Keep Leading!® Podcast 128 | Todd Cherches | Leveraging the Power of Visual Leadership

Eddie Turner:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact through the power of executive coaching, masterful facilitation, and professional speaking.

As a leader, how can you get others to see what you are saying? My guest today says the secret to being a more effective communicator, innovator, manager or leader is to master visual leadership. My guest today is Todd Cherches. Todd is the CEO and co-founder of Big Blue Gumball, an innovative New York City-based management consulting firm specializing in leadership development, public speaking, and executive coaching. He’s a three-time award-winning adjunct professor of Leadership at NYU and a lecturer on leadership at Columbia University. I know Todd because he’s also a member of the esteemed Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches. And he’s the author of Visual Leadership: Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life.

I’m excited to welcome Todd Cherches to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.

Todd Cherches:

Hey, thanks for having me. It’s great talking to you.

Eddie Turner:

It’s great talking to you as well, Todd. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to interview you because I love your book. This cover is absolutely gorgeous but before we get into this book, tell me what I missed about you and your amazing background.

Todd Cherches:

That was great. That was a great recap of where I am, what I’m doing. I’m also a TEDx speaker. I did my first TEDx talk a couple years ago on the power of visual thinking and my methodology really comes from my background from growing up first of all as a baby boomer watching television. In my TEDx, I tell the story about people would say “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and I would say “Superman.” And then they would say “Well, if you can’t be Superman, what’s your backup plan?” And I’d say “Batman.” So, as a five-year-old, those were my two career aspirations. So, I learned soon enough that those jobs weren’t realistic. So, the next best thing was to work in the TV industry. So, I started out working, I got my master’s degree in Communication, bachelor’s degree in English before that and then I worked for all the major advertising for a year in New York before moving out to LA, then going Hollywood and trying to get a job in the TV industry. And I had a number of part-time jobs, temp jobs and I worked my way up from being an assistant to some project manager type of roles. I worked for CBS. I worked at Disney. And then after 10 years in LA, I came back to New York and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and I ended up with a job at the American Management Association and that’s where I got hooked on management and leadership which is what I’ve been doing ever since.

Eddie Turner:

Outstanding. And somewhere along the way, this all leads to you becoming one of the most prolific thinkers on this aspect of leadership. In fact, I did not say this, but I want my audience to know that the esteemed organization Thinkers 50, they’re the Oscars of the leadership world, well, they have recognized Todd. He’s on the shortlist in the leadership category. So, you’ve done a lot to not only raise the bar but to credibly raise the bar with those who are authorities on this subject.

Todd Cherches:

Thanks, thanks, Eddie. Yeah, that was a really nice surprise, Eddie. That came out of nowhere. So, that was really an amazing surprise to hear that but, yeah, there’s a lot of people who work in design thinking and people work in visual medium and there’s a lot of us who work in management leadership, as I know you do. No one before or very few people before have integrated the two. So, if you think about almost like a Venn diagram which I often use as a visual, the intersection of visual thinking and visual communication with management leadership is where visual leadership is. And as you said in the opening, it’s all about how do you get people to see what you’re saying, how do you turn a vision into reality. And I break it down to a few different categories which we can talk about later but, yeah, that’s my differentiator is my visual thinking-based approach to leadership and coaching.

Eddie Turner:

So, give us a nice definition of what visual leadership is.

Todd Cherches:

Sure. Visual leadership is the application of visual thinking to leadership. Our friend Oleg who wrote the book called The Vision Code, when we talk about leadership so often, it’s about what is your vision. And the vision is a picture in our mind’s eye of a future state that is different from and better than the current reality. So, like Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream speech” was his vision of a better future. So, when we talk about leaders and vision, Steve Jobs comes to mind, Branson comes to mind, Elon Musk comes to mind. So, you think about how are you going to change the world through ideas, through innovation, through products, through services. So, such a big part of leading has to do with seeing and vision but also who we are and how we lead is inseparable from the lens through which we see the world. So, the word ‘VisuaLeadership’ as it’s spelled on the cover of my book, it’s a single word, ‘VisuaLeadership’ with a single shared capital L and I actually have the trademark from the US Patent Office on the word ‘VisuaLeadership’, they rejected the first two times I applied and then the third time, I guess, I wore them down but they finally approved it, but VisuaLeadership is not only my brand but it’s also a philosophy, a methodology and an approach. And the idea behind it is how do you think about what you see, how you see, what you know, what you don’t that’s from your past. And then your vision of the future is about as a leader changing the world through ideas and innovation.

