Colleen DeCourcy, Creative Leader of the Decade
Who takes care of you?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 195: Colleen DeCourcy
Here’s a question. Who takes care of you?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach their leaders to help them succeed where leadership has its greatest impact. The intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Colleen DeCourcy. She has been named Creative Leader of the Decade. She led Wieden and Kennedy to three consecutive Agency of the Year wins and her contribution to creativity has just been recognized by Cannes Lions with the Lion of St Mark Lifetime Achievement Award.
I met Colleen in April of 2015. And as I got to know her, I learned that she was humble, that she was generous, that she was vulnerable. That she was going to make it happen, even though, as you’ll hear, she was filled with self-doubt.
Today, three months into her version of retirement, her impact is everywhere.
And her sense of self has found a permanent home.
“It's been a really nice feeling, to not be chasing, ‘Am I good? Am I good? Am I good? Am I good? Am I good enough? Is this good enough? Is this enough for everyone?’ Into, ‘Oh, you're good. I can see what you need. I have that to give. I have that to give you.’ And it leaves you with a really contented feeling. A feeling of happiness.”
At its heart, leadership is an act of generosity.
It asks so much of us that to do it well, to have lasting impact, requires that we give much more of ourselves than we get back. At least in the short term.
It’s one of the reasons why leadership is so lonely.
But the longer that I do this, the more that I talk to leaders and try to understand them, the more I realize that there is a truth that shows up over and over again.
That the generosity that the best leaders bring, generosity that exists even in the face of their own fears and doubts, generosity that exists even in the furnace of modern business, lifts the people around them to heights they never thought possible.
And in the process of doing that for others, what these leaders end up creating, is themselves.
Here’s Colleen DeCourcy.
Charles: (02:24)
Colleen, welcome back to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Colleen DeCourcy: (02:29)
Thanks for having me, not only once, but twice, Charles. I appreciate you.
Charles: (02:35)
It's actually been 4-1/2 years since our last conversation on this podcast, which I find extraordinary. In that time, Wieden was named Agency of the Year three times. You were named Creative Leader of the Decade. You announced your retirement from Wieden and Cannes Lions just announced that you’re this year's recipient of the Lion of St. Mark Lifetime Achievement Award. How does all of that make you feel?
Colleen DeCourcy: (03:02)
It's a mixed bag. I mean, obviously, a great honor, starting from, you know, I guess the last thing and working backwards, a great honor. The Agency of the Year stuff was really galvanizing of a whole group of people, to make something happen, to set a goal and reach it.
On one hand I think about how many people’s effort and talent went into those accomplishments. I also think about how much it took out of us, took out of me, and I weigh the difference and feel still proud of what we did. You know, I think like anything else, I honestly do believe that everything good that happens is sort of the aggregate of a lot of peoples’ actions and that a leader's job is to capture those moments and lift them.
And, so I feel that there are so many people who are involved in all of those accomplishments, that I'm both proud of being able to do that, and then uncomfortable that in our industry and most industries there's always a single person's name that then gets pulled forward. Do I think my leadership had something to do with it? Yeah, I do. And I think that it probably took me 4-1/2 years to be able to say that.
But I also know that you have to have the materials, and I think one of the great gifts of my career is that I was able to work for most of the decade with the Wieden materials, and bring who I was to that. So, you know, when you say it, 4-1/2 years seems like a crazy short period of time. And it also seems like a lifetime ago since we last talked. So maybe that is evidence of the complexity of that kind of thing.
Charles: (05:10)
Wieden is obviously an extraordinary company and has been for a long time. But what do you think your leadership brought?
Colleen DeCourcy: (05:18)
You know, difference. I think I was definitely different for Wieden. I know that Dave Luhr used to say, you know, they met me and I was very Wieden, and that might be true. I never felt it, and maybe that is what made me very Wieden, that feeling, we are a collection of others, truly, in so many ways. I think that there was, well, if we talk about the moment. The moment that happened there was, there was a moment in culture, where I think leadership was changing, because I think the world was changing. I think that, you know, the internet changed the world. There's all the things that we all know. But there was this moment when there was a shift in what people needed from their leaders.
