Developing Leadership Skills: Insights from Nate Hurd on Cultivating Effective Leadership
Alexander McCobin:
Thank you for joining us today for this great webinar on developing your leadership skills for anyone who doesn't know me. My name is Alexander McCobin and I'm the founder and CEO of Liberty Ventures. Where we're building the ecosystem of purpose driven business leaders, investors, executives and entrepreneurs who are committed to a free and prosperous future. To help you scale your businesses and so scale your impact. And while on a lot of these webinars, we talk about what's going on in particular industries or investment opportunities. Or or opportunities in the future.
Alexander McCobin:
One of the things that is also terribly important for building incredible companies is to make sure that we're building ourselves and our own leadership skills, and I am just absolutely thrilled that one of the members of the Liberty Ventures network, Nate Hurd, is willing to share some powerful insights for everyone here on how to do so. Today, Nate has an extensive background in leadership. Previously at the Oxford Club, where he went from being director of trading Services to Chief Growth Officer before he left, but is actually now an executive coach himself and I'm very pleased to say my executive coach actually, who's been providing a tremendous help to me. With my leadership skills and thinking about how to grow liberty ventures over the past year and Nate, I just know you bring such a heart based approach to leadership that also focuses on delivering results. That I really appreciate you taking the time to share your wisdom with the Liberty Ventures community and answer questions at the end of this. So for anyone who does have questions as nates give, giving his presentation type them into the Q&A, we'll get to as many of them as possible when we get to when he finishes his presentation. But Nate, thank you so much for being who you are, everything you're doing. And for joining us today.
Nate Hurd:
Thank you, Alexander. Travel safe. Well, it's so nice to see all of you. I am very happy to be here and I appreciate you all joining. And I guess the first thing that I was thinking about coming into this is that you know the world is awash in leader information and books on leadership. And I've read many of them and perhaps you have too. And many of the. You know encouragements that we receive from books are really powerful and useful, be more decisive, be more inclusive, be more visionary. Provide vision and direction. Be adaptable. These sorts of these sorts of concepts, and they're all really useful. But what I'm going to share with you today is. A little bit deeper than that. It goes under the surface of many of the things that you'll read in books and the the ideas that I'm going to share have come from two places. One, as Alexander said, I spent about 20 years helping to grow a amazing global company and served in various leadership roles. And my. And there and learned a tremendous amount. And the other part is now what I do now, which is to work almost exclusively with founders and leaders of companies. And so now I have the perspective in addition to the experience that you know, I my my lessons of of my own, of seeing the world through their eyes. And watching and observing, what are the challenges that they face and what are the challenges that the people around them perceive? And so some of what I'll share with you today is foundational to everything else that you may learn in here. And so with that, let me jump into a few ideas to get started. And I think the first thing I want to share with you is that I want to offer you a metaphor. In this life. You are a beacon. And you are a beacon whether you choose to be. Or. Not human beings are fascinating creatures, and we're not unique in this way, but we're always looking around and observing one another, and we see in each other warnings and examples. We look around and say this is something that I want to strive to be more like or this is something that I admire and this is something that is something I'd want to avoid and. As leaders, we are beacons. As humans, we are beacons. But as leaders we have the opportunity to become real true beacons for the people that we touch and as a beacon you have control over the kind of example that you set, who you become ultimately becomes your legacy. And so if we look at ourselves first. You know, a lot of the things that may come to mind when we think of leadership are how what are the implications for other people? How do we lead other people? How do we manage? How do we delegate? But I'm going to suggest to you that the 1st and primary place that you can start is with yourself. OK, sorry about that. So as I was saying, my invitation is for you to allow yourself to be fully present here for the next 20 minutes. And so if you like, I do have, you know your phone nearby or windows open. I would just ask you to allow yourself to be present here and maybe pull out something to write with.
Alexander McCobin:
How?