Eddie Turner:

Now, you said a lot there, Todd, and I’d like to unpack some of that because the first time I saw VisuaLeadership and this individual trademark and her way of doing it was how you show up visually. And she was an etiquette expert. So, it was how you package yourself an executive presence but you said something very similar but you’re applying it in a different way. And that’s why I’m so fascinated by what you’ve done here. You just said that we show up as a leader or how we show up as a leader, I believe, is how you phrase it, is largely through the lens in which you see leadership. And you also made that connection that Steve Jobs famously made in his work and why people love Apple products because it’s the intersection of science and the humanities.

Todd Cherches:

Yes.

Eddie Turner:

And that’s what you’re doing for us as leaders in a different way. So, walk me through that a little bit more about the moment you had that aha and how you started applying it in this great work that you’ve produced.

Todd Cherches:

Thank you. Well, coming out of the advertising industry and the TV industry and the theme park business and working at companies like Disney, they’re visual mediums, right? It’s all about creating experiences for people. And working in the theme park business, one of the things that I always thought about was the fact that when you go to Disneyland or Universal Studios, you go there, the ride itself may only take two or three minutes, the experience takes hours, right? And when does the experience start? The second you drive through the gates, let’s say you’ve entered the happiest place on earth, right? So, similarly, when I teach, when I train, I try to create an experience for people. And it’s leveraging all the senses. I incorporate music. I incorporate the visual arts. I incorporate the humanities. I was English literature major. I incorporate Shakespeare and poetry. So much of what we do as leaders, we use metaphorical language, we tell stories, we tell talk a lot about storytelling and specifically visual storytelling. I just did a workshop the other day on visual storytelling. We talked about how stories have beginnings, middles and ends. There are villains, victims and heroes. There’s a quest or a goal. There are obstacles and barriers and challenges that stand in your way. There’s a resolution. There are lessons learned. So, similarly, in leadership, it’s the same thing. Where we are, it’s the status quo. And then you have this picture of the future and how are you going to change the future and make that vision a reality. It’s very similar. So, as a leader, you are the protagonist, you are the hero of your story but you also want to make everyone around you a hero as well. So, one of the things I always talk about is it’s not just leadership. Leadership is not just about you the leader. Leadership is about creating the next generation of leaders and making everyone feel like a leader. So, I actually asked that trick question in my NYU class the other day. I’ll say “How many people here are leaders?” No one really raises their hand. And then I say “Tonight we’re going to redefine what it means to be a leader and I’m going to ask the same question three hours from now and you’re all going to be raising your hands.” So, I packed a lot in today but that’s the idea behind leadership is that it’s not a title or position but it’s a way of acting and being.

Eddie Turner:

Indeed. In fact, those are my closing words to every episode, Todd.

Now, for folks who are looking at the book on Amazon.com or wherever you buy books from, this is a book you really can’t look at online. This is a book you have to hold in your hands. And Todd was nice enough to send me a copy of this. The first thing that struck me and will strike you when you pick up your copy is the weight of the book in your hand. It’s a gorgeous cover.

Todd Cherches:

Thank you.

Eddie Turner:

But the weight. Now, when you open the book, you begin to see why it weighs so much. Todd uses the brightest white paper I’ve ever seen in my life, heavy stock. Very few books are truly color once you get inside. And Todd uses color imagery all throughout, quite apropos for a book that’s entitled Visual Leadership, right? So, Todd, walk us through your decision on that and why it was so important in your decision making.

