Discovering Your Authentic Voice with Todd Henry - 87

Charles Good:
Welcome everyone to this episode of the Good Leadership podcast. Excited about this episode today because I believe there has never been a better time to build your authentic idea or product. But with so many clamoring for attention online and offline, it's also more challenging than ever to do the work that deeply resonates and creates that true and lasting impact. So how do you set yourself apart in such a noisy and crowded world? And how do you do work that's truly remarkable? The key really is to develop your authentic voice. And for that, I got the perfect person to help us unpack that. And that's Todd Henry, who positions himself as an arms dealer for the creative revolution. He teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is also the bestselling author of six books, The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Herding Tigers, Motivation Code, the most recent one, Daily Creative and Louder Than Words, which is going to be the topic of our conversation today. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he speaks and consults across dozens of industries on creativity, leadership, and teamwork. Welcome to the program, Todd.

Todd Henry:
Thanks Charles, it's great to be here.

Charles Good:
Love to give our listeners a little bit of background on you, if you would like to share some and really what got you interested in this field.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, so I studied marketing in school, long story short, ended up as creative director for an organization, trying to help people be creative on demand every single day, helping people generate ideas and deliver those ideas. And then somewhere in the midst of my tenure as a creative director started a podcast in 2005 that was primarily aimed at helping other people who have to do what I do every day, which is come up with ideas and lead other people in generating ideas and delivering value. to be able to do that consistently. And so that was really the genesis of what is now my company, Accidental Creative. And my first book released in 2011 called The Accidental Creative, and that opened a lot of doors for me to be able to spend time collaborating with and leading other people, helping them figure out some of the things that it took me a while to figure out. and teaching them how to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy. And so now six books later, I get to travel all over the world and spend time with organizations and people helping them develop their voice and also generate ideas consistently and in a healthy way.

Charles Good:
Love that, love the books, so much great stuff in all of those books. Today we're going to try to limit our conversation around building that authentic voice. You recommend that through your framework that to cultivate an authentic voice, you really need to develop three elements. Those are identity, vision, and mastery. Perhaps you can just give a broad overview of those and we're going to dive deeper into each one later in our conversation.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, so I mean, really the core part of identity is just understanding who you are and what you stand for. So I believe the voice is an idea or an expression through a medium in order to achieve an impact. So it's basically you have something you want to communicate, some change that you wanna see in the world and you have a medium that you're effective at delivering that through. That could be your leadership platform, it could be your particular craft or your art or whatever it is that you do. And so a You know, it's basically an idea communicated through a medium in order to achieve an impact. And so identity really is about understanding who you are, what you value, the principles by which you work. You know, leaders, for leaders, it's really important that the people on your team understand how you make decisions, what you value, why you make the decisions that you do, why you communicate in the way that you do. If that seems like a shifting matrix of priorities. and dynamics, then you're gonna end up in a situation where people just won't trust you because they won't believe. Now authenticity, which is a part of this, part of the identity piece of it, people often think that authenticity is about transparency and authenticity and transparency are very different things. Authenticity is about putting skin in the game and helping people see who you are and what you value. So that's really the identity piece. The vision piece is what are you trying to achieve? Where are you trying to go? What are you trying to accomplish? What change do you wanna see? The mastery piece is just understanding how to communicate in a way that resonates with other people. That's about mastering your craft, whether that's communicating verbally, through words, in whatever form or fashion. It's about ensuring that you have the capacity to understand timing and the nuances of timing, how to deliver a message, when to deliver it, and essentially ensuring that the message is delivered in the way that it's most likely to land.

Charles Good:
That's a great framework because as I'm sure you have seen, a lot of people wanna be influencers, they wanna have their authentic voice heard, but they really don't follow that, a structured process and they feel like they can shortcut it somehow. And I think you would agree that it takes time to develop each one of these three elements, but if you spend the necessary time and put in the work, it's gonna deliver the impact that you're hoping for in many cases.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, that's exactly right. Which is why I broke it out really into several components of those pieces, right? So authenticity, uniqueness, precision, empathy, timing. Originally there was another one, consonance, that I ended up not including in the book, but consonance being internal consistency. But authenticity means ensuring that people can see who you really are and what you really value. Again, it's not transparency. It's about ensuring that you're putting work into the world that reflects your values, that reflects who you are, that your communications are consistent with who you actually are, the principles that actually guide your decision-making priorities. Uniqueness is really about ensuring that vision or that communication is distinct from other people. There's something that sets you apart from everyone else. We don't need people mimicking messages and voices that are already out in the world. There's plenty of that going on. What we need are people who have some unique perspective. You know, there was a time when interview podcasts were a very unique thing. It was, you know, not there weren't a lot of those going on. And now it's, you know, everybody's doing an interview podcast, you and me included. Right. So you have to figure out a way. How do I find a unique way of communicating a unique point of view that separates me from everyone else? Right. That's that's an example of uniqueness. Precision means that you're communicating in a way that is, that lands, that cuts between the ambiguity. Precision means that I'm speaking, communicating in a way that connects with other people and uses language that is unmistakable. A lot of leaders become very unclear when they become uncertain. It's one of the most common plagues of ineffective leadership is that people become very unclear when they're uncertain because they want to make sure that they don't get stuck if something doesn't go their way, you know, if the political winds shift direction. And so it's important that people speak precisely so that precise language can leave no ambiguity about what it is they're trying to communicate. So authenticity, uniqueness, precision, empathy. We need to be able to connect with other people and ensure that our communications are coming from a place of genuine empathy, that we are opening ourselves up to the experience of other people, that we're entering into the lived experience of other people and that we're communicating as if we're alongside them rather than speaking to them from above. And for organizational leaders, it's a real challenge, right? Because I think sometimes Leaders try to act like they understand the plight of the people in the organization, but it's been so long since they've been in the shoes of the average person in the organization that they can't really speak with that kind of empathy. We have to cultivate that as something we have to choose. It's not a natural thing for any of us. Then timing is really about understanding and ensuring that we know the right timeframe within which to give a particular message or to deliver a particular. kind of piece of work because you can deliver something that is five years ahead of its time and it may be perfectly suited to the needs of the people who are receiving it, but the net result is failure because your timing was off. And the same if you're obviously five years too late as well. And so it's really important that we understand how to read the... the times that we're in and understand how to deliver a message that resonates.