Nate Hurd:
The first thing that is really important to consider, and that I will offer to you is there are elements of the things and habits that you have and do that you know, contribute to your greatest success. So one of the most important things that you can do to engender stronger and more consistent leadership. Is to develop your own success formula. Your success formula is what I call it, but it's basically a list of the habit. And behaviors that you know lead to more optimal performance. So if I were to ask you and I can't see any of you, but I'm just going to ask this question and ask you to consider it and perhaps write a few things down. What are some of the habits that, you know, lead to you feeling good and showing up fully? For your team and with the people around you. What are the things that you do with your diet? With your sleep. With exercise. What are the habits that you instill that you know if you do them consistently, you show up more powerfully and more different. And so here's my invitation to you. If you have a piece of paper, just start jotting a few of those down. Because for most of us. These underlying habits lead to the foundation for how we approach any given day. And my encouragement. To you is. If you can begin to keep a list. Of your success formula, your personal success formula, the habits and the behaviors that you know lead to greater success, greater energy. Then this becomes the basis for everything else you do. And as you make a. List. Consider the things that again you do with your body. Include. And sleep, diet, exercise, water. So my encouragement to you is to make a list of the habits that are most useful to you, and then track them. If if you take the time to track the behaviors and habits that contribute to your highest level of energy, then you're you'll notice the dips and changes, and you can keep yourself consistent. So for example. I know that if I run a few times a week that if I do yoga once or twice a week that if I eat clean. Clean. Cleanly, but if I drink a fair amount of water 100 oz a day. I have a different life. Then if I don't, and oftentimes when we're busy and when we're stressed and when we're focused on the issues that are involved in our business, we forget these things. So that's the one. That's the first one, know your own success formula. The second one is. And the most maybe one of the most important parts of this success formula is. Every day tend to your mind. Our minds are can be our greatest assets and then be they can be our greatest enemies and tending to your mind each day will create the space and freedom. To lead your team effectively, to make decisions without fear. And to show up fully. I'm going to give you a few specific. Invitations. And these three tools, if you were to build these into a journaling practice, which is what I do with many of the folks that I coach. You will. Your life will change if you just if you did nothing else and just did these three things. Your life. Will. Change and so this is what I would call a daily practice.
Nate Hurd:
And it's to clear your mind so that everything else flows more easily. Without this, your mind will do what it is designed to do, which is look out for things to protect you from. And sometimes that can be helpful. But most of the time it can be a challenge. So here are the three things for the the daily practice. The first thing is gratitude. Gratitude is something I'm sure you've heard, but there's a reason for that. Gratitude is like a salve for the mind. It primes us to connect with what's working in our lives. And many times when I meet people, they don't. They're they. They have a hard time doing this at first. If they're not in practice because it's just not something that they tend to focus on naturally. But if you begin to practice gratitude each day, just write a few things down. You can be grateful for your mind will look for and observe more of what's right. And as a leader, that can be very powerful fuel. The second thing is forgiveness. You know, when we hold on to things, things that we did, things that others did, those little subtle things can build into large resentments or frustrations or fears. But by practicing forgiveness every day, we alleviate a lot of those small things. And before we allow them to grow larger. So if you practice forgiveness every day. And as I'm saying this, my invitation is, you know, we we have a short time here. So I'm gonna move quickly, but think of is there anything right. Now. That you would want to forgive yourself for today. Or yesterday. Or is there anyone else close to you? That there's a little something that you might want to let go of and forgive them too. My encouragement is that you practice forgiveness every day. By doing this, your life will transform because the little things will never accumulate into large things. And the the last one is fears. Our fears are it's again part of our natural tendency is to look for what's wrong and to look for what to protect ourselves from. And that's fine. That's there's there's an there are times where that's really useful, but most of the time it's unproductive and so. Each day my encouragement is to take and the whole this whole thing takes 10 minutes, but take a few minutes and just write down any fears or anxieties, things that are worrying you. And as you do this. I would encourage you to consider that. You don't need to reattach to them. You don't need to feel them more or more deeply. But you can just look at them like gifts. Because these fears, these anxieties, the things that worry you are teachers. And if you begin to jot them down every. Day. And you begin to understand the patterns. Your your relationship to your fears will be much healthier. And therefore your leadership skill, your ability to lead others will be greatly enhanced. OK, so