IDL56 Season 2: Make It, Don't Fake It, with Sabrina Horn

Why is faking it damaging to your future success? How can constantly faking it lead to impostor syndrome and a lack of integrity in relationships? Why is it necessary for leaders to face reality?

For Tyler, one of the greatest aspects of the podcast is meeting humble, authentic, real people. Sabrina Horn is nothing short of that. She and Tyler discuss business, life, and the idea of authentic leadership. Sabrina explains the challenge of acting with integrity in a world that tells people to “fake it”. Her book, Make It, Don’t Fake It, turns that adage on its head, and encourages leaders to embrace humanness and to be open to the difficult aspects of reality.

Meet Sabrina Horn

Sabrina Horn is an award-winning CEO, C-suite advisor, communications expert, and bestselling author.

With only $500 and five years of work experience, she founded Horn Group, a public relations firm that for a quarter-century advised thousands of executives and their companies—from the hottest startups to the Fortune 500.

Sabrina has written for publications including The Wall Street Journal, Chief Executive Magazine, and Forbes. Her bestselling book, Make It, Don’t Fake It, is a business-ethics staple, giving leaders the tools to resist “short hacks,” and the courage to lead with authenticity and integrity.

Visit Sabrina Horn’s website and connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

•      Faking it leads to impostor syndrome (9:25)

•      The system is changing (15:10)

•      Create circles instead of bubbles (17:40)

•     Authentic leaders face reality (21:25)

Faking it leads to impostor syndrome

The truth always comes out, and if you fake things to achieve them, it will come out that you were insincere or lied to fake your way into success.

Even though the principle behind faking it until you make it is meant to be helpful, it can cause more damage than good and can have negative impacts on the way you see yourself.

The system is changing

Faking it until one makes it, being the best, showing off, having no vulnerabilities, and not showcasing humanness are traits from some old-school styles of leadership. Those styles are what have led to the current “great resignation” in this modern moment.

You cannot pretend to be genuine, sincere, and vulnerable if you are not, because the truth will come out. If you want to lead authentically, you have to do it.

The newer companies that have more enlightened management are generally more successful because they are person-focused, lead with example – truly – and embrace humanness in the pursuit of success.

Create circles instead of bubbles

Create circles of people who are included, see one another, recognize teamwork, and are unified in their efforts, so it comes down to the team that you hire. Bubbles are fragile, insulated, and not strong enough to hold everyone in the same light.

Therefore, hire the people that tell you what you need to hear instead of what you want to hear.

As the leader, you need to create the space and give permission to your staff for them to know that they are safe to share with you what it is they feel and think.

Authentic leaders face reality

You must accept reality for what it is when you are striving for authenticity.

Leaders, employees, coaches, and teammates may all be driven to fake that everything is alright when it is not because it is too difficult for them to face that reality can be tough.

It is much easier to fake it than to be real about how tough it is. Authentic leaders do not relish in the harshness of reality, but they do not shy away from it either.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Sabrina Horn – Make It, Don't Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success

Visit Sabrina Horn’s website

Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn

The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel

Join the Impact Driven Leader Community

Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

Faking it leads to impostor syndrome, because at what moment do you stop faking it?