I was vulnerable, and was not ashamed of that vulnerability. I constantly worked from, ‘I am not great but I am doing my best and it's never going to be good enough for me.’ I feel like there was something that had to be inserted that just thought about things differently, and the simple fact of that created all kinds of… a cascade of changes. And a knock-on effect. I think it's sort of like when you put a piece of sand in an oyster, something else happens. There is an effect that you get from adding grit, or something that is against the grain, into an organization, and I think that's what I brought, honestly.
Some people responded really well to it. But by and large, I think it really did change the agency, and now it's in, it's— you know, and that was my era, my time, my moment to bring that change. And now it's someone else's, and I'm sure they will bring their leadership style which will create their version of change. We’re a full year and a bit, year and a half, into new leadership at Wieden and I can already see ways that the company is changing in response to who they are and how they lead.
So difference. I think when leaders come in and they just perpetuate what it has been, those are years where you don't gain a lot of new ground and I think I did that.
Charles: (07:46)
You said that you've never found a place where you felt like what you were doing was enough. Can you imagine ever getting to that place where you feel like, ‘I'm doing this enough, I'm doing well enough’?
Colleen DeCourcy: (07:58)
Yeah, you know, what's really funny is I strangely think I have arrived at that place. And it's not about self satisfaction at all. It's about deciding what is within your remit or your purview, or what of yourself you're prepared to give. And then executing against that with your experience and your earned wisdom. I'm just laughing, I don't— I can hear my dog snoring. I don't know if you can hear my dog snoring.
Charles: (08:32)
(laughs)
Colleen DeCourcy: (08:32)
I can hear my dog snoring, it makes me laugh. You know, it's part of my comfort in this new life, is I sit here every day and I can hear my dog snoring, which is a beautiful thing. No, I think I have. I'm working with a group of people right now who I have very quickly come to adore. One of the things that I said when I announced that I was retiring from advertising was that I wanted to spend more time doing the things I loved and less time doing the things I didn't. That I felt that I really wanted to re-look at what social media had done to the world, both good and bad. And use my talent to kind of figure out what comes next.
And so to that end, I have been recently started helping Snap with their creativity and their brand, and there is a group of people there that are profoundly talented. What I'm finding, it's an exercise in, don't bring all that leadership, just bring enough. And I think that's the moments when I'm realizing, yeah, I can be enough, and it's been a really nice feeling to not be chasing, ‘Am I good? Am I good? Am I good? Am I good? Am I good enough? Is this good enough? Is this enough for everyone?’ Into, ‘Oh, you're good. I can see what you need. I, I have that to give. I have that to give you.’
And it leaves you with a really contented feeling, a feeling of happiness. So that's been nice. So yeah, I do think I'm capable of thinking, ‘I am enough.’
Charles: (10:05)
Do you think that's age or experience or environment or all three or none of the above?
Colleen DeCourcy: (10:12)
I think it's all three. I think age and experience, but not as assets, but as in the amount of times you've seen something play out. The amount of times that you have given the blow or taken the blow. The amount of times that you have looked at something and known that that won't end well, that helps. I also think that there was something about saying, “Okay, I'm out, I'm calling this. I'm happy with where Wieden is in this moment, I'm happy with who I am. I'm ready to tap and move along.” With that comes a kind of… I don't know if it's co-wisdom or experience, but like a change in your hierarchy of ego and what you think success is. And I think that's environment.
I also think, obviously with the environment we’re working inside has a lot to do with success. I mean, that's why I talk so much about creating the environment for great work to happen. I always felt that was my job. There has to be someone whose ego isn't in the work, whose job it is to know good, to know who's good, to get clients to see good, to understand the path to good. But to not have your ego and your soul in being the good, but creating the environment where other people are moving along through the process and tapping good for themselves all the way through.
And I think that makes people feel loved. You know, my Nana always used to say, and this is a terrible phrase, but, ‘You get more flies with honey than shit.’ And I believe that. I believe you can set expectations with someone's ability and help them get there, and they want to get there, because who wants to let someone down who believes in them? That's how I've functioned the best. I think that's how others function the best. And without the burden of running a company anymore, just being able to work with creative people, I'm really seeing the clarity of that.
