Overcoming Leadership Shock and Reconnecting with Purpose with Pete Steinberg

Overcoming Leadership Shock and Reconnecting with Purpose with Pete Steinberg

What if unlocking your full leadership potential is all about getting clear on your purpose and aligning it with your top priorities? When those two things come together, the possibilities are limitless!

In this empowering episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca welcomes Pete Steinberg, an expert in authentic leadership. They dive deep into the importance of purpose in leadership and how understanding time as a resource can transform your effectiveness.

Pete shares his unique Authentic Leadership Model, outlining how leaders can align their priorities with their true purpose, leading to greater energy and fulfillment in their roles. 

With insights drawn from years of coaching, Pete emphasizes the significance of reflection and creating space for authentic leadership in our hybrid work environments.


The Concept of Leadership Shock

Pete explains "Leadership Shock" as the phase when past leadership strategies stop working in new roles. This often results in inauthentic behaviors and misalignment. Overcoming it requires rediscovering your authentic self and adopting a leadership style that aligns with your values.

Authentic Leadership Model

The Authentic Leadership Model highlights the importance of aligning purpose, role expectations, and vision. By focusing on these elements, leaders can better navigate transitions. Becca shares her journey of reinvention, reflecting on how this model resonates with her experiences.

The Importance of Time Management

Time is a precious resource in leadership. Prioritizing tasks that align with core goals ensures sustainability and success. Becca discusses how learning to protect her time helped her recover from burnout, allowing her to focus on what truly matters.

Aligning Purpose with Leadership

Pete explains that true sustainability in leadership comes from aligning your work with your core purpose. Passionate work is manageable even with long hours. Becca adds that discovering her purpose inside and outside work boosted both her performance and personal fulfillment.

The Power of Self-Reflection

Self-reflection is key to becoming an authentic leader. Carving out time to evaluate your leadership style allows you to align with your personal and professional goals, ensuring continuous growth in today’s fast-paced work environment.

Whether you’re a seasoned leader or just starting your journey, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you lead authentically and effectively!


 

Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:

  • Unlocking Leadership Shock - Pete Steinberg discusses the concept of Leadership Shock and how it can impact even the most successful leaders when their old strategies stop working.
  • Purpose vs. Vision - Discover the distinction Pete makes between purpose and vision, and why connecting to your true purpose is essential for sustainable leadership.
  • Reinventing Yourself as a Leader - Becca and Pete share personal stories of career reinvention, highlighting the power of self-awareness in transforming your leadership approach.
  • Authentic Leadership Model Explained - Learn about the Authentic Leadership Model's core elements—purpose, role expectations, and vision—and how they guide leaders to align their actions with their true values.
  • Creating a Virtual Commute - Pete offers practical tips on how to reclaim thinking time in a remote or hybrid work environment to boost leadership effectiveness.
  • The Energy of Passion - Hear Becca’s powerful insights on why working in alignment with your passion can keep you energized, even with a demanding workload.

 

Empowering Thoughts to Take With You:

  • "This conversation has provided listeners with practical insights on how we manage or mismanage our time." - Becca Powers
  • "Many successful leaders overlook the concept of time as a critical factor in their roles." - Becca Powers
  • "A company's success is directly tied to both the abilities of its team and how they allocate their time." - Becca Powers
  • "Understanding one’s purpose is vital for sustaining energy and motivation in both work and life." - Becca Powers
  • "It's interesting how the connection between passion and purpose can significantly impact one’s performance at work." - Becca Powers
  • "To be an effective leader, it’s essential to have clarity around your purpose and priorities." - Pete Steinberg
  • "Many leaders confuse their professional goals with their personal values, which can lead to burnout." - Pete Steinberg
  • "Authentic leadership begins with identifying what is fundamentally important to you." - Pete Steinberg
  • "Creating a routine for reflection can help regain the lost thinking time we used to have during our commutes." - Pete Steinberg
  • "The desire to lead authentically is the only requirement for anyone to become a great leader." - Pete Steinberg


About Pete

Pete Steinberg is a leadership and innovation expert with extensive experience consulting with top Fortune 500 professionals. He also has more than 20 years of experience as an elite rugby coach, coaching the USA Women’s Rugby Team at two World Cups and the Rio Olympics.

As a former U.S., international, and Olympic sports coach and commentator for major outlets such as CBS, ESPN, and Fox Sports, Pete has a track record of bringing teams to victory. He has won 11 National Championships with the Penn State Women, MARFU Men, and Temple Women rugby teams. He has also worked with the Men’s Eagles and other age-grade programs within the U.S. National team pathway. Pete was the Head of Coach Development for USA Rugby, leading the program as it became integrated into the World Rugby programs.