Tyler Dickerhoof

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] All right, welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host Tyler Dickerhoof. So glad you're listening in today. So glad you're here. Excited for this episode, this conversation, this was absolutely, every episode's great. One of the things that I really, after I got done with this episode, I was taken aback and I was like, man, one of the greatest, and I've said this before, parts of doing this is the humble, authentic, real people I get to talk to. Sabrina Horn, today's guest is nothing short of that. We have a great time just chatting, talking about business and life and this idea of authentic leadership in a world that said for so long, fake it, fake it till you make it. She shares in her book, Make It, Don't Fake It, the, I guess the starting of that, where that idea started. I'm going to share that real quick. In 1973, there was a guy by the name of Glen Turner who started this education system. You guys will love this. He started this, dare to be great in a legal pyramid scheme and what they would do is they'd sell these phony self-improvement classes. They'd get people to sign up and then the people that signed them up would say they had all this success. So they'd turn around and sell it to more people. They tell them the way that you got successful is by selling this program to other people. It was shut down but the whole idea in that they said, make it until you make it. I think that that culture permeated so much of sales in business leadership for a lot of years. Sabrina talks about that. She launched her PR firm and she had to deal with that herself as a 29-year-old, startup, and she was going to be working within the tech industry, really a lot of the .com series. She had to deal with that. She talks about that. She about it. We talk about how faking it in my opinion, leads to a lot of imposter syndrome and it can be a point of, yes, you earned that role. Okay, that's fine, you don't think you're worthy of it, or you faked it to your point till you're like, oh, I'm really fake. We live in a world today where I believe we are yearning for more authentic leadership. We're going to talk a lot about that. We're going to talk a lot about the current state of leadership and so thankful that Sabrina joined me today and shares her experiences. Get ready to enjoy this conversation. Again, if you're here because someone shared this with you, man, I'd love for you to subscribe, like it, leave a comment, share this conversation with someone else that might get value from it. [TYLER] I want to ask you is how did you end up at Hobart and William Smith? [SABRINA HORN] Oh my God, well, it was one of two or three colleges I was able to get into at the time. I was an average student, shall we say? Hobart and William Smith's reputation has gone up since then, but I didn't want to go that far away from home. I grew up in Connecticut and this was upstate New York. Okay but really the primary reason is that I wanted to go to a college where there was a women's, a focus on women's education and female rights. Of course, William Smith is is the alter ego of Hobart so I really like that. [TYLER] Okay. So the reason I ask that is I spent a summer in Seneca Castle right outside of Geneva. I used to drive through Geneva. I went to school at Cornell and I had a friend that grew up in that area, so very familiar with that little piece in between the Finger Legs, Canadeg, Geneva, Seneca Castle. So it's rare in the world that I live now, living in Spokane Washington, that I come across some of those connections back to upstate New York. [SABRINA] I really had wanted to go to Cornell, but was like way out of my reach but we would go to Ithaca all the time for those lacrosse games We went to this place called plums, I remember. Of course you drive through Ithaca on the way there, so it's beautiful. It's just beautiful up there, the lakes. [TYLER] I have not, so I graduated in '01 and I've been back one time. It's coming to the point now that I have one teenage daughter, almost a 14 year old son and a 12 year old. So almost three teenagers and I really do want to take them back in the early fall, light spring, that time so they can experience what Cornell was like. It's an amazing campus, amazing area of the country [SABRINA] Yes, beautiful. [TYLER] That has nothing to do with the book you wrote, that has nothing to do. But I want to ask that. I mean, it's you asked me beforehand. It's like, well, we're sitting down having coffee and that's what I would lead and ask you about. But as we dig into the book, I want to know this and having a lot of notes and having a lot of ideas that have come from it and really as you stress this, which I think is so paramount one in our society, but I also think it was a virtue of a lot of leadership style, management style, sales style in the '90s into 2000s and still exists today. It's just, oh, just fake it. Just fake your way to success. I want to know what experience specifically did you have that said this is not right. Like, I can't handle this, faking it anymore. Because there had to be one. [SABRINA] I mean, I feel think there were a lot of little ones I mean my whole career was in public relations in Silicon Valley, so --- [TYLER] Is that just a big, do you use the term that you share in this book as well, a big bubble of faking? [SABRINA] Yes. I mean, and potentially yes, and it certainly is and has been. I mean, when I started out, I was 29 years old. I'd never run anything. I probably had managed an intern and here I am starting a company, running it, growing it and advising other CEOs about their challenges and their opportunities and their crises. Oftentimes it was about just make this problem go away or make us be bigger than life or we want to be a hot company to watch and spin this story. And every time it was like, well, but the truth is it's actually like this and we can't go from here to there. We have to go along the way. And it came down to like the integrity of the relationships that we had with reporters and with analysts who some of them are super tough and well known and don't suffer fools gladly. So because of all of that and getting smarter and making mistakes and being called on my own bullshit, sometimes it was like no, we can't be like this. We have to be honest and we have to help our clients in the right way. If they don't want that, then we can't help them. [TYLER] I think, as I experienced that myself, as I can remember, I don't know when