Welcome back to Inside personal growth. I am honored to have Sarah McArthur joining us from Easton, Pennsylvania. And Sarah is, well, she's more than an author, but she's a co author with Francis hesselbein Marshall Goldsmith and herself a collection of essays about work is love made visible. My video editor will also have that book pop in. Good day to you, Sarah.

Well, hello. It's nice to be here. It's nice to

see you again. And the way that I actually started knowing Sarah was through Marshall Goldsmith, and that's when Marshall used to live in Rancho Santa Fe and now he's in Tennessee, and Sarah is is is in Pennsylvania and New York, both places, but I'm gonna let our listeners know a tad bit about you. She's a thought partner and trusted advisor to world class leaders in the areas of messaging, content, alignment and audience development. She's the editor in chief of APEX, award winning leader to leader journal, and the executive producer of defining moments, the documentary about the life and leadership. Francis Hessel blonde, for those of you don't know, she was the one that, with the help the Girl Scouts, I think many of the people will know, and she has is she passed away. Yes, that's what I thought, an award winning, best selling author and editor. Her mission is to help leaders and organizations work together towards a bright future. Her clients include former CEO of Boeing commercial airlines and Ford Motor, Allen malali. And if you've never heard Alan speak in person, boy, you're in for a treat. He actually wrote the forward to the book, folks so wonderful man. Wonderful man, considered one of the greatest leaders of 21st century, and the list goes on. She's been inductee of the radio, television broadcasters, Hall of Fame and Marshall Goldsmith's number one best selling New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. What Got You Here Won't Get You There, and triggers and thinkers, 50 Hall of Fame and on and on. Our whole biography. You want to learn more, go to Sarah mcarthur.com that's Sarah S, A R, A H, M, C, A R, T, H, u, r.com, that's where you're going to learn more about Sarah. Well, I love the way that you all put this book together, and all these little short story I'm going to call them like three page little vignettes, and then at the at the end of them, the questions, the reflection questions, very well done. But the book outlines six core values for organizations, including creating positive memories and succeeding as a tribe. Now there's been a couple of books written on tribes, and I mean tribes with inside of organizations. How can organizations effectively instill and maintain these values across global teams? From your vantage point, having written and talked and worked with some of the best thought leaders in the world,

well, it's wonderful to be here, Greg, it's been a long time coming. So really excited to be here and talk a little bit about work is love made visible and work is love made visible? Is an interesting book. It's an interesting project. A long time ago, I met Frances hesselbein, and she was a great leader, and her vision of leadership was all about a bright future for all, and she was so focused on developing our purpose. And so in her life, she developed basically five, many more, but we'll call it five, because five is what we have in the in the book, five basic principles of leadership that we organize the book into these, these essays by different contributors that we work these essays into things like principles like, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do bright future. That's one of my, my favorites, of course, be ye an opener of doors to serve as to live. So she had these wonderful principles of leadership that she lived and exampled for all of us. And that's what the book is, or how the book is organized,

yeah, and quite effectively. Now she was obviously interview, influenced very much by Peter Drucker. The first chapter of this book is is really about my journey with Peter Drucker. Right? What from your time with her and your ability to kind of look at her as leader, and then Peter Drucker's influence? How do you believe that the two of them, because they're both just so they're iconic? Is it, as it comes to leadership, like, what do you think the biggest influence was that Drucker had on her

those two? They're like, that's a great question to me, Francis hesselbein And Peter Drucker were sort of like the god, the godfather and the godmother of leadership and management. I mean, they really are incredibly influential, and their partnership the impact of their partnership is that both of them learned so much and grew so much from learning from each other. One of the book is based around a question that Francis would ask everyone when she'd meet us so and she'd asked the same question. I went to France to lunch with Francis, I don't know how many times, and she asked me this question. Question is, and it's the premise of the book, and I want, I wanted to hear what other people thought. That's why we have this book. Is because I wanted to hear what other people thought, what their answers were to this question. And the question is, what do you see when you look out the window that's visible but not yet seen by others? And the question when she when Francis first asked me that question, I just kind of stared at her a little dumbfounded, and like, how do I even answer that? And I, you know, I look out the window, what do I see? I see, well, I see, there's a challenge with communication happening in the world today. And Francis said, Very good answer. The the question that she came up with that she asked every one of us is that question. And so when you read those articles by those contributors, they're giving their answers to Francis's question.

