The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories: Some leadership odysseys are not straightforward

By Ian Russell

Leadership is not a destination. Leadership is an odyssey.
A voyage of discovery, marked by changes of fortune and circumstances, informed by successes and failures.
Defined by how you behaved and who you have become.
The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories is a unique opportunity to catch a breath, step back, and take a long, hard, reflective look at who you are as a leader and where your odyssey will take you.
Powered by experience, informed by the reality of operating in today's harsh realities, and leveraging the insights gained from many leadership victories and defeats, each essay creates an opportunity for reflection, introspection and personal growth.
The book spans almost every aspect of leadership, including the journey towards that mythical corner office, the agility and flexibility of styles required for sustained success, the art of crisp, concise communication and the need for an internal compass to guide you on your journey.
Ian Russell draws on his 30 years of leadership experience from around the world, using his irreverent, light-hearted but thought-provoking prose to land key leadership messages. Further diverse and powerful leadership insights come from a number of contributing writers on politics, large corporate life, the public sector and entrepreneurial start-ups.
The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories is an investment of your time into your leadership odyssey. This is not an opportunity you can pass by. So pick up a copy, settle down and enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Release date: Aug 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781998958528

Book preview

The

Upside of being Myself

and other leadership stories

Some

leadership

odysseys are not

straightforward

IAN RUSSELL

First published by Tracey McDonald Publishers, 2022

Suite No. 53, Private Bag X903, Bryanston, South Africa, 2021

www.traceymcdonaldpublishers.com

Copyright © Ian Russell, 2022

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-998958-51-1

e-ISBN (ePUB) 978-1-998958-52-8

Text design and typesetting by Patricia Crain, Empressa

Front cover design by Caitlin Truman-Baker, CTB Design

Cover compilation by Tomangopawpadilla

Digital conversion by Wouter Reinders

This book is for Laura Jane.

Without whom I would never have discovered the upside of being myself.

Thank you.

CONTENTS

Title page

Imprint page

Dedication

Preface

The Upside of Being Myself

The Past is a Foreign Country

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

I Know Someone You Should Meet ...

   by Laura Thomas

A Good Walk Spoiled

Purpose: Purpose: A Way to Befriend the Elephant Inside

   by Pepe Marais

The Little Red Hen

The Little Red Hen – The Remake

Purpose. Passion. Persistence.

   by Luvuyo Rani

The First 100 Days

Leading Transformation Change

   by Bart Peterson

The Art of Giving the SFW

The Upside of Being Myself: The Actual SFW

Contributor Profiles

About Christel House

Stay in Touch with Ian Russell

PREFACE

Powered by experience and fuelled by passion, this collection of essays talks to the heart of what it means to be a business leader and what it takes to get there. The essence of the book focuses on the importance of understanding and knowing yourself as an essential prerequisite for leadership success.

If you are picking this book up hoping for a tightly researched Harvard Business School style set of theoretical essays on leadership, then you will be sadly disappointed.

What you will find in here instead are a series of inspirational voices and insights into the very real world of business leadership, all of which are battle-hardened, no-nonsense viewpoints that need to be read and understood.

Blending large, global corporate experiences and realities with the challenges that face entrepreneurs in every aspect of setting up and leading emerging business, each bite-sized chapter is designed to make you pause, reflect and do something differently tomorrow.

This is Ian Russell’s second collection of essays, following on from the success of the internationally well received The Other End of the Telescope, and he draws upon over three decades of global experience to provide a series of impactful and meaningful messages for all leaders, in his usual irreverent and hard-hitting style. Ian’s insights are augmented and amplified by four other contributors from a unique set of backgrounds and experiences:

Laura Thomas, the millennial founder of creative agency Salt&Candy, tackles head-on the realities of bootstrapping a business in this frank, unvarnished and absorbing journey of self-discovery which has given her the inner strength to succeed where many others fail.

Pepe Marais, co-founder of the brand and communication group Joe Public, writes movingly about the magnificent power of the unconscious mind and its incredible manifestation power when operating on the instinct of the heart and the gut.

Luvuyo Rani, founder and CEO of perhaps South Africa’s most successful township technology business, Silulo Technology, writes about the criticality of an overarching purpose in overcoming the odds, and the lessons he has learnt from trying to tackle the digital divide.

Bart Peterson, president and CEO of the Christel House International group of schools, tackles the balance between courage, arrogance and belief, as he draws on his experience of being the first Democrat elected in 36 years as Mayor of Indianapolis and pushing through important but unpopular legislation.

Press the pause button, sit down and take the time to reflect on your own leadership journey. Go and discover the Upside of Being Yourself.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

– William Shakespeare, from As You Like It

THE UPSIDE OF BEING MYSELF

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

– E.E. Cummings

I only have another 1 500 weeks to live. If I am lucky. How many weeks do you have left?

Have a think about this for a moment. Wherever you are reading this, just pause for a moment. Ignore the coffee shop hubble and bubble. Shut out the irritating flight attendant irrelevantly asking you to turn off electronic devices. Dial down your Pavlovian response to look at incoming WhatsApp messages.

Just press the pause button. Take a breath. Slow down.

Now. Here’s today’s big thought. You have roughly 4 000 weeks on this earth if you are an ‘average’ human. Given that no-one reading this book would consider themselves to be average, then you may have more, you may have less. That’s just what it is. You are certainly bright enough to do the maths and work out where on that 4 000-week continuum you sit as you read this today.

How much do you feel that you have achieved in your weeks that have already elapsed? Did you invest that time, or simply spend that time?

What are your hopes, fears and aspirations for the remaining weeks that you have left? Do you have a plan, or are you bobbing along on the sea of expectation and trying to avoid the chasm of despair?