this is a daily practice, gratitude, forgiveness and fears and anxieties, and in particularly with the fears and anxieties. Just let them go. Let them go and let them go quickly. Another thing that I'll offer to you is as a leader in any company. You are on stage 24/7. Whether you want to be or not. Everything you do is observed and is really taken in more deeply than sometimes we realize. So ask yourself. If I'm on stage 24/7, if every e-mail I send, if every call that I have, if every engagement that I'm involved in. I'm being observed by the people around me in a very deep way. What example am I setting? Remember, I started by saying you are a beacon. I believe that entirely and you as a leader can be a powerful beacon. And everything you do is observed. So your credibility with the people around you is really won or lost through their observations of you in large part. And so just know and own that you're on stage all the time. And so you have a choice in every moment of how you want to show up for the people around you, and what example you want to set. There's another part of this too, which is embracing all of who you are. The the greatest strength and power. Of any leader comes from their ability to own and even love, not just their strengths. But their frailties. Their weaknesses. You know our frailties, our teachers. If you think about the times where he would felt inadequate at something or not good at something, they oftentimes lead you towards the things that you are good at. And the more we lean into those things, that's actually what become our strengths. In addition to that, our frailties are valuable information that can help us surround ourselves with the right people. And balance out those frailties. But the the first step in doing that and oftentimes leaders don't fully acknowledge this, they will kind of push away their weaknesses and focus more and emphasize more on their. Strengths. But embracing all of who you are. There's a there's a man named Tony Schwartz who is the founder of a company called the Energy Project, and he has a great quote about this. When you embrace all of who you are, there's nothing left to defend. And so I think if the more fully we can embrace our strengths and our weaknesses, our capacity for leading people and allowing them to do the same is greatly enhanced. So let's just take a quick second. And my invitation to you is just to consider what are some of your strengths and what are some of your weaknesses. What are some of your strengths and what are some of your weaknesses that can help you to learn more about yourself? And make sure that you're surrounding yourself with a team that balances out. But don't be afraid of them. It's it's, it's fantastic as a leader when you can own fully the things that you're not great at. And the greatest leaders do that. I also would encourage. Any leader? I think a major part of great leadership is to solicit the feedback of people around you. So This is why owning all of who we are, our strengths and our weaknesses is so important. Because if we do that, then we can ask for feedback about the things that we're doing well and the things that we could do better. And when you do that with a team. You are make allowing creating an allowance for them to do the same. That builds trust and camaraderie, and it helps people to not, you know, hide mistakes ultimately. So by embracing all of who you are, and by then soliciting feedback, you know when you're open about your weaknesses, then people aren't afraid to share their feedback with you. That can help you to grow and set an example for them to do the same. The next one I'll share is. Grounding yourself in purpose every day. So. In business, very quickly we can become immersed in the challenges, right business, if nothing else is a great set of obstacles and challenges. If we're doing it. Right. Problems are a sign of. Growth. So problems problems are great, but sometimes that can take us away from our underlying purpose. And leading from purpose, I think Alexander's actually such a great example of this. Leaning into values and purpose and making decisions from that place can allow for really powerful transformation. So how do we stay connected to purpose? Well, part of staying connected to purpose is set. Setting. Purpose driven intentions each day. So a lot for a lot of leaders when they wake up, they look at their calendar for the week and they see the meetings they have or the challenges that have come in and we become very good at solving problems. But it's it's important to consider that your connection to your purpose and your ability to lead and solve problems from that place. Is partly driven by how intentional you allow. Yourself to be. So. To stay connected with your purpose, one of the best things you can do is at the beginning of each day and at the beginning of each week is to set intentions about specific things that you commit to accomplishing that are directly tied. To the original purpose that got you into the business in the first place. Think about how powerful intentions can be. If you go into a meeting or an engagement or a conversation. And you say to yourself. I decide I intend to show up a certain way or to make the other person feel a certain way. How powerful is that? Versus just kind of walking in and seeing what happens and reacting. So to stay connected to purpose, start by setting purpose driven intentions. And I would do that. I would encourage you to do that every day. Foundational to all human relationships. Is trust. Trust is the one of the most important things about high functioning teams. And. Trust is nuanced, and oftentimes we think of trust as either I trust you. I don't, but trust is actually more complicated than that. And trust and the reason trust breaks down in teams is something that you