Pete is also the President of Innovative Thought, a business consultancy focused on leadership and organizational development. He supports clients in the areas of innovation, leadership, strategic planning, marketing, recruiting, and organizational development. Pete works regularly as an executive coach for senior executives of global companies.

Pete holds affiliated faculty positions with the Tepper Business School at Carnegie Mellon University and the Smeal College of Business at Penn State.

 

Connect with Pete Steinberg:

Mentioned on the Show:


Order 'A Return To Radiance' today and get on the path to discover your true happiness and ultimate success.


Follow Becca Powers:


We Want to Hear From You!

How have you transformed your leadership style by dedicating a short amount of time each day to reflect on your purpose and priorities?

We want to hear how you’ve embraced small, consistent actions to foster authenticity, break free from overwhelm and prioritize your well-being as a leader.

Connect with us on social media or leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Share your personal stories of growth, empowerment, and the changes you've made by intentionally focusing on what truly matters.

Your journey can inspire others to lead authentically and effectively!

 



Welcome to another episode of the empowered half hour and in this interview pre-talk before we hit live. I was just so excited to talk to today's guest and I can't wait to bring him forward for you guys to meet and to hear his name. It is Pete Steinberg, and Pete is a leadership and innovation expert, and he's a former Olympic rugby coach, which I think is just pretty cool.

And there's probably a lot of lessons in there, too. Um, also, one of the things that we'll be talking about on today's episode is his new book, Leadership Shock. Which I cannot wait to get into, uh, Pete, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Becca. I'm excited to be here.

I know, I'm excited too. So, can you share the subtitle of your book, just so the audience can hear it?

Because when I read it, I was like, this is going to be a good conversation.

The Path to Authentic Leadership

So it, well, I, instead of sharing the subtitle, what I'd like to do is to share the essence, because I think the title is important, but I want to share. The thing that's really important for me about the work that I do with leaders as an executive coach.

I would love that.

Okay. So, I think one of the things that is really hard for leaders to be, is to be authentic. And I think, because I think partly because, we feel like we need to be someone else a lot of the time. And so what happens is that when you're successful, in your career, what you tend to do is you tend to adopt behaviors and patterns that may not be true to you. They may not be authentic. And so the leadership shock is a state that you get into when you've been very successful. But what's happened in your career. The, the tools and your leadership approach of the past no longer works for you. And the only way to get out of it is to truly understand yourself and what's important to you and bring that forward with authenticity. And I think that's where the authenticity piece helps you get through some of the pitfalls that you might have in your career. And by the way, this is like not an unusual thing. Getting stuck in your career because you've been successful in the past is a very normal action that most people go through. So, so that's how authenticity helps you navigate your way through career success.

So one of the things that I really like about this concept of leadership shock too is like, you know, I'm, I'm at the point of point of my corporate career where I'm on the 20 plus side. And I have had to reinvent myself a couple of times because I have fallen into kind of like a leadership shock. Like I I've had a certain level of skills that I've built up. They've worked, they're no longer working or is no longer working for me. I still might be driving a high-performance team. But inside, I'm like, I'm unfulfilled. I'm not satisfied. So I think that there's a level of, of, of that within your, your storyline too, right?

Oh, I think completely. Yeah, hitting an unfulfillment, unsatisfied level as well.

Yeah, I mean, I think, like, I would argue that, you know, we, we talk a lot about wellness and we talk a lot about sustainability. I talk a lot about, about sustainability with my clients and the, the way that you're sustainable is not actually, I think, I mean, I think there's often amount of time challenge, like people are spending too much time or that they don't know how to manage their time effectively. And that's causing, you know, like, people to feel like they're overwhelmed, but actually, I think I think sustainability is about being true to yourself. I can work 60 hours a week. If I truly believe what I'm doing is important.

Like that, I'll give you a high five.

Because right? Because it isn't the time. It's the time spent on things that aren't actually important to you. That's draining. I, when I coached at the Olympics, it was like crazy. And it was stressful, but at no point did I feel like it wasn't sustainable because I was doing something that was important to me. Right. And I was doing it in a way that was important to me, at least for most of my career. I can share a story a little bit later about where I wasn't doing things that were important to me, and it wasn't sustainable. So I think I think that if you, if you, you know, people go through their careers and they find themselves and I love the fact how you said you had to reinvent yourself a couple of times. That's really what leadership shock is in leadership shock. There's a model called the authentic leadership model, and it's a way of reinventing yourself as a leader. And Becky, you were able to do it because you're self aware, and you probably realize something's not working. But for many people, it's very, very difficult to do that because success creates a belief, creates beliefs. And those beliefs are what drive your behaviors. And so the authentic leadership model really goes into your beliefs and what's important to you and helps you pull out a new way of leading.