Charles Good:
So those are great principles and those are incorporated in those elements. And you recommend too that really this three-part model, you need to have all three. And I think this is worth unpacking just a little bit is that if you only have two out of the three, it's not going to connect in the way you want. So you give some great kind of templates regarding that if you're missing one. So if you have identity plus vision, but not mastery, you're coming off as someone that's really not credible, which makes sense, right? But it's.

Todd Henry:
Right.

Charles Good:
sometimes easy for people to try to push in that direction without putting the time in to build that expertise.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, yeah, and Chris, so much of our credibility is founded upon our mastery of craft, right? If we don't have a mastery of craft, then people aren't going to see us as someone who should be listened to. And so it's critical that we have that understanding of mastery of craft in order to ensure that our messages are going to connect with people in the way that we intend.

Charles Good:
And then the next one is you have identity, so you know who you are. You have the mastery, but you lack the vision. So that translates into being really not clear on who you're trying to serve, right?

Todd Henry:
Yeah, and again, I mean, that's going to lead to an ineffective message, or at least to lead to you being an effective messenger if you don't understand who it is you're trying to serve, for sure.

Charles Good:
And the other one is you have the master, you have the expertise, you have the vision of who you want to serve, but you really don't have the identity. It doesn't feel then authentic. So it doesn't feel like you're being called to do it.

Todd Henry:
Right. And people can always sniff that out, right? People can tell when you're phoning it in. People can tell when you really don't care about the end result if you're just in it for some other purpose, personal gain or whatever that happens to be. If you're not really spending yourself on behalf of the work, people can easily detect that. And often it leads to ineffective communication for sure.

Charles Good:
So you need all three in order to have that compelling message that's going to resonate with your authentic voice, but there's also some forces that you need to overcome that keep you in place, that keep you to conform and just get comfortable. You list three primary hurdles. Is there one hurdle that you've seen from your research and from talking to leaders that really is the biggest hurdle, obstacle for them when they're trying to create their authentic voice?

Todd Henry:
Yeah, I mean, I think fear, just fear of the perception of your communication or fear of, you know, whether it be in the form of imposter syndrome or something else. There's a guy named Neil Feary who does research into procrastination. He'll often bring people into a room. He'll put a wood plank on the floor and he'll ask them, could you walk the link to this plank if I ask you to? And people will say, well, of course, it's just a wood plank on the floor, right? And he'll ask them, now imagine I suspend that wood plank a hundred feet in the air between two buildings. Now, could you walk the link to that plank? And he'll say, No way, are you kidding? I'd have to be drunk. No way am I walking a wood plank 100 feet in the air. Well, what's changed about the technical skill required to walk the plank? Absolutely nothing. What's changed are the perceived consequences of failure. And in many cases, people are afraid, they're unwilling to put their idea, their perception into the world because they're afraid of the perception of other people. They're afraid of what might happen if it doesn't resonate, if it doesn't click, if it doesn't succeed. The net result often for many people, the net result is then that they shrink back, they don't put the work into the world they're capable of putting into the world, they don't lead in the way that they're capable of leading their organization or their movement, their community, because they're afraid of the potential consequences of failure due to those artificially escalated perceived consequences of failure. We have to be willing to engage fully and freely in work that matters to us. And we have to be willing to discuss true risk and understand the true risk involved and not allow ourselves to succumb to the perceived risk, the artificially escalated risk that comes with communicating the message.

Charles Good:
That's great. And the other one that that's excellent. I think a lot of people suffer in those areas and not finding their authentic voice because of that fear of failure. The other one that kind of resonated with me was inertia that I feel like a lot of people get stunted by just simple inertia staying for too long on the easiest

Todd Henry:
brain.

Charles Good:
path, autopilot, not really venturing out kind of on that okay plateau that it's good enough, right? That

Todd Henry:
Right.

Charles Good:
then they really aren't. providing that compelling message, they're just satisfied with where they're at.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, that's right. I mean, it happens to everyone, right? We get very comfortable. We get comfortable with where we are. We're so comfortable with where we are and how things are that we can't imagine they can be another way. And this is honestly the I think that's one of the biggest problems that leaders face is that they get to a place where life becomes pretty comfortable. They're known for a thing. And that seems like a wonderful place to be, but it's actually a very terrifying place to be, because once you become known for a thing, everything becomes about protecting the thing that you're known for. And so many people are unwilling then. to take a risk or to try something new or to venture into uncharted waters, which is how they ended up becoming known for a thing to begin with, right? But at some

Charles Good:
Kind

Todd Henry:
point

Charles Good:
of ironic,

Todd Henry:
they begin

Charles Good:
right?

Todd Henry:
to, it's incredibly ironic because then they begin to protect the very thing that they became known for instead of using that as a platform then to find new ways of adding value, new ways of expressing themselves.

