The Compass Within: Robert Glazer on Leading with Core Values

0:00Welcome to the Give First podcast. I'm Brad Feld and today I'm joined by Robert Glazer, Chairman of Acceleration Partners and the author of a new book, The Compass Within, that is out today. Robert has developed a powerful framework for discovering your personal core values, those non-negotiable principles that guide your behavior and decisions. In his latest book, he uses a fictional story to show how understanding your core values can transform your leadership, relationship, and career choices. We'll dive into why most people are climbing the wrong mountains and how getting clear on your values can change every single day.

0:37Let's get started.

0:42Hi, everyone. This is David Cohen, and I'm here with my amazing co-host, Brad Feld. Hey, Brad. And this is the Give First podcast. In the startup world, Give First means simply trying to help anyone, especially entrepreneurs, without any expectation of getting anything back. So we'll be talking to mentors and founders about what GiveFirst looks like in action and how it makes great entrepreneurship possible. We polled everyone and they said consistently that their favorite part of the show was the legal mumbo-jumbo. So here it is. The following discussion is an expression of personal opinion and does not represent the opinion of Techstars or any company we discuss.

1:16Our conversations for informational purposes only, including any mention of securities or funds. This is not legal business investment or tax advice and is not intended for use by any investor. Certain of Techstars funds own or may own in the future securities and some of the companies discussed in this podcast. Got it?

1:38Well, today we have Robert Glazer on the GiveFirst podcast. Robert, welcome. Thanks for having me, Brad. Let's get started. Just tell the world a little about yourself. Yeah, so I've started a couple of different businesses over my time, the largest of which was an agency called Acceleration Partners, which I'm the chairman of today. I'm no longer CEO. It's a 300 person global partner marketing agency. and while building that agency, you know, I really tried to do some things differently and create a place that I wanted to work and was different than some of the places I worked before and started kind of writing and sharing ideas and starting a little note to my team on every Friday about how they could improve or get better ideas, which ended up being shared kind of all around the World, and then renamed it Friday Forward.

2:36So as things went on, I kind of leaned into that writing, and I've spent the last couple years writing a bunch of different books about leadership and culture and kind of leading to the latest book that's coming out now called The Compass Within. You've written a bunch of books, and when I look at your library of books, I start thinking about you as the Elevate guy. Talk some about Elevate and what it means to you and sort of where that evolved from your thinking. Yeah, well, the latest book in the trilogy is going to be the next one after this. But I need a break because the writing the books isn't hard.

3:15It's launching the books. There'll be the Elevate Your Kids, the finale. But yeah, it was Elevate and Elevate Your Team. And I kind of, I stumbled into this framework called capacity building in that book and this notion of like, how do we make ourselves better, right? And how do organizations help build the people that they need holistically? And it had four dimensions, spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional. And to me, it's just, when I looked at kind of high achievers and that was the process of getting better and people were focused across those four disciplines. So yeah, that was, I've spent a lot of my time and career helping people think about how they get better.

4:00And I think Elevate just captures that pretty well. I think Elevate and your kids sounds awesome. That's a good way to end a trilogy. Yeah, I won't spend time on that. But look, I am not a parenting expert. And actually, the intro to that book starts off with, I'm not a parenting expert. Why would you even listen to this? this. But what I was like, but what is interesting is having written a lot about leadership and studied stuff on leadership, we're pretty in agreement on what horrible leadership looks like and good leadership looks like. And when you match that up to the same people going home and doing parenting, it looks a little interesting in terms of like, you know, we know that micromanagement is horrible in the workplace, but then we go home and micromanage.

4:43So it actually just looks totally at that from the lens of leadership. You've got a new book that has just launched called The Compass Within. Let's go deep on that. Tell me what inspired the book. Maybe also talk a little bit about the high level of the book, and then I'll start poking and prodding at some things. Sure. Yeah. So about 17, 10 years for a few years. So I guess it's about 12 years ago, I went to a leadership, global leadership academy, which is actually a product of EEO that we had talked about on when you're on my podcast. And I really thought it was like, it was like 20 people around the world, how to, how we were going to lead better and the tactics and all these things running my company.

