Leadership Notes #56

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Interview: Alisa Cohn

Alisa Cohn is an Executive Coach who has worked with C-suite executives at prominent startups (such as Venmo, Etsy, Draft Kings, The Wirecutter, Mack Weldon, and Tory Burch) and Fortune 500 companies (including Dell, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Pfizer, Calvin Klein and The New York Times.) She is the author of From Start-up to Grown-up, which won the 2022 Independent Press Award, the American Book Fest 2023 Best Book Award for Entrepreneurship, and is the creator and host of a podcast of the same name. 

A frequent keynoter, Inc. Magazine named Alisa one of the top 100 leadership speakers, and she was named one of the Top 50 Coaches in the world by Thinkers50 and the #1 Startup coach for the past four years by Global Gurus.

She is the executive coach for Cornell’s New York City tech incubator, and she has coached leaders from around the world, including the first female minister of the transition state of Afghanistan and the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. She has guest lectured at Harvard, Cornell, The Naval War College and Henley Business School. Her articles have appeared in HBR, Inc, and Forbes, and she’s been featured as an expert on BBC World News, Bloomberg TV, and in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal. 

You can download Alisa’s 5 Scripts for Delicate Conversations at www.alisacohn.com/5scripts. Read Alisa’s book here and check out her podcast. You can follow her on twitter & instagram @AlisaCohn. 

Potolicchio:  Tim Ferriss, when he was praising your ability to coach him, said that you have a no-BS demeanor and give clients total confidence with your tactical and practical suggestions. 

Do you have any tactical suggestions to jumpstart someone's day? For instance, two of the things I've even learned from you is to drink an eight-ounce glass of water the first thing in the morning because you lose a lot of your hydration overnight. This is something that I can control and it's an easy one to start with. Then, I try to read something that's at least 500 years old, so that I'm not too swayed by the dispiriting news of the day. Are there any things that you think we can steal from you to help ignite our mornings?

Cohn: I love these practices! As I say in my book, the first person you lead every day is the one who wakes up in your pajamas. Remember that, think about that, and take that seriously. 

Broadly speaking, it doesn't matter what you do, but do something that's important to you. Otherwise, you're going to get drawn into the muck and mire of day-to-day, social media, your email, you are drawn into an unstructured morning, and you're going to lose track of your day. Instead of that, decide in advance what would be meaningful to you in the morning. 

Sam, you talked about reading, that's a beautiful thing. You might also say, “Certain YouTube channels make me feel inspired and put me in the right mental state.” Great, use those! It might be going out in nature. I have a deck here, in the backyard, that I go out into every day and I look at nature and I get morning sunlight. 

The other important thing is to find a way to move your body in the morning, whether it's taking a walk or doing some sort of workout. I'm a very passionate weightlifter, so I do that in the morning. If I'm not doing that, I take a walk or I go for a run, one way or the other. 

Setting the intention that you're going to be in charge of your day is the most important thing. Find one or two practices that take five minutes or an hour, that is a manifestation and a declaration that you're in charge of your day. The practices themselves are going to help you and then, the confidence in yourself that you can say you're going to do something, then do it and follow up.

Potolicchio: There are two things I was most struck by in your book. One was this imagery of thinking of yourself as an athlete, just like a Raphael Nadal thinks of seemingly imperceptible adjustments before a major tennis match. How can we be intentional and pay attention to these small differences that can make outsized impacts?

The second image had to do with that quotation where you said “Blame and shame are not helpful learning tools.” There's a phrase that you've used, “overcoming your demons”, what is the best way for us to become more resilient, more effective, more goal-oriented so we can transcend our limitations?

Cohn: It always starts with you, right? I do believe that we're all athletes in our own life. If you were an actual athlete, what would you do? You should take care of your sleep, health, diet, and exercise. You should be mindful of what you put into your mind and body. There's no downside to thinking about yourself as an athlete. The only upside point is that you're intentional with what's going on. 

Blaming and shaming just feed the inner critic. The ideal state is you being mindful and intentional as often as possible about what you're trying to get done. Not every moment, you're not a machine. You have so much capacity to do so many amazing things. Spend your time thinking about the mark you want to make in the world, whether it's large and global or something for your family. It might be this week, it might be getting through a certain milestone in your life, whatever that is, be clear about that. Then, think about how you're going to build towards that milestone in small ways and big ways, every day, week, and month. 

Here's the thing and this is so key: You’re not a machine, you're a human being. You have a complex psychology, and you're going to fall away. Success is not how little you fall away. You're definitely going to go off the plan and you're going to go off the rails. It's not about “Oh, it's so bad I went off the rails.” It is about “What is my resilience plan to bounce back and get back on track?”

Blaming yourself, shaming yourself, and having a strong inner critic is not helping you. It is taking away energy that you could be using to get back on track. You want to gently and kindly articulate that inner critic, and try to put it to the side so that you can do the things that you know you need to do to be successful.

Potolicchio: Can you tell us what rituals can we do and what are some examples that your clients have done that have helped them get to the next level?

Cohn: When you have a habit, it wires your brain to expect it, get the benefit from that thing, and again, to count on yourself that you're the kind of person who does it, whether it's working out, eating healthy, reading, or connecting with your family.

Think of a ritual as upgrading it, making it more intentional, building more resonance in it, and building a feeling of connection either with yourself or with other people. 

The idea of the ritual is that when you don't do it, you're going to miss it. When you do it, it doesn't just do the activity, but it embeds inside of you a muscle memory of this activity that you're doing. 