I first heard it, but starting into consulting and sales as a 20 couple year old and just like, I don't know what I don't know. I'm just going to go out and try to do. I remember being coached up. It's just like, I remember times they'd be like, just tell people that you have a really busily schedule and make urgency. So it's like, I can't take your call right now. I got to go. It's just like, well, I have no other call, so it's making it up so you seem like you're important. Yet that's a very, I mean, that's a sales strategy. That is what sales people tell sales people to do. It kills me because this is the great crux of all of it. If I could spend much of our conversation talking about this, it's the effect of faking it. You talk so much about integrity and authenticity. I mentioned this earlier, because we were talking about, you might get a delivery here. We haven't had that delivery but one of my previous podcast, guests, Anne Hyatt, who got a delivery during our podcast, she talks a lot about imposter syndrome. She worked at Google. She worked in the world that you know and as I was discussing this with readers in the book club, and I said, this this morning, as we were meeting, faking it leads to imposter syndrome. [SABRINA] Yes, it does. [TYLER] Because at what moment do you stop faking it? What did you experience there? [SABRINA] Yes, I mean, so here's the thing. First of all, faking it doesn't help you make it. It helps you fail and there are several reasons why, and every situation is different. First of all, when you fake it at some point it's going to catch up with you and you'll be exposed for what, how however you faked it. It could have been a little white lie, could have been what I wrote about in my book that I lied to this guy I was dating and told him I could ski downhill from a double black diamond. I thought I was going to die when I got up there. Or like investors lying to, not investors, like entrepreneurs lying to investors about what their technology can do or a salesperson over promising to a prospect. The bottom line is the truth always comes out. It always does. It could be a week, could be a year, could be 10 years as was the case with Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi scheme CIA, Elizabeth Holmes, who we just saw; now is facing jail time. The fact of faking it is it may get you to point A, maybe you can pull a fast one and get there, but then what happens is it sort of becomes a habit and lies beget lies. You start faking it all the time and it consumes you and then you basically become a faker. You become that imposter. So imposter syndrome, though has different definitions, the classic definition is that you have achieved a certain level of success. You're put into a situation that is new, a promotion, a new job, a new company that you're with. In my case, I sold my company and you're in unfamiliar territory. There's all these people who don't know you and it's like, everybody's sniffing each other's butts. To be really honest. [TYLER] Yes, no, that's great. [SABRINA] Really honest. So you think that you don't deserve the success you've achieved, that you're a fraud, that it was all based on good luck or good timing or good fortune. So you start to behave in the ways that you think other people expect you to behave and there's all this anxiety caught up in it and insecurity. Then you start faking it and you become an imposter. You can come at it from different sides of the mountain. There's different ways of dealing with it, but I'll tell you, it's terrible. It's a terrible feeling. You can actually lose your job if it goes to an extreme. It does, it affects a lot of people, like 70% of all overachievers, get it at some point in their career. [TYLER] Well, and again, I think, at some point and again, it is this discussion of faking it. I think if we use a term that has become very popular now, the great resignation and how much of that is derived off of organizations, leaders that have just become fakes and all of a sudden people are like, I'm done with it. I'm like, I don't want to be around the fake. I want authentic. I want this wave of people that are, as a friend of mine who said the CEO that's willing to stand in front of the room and throw his arms up in the air and say, yes, my pits are sweating. It's that person that I think our society is yearning for. It's so much of what you talk about in your book, make it, don't fake it. It's really just acknowledging where you are at, what you can do, how you can serve people, but not making this elaborate story to overdo it, because at some point that story's going to unravel. [SABRINA] Yes, I mean, there's a delicate balance between humility as a leader and being vulnerable and then losing your sort of credibility and authority because you're letting your hair down too much. As a leader, that is a very delicate balance. It's not easy to get to that point, but, you're absolutely right. I think so many people, so many employees of those types of companies, but that leadership are just like, I'm just done. I'm just done with that. Sometimes these leaders are not inauthentic. They just don't know how to be human. [TYLER] I'm thinking of a word, it's like, and I seen the background picture of a football team is they don't know how to play the game. They're playing lacrosse, which we talked about earlier and yet the sport is really football. They're thinking, hey, I'm going to bring my stick. I'm going to bring my ball. I'm going to go out and throw it around. They got helmets and pads. I mean, it's the same thing. It's like, no, no, no, no. It's totally different. I think to me, that's this image of when we come into a game and we thought, oh, I got this. I know all the rules, and then it starts --- go ahead please. [SABRINA] Yes, no, I totally agree. I love that analogy. It's the older style of top down autocratic leadership where that comes from and is what we see in the old movies. That's not going to work anymore. The challenge though, is, so you want to become that. You can't just say, okay, I'm going to be authentic today. I'm going to be humble. You can't just strap that on, like, and be it. You have to, it has to be visceral. It has to be part of you. It has to spread across your entire leadership team and throughout your company and your culture. It's not something that happens overnight. So for those companies, I worry because they're going to have a hard time with employee retention. It's the newer companies where there's more enlightened management where there's