Charles Good:
You're right. They should be going on the offensive more instead of staying just on the defensive and nurturing what they have, because that could become stale and over time it's not going to be nearly as effective. So as you develop your authentic voice, you go, you state that there's really four phases of growth. You know, there are discovery, emulation, divergence, and crisis. If you could just kind of unpack that a little bit for us. And then I want to just speak on one of those that I think a lot of people struggle with.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, so discovery is when you discover something new, a new skill. Let's say that you wanna learn how to play guitar, right? It's a great, great example of this. What's the first thing that happens? You hear Eric Clapton playing on the radio and you think, oh, I could do that, right? And you go out and you buy a $2,000 guitar that sits in the closet for six months. And that's an important first stage because you've discovered something new, a new curiosity, a new skill that you wanna develop, something new that you wanna do. But you never actually learn how to play guitar until you enter into the next phase, which is emulation phase. Emulation is when you begin copying other people who already do that skill well. Most managers, most leaders start their career emulating other people. They start their career by emulating other leaders, other managers in their immediate environment. Maybe it's their first manager, maybe it's somebody that they respect, it's a mentor, a peer. But the way that they learn how to manage others is by emulating people they respect. At some point, they've developed that basic platform to the point where they can begin diverging from that basic platform. They begin to develop their own voice, their own managerial style, their own leadership voice, their own leadership style. And at that point, they begin to sail perpendicular to the shoreline. They begin to become known for a thing. This is what we were just talking about because now they have their own style, their own perspective. Inevitably though, everybody hits the fourth phase, which is crisis phase. And crisis phase is when Everybody around you thinks you're doing fine. It looks by all outward metrics like you're doing fine. You're hitting your numbers, you're delivering the value you're supposed to deliver. Everybody seems to think you're doing fine, but you know deep down you've begun to phone it in. You know that you've become stagnant because you're relying on past success for your present state of authority in the organization or in the marketplace. And it's at that point that we have to make a decision. Are we gonna go back to the beginning of the curve, learn a new skill, apply it to our work, a new growth curve and continue up the curve, or are we going to begin the steady decline down the backside of the curve? Because if you're not growing, you're dying, right? Sort of a principle of life, the universe, and the marketplace. So I think many of us have to consistently ask ourselves, okay, where am I right now in those stages of growth? Am I maybe in divergence phase where I'm becoming known for a thing? Great, wonderful. That's a great place to be. have I hit crisis phase where I'm not really growing anymore? It's been a while since I've developed a new skill. It's been a while since I've tried to figure out a new way of doing my work, right? We have to consistently ask ourselves, where am I right now in these stages of growth and what might that mean for me in terms of where I need to go next as a leader in order to continue to grow? And we see this over and over in the lives of leaders, right? the drawing board reinvent themselves for a new time over and over again, regardless of the circumstances, they're not afraid of continual growth. Leaders who stay stagnant, leaders who depend on what they did yesterday in order to achieve today's authority or today's success, find that authority waning over time.

Charles Good:
great four-step process that I think is very effective. The one part of the process that is kind of counterintuitive to me because you hear this a lot is the emulation phase, right, where you don't want to copycat someone, you don't want to emulate those, you want to create some new novel unique work on your own so that you're not being seen as a cover band or a copycat, but

Todd Henry:
Right.

Charles Good:
you give some great examples with Stephen King, with Ursula Le Guin, and that's really the starting point after the discovery phase is you have to be able to emulate and copy your heroes before you can create something that's new and original.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Stephen King said he basically emulated or he copied word for word combat Casey comic books. So he would write them into these little blue books. He would copy the comic books that he loved word by word by word over and over again as a way to get a feel for the style until he could develop his own voice. Steve Earle said that as songwriters, we basically rewrite the songs of our heroes over and over until we find our own songwriting voice. There's this kind of... and sort of an animosity toward copying or emulating in our culture. Right. And I know I have that phrase cover bands don't change the world. But the reality is most people are a cover band before they figure out their own unique voice, right? Like the Beatles,

Charles Good:
You're right.

Todd Henry:
the Beatles played cover songs in the, in the cat with the cavern club, right? In Liverpool, they played in Munich, Germany, they were a cover band, right? They were playing like cover songs for years. as they were developing their own voice as a band. And then eventually they wrote their own music and they became known for a thing. They moved beyond that. Some people never get past cover band phase. That's why when I talk about those stages of growth, really that emulation phase is cover band phase. But at some point you have to move out, you have to diverge, you have to find your own voice. Well, the Beatles did that. A lot of leaders do that. Some leaders never do that because they get stuck in the place where they're just copying their heroes and they can't find their own unique. voice and the unfortunate part of that is they lack them the credibility they need in order to inspire the kind of followership they want to have.

Charles Good:
That is so critical to go through that emulation phase, but you're right. And I think the big question around that is, when do you know that it's time to diverge and not keep emulating your heroes?

Todd Henry:
Well, I think the whole process is not as neat and as linear as that, right? It's not like, oh, now is the time when I diverge. It's remaining open to curiosity, asking the right questions. You know, often we don't ask questions because we don't want the answers to those questions because with answers comes accountability. So, you know, we have to be willing to ask questions to pursue our curiosity and to take risks, to take little leaps. I have a friend. who's a DJ, DJ Z Trip. And he said,

Charles Good:
I love

Todd Henry:
you

Charles Good:
for

Todd Henry:
know.

