Maggie Craddock is an executive coach who has worked with clients at all levels on the professional spectrum – from people entering the workforce to Fortune 500 CEOs. She has been featured on CNBC, National Public Radio and quoted in national publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
Maggie is the author of Lifeboat: Navigating Unexpected Career Change and Disruption – released on August 4th, 2020. Her previous publications are Power Genes: Understanding Your Power Persona and How to Wield it at Work (Harvard Business Review Press: June, 2011) and The Authentic Career: Following the Path of Self-Discovery to Professional Fulfillment (New World Library, 2004).
She has written several nationally syndicated articles on behavioral dynamics in the workplace, and her work has been discussed in publications ranging from Harvard Business Review to O, The Oprah Magazine.
Before building her executive coaching business, Maggie worked for over a decade as a portfolio manager and received two Lipper Awards for top mutual fund performance.
Maggie received a M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, an MSW from NYU and a BA in Economics from Smith College. She is an Ackerman certified family therapist.
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Before discussing your latest book, Lifeboat, a few general questions. First, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) years ago that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.
In 1993, when I found myself standing on the balcony at a spectacular resort in Laguna Beach during an investment conference, I should have been on top of the world!
Our team had just won a Lipper Award for the best-performing short-term global bond fund in the nation. I’d been profiled on CNBC, was being quoted regularly in the national media and I’d even received an invitation from Michael Lipper who wanted to congratulate me on our fund’s success.
While I was both humbled and grateful for the success my team and I were enjoying, as I watched the waves lap against the retaining wall underneath my balcony, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was missing.
In that moment of sacred silence, I found myself struck by the realization that one of the strengths I’d routinely drawn on to advance in my career involved being able to be who other people wanted me to be. You could send me to a board meeting, and I could morph into who they wanted me to be. You could put me on the phone with an anxious client, and I’d become who they needed me to be.
This realization left me with some important questions. Where was I in all of this? Was this really the highest and best use of my talent and energy?
I was experiencing a wake-up call from my authentic self.
Many of us have special moments when the conversations we have with ourselves can literally change the course of our lives. This was one of mine. That moment in Laguna Beach was when I realized that my passion had shifted from helping people create lucrative investment portfolios to helping them create profitable lives.
Here are a few of my favorite quotations to which I ask you to respond. First, from Lao-tse’s Tao Te Ching:
“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”
Mark, the investor that gave me my first big break professionally, had a leadership style that exemplified this quote.
When he hired me in the 1990s, he was running the global bond and currency department at Scudder, Stevens and Clark. Mark’s flagship fund was frequently at the top of the Wall Street Journal rankings in those days. That said, whenever journalists asked him how “he” did it, Mark always cited individual members of the team – from the traders, to the research analysts to the other PMs he mentored – like me. When we talked among ourselves, we’d often marvel at how Mark managed to make each and every one of us feel like we were centrally responsible for the group’s success.
One of my favorite memories of Mark’s leadership involved the way he reacted to me in front of the rest of the team during my first couple of weeks on the job. The fund I had been hired to run had been consistently outperforming its top competitors, and it was a particularly volatile morning in the European currency markets. One wrong call could instantly wipe out our gains!
Intending to show respect for authority, I walked up to Mark on the trading floor to share my thoughts with him about how we should approach our trades that morning. When I asked his opinion about my strategy, he turned to me with dramatic flair and boomed out in his trademark British accent, “I’m sure I don’t know…after all, you’re the portfolio manager!” With that, he swept into his office to leave me alone with the traders.
In one succinct moment, Mark managed to demonstrate his personal confidence in me, convey that confidence to the rest of the team, and empower us to figure out how we could best work together under pressure.
Our fund went on to win two Lipper Awards for top performance nationwide. Mark’s leadership style of giving everyone on our team the personal authority we needed to trust ourselves under pressure didn’t just motivate us – it inspired us.
From Alvin Toffler: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Future Shock by Alvin Toffler was a book I was encouraged to read by a group called the “Gifted Students’ Institute” when I was in high school. This special book remains on a shelf in my home where I have a collection of other authors that have also had the most formative influence on my thinking over the years.
In retrospect, the key insight I took from Toffler’s work was that human beings must always strive to evolve in such a way that their emotional, moral and spiritual development keeps pace with the technological and intellectual advances they are capable of achieving. If this gets out of balance, our ability to thrive at a human level may be compromised.
A foundational assumption that has informed both my writing and my coaching is that the ways we are conditioned emotionally and behaviorally to “fit in” and survive in our early family systems can significantly influence our unconscious reactions under pressure for the rest of our lives. We evolve by becoming conscious of these emotional and behavioral triggers. Pausing empowers us to check-in with ourselves at a human level, evaluate whether our impulses in the moment are constructive, and respond with agility when we face the unknown. Thus, the “strategic pause” that I refer to frequently in my work draws from the theme of learning, unlearning, and relearning that Toffler encourages.
