700: Three People Who Will Help You Grow, with Andrew C.M. Cooper

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
We all know the power of relationships to help us grow, and yet we don’t always seek out some of the nontraditional relationships that could help most. In this episode, 3 types of people we often overlook that will help us grow. This is coaching for leaders episode 700.Production Credit: Produced by innovate learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:28]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. So much of great leadership, by the way, not just great leadership, but being a helpful, caring human being is about relationships. The relationships that are so key to us. And many of us know some of the key relationships that we should have of being a mentor, of sponsoring others, the traditional things we think of. But sometimes we don’t think about the nontraditional relationships that are so important in our professional lives.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:13]:
Today, an invitation for us to think about some of the nontraditional ways that we can engage in relationships that not only are helpful to us, but helpful to others, our organizations and bringing more consciousness into leadership. I am so pleased to welcome Andrew Cooper. He’s an executive leader and apologist for compassionate business practices. He led as a history making 1st millennial and black executive to serve as general counsel of UPS Airlines, the world’s largest logistics airline with over 20,000 employees. His team was essential to the success of Operation Warp Speed, the United States pandemic vaccine relief effort. He’s the author of The Ethical Imperative,: Leading with Conscience to Shape the Future of Business. Andy, what a pleasure to know you.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:02:01]:
Thank you. What a pleasure to know you. I appreciate you inviting me here.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:04]:
We have discovered very early on in our conversation that we share one interest area. Our daughters are both fans of Finding Nemo. Your daughters watched it a bunch. My daughter’s been in a play with Finding Nemo. And Disney and Pixar do such a great job of creating analogies that help us in our lives. And you’ve zeroed in on the character of Dory as an analogy. What is it about Dory that’s captured your interest?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:02:32]:
Well, I think what I love about Dory is that she is unburdened from the relationships of the past, partially because of her lack of memory, but also because she is just a basic good person. In the story, Dory helps Marlon go through so many different situations. And in navigating those situations, she’s constantly creating relationships with people, even with other animals that may be dangerous. But being unburdened with these preconceived notions about what a relationship should be or what it should look like allows her to navigate a world that is highly complex. And if you think about it, that’s what we are doing every single day in corporate environments, in nonprofit worlds, and even in our social engagements.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:26]:
Yeah. And I hadn’t thought about that till you said that. But in the movie, she’s equally willing to engage with the sharks just as much as she’s willing to engage with anything else.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:36]:
And somehow, it always works out. And I think about my own career in organizations. And some of the people that showed up and I saw as sharks initially upon first meeting ended up being some of the people I learned the most from. But I had to, like sometimes, I was able to move past that shark thing and sometimes, I wasn’t. And it was mostly about me. It wasn’t about them.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:04:03]:
It’s incredible, isn’t it? You know, I think back to when I was a young lawyer working at my first law firm and I had a very difficult partner relationship to navigate. And this partner, I mean, she wrote me every single day. On my review, she said, Hey, you’ve got to improve your writing. You’ve got to do this and that. I could have taken that advice and threw it in through the trash. I could have been beaten down by it, but it really made me lean in further. And I think it’s people like that, people who we least expect to be our allies, who give us the really hard, truth about who we are, that external data. That’s what helps us to really excel and to be excellent leaders.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:46]:
You take the name Dory and use it as an acronym, dynamic omnidirectional relationship investment. And there’s 2 distinctions that you make that I think are so significant in thinking about relationships. And one of them is the distinction between organic and inorganic growth. Tell me about what’s key about that distinction.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:05:10]:
Yeah. So almost all of the professional advice we get these days about developing as a leader comes from the perspective of organic growth. It’s obtaining new skills, upskilling. It’s about, looking inwardly, being reflective about the realities of your performance or the goals that you have set. And a lot of that is really good information to have because it is a process of self discovery. And by discovering yourself, you can actually improve yourself. So I don’t have an issue with that focus. But I do think we have over indexed in some ways on upskilling and organic growth.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:05:59]:
Inorganic growth, in contrast, is receiving data signals from sources other than self discovery. There’s so much that we can learn from the relationships in our life, from the world that is outside of our inward thinking, learning to embrace others and their thinking and learning to develop relationships with people in all directions is why I call it omnidirectional. That means people who are subordinate, people who are peers and people who are superiors, allows us to gain a sharpness about our personal journey and greater data that helps us navigate this complex world that we live in.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:49]:
Yeah. And the other distinction that you make is the distinction between traditional relationship archetypes and nontraditional archetypes. Maybe, I’m curious, first of all, what are the traditional ones? And then how are the nontraditional ones different?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:07:07]:
Yeah. So, generally, people have heard about mentors, sponsors, and a personal board. So your mentor is someone who can give you on the ground advice. Your sponsor is someone who’s sitting in the room to help pull you in when opportunities arise or to pull you up. And your personal board is really the folks that are your sounding board when you have to make difficult decisions. Those are great. Bu in my book, I talk about adding 3 more non traditional archetypes to your wheelhouse. The first is the shifter.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:07:45]:
Now the shifter is an individual who helps you to think differently when you run into roadblocks. Now, many people would say, well, shouldn’t a mentor do that? Yeah. A mentor will walk alongside you in making those decisions and give you some guidance. But the shifter is someone who actually presses against the decision that you make to stress test it, to ensure that the decision that you made is the right one. So it’s not just a matter of someone providing a possible alternative to a situation that you find yourself in. It’s actually having someone that will stress test it with you. And when you’ve made a decision and the result is a bad result, the shifter will help you to pick up the pieces and say, Okay, let’s go a different direction. Let’s shift into a higher gear or a lower gear.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:08:34]:
I talk about my relationship with a man named Doctor. James Stevenson. He’s a NASA researcher, has been a fellow for many years. And for 20 years, he has been a shifter in my life in 2008 when the great recession happened and it was hard to find a job. Of course, I had mentors saying, oh, you should do this and you should do that in this circumstance. But James was one of those people that said, okay, you’ve made this decision. Now, I want to tell you all of the reasons the decision that you made could be wrong. And let’s think about what your future strategic plan is if you end up in a place where it’s wrong.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:09:13]:
This external data, this data from someone who’s thinking ultimately in your best interest, but they are also going to be that somewhat, that contrarian, that 10th man is essential. And oftentimes when you get into senior leadership roles, very few people have someone who will give them all of their negative points, the points that are are the things that are gonna go wrong.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:37]:
Yeah. They’re the person that points out what are they- you say they observe a lot. They read between the lines. They can discern the complex relationships and environments. And what is it when you think about James and what he has done for you over those 20 years? What is that perspective done that’s been helpful for you in thinking about what’s next in your career?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:10:05]:
Well, what he’s done is allowed me to plot out all of the eventualities that are in front of me and to strategically decide when something doesn’t happen the way I want it to happen, to adjust dynamically and with my mental health intact. There’s a great article in Harvard Business Review about how the corporations have become Lattices. And basically a Lattice organization, employees are no longer confined really to these linear career paths. They’ve got a broader range of options to them where they can move between groups and their career may not be as direct as they would like it to be. Well, if you are a person like me who’s a highly A type personality, very competitive, you expect to get promotion after promotion. When you don’t get that promotion, you get into a funk. Though a mentor can help you decide, hey, go left or right.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:11:06]:
The shifter has already helped you before you got to that juncture. And so when you finally get to that realization that, okay, I’m in this universe, this new environment where it didn’t work out, I already know what my alternatives are going to be. And James certainly helped me when I was deciding whether or not to go as an economist to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that didn’t work out because jobs were dried up. And he said, okay. Well, we talked about this eventuality. Here are the other things that are on the table. I know you were ready for this.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:37]:
Nice. And so many of us would love to have that person in our lives. And as you say, like, as our careers go on, we tend to to find it’s harder to hear truth. It’s harder to hear that other side. What have you found both in your relationship with James and just, like, seeing people build these relationships that you can notice a shifter? Like, how do you know that that person’s in your network, and how do you build a relationship with them? Do you know?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:12:04]:
Yeah. You will know that you’ve got a shifter in your network when you hit a roadblock, and it is uninteresting to you. It’s been demystified because someone has given you the real deal about the potential for it to happen. If you’re a C level executive, oftentimes this person could be on the board of directors or perhaps even another CEO in an adjacent industry that has gone through disappointment before. So I’ve often seen CEOs, particularly new CEOs that run into a conflict or an issue and things didn’t go out the way they thought it would. And they’re trying to figure out how to deal with a board. And the shifter is the one that says, Hey, the board is going to think these things and we’ve already talked about these things. So now let’s implement the strategy.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:13:01]:
They’re the motivator to keep pushing instead of being covered by, a failure. And oftentimes failure can cause us to make further mistakes because we’ve been so depressed because something didn’t work out the way it was supposed to.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:16]:
I think one of the things that’s so impressive to me about you is just your consistency and all three of these archetypes we’re talking about, the shifter being the first one in keeping these people close. And that’s one of the things that you really are an advocate for for leaders of when you find these people, when you identify them in your network of dedicating a bunch of your time and you zeroed on the number 30% of your, as you call your currency. Tell me about that. What’s important about the 30% number?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:13:46]:
What’s important about the 30% is that it’s significant. And I think that’s really the key is that it could be 40%, could be 25%, but it has to be a significant investment. So let me take one half step back and say that the model that is used to describe these relationships or to frame up these relationships comes from a McKinsey model called the economic power curve or the power curve of economic profit. And McKinsey, after years of research, found that there are really 5 moves that matter for companies to move themselves from kind of the middle quintile of performers on economic profit to the top quintile. Part of that, or at least the first move of that model is investing at least 30% of their currency in inorganic growth strategy. So in the economic power curve, the inorganic growth strategy is mergers and acquisitions. But in the professional context that I talk about in my curve or what I call the leadership power curve, your currency has to be spent in acquiring these resources. These are non traditional archetypes and relationships in order to help you navigate the changing leadership environment that you will constantly see.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:15:04]:
It could be a new president. It could be a new regulatory environment. It could be a new board of directors, new investors. Whatever it is, you must invest a significant amount of energy into developing these relationships. And the currencies come in many different forms. So there’s time, your political capital, it could be financial capital, it could be your emotional energy, your talents, whatever those talents may be, because every relationship is different. And so you have to identify by relationship what you need to invest.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:37]:
And of course, the world is so nontraditional now. Right? Like, so many things are changing, and you highlight so many stories in the book of just UPS and the traditional values they bring, but also how they’ve shifted on so many things in recent years in order to be relevant and stay adaptable to the world. And so I think, like you said, it’s not so much whether it’s 25, 30%, 35, but it’s a significant amount of time of, like, thinking about not setting aside mentors and all the other things that are really important we’ve talked about in the show. But saying, hey. In addition to that, what are the nontraditional things that I know because the world’s changing so much that I can invest in to see things in a new light? And one of the other archetypes, the the second one is the connector. What is the connector like?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:16:22]:
Yeah. The connector- so I’m a introvert, and introverts sometimes have a really hard time in leadership roles. In fact, research has shown that extroverts tend to excel in environments that require high levels of social interaction. If you think about sales organizations, customer service organizations, and of course, leadership roles. In fact, I recently saw a study that talked about that extroverts tend to outperform introverts when you score things like assertiveness and social engagement and they tend to end up being in the C suite and senior leadership roles more often. So what does that mean for someone who may be an introvert or maybe an extrovert light, and what it means for traversing this lattice environment that we find in corporate environments? Well, that’s where the connector really comes in. Unlike a sponsor who is in the room and can pull you up or a mentor who is showing you the way, the different possibilities, paths you could take, a connector is really someone who is walking alongside you on the journey and has those bona fides to build relationships, those skills needed in order to create the environment for an extrovert light or an introvert and even sometimes an extrovert just in a different environment to build the relationships necessary to succeed. So this person, for example, is always identifying social engagements.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:17:50]:
They’re the social butterfly of the group. So if you’re a senior leader, they’re the ones that say, hey, I want you to think about doing this board because it aligns with your business in this regard. And that’s key because they are also aware of what your goals are of your business and what the goals of other businesses are. So they understand the meets and bounds of where there can be synergy.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:14]:
There’s such a big distinction here, I think, because, you know, so many of us as we grow in our careers, as we get into increasing levels of leadership, of course, we need to connect. We need to build relationships. And I was under the assumption, Andy, early in my career, like, I had to always be the connector. And like you, I’m an introvert. It wasn’t my strength area. And I realized at some point, mostly through, like, trial and error, that you don’t have to always be the connector, but you do need to know the connector. And if you know the connector, that is sometimes in fact, often, it’s good enough in a lot of situations if you have a relationship with that person. They will and if they trust you and they know you…

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:57]:
They build relationships and help open doors in ways that you never would have done on your own.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:19:02]:
That’s right. That’s, you know, that’s how deals get done. Right? It it’s all a lot of it is relationship based. You know, I start off the chapter about Dory talking about the failed mergers of AOL and Time Warner. And how that was fundamentally based on failed relationships, failure to connect individual senior leaders at the 2 organizations, and the catastrophic results that happened as a result. There weren’t enough connectors. There weren’t enough senior executives with connectors in order to find those synergies between the two companies. But then you can contrast that coincidentally with Disney Pixar and how those 2 organizations really had the connectors.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:19:45]:
They had the people, the personal relationships necessary in order to find the synergies to make the merger work. So for the professional who’s on their journey and they find themselves in an organization’s highly matrixed or even a highly competitive marketplace where you’ve got many different companies and you’re aggressively going after market share, what is going to separate you moving up in the organization or in the market? It’s going to be having those connectors with the target audiences that matter the most. They could be influencers. They could be social media influencers. They could be leaders within local communities from a business standpoint. From an internal standpoint in the company, they could be the cook in the kitchen who happens to know someone who’s in another department that talks about an issue that somehow impacts you and that person is aware enough that the connection needs to be made and they facilitate it. And I’ll just say one of the things I want leaders to think more carefully about is how we arrange the relationships that matter to us. Oftentimes, as you move more and more senior, the things that matter are people who are senior, but it’s not necessarily the people who can help you the most.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:21:02]:
Sometimes the people who could help you the most could be people who are beneath you or people who may not even be engaged in the same vocation as all. There was a great Harvard Business Review article about reverse mentoring and how reverse mentoring has all of these beneficial effects, bridging generational gaps and allowing for more inclusive workplaces and even helping Deloitte founded, helped in knowledge transfer in organizations and to continue leadership continuity. So if those things are important to you, you’ve got to start thinking about the connectors that you have around you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:35]:
I had the such a similar experience. I worked for Dale Carnegie for many years and the people who were most critical to my success of connecting me inside organizations were the executive assistants always. And if you looked at the org chart, they were the people who had the least level of quote unquote positional authority. But boy, did they have influence in the organization. And I thankfully learned early on that building relationships with those folks, many of them who were connectors, it was unbelievable how much we were able to be helpful to each other and us and and me in turn being able to lift them up in different ways in their careers. And it was looking for opportunities in places that we don’t always think of right away. Like, we think of the person with the biggest title or the most visibility.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:24]:
And oftentimes, like, that connector can be someone who’s in a very different role. And you mentioned, one of the examples in the book, Leonard Searcy. Am I saying his name right?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:22:32]:
Yes. It’s right. Yes.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:33]:
And he being a connector for you, what is it that he’s done as a practice that’s been so helpful?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:22:39]:
Leonard has I was actually with him last night. It’s funny you bring him up. He is one of those Renaissance men. He speaks 8 different languages. Has never met a stranger. But he also finds himself at the fulcrum just as a vocation. He finds himself at the fulcrum of many different types of businesses. So he’s a lawyer in a major law firm.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:23:03]:
They have lots of clients in different industries. And what he has done for me as a client, because I am now one of his clients, is connect me with other clients that may be dealing with similar issues in the tech space. So of course I work for Meta. I’m in the patent acquisitions team. I’m dealing with high-tech issues all the time. And turns out there are a lot of people like me that are in those same situations looking for best practices, looking to create the, relationships, strategic partnerships and so on. And he just does an amazing job of both on the professional prism, drawing those connections, understanding, showing care and concern for the individual, but also learning what matters to them and then connecting to people that have the same things that matter. And then also on the personal side, just anytime there’s a birthday, sometimes he reminds me, he says, Hey, you should send a birthday card to this person.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:24:02]:
Sometimes it’s as simple as that. As a connector say, Hey, I want you to make sure you’re getting an external data point about your mindfulness, going back to the importance of inorganic growth. Sometimes you just need a person to to do that for you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:16]:
The third archetype is the benevolent antagonist. Tell me about who is that?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:24:23]:
It actually happens to be my favorite nontraditional archetype. And I actually developed a relationship with a gentleman named Nate Smith. He’s the, CEO of a company in Australia. But Nate and I joined UPS at the same time, basically as peers in different divisions. And Nate was one of those stereotypical gunners. He’s like, Hey, I want to know who’s the person that you consider next up and I want to find that person and I’m going to push him. Now, I’m not going to compete with them in a way that is unfair, but I want to make that sharpen that person so that I am sharpened. And so he was unafraid to seek out competition.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:25:07]:
And I think the benevolent antagonist for the executive who is really looking to take their game to the next level truly is essential. So there’s some research from UC Berkeley. There’s also some in Harvard Business Review. But for the several last few decades or so, researchers have been looking into the importance of competition in the workplace and how it can impact or boost productivity and performance. And what generally has been found from the research is that organizations that engender or create positive competition amongst the workforce tend to have better results and outcomes. And so an outgrowth of that for you as a leader who is looking to have better outcomes for yourself and for your team is to constantly identify those people who have skills that you don’t have, who could potentially help you sharpen those skills. And I’ll say this, just because someone’s a CEO or a CFO or what have you, doesn’t mean that they are the best strategic manager or the best financial planner. Sometimes you’re elevated for other reasons and it’s okay to acknowledge that and to say, Okay, I need really good people around me who can help to sharpen my skill set.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:26:23]:
So Nate came in, he and I, initially it was, hey, we’re going to compete with each other in the gym. And then it turned into, hey, we’ve got these projects they’re adjacent to each other. Let’s see who can have the best outcomes on their projects and loser buys drinks tonight. But that kind of healthy competition for you, no matter what level you’re at, is really, really going to be what sustains high performance in your career for the long term.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:51]:
This is the person I think too that sometimes shows up in our lives, our careers, and appears to be a shark. And sometimes, like, we do we all run into real sharks in our careers. Right? Like, folks that we probably have a, you know, a transactional relationship with, but we are not trusting relationships. But also often, there’s the person who shows up a little bit as the shark initially, and they end up being a Nate Smith. They end up being the kind of person that really makes you better through friendly competition and deep down. And you mentioned a bunch of examples in the book. I’m thinking about professor Snape from Harry Potter.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:27]:
Like, initially, it seems like the evil villain, but actually really values the big picture very much aligned. Have you figured out a way to know the difference of, like, who’s really the shark, but also who’s maybe the person that really is trying to make you better and and and being able to parse those distinctions?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:27:46]:
Oh, absolutely. The the funny thing about it is these nontraditional archetypes all work together. Right? So when you have a connector in place, that connector is plugged in generally to the environment that you’re in and the people who are in that environment. And what the connector will tell you is whether or not you should have some threat awareness about this person who is truly a shark or if they’re a benevolent antagonist. There will be data signals that manifest for someone who truly does not have your best interests at heart. A shark who wants to do you harm, who actually wants to run you out of an organization or out of a marketplace, you will see that manifest in the conversations that happen around them and the people who are around them. Their actions in the workplace, which are clearly detrimental to the projects that you are trying to place, which are clearly detrimental to the projects that you are trying to accomplish and the performance you’re trying to achieve, versus someone who is actually trying to help, you won’t hear those things in the cafeteria.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:28:30]:
You won’t see that they are taking steps that are to your detriment or to slow down a project or to manifest failure in a project. Those metrics you can see, but also your connector can see. Which is why going back to the 30% of investment, you know, you’ve got to invest a significant amount of resources in these relationships because what ends up happening is if you under invest, you won’t get the data signals. But if you invest at the right level, you will be plugged in. And notice the mentor, the sponsor, the personal board, none of them are gonna be competing with you. None of them are gonna be sharpening you in the way that this particular archetype is.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:25]:
You know, I had not thought about that distinction that you just made of not necessarily just paying attention to what the benevolent antagonist or the shark may be saying, but what are the people around them saying about them? And my very first manager in my professional career, when I showed up for work the 1st day, I was like, oh my gosh, I’m working for a shark, initially. And what ended up changing my mind and giving that person some grace was people around me in the region I was working in. Everyone would always say, like, when I’d mentioned I was working with this person, oh, you’re so lucky. Oh, they’re so good. And I’m like, really? Yeah. In my mind at first. But then I over time, I realized, wow.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:13]:
I really was working for a benevolent antagonist. And she did incredible things to drive my career, but I couldn’t see it initially. But the people around me were indicators of that. And, like, what a great invitation to be looking for that and watching for that.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:30:24]:
Yeah. And an invitation for you to also be that person for someone else. Mhmm. Sometimes being a connector can be case specific to an individual’s personal skill sets. You’ve got to have that extrovert gene, so to speak, that allows you to be the social butterfly that you need to manifest results. But then you have an archetype like the benevolent antagonist that any one of us can be that for someone else. We just have to make the affirmative decision to do so.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:54]:
There’s so much in the book that you examine in research and thinking about the conscientious executive and the conscientious leader. As you went through this process of writing, of research, and now having so many conversations bringing the book into the world, I’m curious, as you’ve gone through all that, what if anything have you changed your mind on?

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:31:16]:
I have definitely changed my mind about the importance of corporations to the communities that we serve. I used to think that it was a mere happenstance that prosperity results in communities because corporations operate within them. And the truth is corporations are the prime mover of prosperity. And it’s a bit of a departure from the old Milton Friedman esque way of viewing business and that the only thing that matters is profit and shareholder value. I think folks that read the book will realize that I was dramatically changed by my experience during COVID and leading a team through that experience. I’ll briefly tell a story where I’m sitting at my desk and I get a phone call and the call, it’s someone from New York. It’s a doctor. And the doctor’s like, Hey, we need to talk to you about getting some services, some cold storage.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:32:15]:
And I’m like, Okay, this is great. But why are you calling, you know, the head of legal and regulatory for the airline? You know? And they say, Oh, well, no, no, no. You don’t understand. We need cold storage for dead bodies. We Our morgues are being overwhelmed. I mean like, oh my gosh. You know, my entire career I’ve spent focused on things like contracts and profit and strategy. And now death is at my doorstep and I’m actually going to have to deal with some very weighty issues.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:32:41]:
And that began the shift, of focus to my people, the people at my organization who during that time, many of them experienced some level of tragedy as a result of the COVID pandemic. I had to shift to both looking at their personal well-being, their health, and their wellness and mental well-being, and also to the health and well-being of the Louisville community. And being at the center of the vaccine response where we shipped over a 1000000000 vaccines and therapeutics around the world. It just reinforced that large incompetent organizations are absolutely necessary. And having leaders who care about the people and the communities we serve is even more important to the prosperity equation than than I ever thought.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:26]:
Andrew Cooper is the author of The Ethical Imperative: Leading With Conscience to Shape the Future of Business. Andy, thank you so much for your book and for your work.

