Dan Morrell: Amy Jen Su (MBA 1997) is managing director at executive coaching firm Paravis Partners, and she’s been hearing some consistent themes in the trenches these days. Increasingly, her clients tell her, they are facing a serious time crunch while, at the same time, their organizations are becoming more global and complex. And these pressures, coupled with internal pressures to succeed, are leaving these executives feeling like they are getting in their own way.

This chorus of executive worries led Su to write her new book, The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self. Those principles are what she calls her five Ps: Purpose, process, people, presence and peace. And in this episode of Skydeck, contributor April White talks to Su about how she developed those principles—and why real improvement requires a holistic approach, not just a lifestyle hack.

READ MORE

April: Amy, thank you so much for joining us today to discuss your newest book, The Leader You Want to Be. Early in the book you introduce us to two characters, leader A and leader B. Can you just tell me a little bit about each one of them?

Amy Jen Su: Leader A and leader B was a heuristic that I created to try to describe what people were describing to me out in the trenches. Leader A is the part of all of ourselves—it's like a mode we have when we're our best self, we don't resist the moment. We see challenges as opportunities and we really meet the occasion with our effectiveness and with a greater ease. And then there's leader B mode, when we are less effective, when we're resisting the moment and we're just a little more stressed and overwhelmed. And so really the question becomes what's your center of gravity—leader A or leader B? When you're thrown off your game, how quickly can you come back?

April: What type of leader are you most typically?

Amy Jen Su: Honestly, this book is somewhat autobiographical and I think I aspire to be leader A as often as I can but truthfully, it's an internal teeter-totter where even if my team is experiencing me or clients are seeing leader A, sometimes to be truthful, I'm feeling quite leader B on the inside.

April: Tell me about some of the dangers that come with operating in leader B mode. What makes that difficult for the leader and for the team that person is leading?

Amy Jen Su: I think when we're in leader B mode and it becomes our operating norm or our center of gravity, that's where the “watch out” really is. When a leader is more and more often finding themselves in that mode, number one, they compromise their own health. When you see people have burnout and struggle, insomnia, headaches, back pain, some form of leader B might be at play.

Secondly, I've seen folks really stall out in their careers where—whether the organization has grown or your role has grown—I've seen leaders cap out and not be able to scale because they are stuck in leader B mode. And then finally for our teams and our loved ones, when we ripple out leader B, we're telegraphing our stress and our worst self onto others and so suddenly our worst days have made bad days for other people.

April: In the book, you lay out five principles that can help a leader to be a leader A more of the time. I believe these are purpose, process, people, presence, and peace. First, how did you develop these principles?

Amy Jen Su: The five principles really came out of taking a big step back and saying, "Being a coach for 20 years now, when I look at all the different leaders that I've worked with, what have been the common denominators in terms of optimizing the ratio of leader A and leader B." The five principles were developed with great intentionality. The first two around purpose and making sure we reset our compass towards contribution and passion and process and rebooting your personal operating system, really are about addressing how do we make sure that our time, focus, and energy are truly ours and that we're making the best choices there?

And then the third principle of people, where we want to raise our game by raising the game of others, really addresses the issue that no matter how strong of a player you are, at some point you will be capped by your capacity. You have to build great teams and great networks of support around you. And then the last two principles really shift from our external world to looking at the internal world of the leader where our presence and not scratching the itch ensures that we don't keep leading by our bad habits. And then the final principle of peace around loosening the grip, is really about ourselves against ourselves, and not letting that mean inner critic and the voice of should drive our actions.

April: One of the things I like about these principles is that you don't think about them primarily as lifestyle hacks. It's not exclusively about time management or improved productivity. You're really looking, I think for something a little bit bigger and more holistic than that. What are you hoping leaders could achieve with these principles?

Amy Jen Su: My greatest hopes with these five principles is that we address the whole person, that someone leaves the book saying, "Wow, I now have a holistic framework to think about not only being more effective and driving my performance but really thinking about what drives my satisfaction and my own inner joy."

April: There is definitely a thread of Eastern philosophy that runs through this book. What role has Eastern philosophy played in your life?

Amy Jen Su: Eastern philosophy has been there for me since the beginning. I'm Chinese-American and the Eastern heritage has been a big part of how I've grown up. But truthfully, April, what really made this relevant was about 20 years ago when I came out of HBS class of 1997, I was in my first job in management consulting for a couple of years, working a hundred hours a week, traveling every week. Truthfully, I was not the person or the leader I wanted to be. And I ended up having a snowboarding accident, which put me into physical therapy for about a year. It was in that year that I really came to realize that not only did I need Western medicine but I really needed what the Eastern modalities had to offer. It was such a transformational year for me and has defined how I coach and work with people. The Eastern thread and the Western thread both live and exist in my life now.