5:32And I describe it as this big mirror the first two days. It was like, who are you and what do you value and figure that out first. and then you'll figure out how to lead. And what that convinced me was that I was a very values-driven leader, and I also could not articulate my values. And unfortunately, while they set us up for this sort of discovery, they really didn't give us the answer. Like, hey, it was like Simon Sinek, like, go discover your why. Well, it turns out not that easy. So I went on sort of a six-month odyssey of figuring out my values, and I found all these things online and keyword lists, and none of it that was very good.

6:10Ended up making a ton of changes in my life. In fact, a couple of years ago, someone was reading my bio before I was speaking and I realized every single thing on the bio was sort of after that moment. It was a pretty interesting moment for me. But I went back to our company and I was like, people need to understand this. And so I took what I had developed and I tested it on three or four classes of our leaders. And can we help them figure out their personal core values and see how that changes their leadership? And it was very effective. and I got the kinks out of it. And then I wrote this book, Elevate, and I talked about spiritual capacity and finding your core values.

6:44And people would ask me this question. And a lot of people don't want to do a course, but I was like, I turned that content into a course. A couple thousand people took it. People told me change for them. And I was like, all right, well, how do I, I want to bring this to more people. But I think if I write a book on core values, maybe no one will read it. I think I'd walk by it on the store. If it said like on values, they don't know what it is. So what if I could kind of show them? And I'm a huge fan of Pat Lencioni, who would blurb this, and Bob Berg, and even the book The Goal, and never written fiction before.

7:18And my daughter sort of challenged me on it. I was like, I think this would. So I kind of took a character who goes through these challenges, what I call the big three, particularly your vocation, your partner, and your community, and where he thinks he's out of line with his values. And he meets a mentor and the mentor kind of Socratically coaches him through his values. And you kind of get to watch this process. In the end, I give you the framework and I tell you what you saw and just how, for me, core values, I think, are the ultimate decision-making rubric for people in their lives. And I think a lot of people are climbing wrong mountains, wrong trees, chasing things.

7:54And really, they won't kind of get the fulfillment they're looking for until they can kind of get that alignment. And particularly with those big three, if you choose a partner, a community, or a vocation that aren't aligned with your values, I think it has a very low probability of success. You and I shared a pretty profound experience, which was entrepreneurs organization, not together, but in different places in the world, different times. Yeah, I did the program later, which was the program. That's right. So we've had some of those same overlapping things. And I hear, like I think back to some of the very early stuff that I was experiencing and sort of rubbing up against in my 20s and 30s.

8:39When you think about these three things and you think about somebody at the beginning of their career. Yeah. Middle of their career. End of their career, which might not be the end of their life. Hopefully for most people it's not. So how does the core values dynamic play at different places with different levels of experience? Yeah, the bigger the decisions, the sort of bigger the discord, I think, for folks. And let me define it. So I think core values are the non-negotiable principles that guide your behavior and decision. So they're intrinsic, they're consistent, they're clarifying. And the way I talk about core values is a little bit different.

9:22I think they have to be, they're not one, a lot of people default to one word phrases. They say sort of integrity or family. I've argued with a lot of people. I don't think family is a core value. I think it's a priority, but I actually think if you dug into someone who said family is a core value and you understood, explain to me like how you show up for your family and what is important about your family. One person might go down the whole thing of trust and they grew up without a unit. And so they, you know, the trust and another might say, it's a really important to show up and be there. Well, the person has the show up and be there value probably has that same dynamic with their friends, you know, and in their workplace.

10:00And so in terms of thinking about how you lead, and I think we all lead aligned with our values. The question is whether you're aware of it and you're, you're driving the steering wheel, or there's like the instructor with a steering wheel next to you. I have seen leaders where it, you know, they, they, they have no self-awareness of some of the things that have formed their values. So it can be a strength or a weakness, but particularly as you kind of, you almost need your 20s to test some things and have maybe the boss in the book who really isn't aligned to your values and maybe a relationship.

10:34But by the time you're kind of hitting your 30s and 40s, you don't really want to make these mistakes anymore. You want to start to get these things right. And one of the things that I just saw was that I think companies can give all kinds of things to people about what a good leader looks like in their organization. I don't think they can tell people how to lead. And I think part of the Jim Collins sort of level five leadership is self-awareness. And if you don't know what your values are, given that they're usually driven by pretty formative life experiences when you're younger, my experience is having done this now with thousands of people, most people's values are doubling down on something that was important to them or running absolutely the opposite of something that was pretty painful for them.

