New Book by Alisa Cohn & LinkedIn Live This Wednesday
I am so excited for my dear friend and Thinkers50 Top Startup Coach, Alisa Cohn and the launch of her latest book, "From Start-Up to Grown-Up: Grow Your Leadership to Grow Your Business".
We will also be going live this Wednesday, October 27th to announce the launch and I hope that you will all be able to join us. I'm really looking forward to our discussion!
Order your copy today: AlisaCohn.com/start-up
Last week I sat down with Alisa to chat more about her book...
Marshall Goldsmith: I loved your book! Why did you write it?
Alisa Cohn: Thank you so much Marshall! I wrote this book because I regularly walk into my CEOs’ environments and see plenty of unforced errors. They don’t have a leadership team; they don’t have a system for delegating; they’re not thinking about culture; they’ve made some bad hires. And I would always think “I wish there were a book to hand them.” There wasn’t. So I wrote it.
MG: How do start-up founders need to change when they grow up?
AC: They need to adapt rapidly, and they don’t always know that when they start. As their company grows from a group of friends to a few hundred to several thousand employees, they have to dramatically change their communication style, the way they lead, the kinds of decisions they make and don’t make – everything. The job of the CEO is incredibly different at every stage, and they have to learn it on the job.
MG: You divided your book into 3 sections: Managing you, managing them, managing the business. I really like that. How did you come up with that?
AC: I noticed that when I worked with a CEO we would move naturally from those topics. One CEO came to me because her company was not growing its customers acquisition numbers fast enough, so we look at the structure of the business. Then we peeled that back and realized that the leader of the team was not meeting his goals. Then the question became why the CEO had been so reticent to have the direct conversation with this leader that was necessary. In the span of 10 minutes we covered all of these topics, and when I coach clients we work along these 3 dimensions.
MG: there’s a lot of confusion about the role of the CEO. What’s your take?
AC: A lot of people think the CEO is supposed to be all-knowing, the smartest person in the room. That’s counterproductive. A CEO needs to set the vision with the other key people. The CEO needs to create the conditions for the employees to do their best work; know when to zoom out to see the big picture and zoom in to deal with details. And, of course, a start-up CEO needs to make sure the company doesn’t run out of money.
MG: In your book you talk about the need for self-awareness. That sounds good, but what are the practical reasons that’s so important?
AC: Self-awareness is not a “nice to have.” Without the self-awareness of your triggers and your blindspots you’ll be susceptible to making the same mistakes over and over again. One of the start-up CEOs I work with has a tendency to fall in love with a certain kind of candidate for her executive hires. After those candidates he loved didn’t work out 4 times, he realized he had a blindspot, and now he makes sure that 3 other people weigh in on new candidates so he doesn’t repeat his mistakes. That’s a tangible example of how important self-awareness is.
MG: I love your scripts for delicate conversations in the appendix. Everyone should buy the book just for the scripts! Why did you write the scripts and what are some your clients use most often?
AC: Thank you Marshall! I noticed that when the CEOs and other leaders I work with deal with difficult people problems, we get to the point of clarifying the conversation they need to have with their employees or their board or whoever. But then they don’t know what to say, so I just start brainstorming what I would say. They take notes furiously and they ask me to repeat what I said. So I realized these were valuable to people and I wanted to share them in my book.
You can download other helpful scripts that aren’t in the book - “5 scripts for delicate conversations and to make your life better” at https://www.alisacohn.com/scripts/
MG: In your book you mention that we are all startups. What do you mean by that?
AC: We are all the authors of our own lives and responsible for setting and executing our own vision. Each of us has to manage ourselves, mange the people around us and manage our own version of our household business. So we can all usefully benefit from the lessons of a startup founder to make our own lives more satisfying.
MG: I love it! Thank you for talking to me today!
AC: Thank you so much Marshall!
Alisa’s book From Start-up to Grown-up is available now and the principles are great for founders, all leaders, and coaches as well. I recommend it! You can also go to Alisa’s website and download her “5 Scripts for Delicate Conversations" at https://www.alisacohn.com/start-up/
Click "attend" to be notified when we go live: https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6857406613930741760/
From Start-up to Grown-up gives a roadmap for the personal and professional journey all founders and leaders must undertake as they grow as a leader. It’s divided into 3 sections: Managing you, managing them and managing the business. Filled with stories from Alisa's experiences in over 2 decades of coaching, each of these explores the most common misconceptions of what growing into a leader is like, and then offer proven tools to overcome the all-too-human mental challenges and knowledge gaps that hold leaders back from success. In the appendix there are specific scripts for delicate situations, including how to hold great 1-1s, how to give difficult feedback, what to say when you're layering someone, what to say when you're hiring a friend, what to say when you have to fire someone.