as a leader can have great impact on. And I'll share with you a few ways that this. Works. So first of all, every time if you run a company and you're watching this, you have incredible psychological size. You may feel you may try to seem and try to make people feel comfortable around. You. But no matter how hard you try, if you run the company or you are their manager and they report into you, you have enormous psychological size and so just know that just know that that's always going to be true. And respect it, respect it and appreciate it because the people that are listening to you and learning from you and looking up to you, they will be greatly affected by the things you say and don't say. And one of the things you can do and learn to do, which is why I don't have any slides here in this presentation. And is learned to be fully present in the moment. You know, it's so easy now to be trying to multitask simultaneously and doing many things, but as far as trust goes, trust one of the greatest things you can do to engender trust is to be fully present and fully engaged with the person you're connected with or with your company. If you're speaking to your whole company. To remove all distractions and model for them being fully present. And then there are types of trust, and I'm going to give you a framework to think about trust. And again, this is a framework that I've learned over many years, but it's incredibly powerful because there are sometimes misunderstandings with trust that are unnecessary. So there are really three types of trust. The 1st is functional. Skills or functional ability? Can I trust that you have the skills and the capability to do what we're in relationship to do to do the job? If if it's a work? The second type of trust is integrity. Can I trust that you will do what I know you can do and show up consistently? And then the third type is benevolence. Do I believe that you want? The best for me. Genuinely and thoroughly. So the reason it's important to know the difference and to teach your teams the difference is because sometimes we'll have a meeting about a project and that project will leave the meeting without being crystal clear about what the expectations are for each of us. And we may reconnect later and. Our expectations were totally different. And when this happens, I see this all the time in business. People can misinterpret that as not just being a miscommunication, which is what it was, but can misinterpret it as you don't care or I'm not important enough. And it's not true. So you can teach your teams that there are different types of trust and that ultimately the most important kind of trust is benevolence. As a leader, if you model benevolence for your team. It's the. It's the thing you have the most control over, and it's the thing that will be the foundation for all other types of trust, trust and integrity and trust and skills. Oftentimes that's observed over time, but benevolence is something you can start with. And here's the other reason why it's so important. You have total control over benevolence, but also it can help you and guide you as you manage your team because it is possible. To love the people you work with, even if they don't workout. If you set a foundation in your culture of benevolence, and really this is true of your whole life, the people that you love, the people that you live with, but benevolence in your company. And you operate from that place. Then even if something doesn't work out with a team member, and I know this because I have seen this happen many times. I've had people call me years later after I've let them go and thank me. Which is how this went from an intellectual idea to a knowing. And then I see this with clients on a regular basis, but you can hold and really genuinely wish the best for someone that you work with, the people that. You. Work with even if it doesn't work out. Then the best thing might be that you free them from a job that isn't a good fit for them. And genuinely help them to find something that's a better fit. And so. It's important to remember I, and I hope you to offer you to remember that love and benevolence this, like, really wanting the best for someone is the best foundation for trust in a company. It's the best foundation and for trust in relationships, and it can carry all the way through even if things don't work out. And the last thing that I'll share is just to let entrepreneurship be fun. Entrepreneurship can be very challenging and difficult, and it's by its very nature. I mean, I'm now a founder and an entrepreneur and I work with founders all the time and I see how stressful they can feel. And yes, of course, entrepreneurship is filled with challenges and friction and problems and. Buyer.
Nate Hurd:
But. It can be fun too, and part of the way you allow this entrepreneurial journey to be fun and you allow allow yourself to be a great leader of people through the expansion of a company and all the the natural challenges that emerge is by embracing failure. In the company that I was with for so many years, we had this. We had this mantra which was, yes, we want to fail because we know that we're only going to succeed one out of 10/1 of the 10 things you try on average is a good measure to, you know, for entrepreneurship is going to succeed. There will be so many things that don't. But if we can embrace failure. And even look for failure as a pathway to success. Then our mantra was fail, but fail fast and learn from those. Learn from those mistakes and move forward. If you create a culture where you help people to see that you know failure is acceptable, as long as it's quick and we don't, you know we don't create a big catastrophe and we learn our lessons, then actually, entrepreneurship can be fun because that's the thing that entrepreneurs fear most is for.