Interesting. You know, something popped up for me. I don't know if this is totally relatable or not, but I can remember art, Link, letter, asking kids the questions, and his show was, if you remember kids say the damnedest things or something like that, right? And I always think about, as a child, what I used to see versus an adult, because sometimes things got the perspective, because we get conditioned, right? And I think our question is spot on, because we need to see what I think is invisible, what we can create into making visible. I always say turning the invisible into the visible. And that would bring me to a man who's done a lot of that you worked with. This is like the second chapter, and it's called the evolution of leadership, yesterday, today and tomorrow. And there couldn't be anybody that you probably spent more time with than Marshall Goldsmith than I've had him on the show at least five times in his chapter is really, you know, he goes all the way from the cave people to the management and the common characteristics of leadership. What did Sarah learn from Marshall Goldsmith, as a Marshall being such a thought leader and an influence that he's had on you, and as it relates to this book as well,

oh, I have learned so much from Marshall. He's an extraordinary an extraordinary person, and an incredibly great executive coach, world renowned executive coach. And so for me, spending 20 years working together with Marshall Goldsmith, 10 of which was in books and content, managed as managing editor of of his content. And then the next 10 years, continuing with the publishing and the books and the and the content, and then also running his company as the CEO. I was coached every day of my life, because that's what Marshall does. He just immediately he sits down next to you, or you, if you sit down next to him, he'll start coaching. He it's just who he is, right? One of the things that I learned from Marshall, I learned very early on, and it was one of the, it's one of the, one of the things that I remember so well, and that I share with people, especially people who are starting out, or sometimes when people feel like they're making a big mistake or something. So we I think it was my first book project, possibly second with Marshall and a another woman named Beverly Kay and a man named Ken Shelton, who was the editor of leadership excellence, and Beverly Kay wrote a book, love them or lose them. It's in its seventh edition. It's been around forever. So these were the editors, and it was also a compilation book and and I was new. I hadn't edited a compilation book before, so I didn't know everything about everything for sure, and I didn't know really, I didn't know my role. I was a freelance editor, and so I was working with the publisher and the contributors and putting all this together, and I did not realize the power I had. And so I we put the book together, sent it to the publisher, and they sent it back, and the all of the bylines were on appropriately, on the the contributors articles, which is great, and then there was a byline on the conclusion. And I thought, well, there's never a byline on a conclusion. So I took their names off, I deleted their names, and I thought, you know, somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. And so it goes, and it didn't come back, and that's great. And it was printed. And after it was printed, I got a call from one of the editors, Beverly K and she said, Oh, did you know that the names were taken off the conclusion? They said, Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I was that wrong. I did that. She said, Well, that's wrong. The contributors are very upset, and rightly so. I'd taken their names off of the off of their contribution. I'm so sorry. I don't what can I do? You know? What can I do? I'm so sorry. I'll do anything you need me to do. Can I call them? No, they're too upset, Sarah, I don't think you want to call them right now. And so she said, Well, I understand you made a mistake, and just, you know, don't do it again. And okay, I'm so sorry. And then Marshall called, and he said, Sarah, you know what happened? You know, did you do this? And I said, Yes, I'm so sorry. I I'm so sorry is, what can I do? I feel so bad. And he says, Well, you know, that's pretty bad. You took their names off. That's their work. You took their names off, and that's, that's a pretty big one. That's, that's pretty bad, so don't do that again. I go, Yeah, I'm so sorry. And he says, and remember this in the big stream of life, it's not that big a deal, right? Let it go.

That's what makes him a good coach. That was good coaching, you know. So this book is loaded with great little short stories from all these people who have authored right that that you guys hand chose for this. But you know, I think one of the things that we're kind of everybody today is maybe grasping with is a bit of uncertainty and where's the world going and what's happening, and obviously, as a leader, you've got to have a clear sense of purpose. So you just said something about clear purpose a few minutes ago. How does, and I don't care if it's you know, in our political political world or our for profit world, how does a leader align a company's purpose with the employees values to contribute to long term organizational success? That's always been the million dollar question. It's like, okay, great, we've got all these teams. I'm the visionary. I'm going to put the vision out there and the mission, and I hope all these people are going to be aligned with the same thing. And have you found any secrets from all these great thinkers about how they've achieved that? I mean, because we have a political leader right now that doesn't seem to care very much about what the people think.