Charles Good:
you to tell that story because that's a great story about identity.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's someone who kind of found his own path as a DJ. He grew up listening to, he grew up split between Brooklyn and Phoenix, Arizona. So in Brooklyn, he would get all this really great hip hop stuff, right? All this great hip hop music. And then when he would go to Phoenix, Arizona, he would hear all this grungy kind of rock and roll music. Well, he loved both of them. And when he became, when he started doing DJ work, He was like, why do I have to choose between hip hop and rock and roll? And so he started mashing those up and became really one of the, one of the pioneers of that kind of mashup movement of rock and hip hop. Um, you know, right, right around the time of like the beastie boys and all that stuff, when all that was happening. So he sort of became this really well-known person, um, in that space where he was kind of mashing these things up and he said, the way that I think about finding my own voice is he's like, everybody's kind of climbing a tree. So you're kind of climbing a tree trunk. Everybody's kind of like hovering around the tree trunk. It's kind of what everybody else does. So that's where you can make, you can make money. You can get jobs at clubs if you're just kind of on the tree trunk. And he said, but I just started stepping out on branches and taking little risks, right? By implementing different kinds of music into my mixes or doing different kinds of things that might be a little bit of a head turn to people. And he said, as I ventured farther and farther out on the branch, I found I was... kind of all by myself, right? After a while, I was developing a fiercely loyal following. Everybody else, you know, people would just kind of go from club to club, DJ to DJ, and it was like they were all basically the same, but people came to me for a thing because I was doing something unique. It didn't happen all at once, it happened a little bit at a time. That's what that divergence process looks like until suddenly you realize I'm sitting at the end of a branch all by myself, I'm kind of known for a thing. That's what it looks like when you've achieved a following, when you become known for a thing. And I asked him, I said, well, what happens when you get so far on the branch that the branch breaks? You know, cause he said, and he said, well, you know, I was trying to push the metaphor as far as I could. And he said, well, that's the beautiful part. When you, I thought I had him trapped and he actually came back with a great answer. He said, when the branch breaks, you fall to the ground and you start a new trunk and then everybody starts emulating you. And he said, and that's exactly what happened. I basically formed a new trunk and then all of a sudden here are all these people coming in and now everybody's wanting to mash up rock and roll and hip hop. And he said, so he had to find his own. Once again, had to go use that trunk, but then go out and go out on another branch, right? And continue to find his own voice. And so that's what it looks like for us as leaders. We have to ask ourselves, okay, what branch am I going to step out on? Right? What does that look like for me? What does it look like for me to begin taking calculated risks with my voice, with my messaging? with our work. For me as an author, I've primarily focused on creativity in the marketplace. But I am and have over the last couple of years, and I am now specifically working on stepping out on some branches and doing some different, writing about some different topics and researching some different topics. Again, that's part of my growth and my evolution as a researcher, as an author, as somebody who's a consultant, who's helping organizations do their best work. I've realized When I started, I was one of the few people doing the work that I'm doing. And now there are so many people doing this work. That's great. That's a wonderful thing. But that means I need to try harder to differentiate myself and to continue to grow so I don't get stuck in that same place.

Charles Good:
That's a great point you just made at the end and two great illustrations of that discovery, emulation, crisis, and then just divergent phases that through that growth process and developing your authentic voice. Love now to go into a little more depth into each one of those three elements. So let's start with the kind of the identity who you are because

Todd Henry:
Yeah.

Charles Good:
for your voice to resonate, it must be rooted in authenticity and uniqueness. But this is also one of the easiest places for you for an individual to lose sight of is

Todd Henry:
Right.

Charles Good:
their identity. So if you could just kind of give us some encouragement, some advice around this on how really to identify that authentic voice and to know yourself better.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, it's so easy to become decoupled from what you really care about and what you value when you're working for an organization, especially. Um, it's easy to subvert everything that you hold dear for the sake of the organization and you, and you justify it, you rationalize it because, well, this is how I make my living, right? I need to pay the kids college. I need to pay the mortgage. I need to whatever, right? Um, and unfortunately, I think a lot of leaders don't discover that they've been making that trade off until. pretty far into their career and then they realize, I think a long time ago, I began to compromise what I really hold dear. The way that we prevent that from happening is by ensuring that we're infusing our messages, our communication, our leadership decisions with a framework that is consistent and that reflects who we are and what we really care about. That's what authenticity is. Authenticity, again, is not transparency. Authenticity is about showing people what you care about and then putting your money where your mouth is. Authenticity is about putting, wearing what you care about on your sleeve, right? Putting skin in the game. It's ensuring that people see, I am putting myself into this in a way that if it doesn't work, it's going to cost me something. If you're communicating and you're doing work, that everybody else is gonna pay a price for if it doesn't work, but you as the leader are not gonna pay a price for it, people aren't gonna trust you. So when we talk about authenticity, what we mean is you're actually willing to put your money where your mouth is, you're willing to put skin in the game, and at the end of the day, that you're communicating in a way that reflects that who you are and what you value is a part of your decision-making priority for the organization. With uniqueness, this is a really difficult thing. We need other people in order to see ourselves for who we really are. So sometimes we need other people to communicate to us, hey, here's what I see in you. Here's what I think that you bring to the table that other people may not be able to bring to the table. So my first question for people when it comes to uniqueness is, who are the people in your life who speak truth to you? Who are the people in your life who tell you the places where you're adding disproportionate value or maybe where you're self deceiving? The places where you think that you're really adding value but honestly, As somebody who's close to you, you're really not adding value in that place. Or that's really not something you're good at. You really shouldn't be trying to do those things that you're trying to do right now. We need a trusted council of advisors around us to help us see ourselves more fully because the net reality is we're always going to be the worst judges of the quality of our own work. We're going to be the worst judges of our own value in the marketplace. If it were up to me, I would massively undervalue the places where I probably add the most value and massively overvalue the things that people really don't care about because our perspective is sometimes skewed. So we need other people. So I encourage people to consider who are the trusted truth tellers in your life? Who are the people who speak into those areas of your life and help you see yourself for who you really are?

Charles Good:
That's sometimes hard or difficult to get that feedback, but you're right, it's so critical and crucial if you wanna grow as a leader and develop your authentic voice. One of the tools that you list regarding the identity is really having a living creed and writing your manifesto, which is your anti-resume, because it's reflective of kind of where you're headed, not really where you've been.