Setting the expectation of, "but of course you can." And no, you won't get it the first time, and making mistakes is the privilege that a creative person gets, because, you have to make mistakes to get to the right thing. All of those things create an environment, I think, of safety, of the ability to not protect yourself. I think that, an environment that makes you not protect yourself, I think that is, something that creativity really thrives in.
Charles: (13:09)
Yeah, you and I have talked about the importance of recognizing safety as a fundamental element of creating an environment in which creativity itself thrives. I think it's one of those areas that's been completely underrecognized. I think the pandemic has actually accelerated and expanded people's sense of that, even if they don't quite yet have language around it. Since you've done that instinctively, and with intention throughout your career, what do you think are the elements that are necessary in order to create an environment that makes people feel safe, but also has enough tension in it to actually drive to great outcomes that have massive effect on culture and society?
Colleen DeCourcy: (13:52)
That's really an interesting question actually. I don't know if I've ever broken it down, which is why I always love talking to you. You force me to do the work. You know, there are pieces that I think really matter. I heard a phrase, and I don't know where it came from. Someone said, you know, “Most people at work have a very simple set of needs. What's my job? Who's my boss? Do they love me?”
And I think that those things are pretty important. Starting with, “What's my job?” and making sure that you're putting people in the right positions. Being clear that you feel responsible for their success and their failures. And yeah, of course you love them, that's why we're all here. I think you need to have an environment where the ego of leaders is not part of the daily churn. I think it's really easy to focus on that as a cult of personality or cult of leadership, where other people are just trying to hit the mark. I don't really think that that always works. If it worked for Steve Jobs, which it did, it was because it worked in a very specific moment in history.
And again, you know, like, there's no one way. I can say for me, I believe that it was not my job to be all up in the work but to be all up in the people...
Charles: (15:21)
Mm-mm (affirmative).
Colleen DeCourcy: (15:21)
.. that made the work.
Someone else will say, "Well, that's bullshit." You know? I want a leader that, you know, I follow them as the leader and place that around craft or around business or whatever it is. And so everybody has their own way. But, this has been mine. I think that there needs to be freedom of discussion and thought, though the way you do that is also really important, respect with which you do that. I find it really interesting that the internet and social media started out as a way for a group of people who had never felt they had been treated fairly or safely to use a democratic open forum to call leaders to account. I mean, in general, all across the world.
I also think that it has sort of almost turned to eat itself in a way, because of a lack of accountability, for those things, so I think that accountability is really an important part of creating a safe environment.
I'll tell you from— I don't know how you scale that huge, writ large, you know, safety, safety. I really do believe it is created with small groups of people that infect all the people that they touch, as well. I'm finding that. You can stand up and speak safety to a massive group and everyone will cheer you because they want safety. But you’ve left that stage at the end of the day and all you've created is a desire for safety. You haven't created safety yet and safety is one-on-one, or one-on-five, five-on-ten. You know? I think safety scales, it doesn't come from the top down. It starts there.
I don't know if I answered your question. What do you think are the conditions? You talk to a lot of us.
Charles: (17:25)
Yeah, it starts with the leader. Right? The leader is not able to do it by themselves, but if you don't have a leader who is committed to creating an environment that ultimately produces safety, then there is literally no chance it will happen. The group itself cannot provide it for themselves without the involvement and without the support of and commitment of the leader. And I think, when leaders think, ‘Okay, for me to provide safety for others, I first have to feel safe myself.’ There's almost no chance of that happening.
And I think one of your strengths, actually, is that you were able to create safety for other people despite the fact that you've rarely felt safe yourself. Is that fair?
Colleen DeCourcy: (18:05)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. There is a really interesting conundrum in this discussion of safety. You know, safety is a requirement for great creativity. Safety is a requirement for great success or for high-functioning organizations. It is often led by people who have not felt safety themselves. Because I think the people who have always felt safe, it's almost like they take it for granted. It's a given. Eternal vigilance is the cost of freedom and safety, it would appear. So, I do find it really interesting that people who are not accustomed to a sense of safety are often the most voracious champions of that.