Yes, yes, I have learned so much from every single contributor, every one of the coaches that Marshall, that we were, I worked with with Marshall Marshall, and I worked with all of the people that I get to work with, with Alan Mulally and Francis hesselbein. And I think when it comes to being mission focused, demographics driven and innovation based is the most important when it comes to aligning values with purpose. So I learned so much. I get to teach working together and share working together with Alan Mulally and and working together is the leadership and management system that Alan Mulally created and designed and developed over his time at Boeing and at Ford, from 1969 when he started at at Boeing, until he left Ford, I think in 2014

and is that a project you're working on now? Sarah, working together constantly.

Yes, I'm working together partner with Alan Mulally. So we're sharing his are working together leadership and management system,

okay? And is, if our listeners want to learn more about it, where would they go? Because that's the first I've heard about it. So, oh, it's always good to do these. So where would they go? I

think they would come to me and just reach out at Sarah mcarthur.com very, very powerful problems with that. I love sharing, working together, and within working together, working together as a leadership and management system. And there's five elements of it, you

read, you said three at the beginning there. So I'd like you to repeat those, because I don't think everybody really got that. So we first started this question. I'm going to go back, because you gave me three key points, and I think it's always important, sometimes you have to hear them a couple of times. So can you repeat them again? And then let's go into the working together. Do you remember what you said,

the three key points of Well,

there you said for people to align Francis from Right, right, the

three Francis. Francis always said that every organization, profit, nonprofit, government, education, military, whatever, what, across the sectors, every organization, especially this is when she was working with Girl Scouts. So especially with with Girl Scouts, because she was leading an organization of 780,000 volunteers. Wow. Those are people who do not have to be there, right? That's the way. And she turned the organization around. Tripled minority membership, changed the organization, and just it was an incredible, an incredible turnaround that Francis accomplished there, and she led the organization with the these three points that you said. You mentioned mission we will be mission focused, demographics driven, innovation based, innovation

based. That's the one that I heard. Okay, yep,

and, and Alan. Alan and Francis, to me, are two peas in a pod. Okay, they're exactly the same. They just look different, and Alan has developed a system for us that allows us to implement Francis's principles and practices. Francis's key concepts, key, key leadership theory and his principles and practices governance, process, leadership team, creating value, roadmap and Business Plan Review make up his working together leadership and management system. The

question he's had to have put this in a book, is it in a book?

We're writing the book as we speak. There's also a lot of references. So you can look to our leader to leader journal, and we wrote Alan, and I wrote an article a conversation with Alan Mulally about his working together leadership and management system. And it gives a summary of the 3000 word summary of, well,

if you can give us some links, I'm happy to put those for our listeners into the blog. I certainly have your website here. But also, you know, it's, there's a it says projects, and under projects, it has defining moments. I don't actually see the one you're working with with Alan Mulally on there, so that that's fine, whatever you have to provide to me, or can that'd be awesome.

Absolutely, you have got it. You have got it. Well,

there's been a couple of times during this that you've mentioned Beverly K and I'm looking at the chapter of Beverly K and it's it. It is time to leave your comfort zone. And one of the questions that comes from this is it would be business leaders leaving their comfort zone, right? And in one section, you mentioned the challenge of stepping out of comfort zones. What strategies do you recommend for individuals organizations to embrace discomfort as a path to growth? Now, I would say that this current administration has created tons of discomfort, and I have been told that, hey, we have to disrupt certain things to make things happen. I don't agree with the way that he's doing it, or how he's doing it, not at all, not even close to it, but I do realize that even Alan and other leaders have to make tough decisions sometimes, like reduction in force. Oh, great. We've got to let some people go. I get that. I totally get that. But how do you do it with, like the Senator said the other night on TV, with some level of compassion and still go about what you have to do? Because I do realize that we got to manage budgets. We've got to do these things around money, but it just seems like if you can't do it with compassion, then why do it at all? Mm,