11:18These things are showing up in your work, in your life, in your leadership. And so you can either, it's an asset, you can work with it, or it's probably causing a lot of havoc for you. So you use the word self-awareness, which is sort of a key word in the context of so many different things. When you encounter someone that you can tell immediately has little to no self-awareness or is in denial of the value of reflecting on things like what they run towards or what they run away from, they might even know what those things are, but they don't really incorporate them into their own thinking about how they want to behave and lead.

12:08what's your response to that in the context of the book, the framework, the storytelling that you do? Yeah, again, if you want to be better, if you want to grow your capacity, I mean, this is, these are the things you want to understand. I'll give you an example that's shown up a lot, having done this work with some leaders over the years. And one of them is people who have a core value of trust or why of trust. Trust is really important to them. And I've done this enough that I've learned to ask these folks like, hey, if we were talking about it and you were bringing up these stories in the core values discovery process, and I was like, Brad, I'm not going to ask you what it is, but did you have a violation of trust in your life somewhere?

12:47And nine times out of 10, the person's teared up or, well, okay, I don't need to know what it is. But let me explain in my experience how this person leads or shows up as a leader. Trust is really important to them. They have sorted their team into people they can trust and people that they can't trust. And they've done it maybe arbitrarily, whether the folks were five minutes late or they missed a deadline or they couldn't find them on a Tuesday afternoon. And a lot of the people on their team are basically in the penalty box with a key thrown out and they don't even know it. In fact, I had an HR person tell me that after going through this with someone and they left the company, they said, you know, I was explaining this to them.

13:30And they said, you know, I was so confused. Like every quarter it was like, we need to promote these people and these people need a performance evaluation. And they switched around. I just couldn't figure out what was going on. So, look, this this person over 20 or 30 years has developed a trust mechanism where they have a small group of friends. They have an inner circle. They have a small group of trusted people. and that's like worked for them, but it works for them if they can go back and do this. They can go back to their team and say, hey team, I just want you to know I'm someone for whom trust is really important.

14:07And so when you do things like this, trust is lost. When it's broken with me, it's really hard to get back. If I feel sort of aloof or distant, it's probably that there's been a break of trust and you should come talk to me. And similar, they also have to realize that just because they trusted someone in the past, doesn't mean that their work could change or they might not do a bad job. So someone who's operating like this, but doesn't know it is at a huge deficit. And similarly, you know, someone who's leaning into it isn't. And if we flip to the relationship side, I think, and then, you know, the community piece is interesting because I know you're passionate about that too.

14:45On the relationship side, I think a lot of people confuse, oh, I like volleyball and my wife likes tennis or we like different activities or my partner, there's a real difference between being on the same page about your values and your kids and the most important things and having different activities or different things that you like. And, you know, I was actually doing this work in the business context with someone and going through and I said, oh, you two of your core values are clearly X and Y. And they said, you know, I'm going through a divorce right now. and my X is the opposite of those two values.

15:20And I was like, yeah, that would be hard. Like you can be a little off on one of them, but if you're like a magnet, like the opposite on the three or four things that are most important to you, it's gonna be really hard. I love the example of family as not a particularly compelling core value, but as a linkage to start a process to try to go deeper. Right. Let me let me use something I think of as my own core value or a core value of mine and see if your reaction is to go deeper and press on. And maybe it's not a core value. I'll run it through my filter that I'll tell you. Run it through your filter, but let's play around with it.

16:05And I come to it. Trust, I don't use trust as an example of a core value for me. I use trust more as a red line for me. Yeah. Right? If somebody breaks trust, I have a view that it's my job to do something about that, which means confront it. Yeah. And I've said this multiple times in different ways. Most of my regrets professionally are when that happens, and I passively avoid dealing with it. And I look back over time, I say, geez, that's when I should have dealt with something. A trust break is an example of where that passive avoidance comes in. A value for me, which came out of my relationship, was that my words have to match my actions.

16:54Yeah. And the core value there was not one of, for me, a red line like infidelity or something like that, which I did experience in my first marriage. But this idea that I would say something to my partner, Amy, like, you're the most important person to me, or I want to spend time with you more than I want to spend time with anybody else, or I'm going to always prioritize what you need. And then, you know, in the middle of pick your activity back in the late 90s before caller ID, the phone would ring and I would disengage from whatever said activity was to answer the phone. Or I'd be 30 minutes late to a fancy dinner because, you know, comma, one more email or I just had to finish that meeting.

