Why Smart Leaders Struggle - Alma Derricks & Eliza VanCort

0:00Eliza VanCort:Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisper Show. I'm your host, Steve Olenski. Part marketing practitioner, part ad agency veteran, part journalist, I was a writer for Forbes for 10 years. I've had so many insightful conversations over the years with business leaders, to athletes, to celebrities, to of course, CMOs. The only difference now is instead of sharing those insights through written form, I'm doing it this way. Today, I welcome two guests to the show, Alma Derricks and Eliza VanCourt, the co-creators of Ignite, a leadership experience built around a simple but incredibly timely idea. As technology and AI continue to reshape the workplace, the human skills that drive great leadership have never been more important.

0:45Eliza VanCort:Now, these two came to this work from very different directions. Alma has spent her time for the three decades building businesses, launching brands, and leading commercial strategy for organizations including Deloitte, HBO, Paramount, and Cirque du Soleil. Today, she's the founder and managing partner of Rev, where she helps organizations navigate moments of growth, reinvention, and transformation. On the other hand, Eliza is a best-selling author, communication strategist, Cornell University fellow, TED speaker, and former acting instructor whose work has helped executives and leadership teams become more confident, influential communicators in the moments that matter most.

1:24Eliza VanCort:Now, one of the things I've always believed in, and these two guests know that better as well as anybody, is great things happen when you connect great people. Now, I know it almost for years before I met Eliza. And once I got to know Eliza, full disclosure, we dated for a while. I couldn't shake the feeling that these two needed to meet. And you're not seeing it, but Eliza's laughing hysterically. So I made the introduction. And if you're old enough to remember that Chuck Woolery, I'm the love connector, right? So what started as a conversation became a collaboration. That collaboration became Ignite.

1:55Eliza VanCort:And today I want to spend less time talking about the program itself. I want to spend more time talking about why it exists. What are they seeing inside executive teams? Why do communication and influence seem harder than ever? And most important, what human skills are becoming more valuable because of AI, not despite it? I'm a Derek, Eliza VanCourt. Welcome to the CMO Whisperer Show. Thank you, Steve.

2:18Alma Derricks:For having us. Yeah. And you are part of our origin story. That is how we met. Sure.

2:23Eliza VanCort:Absolutely. And you introduced us, so it's only fitting we're here. I'm either to blame or take credit.

2:29Alma Derricks:That's right. Credit. A little of both, I think.

2:31Eliza VanCort:To be determined. Right. So, okay, look, we're, this is not breaking news by any means, but every conference room, every boardroom, every LinkedIn post is about AI. You two brilliant people build Ignite around human skills. The first question is why?

2:46Alma Derricks:Yeah. I mean, look, one of the things I like to think about with any technology, right? I mean, I've been around long enough to remember the AI, the internet boom, seen social media come up. I like to ask the question, what's still true? You know, everyone's grasping for straws. Well, everyone's sort of flopping around trying to figure out what this new thing is and how this new disruption is going to make a difference. You know, maybe it's just because I like to center myself that way. But, you know, what is still true about audiences, about people, about organizations? And for the time being, we are still organizations run by and managed by people.

3:21Alma Derricks:And what we're hearing loud and clear, and this is how we sort of came to this work, as you said, Steve, we both had very different things going on before Ignite. But what we're hearing is that the make or break moment for a lot of very smart people is their ability to communicate, to show up with confidence, to sort of tame the voices in their heads. Not what they know technically, not what they know on the ground. They have years of experience at that. But what really breaks at that critical moment as they're trying to make the final pivot into a more senior leadership role, especially, is just their ability to navigate all these other things.

3:58Alma Derricks:It also is inclusive of the politics around you and the system and the unspoken rules of the road in those organizations. So a little bit is personal. Some of it is just reading the room with more clarity. And what we both bring to that is experience from being in those organizations, not necessarily a theory that's an organizational development theory or, you know, a therapist's view of what you need there, just tangibly, tactically on the ground, what it is you need to kind of navigate that. And we've heard a lot of interesting things in a lot of one-on-one conversations that we have as a part of this work as well.

4:33Alma Derricks:And we know for sure those are things that aren't making it back to their senior leaders in quite that way. And so we're getting to distill these ideas and help senior leaders also understand their most valuable people a little bit better as well. Human beings are still the people who are interacting with each other. Human beings are still the people making decisions and largely coming up with the ideas. So just because AI is out there doesn't mean, if anything, it actually makes it a lot more important because the people you have left are the people that you really need to focus on.

5:06Eliza VanCort:So what were you seeing, and either one of you can answer this, in executive teams that made you believe this was the problem worth solving? You know, it's interesting.