hmm, yeah, we're definitely having a challenge, aren't we? In communication, and that's in work. Is love made visible? The article that I wrote for it, the essay that I wrote for it, you know, what do people do all day? Is exactly about seeing the challenges of for me, it's always about communication where, you know, the greatest threat to democracy is our lack of civility, meaning we can have different differing opinions, we can have different ways that we want to do things, and we'll never be able to work together if we're not able to listen to each other and maybe negotiate, figure out the best way forward together. Sometimes it's that, you know, if an organization has a leader, was really It all comes down to who the leader is, the leader that has been chosen by, you know, usually the board, the leader that has been chosen to lead this organization. If the leader who is leading the organization doesn't have the principles and practices of, say, putting people first, including everyone, not managing a secret you know, not making jokes at other people's expense, having a creating creating a compelling vision, comprehensive strategy and a relentless implementation plan. If the leader isn't focused on those things that align the organization, then it's you're not going to have an aligned organization with with our working together leadership and management system, I always go back to that, and I want as many people as possible to learn about it, to implement it in their organizations to The best of their ability. And it is, it's really, it seems like it's, it's a lot, and then, well,

it is, it is a lot. But at the same time, I, I think you've said a second ago or a few seconds ago, you know, Alan has taken all the knowledge and wisdom from these great leaders, and kind of consolidated it into that, including things like talking about our goals and our KPIs and our these kind of things, which, along with the philosophical part of leadership, also comes this. How do you want to call it managing the metrics part of it as well, which he was always great at doing. He was just a master at that. And I think when you put the two together, and you do that with, as you say, the degree of civility and compassion and understanding with the workforce, you can move mountains because you you can't change what you don't measure, right? So that's one of the key aspects of things, and I love that. So the next thing that comes up for me in this book is this coaching and curiosity. Okay, so I'm curious by nature, I wouldn't have done 1200 podcasts with different authors over the last 17 years, but you describe the coaching as staying curious longer and delay giving advice, okay, or delaying advice giving, I should say that's really an interesting one, because the first thing coaches want to Do they're being paid to do is give advice. So what practical tools can leaders use to develop that coaching mindset? It's like, okay, okay, I'm a coach. This person's hired me to be their coach. The first thing I want to do is be is, is I want to give advice. But this whole part about being curious longer. Okay, what is it that a coach can learn by being curious longer before providing advice? Oh,

I think everything. And that's that article, I believe, is by Michael Bungay Stanier, and it's based on his book, The Coaching Habit. And then he did a second book about asking questions. And what he's talking about is, I know Michael, so yep, love him, yeah, and I think that's, that's his his article about being curious and about coaching, he was writing about giving people time to get through their entire issue on their own before giving them any advice. And he might ask a question, like he might say, Okay, tell me what's your, what's your tell me what's your challenge or your issue, or what's happening here? And they would say, well, it's this, this and this. And you go, tell me more. And they go, Okay, well, this, this, this and this, and you go, Okay, tell me more. So rather than giving them advice or suggestion, it was getting them to really think through what was happening, what their issue was. I love that Francis, back to what I learned from Francis and what Francis, what Francis learned from Peter Drucker. So Francis learned from Peter Drucker. She always used to say she had three tattoos, and one was from Peter Drucker. Said, Ask, Don't Tell. And so this book, work is love made visible is based on a question that Francis asked. That question is based on a statement that Peter Drucker made. So Peter Drucker, in the 80s or 90s, was in an interview with Forbes, Interviewer from Forbes and Forbes. Interviewer said, Oh my God. Peter Drucker, how do you always know what's going to happen in leadership and management? I mean, you always, like, 20 years out, you're predicting what's going to happen and total throw away line. Peter Drucker says, I just look out the window and see what's visible, but not yet seen by others. Throw away line, Francis picked up on that throwaway line from that article and did what Peter had taught her. She turned it and she asked, don't tell she turned it into a question that she asked everyone she met, what do you see out the window when you look out the window that's visible, but not yet seen by others. So if you know who

else did that, Sarah, not to interrupt, but she's been on the show, and she's in your book. Rita McGrath,

Oh, I love that article. Fabulous article. So,

so, so Rita is about connecting the dots, right? You can't look in the rear view mirror. You gotta look in the forward. But the point is, is, if you can start to see and connect relationships, that would also be a Malcolm Gladwell kind of thing, right? So you're trying to connect what it is so you become your own predictive analytics. You don't need to go to chat. GBT, you could say, Hey, I gathered intelligence from here, from here, from here, and I realized that this is probably what's going to happen, or the probability is pretty high. Yeah. Would you agree? I would agree. I would definitely. So in Rita's chapter about that, because she is in here. You know, what would, would? What did you learn from Rita? I can tell you what I learned from the interview, but I would love to know what you actually learned from Rita, and how it's actually helped you be a better prognosticator of your own future.