Todd Cherches:

Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for acknowledging and recognizing that. My book is published by Post Hill Press Simon & Schuster. And that was one of the discussions – “Do we do this in paperback or hardcover?” And then I said “It’s got to be hardcover. Just for a variety of reasons I just wanted to have that weight and that heft and that certain degree of … nothing against paperback but hardcover has a certain heft to it. And I teach at NYU and Columbia. So, I wanted to have some academic “weight” to it. And then the debate was about color or not color and the publisher said “Color is really, really expensive and it’s not within our budget.” So, I literally had to put my money where my mouth is and I don’t like to say how much I paid but I literally had to pay … I’ll say it. It’s around 5000 dollars. I had to pay out of pocket for the cost difference between the color printing and what would have been black and white printing. My wife said “I’m not letting you do this in black and white. You can’t have a book on visuals and then have the visuals not pop.” So, then once we decide to go with color, and you learn things about publishing and other things that you don’t even know by trial and error, but because there’s full color and it’s not just like blue, gray and white, it’s literally four color printing, the ink, it would have bled through normal pages. So, they had to use extra thick and extra white paper. So, the extra white is to make the color pop and then the extra thickness is to keep the colors from bleeding through because there is color almost on every couple of pages. So, that’s the story behind this. So, sometimes you got to put your money where your mouth is and have skin in the game, as they say. So, I appreciate you acknowledging that because it was a decision that was made but I’m so happy. I love the cover. I love how it turned out.

The rainbow eye on the cover, just so you know, we could talk about it for an hour just about the cover, the rainbow eye represents the fact that just as no one in the world has this rainbow-colored eye, no one in the world sees the world exactly the way you do through the same lens because, just as I mentioned before, your life experiences, your upbringing, your culture, all of those things shape what you see and what you don’t see. So, the rainbow eye represents diversity and inclusion. It represents individuality. It represents empathy and compassion. The other thing it represents is innovation and creativity because we have to use all the colors in the crayon box or in the marker set to paint a picture of a better world. So, the rainbow eye on the cover represents, it’s not just an eye-catching image to use that phrase, but it represents, from a leadership perspective, what the book is all about.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. Well, I just can’t say enough good things about this book. And when you have special thought leadership like you do, a lot of it, as you say, is about the visual leadership and it’s about the packaging. It’s about how it shows up. This is a book that when someone sees it, they want to pick it up. And when they pick it up, it just really captures the eye and then the content matches.

Todd Cherches:

Yeah, this is heavy. We don’t want to make people think you’re going to get a hernia picking it up. So, it’s heavy. If you’re looking to work out like if you do like 20 presses with each arm, you’ll definitely build your biceps up over a few weeks.

Eddie Turner:

Don’t scare people. It’s a book of substance. Hey, be proud of it.

Todd Cherches:

If you get two copies, one for each arm, think about what kind of shape you’ll be in after a few weeks of reading it.

Eddie Turner:

Fantastic.

Well, I’m talking to Todd Cherches. He is the author of Visual Leadership: Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life. We’ll have more with Todd right after this.

Eddie Turner:

And we are back. I am talking to Todd Cherches. We’re talking about how we leverage the power of visual leadership as leaders. And the basis for the conversation is his book Visual Leadership: Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life.

Todd, before the break you told us what made you write this book and what visual leadership is but I am always interested in knowing about frameworks. Usually, there’s a framework that supports the thought leadership behind the book. Can you share the framework that you have in this book for us?

Todd Cherches:

Sure, I’d be happy to. So, I break it down to four different categories. So, visual leadership is about everything from visualizing in our mind’s eye the future, it’s about having a leadership vision but on a more practical level, I break it down to these four categories. So, category one is about using visual imagery and/or drawing. So, that’s basically leading through pictures. Category two is mental models and frameworks. Category three is using metaphor and analogy. And category 4 is using storytelling and humor. So, when I teach visual leadership, I break it down to those four categories and in my book, it breaks down to those four categories as well.

