it requires taking a modest view of one’s own importance. This doesn’t sound much like a leadership quality. It is however, widely accepted as the one leadership quality common among the greatest leaders of all mankind.

True humility is not the same as poor self-image or self-defeating behavior, those could be considered false humility. Insecure timidity, low self-esteem, or anxious self-concern are also examples of false humility. In fact, those qualities can make one incapable of focusing on others or the greater good. True humility enables leaders to focus on those around them, and contribute to their welfare at an even higher level.

Humility is the way to honor the bigger vision that we are working towards: the progress of all humanity. It allows us to realize that there are much bigger forces at play in the market, apart from our individual concerns, and allows us to listen with the intent to understand.

True humility requires confident self-knowledge. It requires a deep understanding of the big picture. It requires a service orientation towards the greater good without seeking personal gain.

Humility preserves the soul in tranquility and makes us patient under trials. People move fast at high growth companies and decisions need to be made. With the open-mindedness nature of humility, we engender trust. We learn, adapt, do better. We can accept that there will be friction, stay calm, and treat each other with the dignity and respect we all deserve.

Keith Cunningham, my leadership mentor, advises that risk in business is inversely proportional to the perception of its existence. All leaders are one bad decision away from total calamity. The greater the perception that there is no risk, the more likely and vulnerable a business is to risk. Close-minded certainty, foolish bravado and pride were the cause of cataclysmic catastrophes at Enron, Barings Bank and Lehman Brothers.

In The Founder’s Dilemmas, Noam Wasserman distinguishes between the drives to be “Rich versus King” or the “profit” motive and the “control” motive. He says that by opening up our decision-making processes to others, we lose control. More importantly, we also build stronger businesses and experience greater rewards.

In my experience, the “profit” motive is about faith and creating abundance; the “control” motive is fear-based and about containment and constriction. Giving up existential “control” and moving strongly towards the greater vision for a better world – practicing active humility – is a quality of the best leaders. All growth and leadership require an openness to learning. The greatest leaders are voracious learners.

Humility works best in a team. When working toward a greater vision, the whole team needs to have alignment and move in that direction. It must start from the top. Hire people who practice active humility.

On leadership and on humility, one would be hard pressed to find a finer example than my friend Thilo Semmelbauer of Shutterstock. Thilo took WeightWatchers.com from zero to over $100M, and then ran all global operations for Weight Watchers (over $1.5B revenue) before I recruited him to TheLadders. I only worked with Thilo for a few months before leaving to hang up my own shingle at Dave Partners and Thilo left a few months after that to run the business at Shutterstock. In the past few years, Thilo has helped grow the Shutterstock business from $60 million to an IPO to more than $300 million in revenues. He is a leader in the true sense of the word and beloved by all.

Thilo’s success demonstrates the power of true humility: He is an active listener, totally dedicated to his team and his company, and truly open to learning from the people he works with. This has helped him to build one of the greatest success stories in New York City Tech.

His humility constantly reminds me of the leadership benefits of this under-appreciated virtue, and helps me to keep my own humility intact, for the good of my company and the world we all share.

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The Two Most Common Skills of The Top 1% of A+ Executive Talent

At least 50% of the success that anyone could hope to achieve, in any field where humans are involved, will be determined by their ability to relate and communicate effectively with other people.

Why Communication Matters

Every organization where humans are involved is a sophisticated network of complex conversations. The quality of discourse determines the health of the organization.

The language, social norms and culture of an organization play an important part in creating an environment that makes communication more or less productive. Further the CEO often sets the organizational climate, communication style, and the social contracts that executives make with each other while moving the organization towards the company’s strategic objectives. The impact of all these is felt significantly more strongly at smaller, early stage startups.

Nevertheless, self-determining professionals who are dedicated to performing at the highest levels of responsibility and leadership will benefit from the active development of their own communication skills. These skills, not taught at even the top MBA programs, have more to do with how we relate to each other as individuals.

Here are the two most common skills of the top 1% of A+ executive talent:

1: Active Listening

Active listening means listening fully, with the intent to understand first, rather than to be understood.

Most of us are not skilled listeners. The research says that we only remember 50% of what we hear, and sometimes less. If we miss the nuanced variables of tone, inflection, volume, and body language, or fail to read the emotional data through communication, the effects on performance, which often rely on team insights, could be quite poor.

To become an active listener, you must consciously cultivate focus and being present. Experts suggest that you make eye contact, and frequently demonstrate that you are paying attention, by nodding, smiling, and otherwise evidencing a clear reaction to what you hear. Empathic listening improves understanding and builds trust. Hone and fine-tune your comprehension by repeating what you hear: Responses beginning with “I’m hearing that ______” and “I understand that you’re saying _____” give people a chance to correct and enhance your understanding.

One warning: If you catch yourself thinking about what to say next, while someone is still talking, you are not practicing active listening!

2: Performance Feedback

Being a top-performing communicator means being able to give and receive feedback.

Too many companies rely on outmoded “performance review” systems, in which feedback is only given and received at set intervals. This makes feedback something to dread, rather than an essential part of motivating top performance. (My disdain for typewriters, corporate performance reviews and fax machines – vestiges from another era – will be something I explore in another post.)

And while nothing is better than direct, open and honest feedback done on a one-to-one basis in person, with the invention of email, “agile performance feedback” is now possible. Giving and receiving feedback should be part of every day. That means regularly checking in – pitching and catching, giving and receiving feedback where and when it is necessary, with an eye toward rewarding specific behaviors and setting goals together. This is a far superior model.

What is most important about active listening and the giving & receiving of performance feedback is the effect on trust, team building and both individual and collective team performance. Letting your team know what you need and why you appreciate their work builds a sense of real partnership and helps you to stay on the same page as you build and execute the tactics in the direction of your strategic outcomes. Being clear about accountability and ownership – both yours and that of your teammates – is crucial.

Feedback is not punishment. It is not something to fear. Feedback is how you form your blueprint for excellence.

We all succeed with the help of other people. Learning to actively listen and communicate feedback with the smart, capable people with whom we surround ourselves is essential to becoming a high performing leader that people look up to.

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