Leadership Skill #3: "Wow" With Your Career & Life Story

One skill of great leaders is that they create a "wow" when they meet new people for the first time, by sharing their career and life story. Given that most people make their minds up about someone in minutes, this is an important skill to cultivate. I want to show you how to do it.

The key with your career and life story is to weave in: your upbringing, achievements, and what are your true values and beliefs, your ups and downs and your mission. Throughout the story you should be bringing out the true you and your personality.

Once you have nailed it, you should then be ready to flex and bring it to life in two or five or ten minutes, and vary it depending on the audience and the situation. You should also be able to do an “elevator” teaser version that helps others to connect with you extra quickly when required.

To make this concrete, I would like to use a real-life example, and share with you the longer version of my own story. It is partly written in note format to indicate how you should shift it about and pick out the appropriate elements for the occasion.

My Upbringing

• Born in Yorkshire, England. Yorkshire folks are direct, warm and strong minded (if Yorkshire were a country in the 2012 Olympics, it would have finished 10th in the medals table).
• My dad was a creator and commentator on aviation shows. My mum was the rock of the family and she always told me: “You can do it Steve, there is always a way.” I feel lucky to have this core belief.

My Career Start Point

• First job joined biggest company in Europe, ICI. My mum was relieved that I didn't become a professional footballer/soccer player!
• Fast-track young manager at ICI but couldn't believe how bureaucratic, self-interested, and process-bound the company was.
• I felt that there were good people down the company, but that they had limited meaning in their work and the company didn't utilize their talents and motivation. But though it felt like just a job to them, they still cared about the company.
• For me this was wrong and made me rebel.
• Set me off on a mission and quest that I’ve been on for over 25 years, i.e. to find a better way to lead companies. They should create massive value, but also be inspiring places where employees find meaning. The focus point being the CEO: if the CEO is no good then the company will be no good.
• Left ICI and went into professional services, so I could pick up different industries and work with and meet several CEOs. In my twenties, I tried to meet one CEO every week. I was much too young but forced myself to do my own apprenticeship to be super-expert on each CEO I met, and gain a strong grasp of their businesses. For every leader I met, I studied their values and even their language patterns.
• I worked in but kept leaving big professional service firms, as I wasn’t inspired. It was frustrating that the most talented people in these companies were generally not happy, with many of them on a treadmill to becoming partner, or out of life balance. This only reinforced my mission that there must be a better way to lead companies.

My First Success

• Set up my own firm during the dotcom boom. Was worth millions at the start, then nearly went bust until it won a contract with telecommunications firm BT. While many others with tens of millions of pounds of funding went bust, we survived and became profitable within 11 months.
• In the meantime ICI had turned round under the leadership of the iconic and inspiring Sir John Harvey-Jones. Wrote to him asking to speak at a event with us but following his advice that small companies should keep their costs down, said that we wouldn’t be able to pay him until three years had passed. He called the next day and said he would do it for free. This kicked off a special relationship and John became my mentor. He was a man who always believed, lifted and inspired others. He was charismatic, his own man but with a heart of gold and a great ability to have a joke and a laugh in business.
• Under his coaching my company flew – we won industry awards and became one of the fastest-growing professional services companies.

My Big Drama

• Great company, great people, great results but change of shareholders and a few people let me down. I lost out in a boardroom battle and got booted out.
• Felt devastated and let down. Spiraled for a month or two. Went on round-world trip with my wife and kids to reconnect with them. Great times in Oz and Hawaii and the US.
• Then shifted from victim to take responsibility for my own personal leadership failings. Recognized my over-attachment to the company, how I didn’t deal well with difficult, self-interested people and how this had come back to bite me. I decided I was going to work out how be a stronger leader.
• Also although we delivered fantastic results we didn't change the cultures of our clients. They were relieved when we left and they could go back to their 9-5 cultures. So I recognized had to better at working out how to master how to shift people and cultures too.

My First “Global Walkabout”

• By now I was financially free. That summer I went on my first “global walkabout”, which lasted 18 months. I wanted to work out and meet the best practitioners in the world in the fields of human performance, in order to help me find answers for myself. Looked at neuroscience, psychology, coaching, spirituality, leadership etc. Met over 200 people across Europe, US and Asia. Most felt that they had all the answers and many were deluded!
• The industry was full of grey-haired gurus mainly academic backgrounds from US, who based their answers just on their personal business experience. Nonsense I thought. Realized the answer to coaching must be a team approach.
• Found five extraordinary specialized practitioners who had the skills to impact at CEO, board and senior level. However, they had limited business acumen and took time to build trust with them to set up our own company, as many had bad experiences of working with others.