sort of like to gain control, give up control. And I trust you until you give me a reason not to, but let's go out and build something. The other piece of it is how do you be humble? How do you be vulnerable without giving up your authority or your power? And their dirty little secret is that you can actually take that really far. You can say this is just not going well. Or we lost that deal. I feel terrible about it. I feel like you do. I feel like shit. But so what do we do about it you guys? Let's do a postmortem. I wrote about this in my book, do a postmortem, get around the room, not to like skewer people and place blame, but to really understand where did it go off the rails? What did I do wrong? How can I help you guys be more successful next time? And owning it. Then the second piece is actually instituting that and putting it into process because if you don't do that, then it was all for not. [TYLER] Well, I think the willingness to do that means that you have to come to grips with who you are, that practice of humility, personal humility, the proper amount of vulnerability. But that all of a sudden, I think, and again, this alignment of, if I'm a leader and I'm standing in front of this room and I'm worried about how I'm viewed and I'm faking it, I believe that I'm faking it, I'm making stuff up as I go. I'm not willing to share it. That becomes the barrier. You talk about it in the description of having your circle or is it a bubble? To me is you create bubbles when you create people around you that embrace you're faking it. [SABRINA] Yes, exactly. [TYLER] In a circle, they're going to be like, I accept you for who you are. You're not faking it. Let's be real. Then we can all move forward together, whereas a bubble's going to pop. I'd love for you to talk more about that, how that idea came up with your experience there with circles and bubbles. [SABRINA] Yes, sure. I mean, I'm a very visual person. I think visually it helps me get through. It's actually a tool I used to deal with imposter syndrome for myself. I called it watching myself in my own movie and sort of like trying to see how I would act in a difficult situation and be real. But the circle versus bubble thing has several prongs. First of all, it comes down to who you hire on your team. You want those people who respect your values, who are behind you and your mission who feel the same passion that you do for what you're trying to achieve, but people who can stand on their own and and call you on stuff when you need that. It's the people who will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. That also takes security and confidence and permission on the part of those leaders because they don't want to get in trouble or get fired or be penalized. So it comes down to the values that you have as a company and as a leadership team that you make this promise to each other, to be honest with each other. I've been in both situations where I've had people say, "Oh yes, Hey, Sab, everything's fine. We didn't win that deal. The client was dating somebody from the other agency." So they were like in bed together and so there was no way we could have won. Or they brought out our team from New York and it's like, well, no, actually. We didn't win not because of what they did because of what we didn't do. So you want to have a team in your circle that's going to keep it real. The bubble is when everybody's breathing each other's exhaust and you think everything's fabulous and you to make excuses for each other, but actually you are really hurting your company and you're never going to grow because you're going to keep making the same mistakes. [TYLER] I mean, as I think about that, and again, I think back of one, how you're talking about describing this is when the circle, and you can have a very healthy circle, but if the circle's not willing to accept input from outside and how it affects inside that circle, then it becomes a bubble. It's insulated. I think about this idea of quite graphically sharing, we lost the sales deal because they were in bed together. It's like, okay, we're making excuses as opposed to honestly, that's an opportunity for us. It's like, hey, create yourself a barrier of distance here. Take our deal. I mean, you think about those things, but that's being willing, I guess not fake it because if you're saying, oh, we couldn't get the deal, that's not facing the reality. You talk a lot about that. Just you got to accept reality for what it is. To me that comes back to the authenticity. [SABRINA] Yes. I think the whole thing about facing reality is the primary reason why people fake it. Because the bottom line is the truth hurts and reality can be very hard to face. It's hard to face the fact that you're not going to make your quarter. It's hard to face the fact that your product has a flaw and you maybe have to do a recall and your stock's going to take a dive. It's hard to face the fact that your company hasn't performed well or there's a recession and you have to lay people off. I don't know any CEO or leader who relishes doing those things. It's easier to fake it and stick your head in the sand and hope that the problem all goes away, time will pass, or blame it on somebody else or lie. It's easier to do that, but the bottom line is real leaders have to face the harsh truth and only then can they, after peeling back the onion, find a path forward and get to the other side faster and with less heartache. [TYLER] I've shared this with people and you can talk about having difficult conversations. That was a big part of your role, obviously, as founder, CEO. I look forward to those and it's by the experience that I know something good is going to come out of it. Either we're going to come to a resolution or it's going to be overdone with. As you were sharing what you were sharing about this idea of, as a leader, as a CEO, I don't want to feel a face. Tough times are hard. I think it's by the experience of when people go into it authentically and they're willing to be vulnerable and truthful and have those real conversations. I believe this, as I've seen it, they actually start to realize that's a lot easier path. That's a lot easier path than, oh , you know what, we're laying off because we're becoming more efficient. We're laying off because our sales are down 50% and we need to figure out how everyone else can move forward. How we can be in business a year from now, that's more important than the optics of today. And I think we come to a society now that yearning for that. They're