Now, there is overlap. You could have a visual image that is also a metaphor. You could have a picture that you tell a story about. You could have a framework where you’re using an example. So, it’s not that they’re in isolation but when used in combination, they’re even more powerful. And each chapter in the book is about three to five pages and each chapter starts with a picture or image either a literal or metaphorical or a model and then it ends with my thought-provoking in-review questions which basically I summarize “Here’s the big lesson from the chapter. Here’s a big question I pose” and it says “Your big insight” and “Your big action.” So, I wanted to be interactive. I want people when they’re reading it and hopefully writing in it and circling and highlighting and underlining think about what did you take from this but also how you can apply it. One of my mottos is the true value of knowledge is not in its accumulation but in its application. So, anytime we’re reading or learning something, we should always be thinking “How can I use this?” because otherwise, it’s just academic or hypothetical or theoretical. I want this to be really practical. I want this to change the way people see things, the way they explain things, the way they communicate with their audience in mind but it’s all about, again, getting people to see what you’re saying and getting your ideas out there into the world.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. And tell me if you would how are you using this in your work as a coach.

Todd Cherches:

Sure. First of all, models. A lot of times if a client is struggling with something, and we always talk about thinking outside the box and it’s become kind of a cliché but one of the things I say is that you can’t think outside the box until you have something inside a box. So, one of the things I do is help clients create a model or a framework to kind of simplify the complexity of the issue or challenge they’re dealing with. And it might be a four-box matrix, it might be a step ladder, it might be a pyramid, it might be a circle but I help people to kind of create some framework to simplify the complexity so that they can more clearly define problems and then find solutions.

So, one of the examples I tell in the book and the chapter is called ‘How My 30-Second Napkin Sketch Solved the Client’s Multimillion-Dollar Problem’, one of my coaching clients, long story short, he was the head of Sales for a pharmaceutical company for one of the regions in Europe and he was struggling between the head of the east coast, the west coast, things just weren’t working out because of which market was more mature and where the business opportunities were. And I just said to him and I thought it was a stupid idea because otherwise it was so obvious that I almost even suggested but I said “What if instead of the east and the west you divided the country between north and south and then you switched to run each region?” and he just looked at me and I thought he’s looking at me like “You’re an idiot” and he looked at me like “You’re brilliant.” It was funny because I sketched it out of a napkin and he said “Why didn’t I even think about it?” He said “I’ve been wrestling with this for six months and it didn’t even occur to me.” And the problem was he was so close to it. So, as coaches, sometimes we have a big picture view from the outside that our clients are too close to seeing but that was a perfect example of how until I drew it, I probably could have said it verbally but when I drew it out, I just changed the east-west line to north-south, it was like eureka moment for him and the light bulb went off and he’s like “Wow! That was amazing.”

So, that’s just one of many examples of how you can use a sketch to basically illustrate what you’re talking about so that people can see it and go “Wow! Now I get what you’re talking about.”

Eddie Turner:

Okay, thank you. Well, I wrote in my book different quotes that I use to help me keep leading and one of those quotes was about how you give feedback. And then I got the opportunity to teach a program over at Rice University as a part of my work with the Doerr Institute for New Leaders and the program was about delivering feedback, the successful way to do it. And when I had to review the curriculum and read the information and start to teach that, I realized that “Hmm, my advice was not good because” I used the age-old adage of the feedback sandwich. And I haven’t given that advice since. I now use a specific model for giving feedback that is far more successful. Well, when I looked at your book, I noticed that you too tell people to stop with the feedback sandwich. Tell us your thoughts on this.