From H.L. Mencken “To every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”
This is a wonderful quote, and it reminds me of a point I’ve tried to stress with business audiences for over twenty years. The idea that we can think our way out of our challenges when we are facing the unknown is seductive. Relying on ideas and logic alone is seductive because it gives us the illusion of control. Unfortunately, this illusion that ideas alone will carry the day often overly simplifies thorny issues in a way that can undermine our progress and take us off course.
If thinking were all it took to navigate uncharted waters successfully, we’d never see brilliant people make tragic mistakes.
My contention with gifted executives is that my job isn’t to get them to listen to my ideas, it’s to remove the inner blocks that keep them from tuning into their own inner knowledge under pressure. Essentially, this is about retraining people to re-align their own thoughts, feelings, and intentions in the present moment so that they are better able to make wise decisions under pressure – and course correct with agility when warranted.
From Maya Angelou: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
I actually had the honor of meeting Maya Angelou at a fundraiser before she passed, and this woman was a force of nature! Her writing is a reflection of a state of being infused that reflects her lifelong passion for emotional honesty.
One thing I stress in The Lifeboat Process that’s particularly vital when we are working remotely is the importance of considering how others feel about themselves after they have been in contact with you. Do they feel validated and appreciated? Do they feel anxious and drained? Or do they feel empowered?
Whether you are trying to survive in a lifeboat in the Atlantic Ocean or within the ranks of corporate America, making the shift from a transactional approach to human relationships to learning how to establish genuine rapport with others is critical to success.
From Thomas Edison: “Vision without execution is hallucination.”
My work on clarifying what makes up the “inner iceberg” that haunts high performers under pressure is focused on liberating feelings that keep people trapped in delusions that paralyze them. Often, people create a narrative for themselves that justifies finger pointing, dysfunctional behavior, or just plain giving up under pressure.
My interpretation of Edison’s wonderful quote is that true vision stems from the courageous alignment of our thoughts, feelings, and genuine intentions under pressure. This type of vision doesn’t get capsized by our personal insecurities. Vision that is grounded in this inner alignment leads to practical and positive action in the present moment. Although our approach to execution may start cautiously, if we keep taking sequential actions that move us in a positive direction, we will be in the flow of constructive change.
From Theodore Roosevelt: “People won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Leaders like Roosevelt who understand the power of caring realize that there are moments in the lives of every human being that carry a sense of meaning that transcends their generation.
The bond created when we express caring for someone who has lost a loved one, is concerned about the well-being of their child, or is striving to make the final days of a parent as comfortable as possible unite us at a human level. This bond of caring that stems from our shared humanity moves us more deeply, more powerfully and more fully than ideas alone can accomplish. This bond is a source of inspiration we can all tap into that can illuminate our thoughts, integrate diverse perspectives, and align our actions with our highest values.
In your opinion, what are the defining characteristics of a workplace culture within which personal growth and professional development are most likely to thrive?
Those characteristics include:
o A work environment where employees are incented to listen to others, and to themselves, with patience and kindness. We cannot be empathetic towards others until we have learned to be objective about the moments when we have been emotionally triggered or impulsive and learned to put these reactions into their proper perspective.
o Stated values and professional actions are consistently aligned – particularly when it’s inconvenient or expensive.
o Employees at all levels of seniority are encouraged to notice problems, question rules and make constructive suggestions.
o The “informal norms” that are modeled by the leadership team and characterize rising stars include va;lues such as validating others, sharing credit and reacting respectfully and supportively toward colleagues under pressure.
o The culture isn’t based on “looking good” in the short term. The motivating cultural mindset stems from a shared commitment to “doing good” on behalf of the organization’s clients, stakeholders and internal workforce.
Looking ahead (let’s say) 3-5 years, what do you think will be the greatest challenge that CEOs will face? Any advice?
I often remind my clients, “You can have a good career if you’re smart. You will only have a great career if you’re brave.” The reason I say this is that, for any human being, learning to accept the full range of human emotions we are capable of experiencing under pressure, without suppressing or whitewashing them, takes courage.
As I look ahead at the challenges CEOs will be facing in 3-5 years, it’s pretty clear that it’s going to be tough to separate what we are responsible for accomplishing professionally from how we navigate life personally.
Because of the pervasive nature of social media, the boundaries between our personal challenges and our professional roles is already somewhat blurred. Doing the inner work necessary to clarify our self-care needs at a human level, set the personal boundaries necessary to be able to sustain peak performance and embodying the agility necessary to motivate a diverse workforce will require more than impression management. It will require the willingness to question assumptions, transcend biases and model norms that consistently reinforce the alignment of actions and values.
This type of authentic leadership requires inner work. It requires the ability to pause under pressure and realize that often the most important conversations are the ones we have with ourselves. It requires feedback from people who won’t try to sway our policies as much as they will be a sounding board for whether or not we are operating authentically. Most vitally, it requires the realization that our legacy isn’t about us as an individual – it’s about the value we bring to the lives of others.
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Maggie cordially invites you to check out her website by clicking here:
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