like, oh thank goodness someone's telling the truth. [SABRINA] Yes. I mean, it's as much, that in tough times as it is in branding and marketing, honesty is a great marketing strategy right now. It should be the marketing strategy all the time, but right now it's what people are craving. It's so refreshing. Here's a small example. I ordered some furniture from restoration hardware. I'm not getting that furniture anytime soon. [TYLER] I know this. [SABRINA] Because supply chains, people not working, yada, yada. So I call the company and I'm like, "Can you please just stop giving me new, delayed ship dates and just tell me, honestly, when is this thing going to actually be made? You guys haven't even made it yet." Like so just be honest with me because then we can start to have a conversation. I so much more appreciate the companies and suppliers and manufacturers who are proactive about that with me and just say look here's the deal. I can't give it to you until June, but because you have to wait we'll give you 15% off. I would much rather have that than be strung along and somebody kissing my ass and waiting and being annoyed. I'm never going to buy from that company again. [TYLER] Well, and I think, again, that is this great opportunity as a leader to say, hey, how can I make that part of my culture? Because the faking it is, we don't want to tell the employees, the regional, we don't want to tell them the truth. We want to just give them enough so they can answer the questions, but we're afraid of telling people the truth for how they may react. I've seen it play out. I think you described perfectly in your book, how it plays out is when you actually tell them the truth and then say, great, now how can we work to make sure that that is the absolute latest it's going to be if they tell you it's June 15th and you're like, okay. Then they're like, how can we work together so it maybe ends up sooner, that you get it on June 6th? You're going to be elated but if they tell you it's May 15th, then it doesn't show up till June 6th. You're like, why did you lie to me? [SABRINA] Why did you, yes. [TYLER] We could have this, this could have been so much easier. Just like, as a leader, like, "Hey, we lost that deal. Great. How can we learn from it." As opposed to make excuses. And you bring this up. I think it's so imperative, we're in a different leadership. I don't want to say environment, but in an totally different world, because we have different generations that have gone through different things. We have the makeup of these generations that are different and you obviously saw that in your 29-year career of your business, that this change and as you got to the end, it's like, okay, this is different. The 25 year old employee you had in 1994 was entirely different than the 25 year old employee that you had in 2018. How much do you think those two reacted differently to this idea of making it and faking it? [SABRINA] Well, in the first era, fake it till you make it wasn't even a phrase. This notion of transparency, which evolved out of social media and that whole notion of authenticity always existed. But we never talked about it that way. We were still in that phase of like, we just take what our bosses say, and we do it. Now in Silicon Valley, things were more progressive. I'm a woman. I think I'm fairly progressive. I always felt like my employees need to know what's going on so that they can best do their job to help their clients be the most successful. But now to the other, the more modern generation there's no waiting for, what the boss is going to say. There is, but it's more of a, okay, we've already formed our opinion. This is what we want because we're angry and this is what we see going on. We don't like it. We want to know what you think about it. Boy, that leader has to have, has to be educated about many different social issues that may have nothing to do with the product or service they deliver to customers, but it matters to the employees. For their privilege of being in the big seat, you've got to care. You've got to have an opinion on those things. You've got to know. For example, one CEO that I was coaching had a situation where the employees were talking about diversity and social injustice online and when they started to get together at work in the lunchroom. It got heated and political and it became divisive and people were not productive. So that CEO unfortunately just said, well, all those conversations need to stop. You can no longer talk about those things. So what happened, I think about a third of the company resigned. Then that CEO strapped it on and said, "I'm really sorry. Those issues really are important. Let's have channels and forums where we can talk about that productively, but not let it affect revenue." But at that point it was a day late and a dollar short. It didn't work anymore. So to get to your point, it's today leaders have to understand, this is what employees expect and want and you have to go to them and invite them to have a conversation with you about it rather than like, oh my God, what's going to happen today? And be a sitting duck. You can't operate like that. [TYLER] To me, it's a word and it's an action that I've really tried to embrace because to me, it's the solution from my insecurities. That's learning to practice empathy and to practice healthy empathy instead of, as I would describe empathy as putting your arms around someone and walking with them. And there's a spectrum, you can be cold and hard, how I would say that that CEO acted in first place; just like done. Move on, let's get back to business. Then there can also be the extent, the person that becomes a doormat and just all of a sudden lets it all go on and just wants to hide in the corner because they don't want to say anything because they're afraid of what they may say is going to upset people. To me, the solution is engaging. Say, "I don't like, let me show you I care." Because this is obviously important, how can I care? Because to me that's empathy, that's putting your arms around someone and saying, this is important. It's important to you. Therefore, it's important to me. That is something that I think leaders like yourself, that chose to make it were willing to say, Hey, I want to show you I care because that's really how we make it. If I fake it, I'm saying I don't really care. I'm just trying to get somewhere that I want to get to. I think that's what has been a main challenge for a lot of, I would say tenure leaders that are now moving through. They