Keep Leading!® Podcast 127 | The Success Factor for Leaders and High Achievers | Ruth Gotian

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.

Do you ever wonder why some people achieve exceptional success while others only achieve average results? My guest today has invested decades in researching the answer to that question and she’s studied the most successful people of our generation to understand what they do when the world isn’t watching, what do they do that ultimately puts them in an elite class, how do they overcome failure. My guest today is the amazing Dr. Ruth Gotian, the chief learning officer and assistant professor of Education in Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. She has been held by the Journal of Nature and Columbia University as an expert in Mentorship and Leadership Development. In 2021, she was one of only 30 people in the world selected to the Thinkers 50 Radar List, known as the Oscars of Management. In addition to publishing in academic journals, Forbes, Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, she is set to release a new book entitled The Success Factor: Developing the Mindset and Skillset for Peak Business Performance due out January 2022. I am excited to welcome Dr. Ruth Gotian.

Ruth, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.

Ruth Gotian:

Oh my God, Eddie. That is the best introduction I have ever gotten. I feel like I need a tiara.

Eddie Turner:

Oh my! You deserve a tiara is so much more. I am just in awe of.

Ruth Gotian:

That was beautiful, Eddie.

Eddie Turner:

Tell us what I missed about your amazing background.

Ruth Gotian:

Well, I actually started my career in Business and Finance and International Banking, my bachelor’s and master’s are actually in Business and then I decided to go back to my first love which was working with students and I decided to work with high-achieving students. And I ran a combined MD PhD program for nearly 20 years. That’s for students who get both the MD and the PhD degree simultaneously in seven years. And at the age of 43, I decided to go back to school while working full-time and raising a family and I got my doctorate and I studied Adult Learning and Leadership to figure out how people like you and I learn, which is certainly different than the K-12 model, and to figure out why certain people rise to leadership and do it well and others don’t even seek it out or don’t do it well. And I became really obsessed with success. And I was studying it deeply. So, my original research was on the most successful physician scientists of our generation, those who got the MD and did research. And then I started to question if the four things I found in the physician scientists who were Nobel Prize winners and a former surgeon general would I find those same things in other extreme high achievers. So, I started studying astronauts and Olympic champions and Fortune 500 CEOs and senior government officials. And what do you know? The Nobel Prize-winning scientist is just like an Olympic champion speed skater.

Eddie Turner:

Are you telling me that a scientist is like an athlete?

Ruth Gotian:

Oh yes, oh yes, not an athlete, a supreme athlete like Olympic level athlete.

Eddie Turner:

Supreme athlete, okay.

Ruth Gotian:

Olympic level. And they’re like the astronauts because they all do the same four things. And once I realized they all do the same four things, I said “That means they learned these things. And if these are learnable skills, I’m an adult educator, I can teach those skills.” And that led to me writing The Success Factor and all the other articles and speaking about it to anybody who will listen one-on-one or on stages and here we are talking about us some more.

Eddie Turner:

Here we are indeed. Yeah, I mean, I love this concept and that’s why I wanted to talk to you about this. And here we’re looking at this episode as being the success factor for leaders and high achievers. I want to know how you define success.

Ruth Gotian:

So, I actually studied this and as my committee told me, I did two dissertations before I ever got to my dissertation because I had to figure out how to define success. And, Eddie, what I can tell you is that success is a moving target and the definition changes based on who you ask and it changes based on rank, based on gender, and based on race ethnicity but one thing that they all had in common, two things actually that they all had in common was that in order to be successful, you have to push your field forward in some way. You have to push it so that people do things differently, see things differently, act differently because of what you did. You developed some sort of new knowledge right so you pushed the field forward but just as importantly, as you succeeded, as you moved up, you brought people up with you. You paid it forward in some way either one on one, so for example, Nobel Prize winner Bob Lefkowitz, he has mentored over 200 people one on one, or you could develop big programs that really get many people together. So, astronaut Dr. Charlie Camarda created the Epic Education Foundation and he’s reached hundreds if not thousands of people all over the world to get them to think in a more innovative manner about solving major problems and he’s getting kids out of the classroom to do big, big projects just about thinking differently. Those are the two things when you ask me how you define success – push the field forward and bring people up with you.