Todd Henry:
Right. Yeah. And, you know, writing a manifesto sounds like a Jerry McGuire moment, right? I think anybody who's seen that movie remembers when he stayed up all night frantically typing out his industry manifesto and then immediately got fired or whatever from the organization. That's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is just writing out a list of things that you value, of things that you care about and putting it in some kind of concrete form so that you can refer to it often. A manifesto is not... you know, here is how things around me need to change. These are the things about me that I value that are not going to change, that are not going to be morphed by my environment. So, you know, if you say that, for example, if you say that ensuring that people always come first in your communications and that you always wanna put people ahead of everything else, people ahead of results, people ahead of whatever, and... that becomes part of your core operating mindset as a leader. Well, then when you go into a conversation where you have to have a really difficult conversation with someone, yes, you might have to let them go. That might be part of your responsibility as a leader, but the way you have that conversation is in a manner that is putting the person first, putting the person ahead of the organizational logistics involved in having to let someone go, right? And so, That frames up how you have that conversation at the end of the day. That's sort of a very morbid example of it. But another example would be, for me, one of the most important things in my life, in my work is ensuring that I am never doing, I'm never asking someone else to do something that I'm not willing to do first, myself. And so the practices that I teach to other people are practices that I implement every single day. And that's just something that's important to me. Because of it, you know, and I know, you know, people who probably hold different values, people who write books or people who teach who are more than willing to tell other people what they should do without implementing those practices themselves, right? I just don't feel like that's something I can do with authenticity. And so what I teach to others, I am first implementing myself. And that's part of how I see my work. It's part of my manifesto is I go first. I am always the first one to go. And so that, you know, for me as a manifesto, then if I'm writing something or I'm teaching something or I'm out there, you know, giving a speech about something, the question I have to ask myself is, is this something that is born out of experience or is this something that I'm speculating about? And I'm not willing to go out and speculate. It has to be born out of experience for me. So that would be an example in my manifesto of how that plays out for me in my, in my life and in my work.

Charles Good:
That's great and I think everyone, there's a lot of value in having something like that, especially when you wanna know yourself better. And I think that with today's age, with everyone in execute mode all the time, it's really not many people, not many leaders are taking the time to self-reflect, to break away, to listen to their own thoughts and connect in a deeper way with really who they are and what matters to them. And you provide a lot of tools. to help them really get alone with their thoughts. The 50 notables, maybe you can unpack that a little bit, just so they can understand and know themselves a little bit better.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, so the notables are these moments in our lives where we have experiences and we think, oh, that was interesting. That was something that was unexpected. And then we kind of gloss over them, we move on with our life, but we don't stop to notice the patterns. Notables are often... these moments where something is especially resonant. So for example, well, that's interesting. Why did I get really emotional when hearing that story? Or, yeah, that's really interesting. Why did I get really angry about this particular encounter that I had? Or that's really interesting. Why can I not get this idea out of my head? Why does it keep coming up over and over again? Ah, well, I don't have time to execute it. I just need to move on. It's these notable experiences that we have. And often if we stop and we look and we pay attention to them, there are patterns of notables in our life that can point us to that authenticity piece that point us to what we really care about or what we should be spending our finite resources on behalf of. So what I encourage people to do is to keep a list of those notables when they happen, when they occur in your life. These moments of deep resonance, these moments when it happened to me this morning, I was watching a particular video and it was the story of an underdog, somebody who had... achieve something in spite of the fact that the odds were against them. It was just like this really quick short video, but I got really teary-eyed when I saw it. And I, you know, and I wrote about this in the book, actually, I've talked about this often that I am profoundly moved by the stories of underdogs and some of my best work happens with underdogs. Why? Because I've recognized that is just something that brings out the best in me. When I'm working with somebody who is not supposed to succeed or the odds are stacked against them, it just... bring something out of me, I have an extra gear when I'm working with organizations like that. And most people go their entire life and they never really stop to analyze those underlying currents, those underlying themes in their life. And so make a list of those things, make a list of those notable moments and ensure that you're not allowing them to slip by, but you're looking for patterns that could lead to more effective work.

Charles Good:
That is so important and knowing yourself and you've given some great tools that you share with our listeners that I know will have impact with them. That next element of this framework is really vision. It's kind of where are you going? So for your voice to resonate, your vision must center around the audience you're trying to impact. And the big question I have, and I see this a lot, is people really have not identified their intended audience. They're trying

Todd Henry:
Right.

Charles Good:
to be everything to everyone and they're broadcasting instead of narrowcasting.

Todd Henry:
Yes, yeah, and to put an even finer point on that, you know, everyone tries to create an avatar. They try to create a target market or a target group that they're attempting to reach. And certainly that has benefit in some kinds of work, right? Generally speaking. But generally speaking, It also doesn't help you refine and hone a message. It's going to deeply resonate with anyone. It's going to moderately resonate with a lot of people, but it may not deeply resonate with anyone. So what I recommend is for intended audience, and this is something Stephen King, who I mentioned earlier, you mentioned earlier, actually does as well. He has an intended reader. I do this with all my books. Every single one of my books has been written to one person. It's been a different person, each book. So each book has a different intended reader, but and I don't mean like an avatar. I don't mean like, oh, this, you know, 27 year old creative professional working in an agency or something, no, like a specific person. And I was writing the book as if I'm sitting across the table from that person and giving the advice to that person in the moment based upon what I know about their life. And the net result of that has been people come up to me and they say, it's weird. It's like you have cameras in my office. How did you know? that I was dealing with this or whatever. It's because I was writing with such precision to that person because I was writing to solve their problems. Well, their problems are being experienced by everyone else as well, right? And so what I encourage people to do is when they're communicating, as a way of connecting with an intended audience is don't try to craft your message in a way that it's gonna be. inoffensive to everyone. Instead, try to craft it in a way that's gonna be deeply, deeply resonant to one person. Because if you're reaching that one person, it's very likely other people are gonna find it helpful as well.

