Ep. 67: Your Credentials Get You In. Your Humanity Wins Everything Else

Last week, I had the privilege of listening to five world-class leadership speakers. 🎤 Five careers. Five frameworks. Five completely different vocabularies. And, yet ... It was really the same argument! The most expensive thing in leadership is the distance between who you actually are and who your professional environment trained you to be. I felt validated because I've been proving that for over twenty years without calling it that. Years ago, at LexisNexis, I entered an innovation contest about my idea to drive more innovation at the company. Five-minute video. Broadcast to all employees. Every professional instinct said to lead with all of my wonderful credentials first. But the lessons I so deeply valued from Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, Carmine Gallo & Scott Schwertly from all those years ago said to lead with storytelling and humanity first. So, I led with what I loved first: like my family & our dog at the time, with her funny name instead. I led with storytelling. I led with how we can drive more revenue by leading with our humanity to build trust & credibility first. In the end, I asked everyone watching to email me if they remembered her name. A hundred emails came back. I won. I spent years writing blog posts to help legal professionals understand eDiscovery and legal technology by talking about Cookie Monster, I Love Lucy, the 2015 Royals World Series, an RV camping trip, and the art and science of roasting coffee. I even used a medieval castle under siege to explain why your law firm's data is less secure than you think. Why? Because I believe so strongly that if I could make a lawyer smile before I made them think about data preservation or proportionality, they would actually retain what I was teaching them. That is not a communication strategy. That is a conviction about what people deserve when you are asking them to learn something hard. Every time I led with the human angle, it worked. Every time I buried it and led with the credentials, data, 12-point font, and bullet points everywhere, something got left on the table. Here's what all five of those speakers were really saying: 👉 80% of your leadership effectiveness lives below the waterline. You've been conditioned to operate at the tip. And the people counting on you are paying for that gap. The credential gets you in the room. The human being earns everything after that.💡 Episode 67 of the Gold Standard Leadership Lab is live. 🎧 (BONUS POINTS: Watch, listen or read the episode and drop it in the comments the name of my dog back then! 🐾) If you are planning summer 2027 travel, I have something worth your time. In July of 2027, I will be on an AmaWaterways river cruise sailing the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basel. Seven nights. Rhine Castles. Swiss Alps. Brodie, my wife and luxury travel designer at M. Markham Travel, has secured exclusive preferred rates on this specific sailing just for GSL readers and listeners. Come find me on the deck. Bring whatever you are working through. We will talk. See the full itinerary and lock in your rate at mmarkhamtravel.com/GSL https://goldstandardleadership.substa...