5:15Alma Derricks:I had a lot of very smart people say to me, if you don't have a hard number ROI for this work and you can't point to a 5.7 % increase in some key KPI, this will never sell. And Eliza will tell you this in so many conversations, especially, you know, some of our early clients, all we had to say was, you know, I know that you have a technology organization. Those are largely who our clients are. You hire people for their technical skill first and their human skill. Maybe we get lucky. And at scale, that's not working. And instantly, Steve, in every situation, they all do the same thing. They all just sort of grab their temples and go, yeah, that's us.

5:56Alma Derricks:You know, that's the problem. And they know instinctively that it's like one even said, you know, my people need to learn to walk and talk. I mean, it's this instinctive sense that at some point they are running out of runway and it's not about what they know how to do tangibly. It's about the way that they just move around and with each other. So I think that, you know, that's the real aha that, and I think companies know it, companies are feeling it because again, at scale, you can't keep battlefield promoting people with no visible means of support and hoping that teams and projects and things thrive and come together.

6:34Alma Derricks:So that's a huge piece of it. The other thing I found that is really interesting about it is that it doesn't really matter what group we're working with in terms of what part of the profession they're in. Are they in sales? Are they technical? Are they, you know, all of those things. There's certainly a sweet spot for us on who we work with, but in terms of what their discipline is, it doesn't matter. We've worked with sales. We've worked with people in tech. And it reminds me so much when I was teaching acting, I worked with some of the highest, the people who are so highly ranked at universities, really high power lawyers who testified before Congress.

7:09Alma Derricks:And I worked with people who are carpenters and they all deal with the same human issues. There's a way that that kind of struggle in many ways is universal. And then we kind of target where our specific duo hits best. But that's been really, really interesting to see as well.

7:27Eliza VanCort:Have you and how do you help individuals within these companies make the business case for something like this? Does that happen a lot?

7:34Alma Derricks:Alma? You know, honestly, Steve, I have to tell you that largely they've made the business case for themselves. They've already done it. In most of the cases where we're successful and where clients really throw their arms around us, they've made some commitment to professional development for their teams. They were going to do something. You know, they were on a path and looking for opportunities to give them a next level experience of some kind. So I think my observation is that they'd already committed to the work long before they knew Ignite existed and could be a solution. That's pretty clear to me.

8:11Alma Derricks:We haven't convinced anyone for the very first time that it's important that you throw your arms around your high potentials, for example, that you really spend this extra time helping your most valuable employees kind of work out the voices in their heads. That's usually not what we're pitching. They usually know that that's there. And so our biggest challenge is just finding and sorting through the people that we meet and finding the right executives and the people who believe in this kind of work in general. And at that point, it's usually a very short conversation because what we offer is really unique.

8:46Alma Derricks:I think the combination of both of our skills, which are literally 108 degrees apart, which is what we love about it. That stereo that we do is really something that's very different. And so it usually stands out once someone has made that call. I don't think we've ever been the ones to convince them for the first time. No.

9:06Eliza VanCort:Eliza, what's, what are some of the biggest communication mistakes executives are making today that you see?

9:11Alma Derricks:I mean, the communication mistakes in terms of executives, I think that one thing that I'm seeing is that they don't understand they have to communicate with their people to the extent that they do. I mean, Alma and I have both seen this and it's been interesting. They often think that they are doing their due diligence and the people who are right a little bit underneath them are feeling like they're lost. And so that's something that we have worked with people on quite a bit. And the other thing is assuming that people know what they're talking about when they're talking in shorthand and they're not, they don't know.

9:41Alma Derricks:And that's something that people often, when you know what you're thinking in your head and you're used to people saying yes to you a lot, you don't always get the feedback that maybe people are understanding what you're saying and having a third party helping you be a little bit more clear can be extremely helpful.

9:57Eliza VanCort:Now I'm a former CMO. You have a different lens on this, right? So kind of walk us through how you looked at your own leadership style, right, communication style versus what you're seeing through this new lens?

10:11Alma Derricks:Yeah. Well, there's a lot of, you know, one of the things I noticed the most is just the ambivalence about your own agency as a leader and how much control you have in your own sphere of influence. One of the things I can think of, and you know how, and the audience knows how CMOs are positioned in the org. It's such an integral hub sort of function that touches the entire organization. And yet sometimes it's misunderstood in terms of what the real value of marketing is. And so you are constantly under fire. You're constantly having to re-explain and reintroduce people to what you're doing, to explain that you're doing more than just promotion, to really have companies understand the strategy of it.

10:53Alma Derricks:And so I think what very often is missing is not if the leader, if the senior leader, whether the CMO or a marketing leader of any kind, if they are not clear on their ability to sell in and continue to resell in the value and the, you know, buy, if you will, of what marketing is about, it's going to put the entire team at risk. At the same time, you've got a team, you're leading a team of people who are under fire constantly to justify their place in the world. You have to be able to give them, be more transparent with them about what they're up against and not just have them randomly try to go into each one of these battles alone.