Rituals can be anything, even a game with yourself or with other people. My boyfriend and I have a gratitude ritual. We sit down for dinner together, we say a few things that we're grateful for, and we pause before the meal. Even if we're annoyed with each other, or if we both had a bad day, our intention, our mandate is to find somebody we're grateful for. In moments of “Oh, I'm so annoyed!”, we can throw that off, find the things that we are grateful for, and it turns around the interaction. That is the power of rituals.

Potolicchio: What is the advice that you would give those of us who are suffering from impostor syndrome or who don't think are necessarily prepared to enter into a leadership position at the moment? 

Cohn: Impostor syndrome is the feeling that you're going to be found out as a fraud, that you've done everything in your life because of luck, and your luck is about to run out. If you have ever felt that way, you're in good company! Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, and Lady Gaga have all felt that way. It turns out that 95% of high performers have, at some point, felt impostor syndrome or severe self-doubt. 

The other thing you want to remind yourself is of course you're feeling nervous, you've never done this before. It's not about “Oh, I won't be able to do it.” You can transform that into “I'm able to embrace the journey of learning new things, not putting the stamp on myself that I have to be perfect.” 

I'm going to give you two tactical tools to help you when you do fall into impostor syndrome, as you will certainly do at some point in your life. The first is called a “highlight reel.” A highlight reel is a collection of your best moments, the times when you were at your best, especially when you overcame challenges. If you think about what those are and physically write them down, you're going to have a set of things to look at and give you courage when you're feeling behind.

I did this for one of my clients, he was a partner at a VC. Very young and extremely successful, he was always suffering from this feeling that he was going to be called to detention, to the principal's office. Something like that was always in his head. As a coach, I will regularly give these assignments and people are rolling their eyes like “Oh, give me a break.” To humor me, we sat together and he wrote down a number of times that he overcame challenges that were thrown together. Then, I asked him to read this highlight reel every day. Again, he didn't feel like doing it, but to humor me, he was willing to do it.

He came back a week later, beaming. He said: “I did your highlight reel exercise, I read it every morning. It filled me with so much good energy, reminders of things I've overcome and my abilities. Not only that, but I began to tackle the hardest thing in my morning. I've had the most productive week ever because that's been the way I've been starting my day.” And I'm like “Oh, I'm so glad you did this thing rather than just roll your eyes at me.” 

The second thing I want to encourage you to do is find an avatar, somebody who you can think “What would this person do?” It can be a superhero, a celebrity, or a person you know.

One of my clients used to get nervous with authority figures and I asked her to find an avatar that would help her channel somebody when she felt pushed out on the playground. I asked her who she could channel that would help her give energy and she said: Celebrity Chef Anthony Bourdain. I don't know if you know Anthony Bourdain, but he used to travel all around the world, eating weird exotic things. She told me that she pictured him coming out of the bush with a machete in his teeth, being intimidating. She would want to channel him when she felt like she's been pushed around. She began to do that and it gave her some heft and some weight when she realized that she wasn't alone and could channel other people. It began to give her a lot more backbone during times when she felt like she might fall over.

To help you when you're suffering from severe self-doubt, number one, the highlight reel, and number two, find an avatar. 

Potolicchio: Let me go adjacent to self-doubt. Something I also struggle with is decisiveness and knowing when I can actually pull the trigger on a decision, when I need to gather more information, or when I'm waffling back and forth between a decision. How can you help us overcome our inner Hamlet and become more decisive? How do we overcome indecisiveness?

Cohn: There's so much school of thought around making a decision and when you know you have enough information. Part is art and part of science. 

One thing about science is it's important to figure out what you are trying to decide. People have very confused thoughts about “whether I should do this, I should do that or I'm not really sure.” Getting very clear about the specific decision you need to make is the first step. 

Step two is thinking about the criteria you need to make this decision. It's not about writing a pros and cons list, it's thinking about the criteria and why they are important to you. 

Then, the art of the decision is how well you know yourself and how much information you need. Are there other people who need less information than I do? Can I interview them and find out how I can need less information and be less uncertain when I make a decision? Is there a deadline? Giving yourself a deadline can be very helpful because it pushes forward a lot of the work required to decide at a certain time and short-circuits some of that analysis paralysis.

Potolicchio: What's the question that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you and what's the answer to that question?

Cohn: We didn't talk about how to handle difficult conversations. On my website, I have a set of scripts that help you handle difficult conversations. What goes on in the workplace? Conversations, meetings, holding back, and not saying what there is to say are also true in your personal life. Think about the conversation you need to have that you're not having, picture the energy streaming from you. 

I am a very direct person in general and I have become even more direct or more willing and able to lean into challenging conversations, whether it is an apology because that's very challenging for people or giving someone difficult feedback.

I discussed this with one of my clients, who called his high-net-worth client. He comes from a very wealthy family, I'm working with their entire family office, and the nonprofit he's involved with seems to be pushing him and trying to take advantage of his family connections. The conversation that we talked about him having was not “Are you using me?” It is more of a version of “Let me explain to you and educate you what it's like to be in my shoes. Let's talk about what that feels like.” It's not about being mad and resentful, it is about elevating yourself and becoming a mentor to them because they’ve overstepped a few boundaries. Think about some difficult conversations you're putting off that you need to have with family members, friends, colleagues, set a deadline for yourself, and think about the approach to that conversation. I promise you, when it's off your mind, you're going to feel so much better.