17:48Yeah. On and on and on. And so, you know, we had huge conflict that was very, I mean, I should say powerful conflict in early 2000s around that where I became aware that my words didn't match my actions in the context of our relationship. Interestingly, when I think about my words and my actions lining up as a core value, that applies to my work. It applies to how I engage with different communities. And I'm not perfect. I obviously make mistakes around that. And there are moments where they don't line up. But it's a constant touchpoint for me in terms of value. So I give you that as context to react.

18:35I think that's a great value. And I think it's worded. And so the validator, which is in the book and in the story and part of the process is this four question test. Can you use it to make a decision, past or present? When you imagine the opposite of it, does it strike a nerve, right? So it sort of passes both of those. Like someone who just says one thing and does another, you'll be like, oh, like kryptonite for me, right? Maybe it was you at one point and that's part of the problem. The grin fuckers of the world are the ones I want you to do it. Right. When I do this exercise in this, I usually create an avatar the opposite of someone's multiple values.

19:14And I meet this person at a party and their face just starts like, they just tense up. And they're like, I have to get away. I'm like, okay, so we're on the right track. So it does that. Is it a phrase rather than a word? And could you objectively rate yourself on it? To me, that's a great one. Your words meet your actions. And as you said, that should, and maybe you were violating it, right? And that was causing you the problem. And you actually had some guilt around that because you were kind of hiding that. But that should be how you show up in your relationship and in your family. And that's what, you know, you say, look, your definition of family is when I say I'm going to do it, I do it.

19:46And that's what we do. You know, when people say family is, you know, core value, I'm like, okay, well, again, how do you feel about the drunk uncle at the wedding, you know, making inappropriate comments and doing something? Like, is he just family or is there some other value that's going to make you, you know, like, we don't do that, you know, more upset about that. So I think that actually is a really well worded one. I think it meets all of those tests. You know, my values are find a better way and share it, self-reliance, respectful authenticity, health and vitality, and long-term orientation.

20:21I wish I had less, but they're uniquely worded. Like respectful authenticity is very specific to sort of a way I orient myself. Like I like to be the person who tells people the truth, but I also can't stand people who are not kind and disrespectful. And actually like my kids was doing something yesterday and we have a family value of be respectful. I was like, that is not, I know you're joking with what you're saying to your sister, but it's just not okay. like you're like like it's not and other people don't think it's okay either and you know that's the stuff i get really upset about um there's a there's a great example of this again i i think if you think about it as a decision making rubric um gary ridge who is the ceo of wd40 for like 10 15 years turn that company around the little spray can company he would also teach um And he would also teach at these business schools.

21:18And he was a huge believer in core values. And he said, if anyone makes a decision in our company and one more of our core values, they're safe. So he was confident enough to say, look, the values here and the combination of values are more important than the rules. But he did 100 business class things all over the world. And he would break the groups into three cohorts. And he would give them a problem to solve. And the first group, he would give the problem to solve. And that's it. The second group, he would say, here's the problem. and here are your organization's core values. And then the third group, he'd say, here's the problem to solve and here are your organization's core values and their hierarchy.

21:51Like this is most important. First group after an hour, hadn't solved the problem. Second group, barely solved it. Third group solved it with half the time, almost every time, you know, all around the world. So it just kind of shows you, we could have less rules, you know, if we were clear on kind of the values. And as you said, I'm guessing as soon as someone to you who twice says one thing and does another, like they're kind of done. Like it's, you're like, I'm good. Like I'm not going to, you might, you might want to give them another try, but you're probably not going to. Yeah. I know it. I, or at least I know what to expect.

22:27And so I can calibrate myself better against whatever they're saying and how I'm going to engage with them. Can, can core values change over time? Yeah, that's a common question. And I think they can. I think particularly with formative experiences like, you know, death and infidelity and health issues and otherwise. And I think people kind of, but, but I've found that most of them are sort of forward in those younger years. And, and as I said, people are really, something was really important to them. Like there was a woman on our team and we were going through and she just had this corded value of like, not discipline because that doesn't meet the one where I can't remember what hers was, but it was something about discipline and routine matter or something like that.

