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Six years ago I took a presentation skills class.

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It was a four-day intensive workshop

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in which I was videoed practically constantly,

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and I learned the ABC's of presentations. It was:

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A for authenticity, B for believability and C for clarity.

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Well, when it came time for me to be evaluated on presentations,

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the workshop participants told me

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that when it came to clarity, I was great. Yay.

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When it came to B for believability, I was good

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and when it came to A for authenticity, I sucked.

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They were basically telling me that I sucked at being me.

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(Laughter)

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And initially I thought to myself:

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"How do you know? You don't even know me!"

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And then I watched the same videos that they watched

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and I saw they were right.

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Well, that's a big deal for me, I'm a CEO coach,

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one of the things I do is I help CEOs become better leaders

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and authenticity is a pretty important leadership trait

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and if I'm not showing up as authentic

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I'm not really showing up as very credible doing what I do.

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So, as painful as that experience was,

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it made me realize that

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I wanted to learn a new way of being.

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And it gave me my first step in the process

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which is getting feedback on blindspots.

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Now, believe it or not, when I got this feedback

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that I was showing up as not authentic

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I didn't know. I had not idea, I wasn't conscious of it.

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And then they shone a light on this being I had

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that wasn't working for me

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and my life hasn't been the same since, it was a gift.

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Now, I want to say a word about accepting feedback.

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If someone takes the time and trouble to give you feedback,

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just take it.

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Unfortunately, my experience is that

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people have one of four reactions to feedback

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which I call the four Ds.

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Defensiveness, denial, discounting and drama.

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Okay? (Laughter)

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So, defensiveness looks like:

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"No, you just don't understand, you don't get me."

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Denial looks like:

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"No, you are wrong - and it's about you."

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And discounting sounds like:


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"You know, it's just - it, you know, what's the big deal?"

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And drama well, we all know what drama looks like.

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Well, once I had a taste of feedback

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I realized I wanted more,

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because if I had one way of being that wasn't serving me,

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I probably had more than one.

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So I took this assessment called the EQ profile,

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and one of the things the EQ profile does is

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it looks at your and assesses your positive-negative orientation.

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It's another way of thinking about

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how optimistic or pessimistic you are.

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So, it's a bit like this image.

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Some of your will see two faces,


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some of you will see the candlestick,

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you're all looking at the same image -

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it's just how you see it.

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Well, what I learned when I took this assessment,

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is I see risk where others see opportunity.

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Well, again - that's a problem for me.

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I work with entrepreneurs who eat risk for breakfast.

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(Laughter)

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And if I'm seeing risk where they're seeing opportunity,

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I'm not going to be able to help them very much.

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So, this is how it shows up for me:

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I run CEO round tables,

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and a CEO came to the round table one day

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and he wanted to use the group to explore

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possibilities around a new business.

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He explained the new business,

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he got all kinds of great feedback from the people
in the group.

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They told him:

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"Hey, you just need to get your metrics down,

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use the metrics to create a case study,


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use the case study to get VC money

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and scale this thing and sell it to Facebook.

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And all I could think of was: "Don't quit your day job."

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(Laughter)

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And again, I realized that, that was my pattern.

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That was me doing that thing I do

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which is seeing risk where others saw possibility

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and it didn't make me right.

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It was just my pattern.

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I was seeing this entrepreneur

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fall into this great crevasse versus land on a candlestick.

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And it brought me to the second step

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in learning a new way of being

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which is noticing how we are being in that moment

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when we are acting in that unconscious way.

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I call this engaging my observer self

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or looking over my own shoulder.

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Now, there's a very important reason

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why we tend not to accept feedback

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and why we tend not to notice how we are being.

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And it's because of the erroneous belief that we are right,

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or at least that everyone else is wrong.

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Kathryn Schulz has written a book called "Being Wrong"

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and she's got a great TEDTalk on the same topic

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and what she has found as she has researched people

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who are wrong and think they are right,

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is that they make -- Am I holding the right fingers?

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they make three unfortunate assumptions.

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Unfortunate assumption number one is:


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"Everyone else is just ignorant."

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Assumption number two is:

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"Everyone else is just kind of an idiot, they're stupid."

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And assumption number three is that

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everyone else is just evil, they're trying to hurt me.

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Well, my experience with people who receive feedback

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is that they make those same assumptions

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about the people who give them feedback.

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A professor from University of Chicago, my alma mater,

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did a study on feedback in the workplace,

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and they found that we're actually remarkably poor predictors

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of how people see us, and here is why:

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We experience our life like a movie in which we know

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the history and the feelings and the characters, everything.

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And other people experience us like a snapshot, right,

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a series of snapshots,

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and they make up stories in between, okay?

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Well, this explains two really important things:

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Now, one explains why we are

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such poor predictors of how people see us.

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And it explains why we think we're right, right?

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Because we have all this history,

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but what is happening really is that

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we're behaving in a way today

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that's based on something back here in our past.

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And the way we're behaving today no longer fits,

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and the people around us can see that

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and we cannot.

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And that brings me to the third step

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in finding a new way of being.

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And that is to make a conscious choice in the moment

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to be different.

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We all have ways of being that don't get us what we want,

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whether it's being controlling, or being judgemental,

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or being judging, or being worrying.

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We all have those ways

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and I'm not saying that this is easy to be different,

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to get the feedback, and accept it,

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and to notice, and to make a different choice.

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It's not easy. It's not easy for me to be authentic.

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It's not easy for me to be positive.

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And it's not easy for me to be warm.

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I've also got feedback that I'm not warm.

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(Laughter)

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And, if I can realize that

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in order for me to fulfill my purpose,

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which is to make lots of leaders' lives better,

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then I can turn those things on

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and act in a way that gets me what I want.

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I believe that we all have a purpose in life,

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and that we have ways of getting in our way

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for the full expression of that purpose. Right?

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And if we can just get feedback

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on how we're getting in our own way,

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and we can embrace and accept that feedback

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and then notice how we're being in the moment

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then we can make a conscious choice to be different.

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I invite you to take a look at your life,

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see how you're getting in your own way

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and learn a new way of being

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that gets you more of what you want.

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Thank You.

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(Applause)