It develops a keen sense in you of what's not safe. I think because of the way I have grown up, I have an innate sensibility that I wish I didn't have sometimes. Which is, I'm constantly reading every room I'm in, to decide if I'm safe. Great moments of acceleration in my career have been, sometimes, in situations where I felt very safe, and other times in situations where I felt profoundly unsafe. And so whenever I was able to slay whatever dragon or, you know, pull whichever boulder up a hill, my win for myself, my claim for victory was, "Okay, we're going to be safe now. Right? We're going to create safety."
You know, I've often wondered, just like all of us, fascinated watching Ukraine and Zelenskyy, had a very interesting, trail through Twitter today where a very well-known banking person / capitalist put out a tweet saying, you know, "Does Zelenskyy not own a suit? Could he not of put a suit on? Does he not respect the United States?" It just, you know, on top of everybody jumping all over him, it just felt like such an old-school thing, because the suit was the armor of business, that is the safety. Zelenskyy was not wearing the safe suit. He was coming raw, as he was, as he had been the moment before he got on that thing.
And I have wondered if Zelenskyy grew up feeling safe or not safe. I mean, he's a comedian. So it makes perfect sense to me that he's turned into the leader he has, because I think great comedy is intensely connected to the idea of human pathos. And so we know he has that sense. I don't know what his childhood was like. I know it's never too safe to be an actor or a comedian. You're kind of always working a bit without a net. But I do think that that he inherently knows what people need to hear because somewhere in his life, he has been unsafe. And so in this moment when lack of safety is what's going on in that country, he's like, "Oh, I got this. I know, I know this."
And, when you listen to the things he is saying, it's really about making people feel safe, whether he's speaking directly to the Russians, saying, "Look, we are humans. We are people." He's never really just spouting off at Putin, or yelling at the other countries who aren't helping. It's always from a different place, which is, we just want to be safe here.
So yeah, I think that it's an interesting thing that a lot of leaders who create safety did not have safety themselves, and I think it's about knowing the difference, carrying the bridge. It's like people who grew up in poverty never quite get past, even when they become very wealthy, that attachment, or lack of attachment, or confusion about money. I think safety is the same thing.
Charles: (22:15)
I'm also struck listening to you about the realization in my mind that the intention of the leader is really important. The context of what they're trying to achieve is absolutely essential in terms of how you provide safety. I'm struck by the fact, watching him, his intention to have his people survive is very clear. You know, he was not, by several definitions, a particularly great leader in times of peace, where he was trying to move a society forward, and it's going to be interesting, I mean, it's tragic, the situation is tragic. So to treat it like it's some sort of case study seems completely wrong, but nevertheless, I think it's going to be important to watch him and see how that evolves as the situation evolves.
So I think, you know, a long way of saying, the context of what a leader is trying to achieve has a massive impact on the kind of safety that they provide. I'm thinking about how parenting has changed, for instance. In the '60s and the '70s, part of good parenting was actually getting your kids out into the world to play in the dirt so they could develop antibodies. And now with helicopter parents keeping their kids protected at all times, there's a different definition of safety, and probably a less healthy one in some respects. This idea of context leads me actually to this.
When you came into Wieden, when Dan brought you into Wieden, he had really clear intention for what he wanted you to do. Do you remember how he described that to you?
Colleen DeCourcy: (23:41)
Yeah, you know, I mean, because it was Dan, it was probably a mystery shrouded in a riddle, but, you know, he was very clear. "Evolve the place. Evolve the place." He knew I was a square peg in a round hole. He knew I was different. He intentionally went for that and the change that it would bring. To change the place.
Now history will only show if that was worth it, but his intention was so strong that he took those risks because the place had to evolve. I mean, my God, I don't even know if Dan ever looked at my work before I came here. It's kind of a crazy thing, because it was for like, the head creative role. You know, I knew he knew I was different in terms of digital and maybe he felt like that wasn't the kind of work that he would know how to assess, though Dan knew when things were good and weren't good.