were brought through this culture. They learned how to play the game. They learned how to play the game and fake it and all of a sudden they're realizing, oh, I can't just call up that, dial up that play that's always worked, which is really just a fake. It was a fake handoff. It was a fake. Whatever it may be, oh I got to be real and share with them that I actually do care. If I don't care, well that's okay, but I need to care because they care. It's like --- [SABRINA] I mean, look, this is hard stuff because sometimes it's hard for a leader who has been tough and resilient to show a softer side. But at the end of the day, I view it as like you would listen to your customers about an issue that they have. So why wouldn't you listen to your employees. It's not going to hurt anybody? The more you resist it, the more they're going to come at you. That's the thing. It's to every leader's advantage to face reality A, B and engage with their people, with their employee, with the managers of those teams and say, "Hey man, I know this is going on. Talk to me. What's going on here and how can I help? How can this company help? What would be meaningful?" Not just to like put a bandaid on it, but like what would be meaningful? Then also being humble enough to say I didn't know that this was going on and I really want to fix that. It's not just something that you do once and then you're done. This is part of ongoing leadership. This is about, this is how humility becomes authentic, because you follow up on it and you go back to those same people and say, what do you think guys? How are we doing? Do you feel like you've been heard? Tell me. And shame on them if they don't, but that's an ongoing process. It's part of the fabric of how you lead. [TYLER] Well, I think, you mentioned earlier that, talking a little bit about trust. When you aren't building up trust, it's breaking down. And it's even in a situation, as you last left there is like when you're asking for authentic feedback. You're just like, "Hey, how are we doing?" If people don't want to tell you, it's because there's no trust there. So that's a sign that I need to work at this. I need to show even more and I need to be more trusting. I need to be real. I need to not just air my dirty laundry. As one mentor has told me is like, it's a leader's job to tell the truth always but they don't have to tell all the truth. It's understanding what is appropriate, what needs to be shared. That's a level of developing relationships that can be trusting. To me that's forming a circle and not just living in a bubble and just creating that bubble that, okay, it's safe. To me, and what I'd love to note from yourself and so many leaders that you've worked with, what seems to be the barrier there or the barriers where they're stuck in this place of, I hear you Sab, as you call yourself. I appreciate that. We're cool. Is I hear you. I need to stop faking it, but I'm scared. I don't want to tell them the truth. I don't want to tell them what I'm afraid of. I don't want to tell them that we just, we're on tooth and nail to get that next round of funding and I'm not sure if we're going to get it. So I need to go out there and play like we have it all under control so they keep selling product and not get scared, but in X, Y, Z barrier. What do you see are those barriers? [SABRINA] It starts at the beginning, with the tone and the structure that you set. It's our core values. Even when we're facing hard times, it is part of it, like a core value, that when it's on your website. It's when we fall on hard times, we will deal with these situations together. Now in the example that you just gave, I've been in those situations too, where the market's crashing, there's going to be a recession, agencies and other businesses are laying people off, clients are cutting their fees. And people aren't stupid. So they're looking at me, it's like the elephant in the room, like when is Sab going to tell us that we've lost our jobs? So as a leader, you have to look at reality in the face and you have to say, "Look guys, here's, I know you're all thinking this. Here's where we are. The situation is tough. Clients are leaving, we are reconfiguring our budgets and we have a good pipeline, but we're watching it every week. When things change, I will have another conversation with you about how things change. There are other revenue streams that we can deploy, but they may not take off. So are we going to be okay? Absolutely. We're going to get through the other side, but it's my responsibility as a leader of this company to protect the financial health of this business." I've had employees ask me, are we going to have a layoff? I'm thinking about it, like, yes. Well, in my head, I'm like, yes, probably, but I also can't say that because I haven't done it yet. I have to tell all of my staff that when I have a plan. So what do you say in those situations, you say, well, yes, times are tough. I'm considering every option. When I have a plan, I'm going to come back to you with it. I'm sorry I don't have any answers for you today. That's the truth. I mean, that's the truth. So you cannot, you can get close to sort of that reality of how bad things are, but you cannot say, "Everything's fine. The product's shipping. Go out and sell. Let's go have drinks." No. You can't do that because that is blatantly lying and leading people on. [TYLER] But yet, so many have chosen to do that. I mean, obviously you wrote a book because you saw it so much. I think we've seen so much of that in the last two years, with the pandemic, of how many leaders, I look at this from a standpoint of faking it when they said everyone has to be in the office to do the job. It's like, really? Okay, is that because you're covering up your own fears that if people aren't in this office, I can't hold my finger over them and making sure they're doing what I want them to do? To me, that's so much authentic lack of authenticity and lack of trust. I believe this. I've talked to friends about it, is we've seen four different types of companies over the last two years. We've seen companies that have absolutely fallen because their industry was massively affected. We've seen companies that have dramatically taken off because they had new opportunities. Yet those two do not coincide with the companies that have absolutely failed because their leadership have failed their people and the companies that have absolutely, I would say bound together, even tighter because their leadership said, the things that you