Rita McGrath is an incredible educator and thinker. She's just absolutely incredible, and from that article first, Rita had some things going on when she was going to submit the article, and what I learned is that it was really important to her that she gets she contribute to our book. And so she was so clear and so conscientious in communicating with me what was happening and why so that part I loved about the connection and relationship that she really cared about it, and what I learned from Rita and reading her article when I got it, is about the looking at the overall picture and the connections and the pieces that come together like you never really know why something is happening at the moment, right? And then later, the pieces come together. And so that she was describing that personal experience in that in her article, she was and she was describing a personal experience of how the pieces fit together, and then relating that to leadership theory. And you don't

always, we don't always see them, you know that. And one of the stories that seek more Rao, Dr Rao told me the other day in an interview was really and you've probably heard this, but for all of my listeners, they've heard me now say it 1012, times, good things, bad things. Who knows? Right now, that's certainly an Eastern philosophy. And I go along the lines of Eastern philosophy, but it's absolutely true. We know that sometimes the most negative things that happen can now ultimately turn out to be the most positive things for our life, in our life and and that brings me to something. It's coming close to the end of your book in I'd say this book compilation, and you said one of your favorite books is, what do people do all day by Richard Scarry, and this was your chapter, Sarah, and I loved your reflection questions. So what message would you want to leave for the listeners that is kind of paramount here, from what do people do all day? And I there is some solutions to the breakdowns that you wrote, which I thought are just fantastic, like have a message, be curious and have respect for all people. You know, you've got be clear and concise, right? So tell us a little bit about this, because this was a great contribution that you made. It's not only do you actually get to work with all these thought leaders, they let you put a chapter in here too.

Well,

I remember when I when I came up with the idea to to do this book, and I got to write up the summary of what it was going to be about. I got to ask Marshall and Francis if they would please be involved. I got to ask all the contributors if they would please, you know, I get to describe the book and ask them if they would please contribute. I got to define what the parts of the book are, what they mean to to me, and what what Francis's philosophy means to me, like leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do. What that means to me. And I have a I'm just going to read it. It's on page 222

I'm on 221 so I go to 222

right, right in the center of the page. What I was thinking about for the book. To me, this book is the essence of work. Is love made visible, working together for the functioning of society and the well being of people around the globe. Its message is that we all contribute to society. Everyone has a place, everyone is included, everyone participates. Humanity is a big network of people working together. There is no disconnect caused by poor communication. That was my call to bring this book to life,

and rightfully so. And I think you did a Magni magnificent job of editing this, putting it together and putting all these stories together, because this is a book that anybody can pick up, and if they just want to read one little chapter and learn something, they can there's some of them are four and five pages long, and reflection questions for them to ponder and think about, which I think is excellent. Now, one of the things that I kind of like to wrap the interview up with is just this reflection on leadership. I mean, leaders today are asking, asked to be doing more with less time. They seem to be pressured. We seem to be moving in a very, very fast pace as a society and a world. How do you see I see that you're talking about working together and management systems with Alan Mulally, and I can't wait to actually read whatever it is that you've got. But how would you tell leaders today that you see this leaders their role as a leader evolving into the next decade, primarily with the impact of all the digital ness of our world, be it AI, and you know, AI has just started, right? It's just now revving up. We haven't seen the likes of what it's going to actually turn into so if I was out there today and I had a job at Amazon, Microsoft, whatever, and I was in a top leadership position, what advice might you have for me from the great thought leaders that You've interviewed,