Eddie Turner:

I absolutely love that definition and appreciate those two good examples of what it may look like. Thank you for sharing.

It sounds like that requires a certain mindset. Can you talk to me about the mindset of high achievers who achieve this type of success?

Ruth Gotian:

Absolutely. So, Eddie, there’s actually four things that all of them have done. So, I said you can’t just copy other people’s habits. If I’m a high achiever and I’m a morning person and you’re a night owl, you’re not going to turn into a morning person because that’s my habit. It’s just not going to work but there are mindsets that you could absolutely emulate. Now, there’s four things, and you have to do all four things together, but there’s something you have to do first and that is to find out what you are passionate about, what is your purpose, what you are put on this earth to do, the reason that you wake up in the morning and you cannot quiet your mind at night because you’re always thinking about this, you would do it for free if you could because you love it so much. There’s a fire within you that’s always burning. There’s an intrinsic why – why you need to do this, why you need to solve this problem.

Now, Eddie, this is very different from extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation means you are doing something because you are getting a promotion, you’re getting a big salary, you’re getting a diploma, an award, a recognition. Eddie, that means other people are judging you. And if other people are judging you all the time, it’s really hard to stay motivated and what will happen is you will fail out or burnout but when it comes from within, you don’t care what other people think because you have a bigger purpose for doing it. That is your reason for doing it. So, that’s the first one and that’s step one. You must get that right. And that’s why when I coach people, I always take them through a Passion Audit to figure out what it is that they’re so passionate about doing because just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you’re passionate about it. Big difference, right?

Eddie Turner:

Absolutely, a really big difference. I like the way you explain that and that makes a lot of sense and I really like the point that you made about how it has to be different for different people because sometimes you read about someone who gets up at 4 a.m. and all of a sudden, if you’re a night owl, you’re thinking “I got to get up at 4 a.m.” It’s depleting to even think about it. So, therefore, that person doesn’t try.

Ruth Gotian:

You’re just going to sleep.

Eddie Turner:

Right.

Ruth Gotian:

One thing I want to offer your listeners is, if they want to do their own passion audit, they can. There’s a passion audit on my website that they can just download. So, just go to RuthGotian.com/PassionAudit and you can download one for free and really start to figure out what is it you enjoy doing, what you would give away for free if you could, what you don’t enjoy doing and what is something that you must continue doing.

Eddie Turner:

Excellent. We’ll be sure to put a link to that in the show notes so that folks will simply click on that and not miss the opportunity.

Ruth Gotian:

You got to figure out your passion. You ready for number two, Eddie?

Eddie Turner:

Go right ahead.

Ruth Gotian:

When you love what you do, you are going to outwork everyone not because you have to but because you want to. And you fall into what’s called a state of flow because you love what you’re doing, you become hyper focused at it. You’re not tired. You’re not hungry. The sun sets, you don’t even notice. You love it and there’s a fire from within that is pushing you to continue. Now, don’t get me wrong. You know how to balance this and balance it with your life but you need to solve this question. It will always come from within and you will really outwork everyone and you will do it with so much passion. You’re not just spinning your wheels. You’re actually being extremely productive. So, that’s the work ethic, the perseverance, the grit, all of that, that’s number two.

Ready for number three?

Eddie Turner:

Go right ahead.