Charles Good:
That's counterintuitive, but that is spot on. And many leaders, many individuals that want to have an impact, they feel like they have to be everything to everyone. They don't want to limit their audience in any way, shape or form. But as a result, they don't have that impact that a person with that precision has.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, that's exactly right. And you want to be able to go deep and you want people to feel heard, you want people to feel known, you want them to feel like you understand them. And the best way to do that is to actually know them and understand them. The best way to know and understand the plight of a thousand people is to deeply know and understand the plight of one person, to really get to know one person. Because people in the abstract often have a difficult time expressing what they need from you or expressing what they need to hear from you. But if you go really deep with one person, it completely changes that calculus. And the ironic net result is other people feel included in that message as well.

Charles Good:
That's great. So don't fall in the trap of creating for a group or demographic. Think about impact and resonance, not immediate results, and create something for your intended audience that they feel like it's, that it was made for them personally. And the other piece of this vision really is, is knowing your audience well enough to have empathy. And you give a great four step framework on empathy that perhaps we can just unpack at a high level. So they know really how to create that empathetic voice of their intended audience.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, so I mean, the first thing really is just to stop and to recognize that your experience is not the same as the other person's experience. I think sometimes we tend to think generally speaking, this is interesting when I was working on the motivation code research a couple of years ago, three or four years ago. What I discovered is that many managers think that generally speaking, most people are motivated by the same things that motivate them, which is completely untrue. And yet that's how we tend to think about other people. Well, generally speaking, people are motivated by the same things. No, it's not true at all. The same thing goes for empathy. We tend to think that most people see the world the way that we do. Most people have the same kind of experiences we've had. So we have to stop. We have to recognize that. We have to... enter into, willingly enter into the experience of that other person. Think about a time when we've had a similar experience in our past. When have we been through something that is comparable to what this person is going through, or at least somewhat parallel to what this person is going through? Think about what we felt in that moment and revisit those feelings and actually enter into those feelings of ambiguity, of confusion, of whatever it is, of pain, of sorrow, and really enter into that. And then ask, okay, what now, what would I need from me if I were in that position? What would, what would I actually want to have or hear from a leader or from someone in that situation and then act accordingly? Um, you know, we tend to act with sympathy, not with empathy. And those are different things. Sympathy is, oh, I feel bad toward you. Empathy is no, I'm actually attempting to feel what you're feeling right now. And those are very different things. And people who, and this goes by the way, it's not just business leaders, but like you look at politicians who are really able to speak with empathy, tend to resonate more deeply with people. People who speak with sympathy tend to come across as condescending. The people who speak with empathy tend to come across as resonant and connected in a way that is unique. And so that's what we're trying to aim for is to communicate with empathy.

Charles Good:
That's a critical distinction. And so you really want to know what your intended audience needs, feels, fears, and hopes for. And you have a great example of two campaigns. And these are anti-smoking campaigns, one produced by the tobacco companies and one produced by another agency. And the difference in impact they had because they empathized with their intended audience and they really hit the right emotion. If you could just give our listeners kind of... sample of kind of what those campaigns were about and which one had more impact and why.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, so in the wake of all the tobacco settlements, you know, the tobacco companies had to create campaigns that were that were anti smoking campaigns and the one that the tobacco company, I mean, I'm generalizing here, right, but the ones that the tobacco companies put out all sort of had that typical appeal to authority where it was like a parent coming in and saying, you know, Jimmy, you really shouldn't be smoking, right? Oh, I know, dad, I know, you're right, smoking is so bad for me. And You know, surprise, while they satisfied the legal requirements of putting out anti smoking ads, they were incredibly ineffective at moving teenagers away from smoking. Contrast that to the truth campaign, which was primarily targeted at showing that tobacco companies had been using and, and taking advantage of youth, right? And the core message of that was, hey, they're lying to you. It was basically an anti-authority message, right? Like, you don't have to put up with this, you don't have to put up with these authorities, you can rebel against these authorities. Well, that's a deeply resonant message for teenagers. And so the Truth Campaign was incredibly effective because it was appealing to something that was naturally. ingrained in the teenage experience, which is rebelling against authority. So they were appealing to that, that rebellion against authority. Right. So, you know, what this shows is when we really understand what motivates, what drives people, what really makes them tick, we can communicate in a way that's going to draw out some of those natural instincts. By the way, I'm not, I'm fully convinced that the tobacco companies knew exactly what they were doing by creating those campaigns, right? Like, I mean, they

Charles Good:
course.

Todd Henry:
were technically they were technically doing the thing that they were being told to do. And listen, they're selling the product, whatever. But I'm just saying, like, I think I think that, you know, it's interesting how you see the contrast of those two campaigns and how one of them played into those natural ingrained motives of teenagers towards rebellion against authority and how much more effective that was in achieving the result they were trying to achieve.

Charles Good:
That's a great point and that's a great illustration of really knowing your intended audience and being empathetic with your intended audience for that meaning. I completely agree with you. I think the tobacco industry, there's plenty of bright individuals there that knew exactly what they were doing and know the impact they wanted to have. Let's move to that third and final element of the model and that's really mastery is how you're going to develop a voice that resonates.

Todd Henry:
Great.