the advice that I would have is that the leader is really, really, really important. I worked with, I've been working with Alan Mulally, and one of the elements of the leadership and management system is leadership team. And one day we were working on his slides and charts, and I, I put an underline under leadership team and sent it back to him, and he said, you know, he he sent me an email and said, Sarah, I think there's a mistake. There's an underline under the word leader in

you did it again, Sarah, the names off. Now you're underlining something. I

know I'm going rogue. And I said, No, that's not a mistake. I I was just, I just the leader is really important. So I thought I would just make that apparent in, you know, in the script, and he says, okay, and it took a little while. He's a very, very, very humble person, and it's never about him. It's always about us. You know, with Alan Mulally, it's We. Go from i to we, and from me to service. He's all about we and service and to be leader. Have the leader be underlined? Was a really big deal. He gets it, though, and yeah, he does, and it's been some time. So I would say the leader is really important, and who we are the leader. Leadership is a matter of how to be. This is a direct quote from Francis. Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do. It is the quality of our character that determines performance and results. So so many leaders are scrambling for those results, and we're never going to catch them. I mean, we might catch them, I don't know, but I we're never going to catch up. It's who we are is going to have everything to do with our results and our performance. That will be my biggest bit of advice. And what I've learned from the great leaders I've had an opportunity to well,

and I think what you've been doing all your life. Who we are is a result of how we choose to educate, what we choose to read, who we hang around. What are the kind of news material that we feed into our mind? What are we doing to take care of ourselves, our body, our spiritual body, are everything, and all of these are elements of how one shows up, right? And I think when one shows up in the middle of chaos and can maintain that state of calmness and authority and whatever, they're incredibly valuable. Yeah,

incredibly valuable. Yeah, it's, it's all about who we are and who we are will determine our results, right? If we are focused on, say we're focused just solely on the bottom line, then the product will likely suffer because we're not focused on creating the best product. We're not focused on including all of the stakeholders and the customers, the employees, the manufacturing procurement. We're not we're not focused on including all of the stakeholders in making a wonderful product or service. We're focused on something, we're focused on the bottom line, and we may, we may achieve that bottom line, but the rest of the areas will suffer, just as if we don't focus on, we don't have that bottom line included in what we're doing, that will suffer. So to me, it's including, its inclusion. It's stakeholder centered leadership. That's to me, where we're we're headed. That's what working together is all about. Is stakeholder centered leadership, and it's a difficult it's a difficult thing to do, because as a stakeholder centered leader, it's not command and control leadership, it's not top down leadership. It's stakeholder centered, where the leader, who is really, really important, isn't there to tell everybody what to do. The leader is there to facilitate all of these knowledge workers, customers, input from all of the stakeholders. The leader is there to facilitate that, to help us move forward, that I think that's our way forward. And I think we're at a crux in right now. We're at a we're at a definite point in

crossroads. Yeah, at a crossroads. We're at a crossroads. Yeah, and I, and I, and I appreciate that perspective, because I think reading books like this one work is love made visible. Reading other books like what's not a book yet, but like working together in management systems. So for all of my listeners, what you're going to do if you want to reach out and get more information about this book, see the other books, but also about what we've talked about a little bit. Here is Alan Mulally and his work, which is working together, which Sarah is now editing, into a book, which I'm sure is going to be a great best seller. Congratulations to you. Got two guys coming together to do this, and you know, because it's really as we've learned, whether it was Peter Drucker or it was Francis or it was Marshall, all of these things, it's the sum of all the pieces, right? And if you're managing all the pieces, like I'm gonna say, we said, read them. McGrath says, look out the window and see what you can see. That's obviously Francis's statement as well. What do you see, but what don't you see? Right? And I think that is a wonderful question to be asking right at this time, especially with the kind of environment that we're in. And I think question is, what are we not seeing that we can have an impact on,

right? Yep, absolutely,

yeah. And I think what I don't see, maybe you do. So maybe I should ask you, what do you see when you Yeah,

I like that. One too. Inclusion.

I don't have to know it all

well, Sarah, honor, pleasure, wonderful book, wonderful contributions from all kinds of authors. So for all of you out there, go out today, get a copy. We're going to put a link to Amazon. We'll put a link to Sarah's website as well. And Sarah can't wait to see you when you come here to San Diego, we'll sit down and break bread, enjoy the rest of your afternoon and Namaste to you.