But it was so clear to me that that was the intention and he said it himself. And later in a very, very, very difficult moment, when the rubber had to meet the road on what it meant to evolve the place, to change the place, and it was something that I was hesitating at, that I was truly in fear of, paralyzed almost in fear of what the next steps of evolution meant, and he just said, "This is no time for cowards, my dear."
And, yeah. I sometimes feel a little bit alone in my experience of Wieden+Kennedy in that it was, I didn't have the usual experience with him. And not just because I didn't get to spend the same amount of time with him, but because his intention for me was different. So my experience with Dan was not chasing work, was not in meetings. His instructions to me were always about leadership, never about the work.
And, so, I took that to heart, as there were all kinds of people that he had raised that could do that, that could do the work. I was brought in as someone different, at the risk of upsetting a lot of people because the job I was given was different and it was to evolve the place.
Charles: (26:20)
And, I ask the question because, not only because I think that's such an important reference point for your own journey, but also because I think it's incredibly relevant today in what's going on in society and the world at large. I see so many companies who are trying desperately to get back to early 2020 in some version or some fashion, and they intellectually acknowledge that society has changed, they intellectually acknowledge the world is different, but emotionally they are stuck with an old view of what the business was and how it worked and how it was constructed and why it existed, and they're not trying to change the place, to use your words.
If you were building a company today, what would that be? If you were starting from scratch, what kind of company, what kind of business would you build today based on how you see the world?
Colleen DeCourcy: (27:12)
Wow. Would I have to make the choice to build a business?
Charles: (27:16)
(laughs) No.
Colleen DeCourcy: (27:19)
(laughs) No. I wouldn't have— what kind of business would I build today? Well, I can tell you, you know, that's a really hard question. Because I'm a little bit anti-business right now. Not because I think business is bad, but because I think it doesn't need me. If you look at, you know, the question you asked about why people are having trouble… we’re trying to operationalize new models coming out of the last two years, I mean, literally specifically the last two years, it's March 17, I think we were all just going into hiding, for reals, this week.
Charles: (28:07)
Yep, for sure.
Colleen DeCourcy: (28:10)
The reason they can't emotionally let go of it, I don't see necessarily as the failure of individuals as much as the turning of the crank on human nature and society. Business has always been a reflection of society. Business has helped shape society, you know, one saying that when we make our tools and then we make us, that's what business represents to me. But when we just kept grinding on the same damn tool for so long and so we have a collapsing middle class. We have as much if not more poverty than ever in the United States, we have a homeless problem that is really above and beyond what you would've seen 20 years ago.
So I feel like that model, not the model of there being an economy, obviously I’m in business, but the way that it's upheld, the armor of the business suits, the thing about shareholder value. The whole thing, seems like someone just took a bunch of really, really, really successful titans, people who are making the world turn, stuck them inside their houses with their families that they hadn’t seen in a very, very long time, and two years later pulled them out and said, "Oh, you know, that thing moved on, that's gone." And so nobody knows what to hang onto.
And in this moment, I guess if I was going to create anything, if I was going to try and put anything into the world, it would be this notion of how you create safety. Because who does feel safe? If you're kind of like a jerk asshole that, you know, has been on top forever and social media is coming for you and you hear a lot of, "I don't want to say anything, I don't feel safe anymore." And sometimes I'm like, “Oh, now you know what everyone feels like. I'm so sorry, it's hard, isn't it? But you still have to go to work, brother. You still have to get up, and you know, like the rest of us.”
And then I try and be more forgiving and think, “Wow, well, yes, so now we are all unsafe. Where do we start now? Where do we go? What could we do?” It's got to start with some kind of system that extracts value for society, through the well-being of the people that live inside of it. I don't think that's how business has worked before.
So yeah, I think my overarching question would be, would I start a business right now? No. Because it's just not where I'm at. But I will put my weight behind businesses that I think are looking at ways to create safe environments for people.
Charles: (30:56)
And if somebody asks you what kind of business you think they should start, what would you tell them?