I want to come back to that, uh, that model. Um, but I want to start with a different question first, but I do want to table that and explore that because you were saying all the right words and all these things that I'm super passionate about.

I'm like, Oh, I already just want to go there, but, um, I do like to start for the listeners, um, With the back story. So let's start there. Where did, where was leadership shock born? Why was it born?

The Birth of Leadership Shock

You know, this is one of those things where when I tell the story, I'll be authentic back on this podcast. For about 20 years, I coached elite rugby and had a leadership consultancy where I did executive coaching. So, for about 20 years, I did both. Mostly, the leadership consulting work was to support my rugby habit, because if you're going to go to the Olympics, you’re like, "I've got to take four months off. What job gives you four months off?" Or I want to go spend three weeks in New Zealand and learn; you just can't do that with a real job. So, I created this role that allowed me to do my rugby stuff.

But in my executive coaching, I found myself meeting leaders in the same situation. And what I'll say is, it took me a few years too long to make the connection that this was happening. But it was all like, their calendars were crazy, right? They had no time. They had no control over their calendar. Their teams were confused, they were exhausted, and they felt like they just weren't being successful or fulfilled.

I kept seeing these symptoms, and I would work through them as the coach, help them think differently and move forward. Then, I realized all these people were going through some change in their context. In most cases, it was a new job that was very significantly different in scope than their previous job—like a director of finance becoming VP of finance, or a marketing VP becoming a chief marketing officer. Often, it was that, or a change in the organization, a new boss, or a restructure. Something around them had changed.

I started to see this pattern. I was doing basically the same thing with these leaders every time there was a change, and I thought, "There’s a pattern here." So, I created and evolved this model called the Authentic Leadership Model, which helps leaders through that transition. And that’s where Leadership Shock became a thing.

It’s called Leadership Shock because it’s like when your body goes into shock. You breathe, your heart pumps, you’re actually alive, but you have no control. When I come across leaders in this, and by the way, this happens to everyone, not just C-suite leaders. If you take your best salesperson and make them the sales manager, the same thing happens. What made them the best salesperson isn’t what makes them a great sales manager. It can even happen in your very first role. The difference is, you kind of know that first role is going to be different. But when you go from VP of Marketing to CMO, you think it's probably the same because that’s the track. 

I really like that you refer to it as "shock" because you’re coming out of something familiar and starting something new. Whether you're a high-performing salesperson moving into a leadership role or a seasoned leader stepping into a new role, you're not really expecting to be in shock.

Well, because you’ve been really successful! Career success leads to Leadership Shock. If you aren’t successful, you don’t go into Leadership Shock because you’re trying things out. But if, for the last 15 years of your career, you have been very successful, you’re not stopping to reflect on why. It’s just success after success. 

I have a story of a client who was hyper-successful, like "30 under 30, 40 under 40" successful. His company got bought, partly because he was so valuable. He moved to a new company, a different culture, and found himself struggling. He was idea-driven in an organization that was people-driven, and a year in, he almost got fired by the CEO because he wasn’t fitting the new culture.

That’s Leadership Shock. The more successful you are, the harder it is to reflect on yourself because you’re always onto the next thing. The Authentic Leadership Model is about stopping to ask, "What are you good at? Where are you now? What’s important to you? How should you lead?"

I think most people don’t think about time as precious. In my coaching, I often tell clients that time is a non-renewable resource. It’s precious, and we should treat it that way. But we don’t. We allow other people to put things on our calendar, filling it with things that aren’t priorities.

Let me share a story that illustrates this. In 2011, I was appointed the U.S. Women's Rugby Head Coach. My first game was against England, a team that had beaten us by 40 points the previous year. We had six hours of practice and six hours of meeting time to prepare. Every minute was precious. We organized our time so meticulously, and when we played, we almost beat them. We lost in the last minute, but that experience taught me how valuable time is.

I learned that when you absolutely have to make every minute count, you truly appreciate how precious time is. This idea applies in life too. When you’re pressed for time, you realize what’s really important and focus on that.

I think this conversation ended up being just a really practical takeaway for the listeners. We're all managing time or mismanaging time or not thinking about time. Companies often say, "We’re only as good as our people." I say, "You’re only as good as your people and where they spend their time."

Let’s go back to the Authentic Leadership Model you created. Now that we’ve set the context about time and leadership shock, let's repeat the model and give an example of how listeners might apply it to their lives.