Charles Good:
You must gain mastery over the basic skills necessary to express your ideas. There's a lot of talk about 10,000 hours with Anders Eriksson, with Malcolm Gladwell. He's put all this together, but I love that distinction that you draw upon it is that you could work a long time and never get better at a craft. It takes a certain form of practice, focus, and diligence if you wanna really make those hours count.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, it's deliberate practice, right? And this is really the work of Ericsson. That was really his sort of main point with I think a lot of his work and a lot of his research was practice itself is not what does it for you. And honestly, it's not even. the practice as much as the practice combined with the environment combined with the natural talent. I could play guitar for 10,000 hours and I'm not going to be Pat Matheny or I'm not going to be Eric Clapton or I'm not going to be, you know, insert amazing guitarist here, you know. It's just not going to happen because I just probably do not have the talent. Now will I get better? Of course I'll get better. if I practice for 10,000 hours, will I be a good guitarist? Of course I will. But that doesn't mean I'm going to be the Beatles because I did that. And that was never really the point of Erickson's research. But deliberate practice is what matters. So if I want to become a better writer, I need to sit down every day and deliberately write, specifically write in the form, in the mode that I want to get better at. Not just going clickety clack on the keyboard, but deliberately practicing what it is I'm trying to practice. I love the story of Kobe Bryant. There's a great story about Kobe Bryant who is notorious for his discipline and his willingness to practice. And I can't remember where I heard this story. I think I read it maybe in a magazine where this guy was going to show up to work with Kobe and said, okay, great. Well, let's meet tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. for our workout. He's like, okay, that's great. Yeah, we'll meet tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. And so the guy shows up to the gym. And He hears dribbling in the court and Kobe had already been in the in the gym for two hours to get his workout in ahead of when he was going to do the workout with the other guy because he had this deliberate workout that he did every single day. And he was like, Yeah, I want to do your workout, but I'm going to get my workout in first before I do your workout, right. And that's a great example of deliberate practice. You see guys in the basketball court go out and they just like, they're just kind of standing around tossing up shots. They're kind of goofing off and whatever, or guys on the golf course out there sort of just like goofing off, or women out on the golf course just kind of goofing off and just sort of swinging. The pros understand that you have to take shots under game situations, right? You have to take golf shots in a simulated game time situation with a lot of pressure. And the same thing in practice. You have to practice under the conditions you're going to be playing under. Same thing applies in business. We have to deliberately practice the skills that we're gonna be needing to apply under pressure if we want to be good at what we do under pressure. We have to engage in deliberate practice. And that's how we master our craft is through deliberate practice. People come to me a lot, as you can imagine, having written six books in 12 years with major publishers. People ask me, they say, I want to be a writer. I'm like, great, I would love for you to be a writer. I think that's fantastic. Matter of fact, I'm going to don you a writer right now. You are officially a writer, but here's the thing. That means you have to start writing every single day. Whether you have a publisher, whether you have a book deal, whether you have even a book that you're working on, you have to be writing every single day because writers write, that's what they do. Leaders lead, that's what they do, right? And so my encouragement is, you know, if you want to master your craft, you have to practice it every single day. Under game. pressure under game type situations if you want to get better at what you do.

Charles Good:
Perhaps you can kind of illustrate your process because you list personal daily. So it's doing something like you said every day consistently over time to hone and to practice your craft and to practice it in a very deliberate way that's going to improve

Todd Henry:
Great.

Charles Good:
you rather than just keep you stagnant. But there's some great insights I think into those personal dailies and even have it separated into business dailies that leaders could take and say okay this is these are manageable things I can do every day that will keep me motivated and

Todd Henry:
Mm-hmm.

Charles Good:
get me better in the long term.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, yeah, and so, you know, in the monastery, there's a list of things called the dailies that monks do every day, you know, whether it's hot or cold or whatever season it is, they engage every single day in these dailies and the dailies are designed to keep the monastery moving forward, to keep things going. In spite of anything else that's happening and the dailies have to happen every single day. I have a list of dailies in my life and they include things like study, they include things like journaling, writing, meditating. I write 500 words a day, even if I'm not working on a book, I write 500 words a day. Why? Because I need to keep my writing game in tip top shape. And some of my best ideas for books have come from me just writing in moments where I don't have a project I'm working on, but I just happen to have an idea and I'm writing about that idea and that becomes the kernel or the seed for a much bigger project, right? So we have to... We, and whatever that could be, any number of things for leaders, for example, it could be, I have a strategic conversation every day with each of my direct reports. Every single day I have a check-in where I ask them this list of three questions just to make sure that we're all on the same page, right? It could be, you know, for me, for a number of years, one of my daily practices, I was leading a team that was comprised of about 40 people. They didn't all directly report to me, but I would choose somebody in the... organization inside my organization every single day. I had about a 20 minute commute home from work. I would get on the phone every single day and call one person and just say, hey, I just wanna check in with you. How are things going? Is there anything I can do for you? How can I be better provide for you whatever it is you need right now in order to do what's being asked of you? So that was one of my daily practices that I engaged in Monday through Friday. And as you can imagine, that meant that like, what, every eight weeks on average, somebody would get a call from me. you know, every couple of months, somebody would get a call from me just asking, how you doing? How are things going? You know what? It cost me nothing to do that, but it was a fantastic way to stay in touch with people on the team and to understand what they needed. And it was a great daily practice for me because it kept me in touch with the pulse of the team. And so really, you know, one of the things I like to say is, you know, you define your rituals and your rituals define you, you know. that really applies to these dailies. You define your dailies, but then ultimately your dailies are gonna define you. So you need to make sure that you choose them wisely. But we need to have that set of practices we engage in every single day to keep us on course.

Charles Good:
But it also keeps you battle ready, because I love the example

Todd Henry:
Mm-hmm.