Todd Cherches:

Well, to be honest, it’s the exact opposite of that. My chapter is called ‘In Defense of the Feedback Sandwich’ because so many people bash it including Adam Grant and we’ve been debating back and forth over the years. What they say is the feedback sandwich is insincere and ingenuous when it’s used as flattery like if I said to you “Eddie, you look great today. I love your new suit. By the way, you’re the worst employee I’ve ever had in my life. You’re fired but, you know, let’s have lunch next week now that you have all this free time.” So, I just used the feedback sandwich. That’s not what it’s intended to be. So, feedback sandwich, if I said “Eddie, you did these things really well. One of the areas of improvement might be this, this, and this. And hey, I know you could do this and I look forward to seeing how you improve over the next few weeks,” I just used the feedback sandwich in a positive encouraging way. So, I think when people object to the feedback sandwich, it’s because it’s not used properly or it’s used insincerely but, again, like any tool or any model, there is no one-size-fits-all. So, it’s not appropriate for all situations. Sometimes you just need to give people the meat of the message and say “Hey, you really screwed up” or you start on a positive and you just say “You know what, this can’t happen again” and you leave off the bottom bun. So, in the chapter I go into the details about the pros and cons of this methodology. In fact, we had a whole debate about it in my NYU class the other night, which was kind of fun. So, again, there are multiple perspectives on it. I like it and I use it all the time when appropriate but I don’t use it when it’s not. So, that’s one of many tools in our leadership toolkit and I’m open to all perspectives. So, it’s interesting just to hear different sides of it. Some people like a radical candor type of approach of “Hey, just give it to me straight.” So, it really depends on the person, the situation, the relationship and other factors.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. And I see I actually misread that, checks out.

Todd Cherches:

So, now you have to go back and re-read it and get a different take on it.

Eddie Turner:

Now, you also cover this concept about, well, the age-old question “Is it more important to be liked, admired, respected or trusted?” and you give us a visual on that. Talk about that, please.

Todd Cherches:

Sure. I call it my hierarchy or followership. So, basically, ideally, we want all of them. We want to be liked, admired, respected and trusted but ultimately, leadership comes down to trust. So, you could say “I don’t like this person, I don’t love this person, I wouldn’t be friends with this person but do I trust this person? Do I trust this person’s integrity, their honesty, their authenticity? Do I trust their values? Do I trust that they’re going to do what’s best for the company as opposed to what’s best for them?” So, we always have that discussion and debate. And, again, you could say “I respect this person but I don’t trust them” or “I admire certain things about this person but I don’t trust them.” So, those are four components. And you don’t have to have all four. Ideally, it’d be nice if you had all four but I think the bottom line is it really does come down to trust and this model kind of just emphasizes that.

Eddie Turner:

Good. And you have a whole chapter on how being a quitter can make you a winner. Talk about that.

Todd Cherches:

I mean, so often there’s all the sayings like “Never be a quitter,” “Never give up” and all that kind of stuff. And this chapter was actually triggered by one of my NYU students who came to me and she said “My father has so ingrained in me “Never quit. Finish what you start”” and she said “It actually works against me.” She’s like “For example, I started reading a book. 10 pages in I realized it wasn’t the book I thought it was but I felt like I had to finish it because I had my father sitting on my shoulder saying “If you start something, finish it.”” So, what I said is sometimes quitting or giving up on something or cutting your losses is the best decision you can make. So, if you reframe quitting from “I’m a quitter” to “You know, I’m going to stop doing this” … Marshall Goldsmith in fact quotes Peter Drucker as saying “We spent a lot of time teaching executives or business people what to do but we don’t teach them what to stop doing.” So, this is a similar kind of theme of it’s okay to stop. If something is not productive, if you go in the wrong direction to where you were intending, you wouldn’t just keep going, right? You would turn around and get back on the right path or make a different choice or take a different road. So, that’s the philosophy behind “Quitting is okay if you quit for the right reasons.”

Now, it doesn’t mean quit for someone who’s relying on you, doesn’t mean just walk out of a relationship whether it’s a business or whatever. So, I don’t want it to be misconstrued but that’s the idea is quitting is okay if you do it with integrity and for the right reasons and you’re not hurting anyone including yourself.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. And I talked about your work at New York University and Columbia University in the beginning and you’ve referenced them several times throughout our conversation. So, tell us about those programs that you’re teaching in and what is the most rewarding part of it.