Second Walkabout

• In the meantime I joined a global search firm. Believed that talent absolutely critical to building an amazing company, but that the search industry was pretty broken. Also incredible to have access to CEOs all over the world.
• Decided to meet 200 of the world’s top CEOs, drill them on how they did the job, and write a book about it. Fortunate to meet CEOs of Virgin, BP, Tesco, Lenovo, Infosys. My first book ‘The Secrets of CEOs’ aimed to lift the lid on business, leadership and life. Richard Branson wrote the foreword. Took knowledge of best practice to new level.

Third Walkabout

• During recession, set up Xinfu, a CEO confidant business (in Mandarin ‘xinfu’ means most trusted expert and friend). Brought together the best practitioners in a tightly-bonded fellowship, as we had known each other and now worked together for years.
• Grew incredibly fast, and within 12 months, was coaching 12 FTSE 100/Fortune 500 CEOs.
• Did a 3-year walkabout, this time around China. Learnt to speak Mandarin and met over 150 CEOs and entrepreneurs, many of whom we now work with. Published a book in Mandarin called ‘Dream To Last’, which aims to help Chinese CEOs win domestically then go global.

Where Am I At Now?

• Have built an even closer fellowship at the heart of Xinfu of many of the most super-talented people I know from my various walkabouts.
• My "day job" is coaching many of the top CEOs in the world and being their sparring partner. I shuttle 4 weeks in UK, 2 weeks in China, 1 week somewhere else in world. This is one reason why I am now single, but my wife and I still have a special relationship, and I enjoy a challenging but inspiring life.
• My "night job" includes being the host of BBC ‘CEO Guru’. This is a BBC World program where each week I get to meet and challenge the top CEOs in the world. This enables me to bring best practice to live and challenge the not so good CEOs and practices.
• Launched a new venture called ‘World Of CEOs’, the place to come to learn about, connect with and become a better CEOs. A vehicle to bring best practice to a wider audience.
• Became a LinkedIn Top 250 global Influencer, which is why you can read this today.

Into The Future

• Feel mission is going well, especially in the last five years. The bringing together of the best of Western and Eastern approaches has moved us to the next level on how to lead global companies.
• Now know for sure that there’s a much better way for CEOs to build massive value and inspire their people. Have a repeatable formula which has to be freshly baked for each CEO and company and then delivered through a range of business and personal leadership experiences. It is often very challenging for the company executives, but if the leader has ambition, strong drive, integrity and some talent then confident it works.
• Feel I’m currently at a 6/10 in terms of fully bringing this to live. Limited by finding people who have exceptional skill and character for mission. Believe I can get to 9/10 before I finish.
• Keep battling to balance life and quality time with my two beautiful daughters Lauren and Hannah, of whom I’m very proud, and the rest of my family and great friends.
• So guess I’m a work in progress but bags of potential!
• Look forward to my next “walkabout”... may be in booming South America, World Cup, Olympic… who knows?!!

Takeaways From The Career Story

If I had to sum up the main elements of my story, I would say that they were the following:

1. The start point: my quest, my destination

2. My achievements and failings

3. My values: inspiring leadership, do the right thing, adventure, team

4. My beliefs: “there is always a way”

More importantly, I hope that the above will have given you a sense of who I am, where I’ve been and where I’m hopefully going next.

I can vary this to tell the story in 2 minutes, 5 minutes or a longer version as needed.

Don't think about this post as being a big thing about me or for me personally, as I am just an example here. But I am someone I know well!

Homework: Your Turn

Unsurprisingly, this week’s leadership homework is to sharpen up your own career and life story…

Good luck with it. I'd love to hear your stories in the comments section below.

Once you have your own story ready to go, you can also use it to create your own World Of CEOs profile, and have companies and headhunters find you with the latest job opportunities.

This is episode 3 of a 12-part leadership skills series. The goal is to share the latest best practices in a way you can put to practical use yourself. Also check out:

Leadership Skill #1: Build Trust With Anyone

Leadership Skill #2: Do You Have A Dream?

Do follow me here on LinkedIn to ensure that you receive the remaining 9 parts in this weekly leadership skills series.

---------------------

By Steve Tappin

Chief Executive, Xinfu, Host BBC CEO Guru & Founder, World Of CEOs

www.twitter.com/SteveTappin

www.worldofceos.com

www.xinfu.com

www.facebook.com/ceoguru

www.bbc.co.uk/ceoguru

Steve is a personal confidant to many of the world’s top CEOs. He is the host of BBC ‘CEO Guru’, which features in-depth, on-the-record interviews with the CEOs of General Electric, Lenovo, WPP, China Vanke, Wholefoods and Unilever.

Founder Of WorldOfCEOs.com, Steve is the author of ‘The Secrets Of CEOs’, which interviews 200 CEOs on business life and leadership. His latest book, ‘Dream to Last’, was published in Mandarin in December 2012, by Beijing University Press, and will be released in English later this year.

To receive Steve’s weekly ‘CEO Insider’ email, sign up at:

http://www.worldofceos.com/ceo-insider-signup