The Power of Purpose

Sure. So, um, so, first of all, this is a great segue because part of the authentic leadership model is your priorities, which is where you spend your time, right?

So you can actually have something. So am I spending my time where I should? So the authentic leadership model starts at purpose. Like, what's important to you? I recently was working with, um, uh, a client actually last week. I was in Warsaw wandering around a beautiful park talking to my client because I like doing executive coaching sessions on a walk with my client because they don't leave the office.

I don't want to talk to you on a screen. You're on the screen the whole time. Let's get out. So, so, anyway, I was walking around this beautiful park and we were talking and we were kicking off the authentic leadership model. And the first part is purpose. And then there's role expectation and vision. So those are contextual.

So role expectation is in your job. What's expected of you, not your job description and your vision. What do you want to accomplish in the role? And so, so he, my client, he had spent some time doing purpose, role, expectation, vision, and his purpose is like, Oh, I want to grow the business. Um, I want to, uh, you know, empower my team.

I'm like, hold on. That's your vision. That's what you want to accomplish in the role. Your purpose is what's important to you. What gets you up? What gets you, what gives you energy? And it was really interesting. I don't think he'd ever thought about it. Like there's something in all of us. That is important.

Fundamentally important, like doesn't change, right? And when you make that explicit and you say, my purpose is this, it gives you energy because you can connect what you're doing to something that's important to you. If you don't make that connection, it's really hard to be sustainable.

I think that's a really important part that I just want to like, talk about a little bit more because.

When I, when I look back at when I was a senior leader and I went into burnout, it, I had, my purpose was tied to the company's purpose. Right, and energy is associated with purpose. This is what you're saying. Yep. And so, and it goes back to what you said in the beginning of this conversation to, like, whether you can work, you can work 30 hours or 60 hours.

But it's, you know, your energy associated with that. If you're on purpose and passion, you can work 60 hours and still be energized. Right. So what, but I learned when I had to heal myself from that situation that I needed my purpose. I needed my passion and now I have it. I still work full time, but I podcast and I write books and I taught I keynote and I do workshops and so I'm a, uh, I have a lot of hands happening, but I'm so lit up on the inside. That I, I don't even feel like I'm working half the time and guess what? My performance at work has been my entire career. I mean, I mean, it's, it's, it's funny. You were talking to people. I know you're, you're, um, like, uh, we, we were, we were talking about kids before the podcast and, um, and, you know, I'm, I'm an older dad. So when my son goes to college, I'm gonna be 68. So I'm like, I'm never gonna retire. I have no interest in retiring, maybe working a bit less having more choice, but I love what I do. And what's so interesting is that I coached for 20 years at the elite level, and I loved coaching, but I didn't coach to win.

I coached to give the experience. To the athletes that was transformative to them. Rugby was just a tool to do that. And the reason why I don't miss coaching or I miss it a bit, but but but but the reason why, like, like, it's not a big hole for me is I get that purpose. My purpose was fulfilled because it was about helping people become the best that they, that they can be not in sport, but in life.

Why Purpose is Fundamental

I do the same thing in my work. So I'm still fulfilled. So purpose is really fundamental, right? So you have to get there. But if you take your purpose, And your role expectations. So what is expected? Not your job description, but he's supposed to be a challenger, a collaborator, those sorts of things and your vision.

You can actually identify your priorities. You can say, where should I be spending more of my time? Right? And just 1, 1 thing on priorities. A 3rd of your time. It's not just like is company time. It's stuff that you have to do, right? Um, a third of your time is, uh, um, time that is for your boss or like, it's not linked to your priorities, but you have to do it anyway.

And about a third of your time, you actually have discretion. So it's really in that in that last third. Are you spending your time? Because now I can decide if I should be on a meeting or not, because I understand what my priorities are. I'd have to be in that meeting. That's not linked to my priorities, right?

So and then also my priorities are linked to my team's priorities. What should my team do? And what should I do? So that's that's sort of like getting to priorities. Then you go back to purpose and you say, Hey, What are the strengths that I bring to this role? Not what are my strengths in the previous role?

This goes back to the sales manager, right? So I was a great at building relationships with clients. Guess what? As the sales manager, not important.

Yeah.

So what is it? What are the strengths that I'm bringing to this role that I should leverage? And then what do I believe about leadership? Again, this is about being authentic.

There are some things that I believe about leadership. And so if I take my purpose. My strength and the things that I believe about leadership that I can identify how I want to lead. So you have your priorities, which is what, like, where do I want to lead? Right? Which things are important to me? And then you have your, um, your leadership, what I call principles, which is how you want to lead.