Colleen DeCourcy: (31:07)
I think creative businesses are callings, and so it would change person to person. What I would tell them is that infrastructure is your enemy. That the ability to bring different talents and people and skill sets to bear in the moments they are required, is a gift, and you should build for that. That nobody wants to buy your process. They want to buy solutions and trust and success. So, I think I would tell someone to create a distributed business that can aggregate people with passion, and disperse them just as quickly, so that we never again get attached to models that are outdated.
I still think that the communications industry desperately needs great talent. I think that as long as advertising still has the reach that it has, the impact that it has on people, if you're good in your creative purpose and then you think you can deal with it, then you should go there, because messages we put up can be damaging a lot.
Honestly, if I had gone to architecture school, I would become an architect right now and I would start a business that figures out how you build communal living spaces for people to share in their passions and their work and their lives and their pets, because we're all fragmenting and if the pandemic showed us anything, it's that a lot of people retreated singularly, on their own spaces and sat in boxes for two years. And we really realized that without the workplace, how alone so many of us are. Yeah. Again, I'm not sure if I answered your question, but they're really good ones.
Charles: (33:20)
Do you have any regrets as you look back at your career so far?
Colleen DeCourcy: (33:25)
Oh my God, yes. Yes, yes, yes. All of them. (laughs) I have all the regrets. My biggest one being I would have believed in myself more, and earlier. I think that inner peace and contentment with who you are perpetuates kindness in the way you deal with others. I think there were times I had to do really important things in a state of great fear, and it enabled me to do them, but you become kind of swept along with the trajectory of the thing you're doing rather than controlling it. I think I would have spoken up more about what I… well, I'm going to go back to Zelenskyy for a minute.
When we were talking about that, the thing that occurred to me was that right before— and when I was saying, “I wonder if Zelenskyy has ever not felt safe,” before this whole thing happened, the line on Zelenskyy was that he was not equipped for the job. That he didn't have a history as a politician. He hadn't grown up in government. This guy from another place, entertainment, had come in and was trying to lead the country and he was not doing great.
So of course he came from a feeling of non-safety. And I think that he came into his feeling of confidence, we can tent it with who he was when this war happened. And I bet if he had been able to come into that earlier, he would've been a great president in peace-time as well.
And so that is a trajectory in a situation I am well acquainted with, and, very well acquainted with, and I wish that I had understood that earlier. Whatever I was bringing was not enough for someone else. It was enough for me, and it was enough for the business and it was enough for the people that felt safe with me and it was the thing that created change. I just wish I'd been able to be at peace with that earlier, because I think a lot of my workaholism, a lot of my anxiety, a lot of all my shit, you know, I mean, I think my biggest regret is that my career has had a profoundly lasting effect on my health.
Because I just couldn't get those blocks in the right order. I was constantly throwing myself off cliffs and figuring it out on the way down, and confidence and momentum are the things that allow you to get out ahead of those kinds of feelings. But we've only just come into a time when being different is seen as a benefit. So, there's that. Other regrets. Other regrets. I wish that I had not taken every promotion I was given. I wish that I had spent more time until I felt that I was ready for the next stage, not when someone else needed me to be ready, because I think that also brings your sense of the right to be leading.
Those are two big ones for me. I wish I had spent more time among the people that I knew were doing okay than only focusing on the problems. I think the thing I am very proud of is that I didn't let the job truly, truly did not define me and who I felt I was as a person, which has two edges to it. One is when you're doing great and getting things like Lion of St. Mark, you know, my first reaction is “Yeah, not me, right? Like, that's not real.”
Because I'm my worst critic. Then, on the other side, when people are like, “What it is you want to do is wrong, we don't believe in that, we're not going to follow you.” You're like, “Well, but what you think of me doesn't matter anyway.” So you have to take the good and the bad, with not basing your sense of who you are on what other people think. And I think that has been the thing that has saved me. I've never felt anything other than other, which means you can't be drop kicked, called down, called up, praised, all of it doesn't matter. It's just about how you feel each day. And these days I'm feeling really great.
Charles: (38:38)
A lasting impact on your health is a really high price to pay. Was it worth it?