Andrew C.M. Cooper [00:33:38]:
Thank you very much.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:42]:
f this conversation with Andrew was helpful to you, 3 related episodes all in the spirit of growing your network that I think would be helpful for you also to listen to. One of them is episode 525, how to strengthen your network. Marissa King was my guest on that episode. We looked at her research on how people build networks and, perhaps most importantly, how do we play to our strengths in doing that? Many of you know I’m a big believer in strengths and how we leverage those things. And Marissa’s research looks at 3 common patterns of how people build networks. So it’s the other side of the perspective from this conversation, looking at ourselves and thinking, how do I utilize my strengths in order to reach out and connect with people? Well, it’s a fascinating conversation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:27]:
And if you’re thinking about starting to build your network, reaching out to different kinds of people, I think it’s a wonderful starting point and a lens to be thinking about how to leverage your strengths. Well, episode 525 for that. Also recommended episode 591, how to build a network while still doing everything else. Ruth Gotian is the perfect person to have had as a guest for that conversation because Ruth is a busy person, an extraordinarily successful leader and professional, author of some best selling books, and somehow has an amazing network that, amazes me all the time. She’s put me in touch with many folks. She has a way of balancing it all somehow and being able to continue to grow and connect people. And in episode 591, we talk about that. How does she do that of having a busy job, lots of responsibilities, and at the same time, growing a network and some of the real challenges and obstacles that many of us run into with that episode 591 for more there.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:25]:
And then finally, I’d recommend the conversation on episode 671 with Guy Kawasaki, how to recognize remarkable people. Guy has been a leader in the business and marketing and entrepreneurial circles for many, many years, has a podcast where he interviews remarkable people, and we talked about how do we recognize those people in our lives. A beautiful conversation. Lots of great insight from Guy. Episode 671 for that. All of those episodes, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And by the way, there are many other conversations we’ve had about growing your professional network over the years. It is one of the topic areas inside of the episode library.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:06]:
If you haven’t registered on the website for your free membership yet, I would encourage you to do so so you can get access to that as well as everything else inside of the free membership. And you’ll also be able to track down all the other benefits inside, including the episode notes from every episode. I have taken notes of my interview today with Andrew. I’ve also highlighted some of the key paragraphs in his book and pass those along to you in the interview notes. It’s one of the benefits inside of free membership. To access it, just go to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership, and you’ll have access to that, plus a bunch more, which you’ll see when you get inside there. And perhaps you’re looking for a bit more, and perhaps you’re looking for a way to build some of the nontraditional relationships that we’ve talked about today. You might consider the Coaching for Leaders Academy.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:59]:
In the academy, I work personally with listeners in our community to help them to work through the inflection points in their careers, to help them to learn the new skills, and also to broaden their networks. So many of us, we only connect with people inside of our organizations, maybe our industries, maybe occasionally in an association, but we don’t often have perspective from outside of our organizations and industries. I know that changed for me dramatically years ago when I started not only Coaching for Leaders, but started to reach out across industry in relationships. I find I have the opposite problem now. Keeping up with all the perspective, all of the generous insight and objectivity that I hear from so many of our members and listeners and friends and colleagues. It is a wonderful path for you to consider if you’re thinking about growing your network now. And if you are at an inflection point, go over to coachingforleaders.com/academy. You can find out more there.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:58]:
You can also register to receive an invitation for when we next open up the academy for applications. Again, details at coachingforleaders.com/academy. Coaching for leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Thank you as always for the privilege to be with you. 700 episodes, so much more coming on the show in the next few months. Thanks as always for the privilege to support you, and I’ll look forward to seeing you back next Monday. Take care.