just said earlier. It's like, "Hey, we don't know what's going to come from us, but we're going to figure this out. We have the resources, we have the people, we see the opportunities. We're going to make the most of this." Those four companies are not connected financially in any way, shape or form. I think a lot of people are looking around and saying, okay, where am I working? Because it's meaningful. [SABRINA] I know. I think about something that I actually talked to my kids about the other day, I have two daughters, one is 24 and the other one's 20 and the last two years have taken a toll on them in a different way. But it's sort of similar to leadership and why certain leaders can't sort of make like gumby and show that empathy and humility. It's because we don't know how to live in limbo. We don't know how to live and run a company with a moving target. One week it's like this, next week it's like that. Oh, no, it's not going to be like that. It's actually going to be like this. Now it's this, but now it's not that and oh, so we're going to open into, no, we're not, we're not, we're not. And that we want benefits. No, no, we don't. There's salary pay. No, no. It's constantly, everything is constantly changing. And that takes a different leadership in my view. It takes being able to have all of these different contingency plans, like arrows in your quiver that are at the ready, no matter what scenario plays out. You're constantly in, I wrote about this in the book, like a war time CEO. You're constantly, every 15 minutes something's coming at you, every 15 minutes, you've got to respond and rejigger your plan. That is exhausting because you're constantly in crisis mode. And if you are not, if you don't think you're in crisis mode, then you're out, because that every good leader knows. Like the last two years, you're constantly having to shift gears. The concept of long term play planning, forget it. Everything is a short term plan and it's hard to run a business with a short term view. So I think that has led to not being able to cope with this environment, not having those leadership skills or the stamina, frankly, the resilience to sort of operate in that mode 24/7. That is what causes people to just, whatever, throw in the towel or not try and change and not show empathy. Because they think they're given up the store and giving up too much control because everything is out of control. Like I get it, I get it. But that is not a recipe for success. Now it's, everything has been changed. So it's going to be like this for a long, long time. The future leaders of the next Fortune 500 are going to have to lead differently. [TYLER] I mean, what I wrote down is the leaders that have the ability to be certain with uncertainty. [SABRINA] Yes. [TYLER] It takes an ability and a skillset to do that, but the ones that do, man, they're able to see figures in the dust and understand that's the way to get through this. I believe that we can learn those skills, but they're such tremendously different skills that aren't just hardwired, oh, this is how you follow a business plan. This is you create a three to five year plan and this is how we go quarter to quarter to quarter, if anything two years of total, that doesn't work. So you've got to be nimble enough in organization. I think the great opportunity for the leader is to express certainty with uncertainty and to see the opportunity there. Invite people into that and to do so with open arms and say, let's go with this together because I know where we're going. I know what we're trying to create. The moment that the leader gets confused there or, to use, I think if they've been faking it and so they're really not sure where they're trying to go, they fall into this angst and this pressure and this tension, because it's like, "Oh, where I thought we were going, we're actually pointed at a completely different direction. How do I rectify those in safe face?" [SABRINA] Yes, exactly. It's preserving reputation. It's ego. I mean, I think in those situations, you have to have a great safety net of mentors. I know you talk a lot about that, like the community, the circle that you build around you, not the bubble, the circle. That circle includes people who have presumably been in your shoes and want you to succeed and who will give it to you straight. These are not people who are on your board or advisors. This is like your personal network. I, through the years had up to six, seven or eight of these people that I would call when an issue that related to their field of expertise came up and I'd be like, "Hey, can I just run something by you?" Or like, "I'm totally screwed right now. Here's this situation. I don't know what to do and I have to have an answer. So can you help me think this through?" That shows humility in a safe circle but it gives you maybe another arrow in your quiver, or even just a sentence that would say to your employees, "This just happened. Here are the facts. We are meeting soon as we get off the phone to figure out what our next steps are. We will get back to you with what our move is going to be tomorrow." Then you have to do it. You cannot say nothing. You can't say no comment. You can't pretend the situation didn't exist. You have to follow through. Then the other thing is, in times of, I call it fear, uncertainty, and doubt the flood factor, you have to over-communicate. So if you say something once, it's like at first the emotion that people are dealing with, they're not really hearing half of what you're saying because they're all just thinking about how is this going to affect me and my family. So you have to find multiple occasions to repeat what you're saying even if the status is the same. I liken it to when your flight is delayed and you're sitting at the gate and there's nobody behind the counter and there no airplane, but all they say every half hour while you're waiting is it's going to be another half hour. It's like, could you just tell me what's wrong with the plane? Like, where is the plane? So even if the status is the same, you have to repeat often and frequently, because that gives people comfort. [TYLER] As you share that story, and I've been there. I was there actually, I don't know, within the last month, the plane. You just kind of like, "Hey don't be afraid." To me, it's kind of like, well, we don't want to ever have to send bad news. So we'll just keep the news from being anything, you know, it's pretty vanilla. It's like, oh, well, we don't know when the plane's going to be here. It'll