Colleen DeCourcy: (38:50)
No. But like I don't say that as a victim, right? It's not like, oh my God, I'm just saying this and now I'm so, it's not that. It's like I did not take care of myself. I put the work in and all the other things in front. I didn't stop and deal with, you know, my life. I just kept going, always trying to hit escape velocity where safety was on the other side. And so, no. Was it worth not having good health for a career? No. Could I have done it without compromising my health? Yes. So it's kind of a double answer. Yeah, no, not worth it, but it could've been done without doing that, so my bad.
But I would say to people, if it's too much and you look around and everyone says it's too much, and you can say, “I'm dying from this, this is killing me, this stress or this lack of time, or these work conditions or this pulling, this fundamental ripping apart of my body down the middle because there is a life and a job that are both pulling at the same time,” if you can in any moment say that, and a bunch of people look at you and half of them say, "Me too!" out loud, and the other half just look at you like, “I'm afraid to say that's the case but yeah, it's killing me, too,” well, then the problem is bigger than you.
And, we have to start holding hands and saying, “Yeah, hey, whoever, I'm sure you didn't mean to create this environment for us but we're dying for you here.” And I don't think that happens enough. I think people are afraid that it's a sign of weakness. I know I always was.
Charles: (40:41)
I think that's so true. I think that's so profoundly true. I see that over and over again. So, what now? What do you want to learn about yourself as you look at the rest of your life, as you move forward? What's the difference that you want to make from here?
Colleen DeCourcy: (40:56)
I want to have enough time in my day that I can always follow through on all the things I want to do for people, and for my life. I was always a big committer and then the train wreck of scheduling and not owning your own day would kill me, and I would end up not being able to do all the things that I had hoped I had been able to do. So I've been working really, really, really hard on saying yes to the things I can do and no for the things I can't, and just making sure people know it's not that I don't want to, it's because what can you actually deliver. That's really been important to me in this phase in my life.
Space to sleep is really important to me. And a clear enough head where the needs of people around me are not a burden on top of all the other things I'm trying to stay on top of, but actually the thing that I notice before anyone even has to come to me. Hey, you look like you're having a bad day. Hey, what's going on with you? I haven't heard from you lately? Hey, you know, you forgot that it was Janie's birthday last week and she missed you at the drinks. That stuff just passed me by for the last 25 years.
So I'm really into being present now and I am consciously moving in ways that reject me holding any power, because it forces you to add value in the places that you can and that needs you. I don't know why that was so important to me. I think it's like, you know, we talked before about when I felt conflicted with the relationship with leadership and power, but, I just feel like if you can get the job done when you hold power, good for you.
If you can get the job done when you don't hold power, God bless you. And that's kind of where I'm trying to play right now.
Charles: (43:14)
Which is a perfect segue into the question I have to ask you. I ask it of all my guests. How do you lead?
Colleen DeCourcy: (43:21)
With my heart. I lead with my heart. I place people in a situation where they can see the value I see in them, where they can feel the value I see in them. And then I keep pushing them into places where they're going to fuck up and make sure that I catch them when they do. And those people are gold by the time they're done. Yeah.
Charles: (43:56)
And what are you afraid of?
Colleen DeCourcy: (43:59)
I am afraid of not having as much time left to be this version of myself as I had being the other one. Just time, man. I'm just afraid of running out of time. Everything else, I'm like… I am rounding the bend toward 60 and I feel safe for the first time in my life. And I’ve created that. And now I just want like tons of time to live inside it.
Charles: (44:33)
I've known you for quite a long time at this point, actually, and I think know you well, and I would say to you, on the record, that I have seen you evolve over the last few months, and I think you are absolutely present in a different way, and I think it is uplifting and hopeful and inspiring to watch somebody make conscious choices about who they want to be and how they want to show up and actually be able to start living that way. So I just want to acknowledge that publicly. Thank you so much for joining me again today. It is such a pleasure and such a privilege to have you come on and talk so vulnerably and openly about an extraordinary life and an extraordinary career, and I'm excited to see what you do next.
Colleen DeCourcy: (45:20)
Thanks, Charles, I'm hoping that we both will be working at that together and figuring out the world, always, by having these conversations. I think they help everyone. So thank you.
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