Ruth Gotian:

You need to have a strong foundation which you are constantly reinforcing. So, the same things that you did early in your career are the same things that you would do later in your career. Doesn’t matter if you got the Olympic gold medal. Doesn’t matter if you got the Nobel Prize. So, for example, I spoke to Ryan Millar who’s a three-time Olympian and gold medal men’s volleyball player, he told me in the training for the Olympics what thing they would work on is ball control. And they would do ball control with the game called Pepper. And he said pepper is what he played in his backyard when he was seven years old. It’s the same exact drills. Kobe Bryant would do layups in his workouts at 4, 5, 6 in the morning. Those are the same workouts and the same drills you would see in any junior high gym. Hasn’t changed. Kobe Bryant just had better sneakers, better coaches, better equipment but the drills are exactly the same. The scientists, they don’t give up writing grants and writing papers and doing their research because they got the Nobel Prize. They just keep doing it. So, these things, it’s about really developing that strong foundation and constantly reinforcing it.

And last but certainly not least is all of the high achievers, they never think that they have all the answers. In fact, they are continuously learning and they are learning by informal means. So, they’re not sitting in the classroom. That’s unreasonable for most adults, especially adults who are also working. So, what are the other ways they can learn? Well, you can read books. You can read journals. You can read articles. You can listen to podcasts such as this one. Hopefully, you’re hearing great things now. You can watch YouTube videos. You can talk to people. Now, with that talking to people, all of the high achievers surrounded themselves not just with one mentor but with a team of mentors. And that is what is so critical. You surround yourself with people who believe in you more than you believe in yourself.

So, those are the four – intrinsic motivation, perseverance, strong foundation, and learning through informal means and mentors.

Eddie Turner:

Thank you for explaining all four of those and thank you certainly for summarizing them again so that we can understand the mindset of extreme high achievers. And I was recalling the quote that “Excellence is not an act but a habit” as you explained the third one there. So true that when people achieve, they don’t stop.

Thank you so much, Ruth.

Ruth Gotian:

Oh, thank you.

Eddie Turner:

I’m talking to Dr. Ruth Gotian. Dr. Ruth Gotian is the author of The Success Factor: Developing the Mindset and Skillset for Peak Business Performance. We’ll have more with Dr. Ruth Gotian right after this.

Eddie Turner:

We’re back. I’m talking to Dr. Ruth Gotian. She’s the author of The Success Factor: Developing the Mindset and Skillset for Peak Business Performance.

Before the break ruth you were explaining the four mindsets of extreme high achievers. And so, I would like to know for the leaders listening to this discussion who want to be high achievers how can they go about developing that mindset you described.

Ruth Gotian:

So, as I said, you have to do all four of these things together and it really starts with tapping into your intrinsic motivation. And I told you about the Passion Audit and your listeners, where they can find it. They could just go to RuthGotian.com/PassionAudit but once you find that and a good tip to really think about is when you’re procrastinating what is it that you are doing when you’re procrastinating. And also, look at what you’re doing on your time off nights and weekends. What are you doing during that time? That’ll give you some insight as to what you might be passionate about but there are so many ways, and that’s what I talk about in The Success Factor, of how to develop each of these four mindsets, how to tap into your intrinsic motivation, what are the different ways that you can tap into your perseverance and your work ethic and be more productive. Just because you’re busy doesn’t mean that you are productive. So, I talk about finding your peak cognitive hours. So, for example, I am a morning person. It is when I do all of my cognitive work – my reading, my writing. I am not on Zooms in the morning if I can help it because that would not be a good use of my time. It would have to be in the morning for me. I also work in what’s called sprints. So, sitting for three hours even during my peak hours, the third hour is not going to be as productive as the first hour. So, I actually work in sprints – 25 minutes on of deep focused work, take a five-minute break, do another 25 minutes, take another five-minute break, etc. It’s something called the Pomodoro Technique. And I actually wrote an article for Forbes about it and I said during the pandemic I actually used the washing machine as my timer – put a wash in and that was my deep focused work; cycle was over, that was my break. And then I continued that.

And other ways to develop, for example, your informal learning. We talked about the books and we talked about the journals and we talked about the podcasts you can listen to but my God, there has been an explosion of webinars and LinkedIn Lives during the pandemic. The world’s leading experts are giving away their knowledge and talking and giving master classes. And there’s also these online courses you can take, of course. There are these individual courses people have, there’s LinkedIn Learning type of courses that you can take but there’s really just such a plethora of options that you can choose from. Look, I have access to some pretty impressive people. I mean, I study extreme high achievers, right?