This isn’t a self-help book. It might sell more copies if it was, but that isn’t something that I can write about or guide anyone on with authenticity. If nothing else, by now you will know that I write from a place rooted in experience, mistakes made and the odd success along the way. Theory has a place, make no mistake, but that is not the vibe here.

This is a book about the complexity of the leadership odyssey. If an odyssey is a long, wandering journey or voyage, usually marked by many changes of fortune and circumstances, then I can think of fewer words that better describe the reality of our varied and collective development as leaders and people in business. Within this book you will find other leaders reflecting on aspects of their own odysseys: there is no homogeneity here. Variety is the spice of our leadership journeys. To learn from such variety requires an unplug. It requires reflection. So, I hope you’ve kept that quiet space going. Try and give yourself another ten minutes, whilst I unpack my ‘four stages of leadership’ in homage to the Bard’s seven ages of man.

Remember the quote from As You Like It at the start of this chapter that you are supposed to have read before you began? I am kind of hoping that Shakespeare would style me thus these days:

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part.

Old enough to have gained some perspective and perhaps a little insight into the world, not so old that I am yet ‘sans everything’. I hope.

But it wasn’t always so.

Mewling and puking

Remember that first ‘proper’ job? That nervous excitement of going into the office (like we all did in the pre-2020 halcyon days) for the first time. The funny smells, the new three-letter acronyms (TLAs as you quickly knew to call them), internecine office politics and weird computer systems that were slower, more complicated and random than the technology that you had at home or at college.

That first day, born mewling and puking into the world of corporate life is a tricky one. You listen, nod appreciatively, pretend to have a clue about what is going on, and finally get home, worried that the whole process repeats again tomorrow.

Just like a learner driver who has passed their test and is now allowed out onto the roads for the first time, these days are all about survival and not crashing.

This is the beginning of your marathon, not the home straight.

So how do we handle this part of the odyssey? Speaking from experience, I simply acted as a sponge for much of the first year or so of my career. I had landed a graduate job in supply chain at Ford Motor Company, buying janitorial supplies (I kid you not). It was literally the baby buyer role – the smallest, least important portfolio that they could give their latest recruit. But it was still an access point to a whole new world, however slim, and I truly listened, learned and absorbed. I was a shy and unconfident 21-year-old. I could be quite diffident in company and did not have the confidence to speak my mind amongst many older and ‘wiser’ people, who had been around for a long time. I was self-aware enough to know this ... but not yet grown-up enough to know what to do about it.

So, I listened. I put my hand up every time someone asked for a volunteer. I got out of the office as much as possible, into the factories and talking to people that actually used my products (yep – I learned a whole lot about urinal blocks, Windolene and tampons that not many 21-year-olds either want to know or should know!). I got out of the office and talked to my suppliers. When I was in the office I talked less, but grew in confidence as I began to realise that I was beginning to know my space, to own my desk and what lay within it, and had begun to create peer-to-peer relationships which were based on face-to-face contact and a very low-key but quiet effectiveness.

In retrospect this first phase was really quite short ... but I grew quickly in my own skin. There is no short cut that I can pass on here. It was about hard work, focus, patience and a lot of humility. I wasn’t reaching for the stars. I wasn’t pushing the envelope hard (not that much you can do with Windolene in any case), but I was learning my trade. I was being effective and as I grew more confident, began to speak up in management meetings when I had something to say.

Several years passed, and the baby buyer portfolio moved to the next new graduate. I started to work on much more complex, global portfolios and the trajectory of my career quickened. But much of what I had started to do, I continued to do. I never shirked a hard yard, took no short cuts and ground out the deals through the detail. Ninety per cent perspiration, 10% inspiration at the very best. I took every opportunity offered to me by the company – whether it was Kaizen training, facilitation skills or Team Oriented Problem Solving in 8 Degrees (TOPS 8D). Trust me – that was a thing. Google it.

I know your attention is wandering now. So let me make the learnings here as simple as this:

•Focus and application

•Listening over speaking

•Humility and reflection

•Engaging with every opportunity being offered

Born into the world mewling and puking I may have been, but I loved it; embraced it all and I simply did not let an opportunity pass. And with these passing years, I changed, and before long began sighing like a furnace. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing ...

Sighing like furnace

So, those first few years are safely navigated. You are that rare thing – a learner driver who didn’t wipe out in those first few kilometres going solo. Gathering speed now, and confidence, the next phase is perhaps the defining one. Capturing that momentum and turning it into the long-term gain that you hope will lead you to that corner office, or whatever it is that your heart desires.

As Shakespeare intimates, this is about finding yourself in the grown-up world. Life stages change. It’s often a time of coupling up, of talk about families and mortgages. Adulting kicks in on the side, as your career starts to become just a little more serious. A little more critical.

Whilst that marathon is never won in the first few miles, it can quickly be lost if you are not careful. And I wasn’t careful.

With the confidence of a few successful miles under my belt, I careered from manufacturing into the work of banking in the City of London. An egotistical place of note. Male dominated, Oxbridge focused, expense accounts extended into an art form of note. Not a nice place.

I wasn’t equipped to deal with the change. I didn’t fit. Wrong type of suit, wrong type of language. Joining a club of people that had been working together for years and hadn’t invited me into their club in the first place. Perhaps, as Groucho Marx said, my mentality wasn’t the right one in any case: ‘I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.’

My first 100 days at the bank (not to be named here, but a large Black Eagle sits astride the portal of its branches) were a classic oil and water time. Dangerous and nearly fatal organ rejection set in.

Let me explain: I had been headhunted because of my technical specialism in supply chain