11:33You really do need to add to that and bring your own personal lens to it, your own experience,

11:39Alma Derricks:and help them see how they grow, how they mature, how they grow into these arguments so that they can be ready when it's their turn on the firing line. You know, we and a lot of our clients, the participants in the program are for the first time going in front of the executive committee now that they've been promoted, they're new VPs. And it's a mystery what that process is about. They, you know, their leaders before that didn't expose them to what that might look like or help them understand how to deal with a committee. I remember telling one woman, she said, I was preparing, I had a two-slide, five-minute presentation to do in a larger round robin.

12:17Alma Derricks:I had 50 slides. I always have 50 extra slides prepared to be ready for anything that comes at me. And they just don't know how to do one of two things. One probe as to why some question comes up, because I had to let her know from my side of the table, having received those presentations. Sometimes I just have a wild hair. And so I ask you a strange question. You tell me about sales and I go, how are sales going in Switzerland? It's just because I happen to be there. I'm going there on vacation and I just bring it up. And you panic because that seems like, oh, my God, what's the secret code about Switzerland that I didn't know and I didn't drill in?

12:52Alma Derricks:If you ask the question and engage, tell me, Steve, what's interesting about Switzerland to you? And then have a conversation. You might figure out that it's a wild hare. I might be able to just say, well, here's what I can tell you and let me get back to you. The fear of saying, I don't know. The exact answer to that question is something that is chronic. And so it doesn't create a good situation. The leader's not getting what they need. The other leader that's presented is panicking. And the whole thing sort of spirals. It's just not productive at that point. The 50 page thing, if I could hop in on that.

13:25Alma Derricks:That's the other thing in terms of when they're talking to somebody else and it's the first time and they're going up in front of people who intimidate them. It's the over-preparing, not really over-preparing, but just over-explaining. So they come in and they have eight bajillion details. And I always say, you know, you don't need eight bajillion details. You really don't. You need to give them the basic idea. And the way that you show what you know is by letting them ask you a question. And then they're interested because it's the thing that they want to know about. But if you hit someone with eight bajillion details, they're going to start thinking about their laundry because that's what humans do.

14:01Alma Derricks:And so that's that I think is just a thing across the board that people do. That is always a bit of a problem that we have to work with them on.

14:09Eliza VanCort:So you mentioned and Eliza, you said it, too, I think is fear. You know what? What's the root cause of these mistakes? And Alma, you mentioned fear. I would imagine there's ego. Right. Is there some imposter syndrome happening?

14:23Alma Derricks:Yeah, sure.

14:24Eliza VanCort:Do you guys come, yeah, talk a little bit about that.

14:26Alma Derricks:Massive, massive imposter syndrome. I mean, I have come to the conclusion that there are two different kinds of imposter syndrome. One is that most people, as they move up in the ranks, particularly if they're younger or younger looking even, will feel like they're at the big kid table. And they're just like, what am I doing at the big kid table? I'm not really supposed to be here, even if they clearly are. The other thing is sometimes spaces make people feel like an imposter. And that's the other flip side of it. And that's when you kind of don't have to examine yourself so much. You have to examine what in this space is making me feel uncomfortable and what can I do to try to mitigate that.

15:03Alma Derricks:And so those are two things I think I see all the time. And there's some exercises that I do with people to help them with that that are very, very powerful. But I think overall, identifying what's going on, is this something coming from inside of you or from some external source where you're working is huge. But imposter syndrome impacts everything. Because if you're sitting at a table and you have an idea and you don't want to say it, then the marketplace of ideas. I mean, I always tell people the reason you're hired is for your brain. And if you don't share your brain, then you're not actually doing what you were hired to do.

15:38Alma Derricks:But that's still a hard thing for people to do often. And also building on that, I think that one of the things tangibly that happens that goes wrong in these environments where you're not giving support, managerial support, and helping people build those muscles alongside their technical skill. One of the things that happens, and this is going to sound for a minute, but go with me, like I'm standing up for bureaucracy and slow-moing your career and slow-stepping your career. But there's something to be said for being the assistant manager of pencils, then becoming the manager of pencils and pens, then becoming the director of writing instruments.

16:15Alma Derricks:And when I say that, what I mean is it gives you, let's say, two-thirds of the competency you feel really confident in. And so when you take that promotion, as all of us have done, you're going to be doing something new in that new role. It wouldn't be a promotion if you weren't. But you have, let's say, two-thirds of your base. Your legs feel solid under you, right? You know a portion of this. You don't know every writing utensil, but you know pens and pencils. And so now when I throw markers and Sharpies and other things in, the very least I feel like I have something to bite down on, as opposed to feeling like you're falling backwards down the hole.