And they're all contextual, right? So I get a different role. The role expect the purpose is static. Leadership beliefs are probably pretty static, too. But I get a different role. My role expectation changes my vision changes and the strengths I bring to bear change. Right? And so people that go through the authentic leadership model, I will, you know, um, there's there's a client that is on the podcast on the leadership podcast again.

She was like, Oh, yeah, I just got a new role. I went back to my leadership model. I pulled it up and I'm like, yeah, it's a tool. Like I have a very bad business model, Becca, but I have a very bad business model. Like once I work with a client, the goal is for them to never need me again. So that's a problem for business, but it's great for them.

So this is all in, this is all in the, uh, all in the, all in the book leadership shop. And one more thing about the book that I'm going to add is I wrote a book that I would read. Like I get a third of the way through leadership books and I stop. I'm like, I get it. Don't tell me more anecdotes about how it works.

So the book is a fable. It's a story about a CEO and it's that, yeah, it's, yeah, it's the story of the CEO coming out of Leadership Shock, how he got out of leadership shock and became successful. And it's linked to the different modules. So it's also a bit of a do it yourself. At the end of each chapter there's like, Hey, if you want to identify your purpose, these are the here, here are the questions that you should ask.

Here's how you should go about doing it. So if you get the book, you can actually build your own authentic leadership model.

That's awesome. And I do want to ask you one more question. But since we're talking about the book, I assume it's with all major retailers and major retailers. Yeah.

Okay, cool. And we'll listeners will have a link in the show notes as we always do too.

So if you're wanting to click your way there, you can or you can go look for it on any of the major retailers. So we're coming up on the bottom of the half hour. I knew this conversation was going to go fast. Um, What is an empowering message you can share with the audience based upon your work?

I think, well, I mean, can I have two, two?

Okay, we're taking two. So the first thing I would say is that, um, the only thing you need to have to be a great leader is the desire to be a great leader.

That's nice.

Okay. So, so everyone can lead in their own way. Right. So the goal is you can be a great leader, an authentic leader. That's great. You, you just, you just have to have that desire.

And the second big takeaway is, I would say is the, um, and then to go on that journey, you need to find time. To think about your leadership and to truly reflect on it. And I actually think, Becca, this is one of the challenges that we have in the hybrid or virtual world is that people at the start of the day used to get in a car and drive to work, and they would have, like, 40 minutes or 30 minutes or something like that to think.

And now what we actually do is we actually open our laptops at the start of our commute. We don't open up our laptops at the start of our day in

this for a long time, because I used to be the inner off, you know, yeah, driving type of thing. And now I work from home and my commute time is 30 seconds, right?


The Birth of a ‘Virtual Community’

So there's so yeah, there's no transition, but we lost that thinking time, like thinking time about what am I going to do today? How am I doing as a leader? We've lost it. So you have to find a way to find it. One of the things that I work with clients is to create a virtual commute. Okay. So take your dog for a walk before you go for a work, um, or I even had one client who went for a drive because he just felt like he could put music on and he would drive around for 15 minutes and then come back because that was how he could process it.

So I think creating a virtual community and then if I can share one tip that's really useful for me to create bright lines around commuting. Is don't shut your laptop. Turn your laptop off. If you turn your laptop off at the end of the day, it's actually a lot harder to go back to work because you're going to press it.

And then you're going to wait. And especially if you're in the corporate world, you've got all these updates that have to happen. But as your commute, if you turn your laptop off, you won't you actually won't go back to work. If you just shut it and don't turn it off, you'll go back to work.

There's this whole episode.

Thank you so much, Pete, because I feel like throughout the whole 30 minutes, there were so many teaching points and just such valuable, you know, content. I really, I was excited to interview you beforehand, but I, it was just a joy to have you on the show and maybe have you back at some point because I feel like there's more.

Yeah. I, I, yeah, I would love to come back, Becca. And I, I. I appreciate learning from you to this conversation was great.

Yeah, if you can real fast, do you mind sharing your social handles? So the people can stay in touch? Sure. Yeah, yeah,

you can find me on LinkedIn at Pete Steinberg and then Pete Steinberg dot com.

I have a newsletter be great for people to sign up. I share my, my stories, my, my insights. What I'm doing with clients. So those are probably the two. If you want to find me on Twitter and follow a bit of rugby discussion, that you can also find me at Pete Steinberg on Twitter, but that's mostly rugby stuff.

That sounds great. Thank you so much for being a guest. Appreciate you.

Thank you, Becca.

0 comments

There are no comments yet. Be the first one to leave a comment!