be another 30 minutes. They know full all along it's going to be two and a half hours, but they don't want to tell people two and a half hours because it really ends up being in an hour because they got things. Then they have to go back on it. I think you mentioned this earlier, where we're at today in information and communication in this absolutely intertwined web of connections, people already know. So you might as well tell the truth because people already know and that's the only way for you to build and maintain trust and understand, hey, what I know today is this. Now tomorrow may be different. If I come to you tomorrow, hey, what I've learned in the last 24 hours now, all of a sudden this story is this. Being willing to have that conversation, as opposed to just putting blankets, slap, properly curated PR statements, people are over it, I think. [SABRINA] Oh, people are so over it. Look, listen, the truth will set you free, as somebody said. I should know who said that. But if you want to be an effective leader at any time, but especially now, you have to be honest. You cannot keep faking it. It will not serve you well. Your employees either already know, or they'll be suspicious because they sense that you're faking it. If you don't know, you can say you don't know. You can invite people to form a group with you to help you figure it out. How wonderful would that be to help solve a problem at a leadership level. So I think you just have to get over yourself and fake it till you make. It does not work. It does not work because the truth always come out and when it does, you'll be exposed and sabotage your success and ruin your reputation, your credibility. So like, sometimes people say so what should I do? What is something I can do like right now? It like, so what I say is, think about the last time you faked it. Is it this morning, yesterday? But why did you fake it? Was it a little white lie? Was it a big lie? Why did you fake it? Were you under pressure? Were you afraid? Did you not have the information? Like you felt you had to have all the answers? Then what happened? Were you exposed? Did somebody call you on it or did you have to tell another lie? How did you feel about that? Were you ashamed? Did you have anxiety about it because that can happen a lot? So then if you could have a do-over, what would you do differently? Imagine, like, what does success look like? This is how you want it to end up ideally? What's another version of that? What's a couple versions of what success could look like? And then work your way back to where you are today and take the chance to be honest and I promise you will serve you well. [TYLER] Well, as you were starting that off and such a great way to kind of process and conceptualize that, I think one of the times that I can remember personally moving from the faking it to making it is being willing to say, I don't know the answer. I'll go find it for you. I'll work hard at finding, I'll bring in the people. I'll find the people. I don't know the answer. And I think as I learned the moment we did that, as you just described, because what are the other alternatives? The moment we say that people are like, okay, they're in this with me as opposed to two opposing forces. They're like, well, now we're in it together. [SABRINA] It's kind of the, here's a thing. Lots of people who are in leadership positions feel that they have to have all the answers. This comes into having humility again. Like you actually, I was like this when I was 29, 30 years old. Never been a leader of really anything. People would ask me questions, clients, employees, and I would feel like I have to have all the answers. But actually, and then I started to fake it and make some shit up and then my employees would see that and then they would fake it too and make shit up. So then I was like I'm building a company of fakers. This is not good. So what I realized was you don't have to have all the answers. To your point, you can just say, "That's a great question. I don't know the answer, but I'm going to figure that out and I'm going to get back to you tomorrow," and then you better get back to them tomorrow. Or, "I don't know the answer to that. Can you tell me more about the situation? Share with me more about where this is coming from," so that you invite them in to helping you solve the problem. [TYLER] Yes. I love it. Sabrina, thank you so much for your time. Your authenticity spills out and I appreciate that and I very much enjoyed the time and I know our audience will as well. Thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, Make It, Don't Fake It. For anyone listening, please go to sabrinahorn.com, yes? And check out everything Sabrina has. Again, thank you for your time. [SABRINA] Oh, thank you, Tyler. It was really great talking with you. I really enjoyed it. I think you have a great show and the way with which you talk and relate to people is awesome. [TYLER] Thank you. Appreciate it. I mentioned this in the intro and I was truly just thankful Sabrina and I went and talked for another 10, 15 minutes just about life and about this idea of why we're doing what we're doing. I very much appreciate through her strategy, through her book that her desire is to serve corporate executives and help them become more authentic leaders themselves. I believe that is a challenge that is in front of us. I believe the great opportunity that I have stepping into this place is to help leaders really grow into that place of authenticity and true vulnerability and displaying real empathy. I believe that's the solution. I believe that's the way to be better leaders. And I invite you to continue to listen with us with great conversations like with Sabrina, but as well, join the Impact Driven Leader community. We have a book club, we have a round table, getting ready for a new group to join here in the second quarter. We're already six week or so through the year of 2022. There's no lack of opportunity to grow in our society and we are needing it more and more. Thank you guys for listening. I hope that you got tremendous value and appreciate all the kindness that you guys share when you share these up episodes for amazing people like Sabrina that is really doing great work in the world. So thanks again for listening in. If you could share this with somebody, rating, a review, wherever you listen and subscribe, appreciate it. Love more people to hear these conversations because they deserve to hear people like Sabrina. So have a great day. I'll see you next time.