Todd Cherches:

Sure. At NYU, this is my 11th year teaching. I teach leadership and team building in the HR Master’s Program. And there’s a lot of international students, I would say, I forget about percentage, but a number of students from China, from India and other countries and other cultures. So, I learned so much from them, first of all, but just to help people see themselves as leaders is the most rewarding thing just as my question I asked before saying “Who’s a leader here?” because people walk in thinking “Oh, I’m not a leader because I don’t have a leadership title.” I said “Even if you’re leading and managing your own life, you’re a leader and a manager.” So, let’s just start from there and then you will build on it from there. So, you may not be a people manager of others but you’ll get there at some point.

And at Columbia, I teach on a variety of different programs including their Strategic Communications Program. I taught a class on the Practices of Leadership but one of my favorite assignments is in the spring and I’m going into, this will be my eighth year of doing this, I teach leadership for Broadway stage managers in their MFA theater program. So, I get to incorporate some of my Shakespeare background and some Broadway show tunes and make it fun. So, I love both programs. And the most rewarding thing is just again it’s instilling knowledge and sharing the wisdom of my experiences, both the successes and the failures. I’ve had many failures and my students love my failure stories, the most famous of which is in my book and it’s called ‘The Love Letter to Horrible Bosses’. It’s about the boss who threw a box of pens at my head because they were the wrong ones. She wanted the fine points and these were medium point pens. So, they love hearing stories because, as you know, our students put us up on a pedestal and think “Oh, as professors they must have had like this linear career path.” And one of the things I say about career paths because it implies, that visual metaphor implies as if it’s a stroll in the park with stepping stones laid out for you, I say “It’s not a career path. Mine has been a career roller coaster of ups and downs, twists and turns, exhilarating highs, and terrifying plummets.” And I hate roller coasters. So, it really is a journey and by sharing the wisdom of our experience with our students … Eleanor Roosevelt said “Learn from the mistakes of others. Life is too short to make them all ourselves.” So, I love sharing the wisdom of the experience of all the mistakes I’ve made with my students. They get a kick out of it. And just finding the humor in relationships in business situations is probably my storytelling type of approach because even though business is serious, we can still find the humor in it. When using humor and people are laughing and smiling, they’re more receptive to learning and it creates a psychologically safe environment where people could be vulnerable and share their own stories.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. Well, Todd, what is the main message you’d like to leave our listeners with?

Todd Cherches:

I would say the main message is what’s interesting about visual leadership is we already do this. We already use metaphors. We already use visual imagery whether it’s in PowerPoint slides or sketching things out or we use mental models and frameworks. I think the main thing people could take away is be more aware of it when you’re doing it and when other people are doing it. And if you’re more aware, you could be more intentional and more strategic in how you go about it. So, the more you use some of these tools, the more effective you’ll be in getting others to see what you’re saying. And if you could do that, you could change not only their world but the world.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. And what is the quote that you use that helps you to keep leading?

Todd Cherches:

Oh, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. This one I actually just thought about yesterday. I have so many quotes by like the Marshall Goldsmiths and the Peter Druckers but this one, we had a huge storm here in New York this week and I tell this, I have this quote in my book, my wife said this number of years ago. We were looking out the window and the trees were going crazy and my wife said “Wow! Look at that wind.” And I said “You can’t see the wind. You can only see the effects of the wind.” So, similarly, the words we say, we may not be able to see but they may impact another person with the force of a hurricane. So, I’m going to leave it at that.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. Well, Todd, I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to you and thank you for the wisdom and the many quotes you shared, a couple from Marshall Goldsmith and Eleanor Roosevelt and others that will help us all to keep leading.

Where can my listeners learn more about you?

Todd Cherches:

Sure. The best way is to just go to ToddCherches.com and you can check out my TED Talk there, find out more about my book and download my list of my top 52 visual leadership related books that most influenced me. So, do that and then feel free to link in with me. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. So, just say you saw me on Eddie’s show and link in with me and we’ll continue the conversation there.

Eddie Turner:

Wonderful. Thank you for being a guest on the Keep Leading!® Podcast and helping us all to be able to keep leading as visual leaders.

Todd Cherches:

Thank you.

Eddie Turner:

That concludes this episode, everyone. I am Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.