Alexander McCobin:
Yeah.
Nate Hurd:
And so many of the entrepreneurs that I meet are often sitting with some element of feeling like a failure at times, because we go through periods where things don't work out. But if you can just open yourself up fully to the fact that failure is a natural and necessary part of our progress as entrepreneurs, then and you teach your team that, then it actually starts to get fun. You can navigate those waves of change with a smile and with an embrace of what is necessary. To create the successes that you hope to accomplish together. So. I I think that I wanted to share with you a few ideas with you, with about leadership and about some of the fundamental aspects of leadership. And here's, I guess, just to wrap it up, I'll just say again that you are a beacon. You will always be a beacon as a leader. You get to decide how brightly you let that beacon shine. And some of the practices that I've talked about here today are ways to start with yourself, to generate a greater sense of self-awareness and self understanding. And use that as a catalyst to invite and empower others to do the same. If you do that and you create that level of trust and transparency with your team. Then you the gifts of leadership are some of the greatest gifts in the world. I will close just real quickly by saying that the greatest gift I've ever received in business, you know, in business specifically, you know, separate from my kids or what have.
Nate Hurd:
Is when I left after 20 years working in this company, we had grown it from, you know, maybe an $80 million company to almost a $2 billion company. And the ride was amazing. And before I left, we had a party and I and I was saying goodbye. And I was sad to leave. But I. But I wanted to leave to go start what I'm doing now and they handed me a book. And it's this book here, and it sits on my desk every day. And this book is filled literally with dozens of letters. Handwritten letters and each of these letters contains reflections and observations and appreciations for the time that we spent together. Most of these people were people that I that I had the opportunity to lead. And they handed me this gift of their reflections over the time we had spent together. And I'll just tell you, when I received it and I was told what it was, I couldn't read it in front of anyone else because I knew I couldn't keep it together. And when I got home, I read it. And it's it's the greatest gift I've ever received. So I just say that to say not to. You at all, but to impress upon you that leadership has. As and can lead to some of the greatest rewards imaginable. And so I know all of you watching. Wouldn't be here unless you care deeply about stepping into your own leadership. And and I hope that this. Has been helpful. So back to you, Alexander.
Alexander McCobin:
Well, Nate out of respect for your time and everyone else is, I'm sorry to say that we don't have time for questions right now, but that was so powerful and I have to say for everyone here. I feel incredibly fortunate to get to work with Nate on a weekly basis, sometimes more than that on these very issues and what I love about getting to work with you, Nate, and why I think executive coaching is so important is that it creates an accountability structure. Because it's one thing to know, the right things to do. It's another to have someone else helping you. Do the follow up on doing them thinking through the challenges that we face as you, as you pointed out, so many of us who are entrepreneurial, go through tough times and are worried about failure and need to be in the right mindset in order to be our best selves and deliver the best. Results and I think what you shared here are some fantastic techniques and tips for everyone to start leaning into. And I also want to say I'm really excited for you to get to share more of this with people at the summit coming up in a couple of weeks in New York where you're going to be able to work with some people on this there and talk about ways to work with them afterwards too. So really, just thank you for. Everything that you're doing helping me and other leaders be our best selves to make, to build impactful organizations, making the world freer and more prosperous.
Nate Hurd:
Thank you, Alexander, and for anyone watching, you're welcome to reach out. If there's anything I can support you with or if there's any questions you have that I can answer. Since we didn't have time for them. I'm sorry, but my e-mail is nate@curtingroup.com and I'm happy to follow up and answer any questions and chat if that's helpful.
Alexander McCobin:
Fantastic. Thank you, Nate. Thank you everyone for joining us on this. On this webinar, look forward to talking with you again soon and hopefully seeing you in New York. Take care of Molly.
Nate Hurd:
Thank you all.