23:12And, and she just, the way she talked about it, I was like, what was one of your parents in the military? You know, and she said, yes. And look, in the midst of all of that moving around and all of that stuff, like the routine, like was really important, you know, to her. And that sort of became part of the operating system. So yes, I think they can change. I think usually something substantial changes. but what's super interesting about this is that when you figure this out and there's a moment with a character in the book, you kind of have this like epiphany fire. It's like someone took a stencil and laid it on all of your jobs and relationships and whatever.

23:49You're like, Oh, no wonder that worked. And no wonder that didn't work. And I should have left that thing like four years earlier. I, that, that doesn't make sense. So it's really powerful when you kind of look back and, and start to see kind of line up a bunch of things that you were doing against kind of the values once you have clarity on it. I'm a big fan of the five love languages construct. And, you know, one of the things I try to do, especially in the context of mentorship, is meet the other person where they are rather than make them meet me where I am. So understand their love language equivalent in the work environment.

24:32How does that relate from your frame of reference? Understanding, you know, I get the organization's core values, understanding your core values, but what if your core values, you're in a work environment, you've got a set of your own internal core values, and they're different than somebody else's core values, but you're still within the core value system of the org. How do you reconcile that? Yeah. So most of these things are awareness, kind of like any of these personality things. It's like, we're not going to change, but we got to be aware. I have seen more adults in workplace arguments and fights, having done a lot of this deep work with them, that has nothing to do with today.

25:08It is like child. Nothing to do with the thing. Yeah, the thing. So here's an example. Like, here's one I never forget. Like, a person who had a core value of include all perspectives. And you know what? They did not feel heard. And they grew up in an environment where they did not feel heard and they did not feel voiced. So this was super important in the workplace. A gentleman who had a core value, grew up really poor and has a core value of, like, do not waste, right? And they are fighting over a budget. and they're fighting over this budget because this person feels like they're not being listened to.

25:41And he's like, look, you're just asking for tons of money, like more money and are not talking about things that you're going to stop doing. And there's real, it's really, you know, it's like, it's not about the now, like it's not about the budget, right? So to the extent that they work together or as a team, or they had shared this stuff, or she knows that to him, like waste is like a really important thing, you know, then they could approach that differently. And she could say, I went through all the buckets. I promise you, you know, we need this. And he could sit there and listen to what she has to say, even if he's already not going to pay attention to it.

26:15But I've seen this time and time again, where, and look, if the other person doesn't, can't know it or know about you, at least with the self-awareness, you have one person in the argument who might be saying in the discussion, hey, actually, I think I'm getting way too wrapped up in this. And let me just try explaining it a different way. Or look, my core value, my dominant hierarchy is find a better way and share. When people try to tell me that it can't be improved in any way, they're fighting words. And I have to understand, in some cases, that's not how they mean it. Or I need to actually stop trying to make everything better.

26:57Or I won't make a few things. better. It's pretty awesome. I'm excited about this construct and sort of digging deeper into it. If you have this new book, tell people how they can engage with you. You have other things around the book. You talked about some of the workshops that you've run. If somebody's interested in doing this with their company in more depth, or even just personally, what are the best ways for people to engage with you? Yeah. So look, the book's a parable. You'll get to take a look at, You can go to compass-within.com or robertglaser.com and you'll find it. And if you order the book this week while it launches, there's a course that comes with it for free this week and you'll get it delivered shortly after.

27:39For people who are like, huh, I'm not sure I want to get into this whole process, the actual process starts with answering these six questions, these kind of behavioral-based questions about times when you've done things well and not well. And I always say, you can go to robertglaser.com slash six. The questions are there. So you don't have to write them down. But just spend an hour with a coffee. Answer those questions on six little pieces of paper. Take a look at the answers and say, huh. And then that's the first part of the exercise. So you can continue with it. But I think a lot of people, I've seen people post on LinkedIn their answers.

28:14They're like, I was kind of really surprised what came out and how I was able to see those themes. So that's the best way, probably. So all that stuff is at robertglaser.com or just go to slash six if you want to see the questions. Wonderful. Robert, congrats on the new book. Thank you for spending the time here today. Great to hang out. Brad, thanks for having me. Thanks a lot for listening to the show today. We'd love to hear your feedback, ideas, or who you'd like to hear next on Give First. And please leave a rating and review, ideally a good one. and reach out anytime to podcasts at techstars.com or on Twitter, I'm at David Cohen.

28:51See you next time. Don't forget, give first.