April: Tell me a little bit more about your own leadership journey, your decision to become a coach and to turn into a leader of a coaching firm?

Amy Jen Su: It's so funny, as I was just mentioning that year that I took off for physical therapy, I think that was just really one of those hallmark years where at the time it seemed like one of the worst years of my life and now when I look back 20 years ago, you realize it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. I think sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom and realizing that you are absolutely out of alignment to yourself, that you realize what your life purpose is meant to be. In that year, I really realized that, what I most love doing was helping people, working with people, riding alongside other great people who wanted to make a difference in the world. That really opened me to this whole idea of becoming an executive coach.

April: I want to dig into this idea of purpose, which is of course one of the principles that you introduced in the book. It's one of five but it does seem to be the one that governs everything else you think about in the book.

Amy Jen Su: I think at the end of the day where we set that compass drives everything else, how we define the difference we want to make now, which is about our contribution coupled with what actually brings you passion and joy. The combination of those two things for me is what defines purpose, it's ever-evolving. What you enjoyed and the difference you wanted to make 10 years ago is certainly different than even five years ago or even a year ago. We have to stay connected to an ever-evolving purpose.

April: What kind of concrete advice do you offer to your clients and your readers on how to identify this purpose?

Amy Jen Su: In the book we define and lay out an equation that purpose equals your contribution plus your passion. What I could best offer listeners today is to really sit down and think about both at work and at home. Number one, think about your contribution and what is your highest and best use. When you think of the projects and initiatives or tasks that you do every day, what really matters the most and what's your highest value-add? That's number one. And then number two, to pause and really think about, "Where's my passion and my energy now? Where do I derive energy? What are the projects, the tasks, initiatives, things that I'm working on, where no one even has to tell me to go work on it? I just want to go do that." You're really looking for the sweet spot of contribution and passion. To me that accounts for a ton of great “leader A” days.

April: You raised a really good point. This sort of clarity that these principles can offer in the working world can also be useful in the personal world. Can you tell me how you might apply those in your own life?

Amy Jen Su: I think this whole idea of the leader you want to be and a best self absolutely applies to our home life. You can almost think of it, "Who's the mom I want to be? Who's the wife I want to be, who's the friend I want to be and who's that best self." So often I think what happens is people bring their game face to work and their best self and then we come home and we bring our absolute worst self to our families. I think you could easily ask my husband and my teenage son what happens when mom comes home after a long, tiring day. I think you can absolutely take the same five principles and say, "How do these apply to my daily life at home?"

April: One of the principles you include as we discussed is the idea of peace and it's not a concept or a word that often appears in business books.

Amy Jen Su: The word peace—you're absolutely right—does not show up often in a business book but I felt really passionate about including it here. I am so fortunate to work with leaders who are making a difference in the world, who have big titles, who make great compensation, who have a life that most of us dream of eventually achieving. What was beginning to break my heart was that more and more behind closed doors and in private, folks were telling me that while they had all the external markers of success, they actually did not feel it on the inside. And then in fact more of their own private inner world was dominated by worry, self-doubt, and issues of ego. I felt like it was important to address in this book. How do you come to find that peace? How do you loosen the grip on yourself? So that if you're going to work this hard, you actually enjoy the ride along the way.

April: You raise a point in the book, which is this idea that you won't always be leader A, you will sometimes be leader B and you should forgive yourself for that. How do you communicate that both to yourself in the moment and to clients? How do you teach people to be okay with that back and forth?

Amy Jen Su: It's such a relief and I say to clients, "Hey. Let's pause for a moment and realize this is everyone's experience. Remember, you're not alone." I cannot tell you the number of people that I've talked to, coached, or facilitated sessions for, where it's the biggest relief moment when all the leaders in the room just admit that everyone experiences leader A and leader B. I don't think I've had a group of leaders ever break 60, 40. That when they were really honest about the nature of their roles in their lives, most people will tell you, "I'm probably A to B, 60 to 40 ratio and I would love to make that 80, 20." But what a relief that nobody has the hundred to zero figured out.

Skydeck is produced by the External Relations department at Harvard Business School and edited by Craig McDonald. It is available at iTunes and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. For more information or to find archived episodes, visit alumni.hbs.edu/skydeck.

Featured Alumni

Amy Su

MBA 1997

Login to send a message

Post a Comment