Charles Good:
you give about Michael Pollock and the Billy Joel concert that you never know when opportunity is gonna strike you, so you wanna be ready when it does.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, this is I love this video as well. You know, I talked about the videos of underdogs. I mean, it's a great example of that. Billy Joel was given a talk, I think, at Vanderbilt University, and this guy stood up and he said, Hey, I want to play New York State of Mind with you. And Billy Joel's like, Yeah, OK, come on up. You know, he's like, what instrument do you play? He's like piano. And like, are you kidding me? I mean, you're here with like one of the greatest living pianists, right? Right here. And yet you're going to, you know. And so he did, he sat down and he just absolutely killed it. And it turns out the guy every single day was working on and playing and practicing every single day, including that song, right? That was like one of the songs that he practiced over and over and over again. So he was ready and the moment when it came, he was ready to deliver. I always tell people who aspire to be public speakers in some capacity. And I've given, I mean, I've given talks in front of everywhere from a couple dozen people to like, 400,000 people, right? Like on stages that are like smaller, all the way up to like giant, huge auditoriums with 10,000 people in it. And what I always tell people who aspire to speak in some capacity is you should be ready at the moment's notice to give a 30 minute speech. If somebody tapped you on the shoulder, you should be able to get up right now and give a 30 minute speech. and a good 30 minute speech. If you can't do that, then you're not serious about wanting to be a public speaker. You're not serious about wanting to really transform lives through your speaking. You're just not, because that's what a good public speaker does, if you're waiting for somebody to tap you on the shoulder to figure out what you might wanna say, not good enough. So you have to stay battle ready. You have to be ready to go. I am constantly developing ideas, communication methods, stories, ways of innovating. I mean, it's really primarily like. We wanna be the noun, that's what Austin Kleon says, we wanna be the noun, but we don't wanna do the verb, right? So we wanna be a leader, but we don't wanna lead. We wanna be a writer, but we don't wanna write. We wanna be a speaker, but we don't wanna speak, or we don't wanna like work on the craft of it, right? Or whatever it is. We wanna be an entrepreneur, but we don't wanna engage in entrepreneurial behaviors that lead to ultimately success as an entrepreneur. We have to be willing to do the verb if we wanna be the noun, and the verb is way more important. than the noun. Gretchen Rubin said, what you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while. So you have to be willing to do those things every single day, even when you're not seeing results, do the things every single day for a really long time to position you to be battle ready when your moment.

Charles Good:
That's really hard for a lot of people is playing the long game because people want to hacks the productivity secrets, whatever the case may be. They just they don't want to put in the work for an uncertain future over the long term to see if they really can provide that impact that they're going for.

Todd Henry:
Yep.

Charles Good:
It's also you know part of this element is about mastering emerging ideas because I think a lot of leaders feel like they have to come up with something new and novel. But really what they should be paying attention to is ideas that are already gaining momentum. And you provide a great example, and I've seen this campaign, which is, I can understand why it went viral, but it's the hashtag like a girl campaign

Todd Henry:
Right.

Charles Good:
that they really connected with something that was coming up, that was emerging, and they took it to the next level.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, you know, again, part of having dailies in your life, part of what the benefit of that is for you as a leader is it keeps your ear to the ground. It keeps you in a place where you're able to discern what some of those emerging cultural patterns are. And so that's a great, the Like a Girl campaign, I mean, it's been written about so much now and it's become almost like a cultural, unsurprisingly has been studied by, you know, as a case study by business schools and all of that. Part of the reason is because it was such a resonant moment. They captured a sentiment that had been brewing for a while and it was a perfect product, right? A perfect message and the timing could not have been better for that message to reach the world. And so that was really sort of, and I had a great interview in the book with Judy John, who was part of developing that campaign and Edgar Sandoval from from Procter and Gamble who helped develop the campaign as well. And really it was just sort of this like catching lightning in a bottle moment, but it was largely because they understood that was a message that was ready. It was ready for prime time because they had their ear to the ground, right? They sort of understood that those cultural currents were, it was sort of a confluent moment in culture. And so, you know, we talk about authenticity, uniqueness, precision. empathy timing and then consonance is the other one. Consonance is sort of an internal consistency. You know, is your message internally consistent? And that was a great example of consonance between the product, the message and the cultural moment. And so it was the right moment, the right message at the right time, reaching the right group.

Charles Good:
That's a great illustration of that. And before we wrap up, just like to end with, the leader also plays a key role in unlocking the voice of their team. And you provide five principles. We're not gonna be able to unpack all of them. And I'll just kind of briefly give an overview and then maybe you could perhaps go into one or two of those in the remaining time. One is be a laser, not a lighthouse. Encourage dissent, but foster discontent. Defend your team to the death. Think backward and forward and be clear. even when uncertain. So is there one that

Todd Henry:
Yeah.

Charles Good:
really you've seen with leaders recently that have struggled with or really that they need to hear?

Todd Henry:
Yeah, I'll do the first one, be a laser not a lighthouse. I think a lot of leaders are more concerned about helping their team avoid failure than about helping them navigate to success. As a leader, we have to be a laser, meaning we're pointing the way, we're showing clarity in the midst of uncertainty that we're cutting through the fog for people and saying, here's where we're going. This is the direction you need to be headed. A lot of leaders act more like a lighthouse. Don't go here, don't go there. Don't go here, don't go there, right? It's really about protecting themselves and protecting the organization more than it is about helping people navigate towards something. Effective leadership is always toward. It's not about running away from things, it's about moving toward things. But in order to do that, your team has to understand what they're being asked to move toward. And so be a laser, not a lighthouse is my way of illustrating. Be forward-focused, be active, and be in motion toward something, not away from something as an organization.

Charles Good:
That's a great point and a great way to end our interview. Thank you so much Todd for joining me today. Remind our listeners how they can get in contact with you.

Todd Henry:
Yeah, ToddHenry.com is my personal website. Also my podcast, The Accidental Creative, it's been around since 2005, delivering weekly tips to help you stay prolific, brilliant, and healthy. So check out The Accidental Creative podcast or just visit me at ToddHenry.com.

Charles Good:
Thank you, Todd, for joining me today. And like I say, at the end of every podcast, it's not what you know, but what you do differently that makes a difference. See everyone next time.