Eddie Turner:

Yes.

Ruth Gotian:

But I found out that if I want to learn from people, I can just tap into these webinars that are being offered for free or almost free and learn such incredible stuff. And then what do the high achievers do? They’ll listen to this and they’ll pick something up and they’ll listen to something else and pick something up and listen to a third thing and pick something up. You know what the former undersecretary of the US Navy told me?

Eddie Turner:

What’s that?

Ruth Gotian:

Innovation is just poaching other people’s ideas and thinking about them in a new way. And that is something that you can start doing every day. Just put yourself around really interesting people. And when you put yourself around really interesting people and interesting ideas and pay attention, oh my God, the things you can learn but learn and think about it and see where you can connect dots that other people don’t yet see. Those are just a few of the ways. I have four chapters in the book The Success Factor devoted to this including how to find mentors, where to find mentors, how to approach those conversations. And I tell people you can’t just have one mentor. You have to have a mentoring team. You need your own board of directors. So, how do you put that together. Who should be on that mentoring team? How do you develop those relationships? I mean, this is a key, key topic. And this could be really differentiating because did you know, Eddie, 76% of people think mentors are critical but only 37% actually have them? Isn’t that sad?

Eddie Turner:

Well, I learned that you’re one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject of mentoring. So, that’s a very good statistic and I’m glad you shared that. And if an individual wants to build out their mentoring team the way you said that high performers do, high achievers, how do they do that?

Ruth Gotian:

So, Eddie, there are layers and layers to this mentoring team and you can always add to it. That is what is so great because this is not a dissertation committee. They don’t all need to meet together to discuss you. This is not an actual board meeting. You can pick and choose who you turn to at any time for information about a certain topic. So, for example, when I wrote my book proposal for The Success Factor, I actually reached out to my former dissertation advisor who’s my mentor and one of the most gifted writers I know and I asked her to review it. I also asked another mentor of mine who’s an editor of a big journal to review it. I didn’t ask the military person, I didn’t ask the scientist, I didn’t ask the lawyer because that’s not the type of expertise that I needed for this particular project but if I’m going to have a negotiation, you bet I’m going to talk to that lawyer who’s an expert in negotiation. If I need to write a grant, I want to talk to someone who’s written lots of successful grants. I don’t want to talk to the person who’s never written a grant. That’s why you need all of these people.

Now, there’s different levels of people. You need somebody who’s senior to you, at least one, I say many, because you want someone who has the experience and has the skills and has the expertise and has that political capital and that network you can tap into but you also want people who are at your level, what we call peer mentors, and some that I call friendtors, friends who are your mentors because, Eddie, peers rise together. So, even if you’re junior and you’re at the bottom of the food chain, you are not going to be there forever. And I actually talk about Dr. Lynn Wooten who’s the president of Simmons University in Pennsylvania and Dr. Erica James who is the Dean of Wharton at UPenn, top business school. The two of them are best friends. They’re best friends and they’re also each other’s mentors but now, one is a dean of a big business school the other is the president of a university but they met in their 20s when they were grad students and they’ve been friends and peer mentors ever since.

Now, the last layer that you need is actually people who are junior to you because people who are junior to you actually can help you and give you perspective about some of the things that you may not be familiar with. Eddie, it’s how ten years ago I learned how to use Twitter. It’s also how I am helping a Nobel Prize winner who’s a generation older than me get the word out about his book because he only knew how to talk about it in his demographic, in his industry. He didn’t know how to cross industries. And even though he’s a generation older than me and he’s a Nobel Prize winner and I’ll never get the Nobel, I am able to help with that because I know how to do that and I have the network for that. And I think his book is brilliant.

So, this is how you can learn from people who are senior to you, at your level, and junior to you. And you also want to get some retirees on that mentoring team because the retirees, they do not hold back. They will tell you everything you need to know. They will tell you who will have your back and who will stab you in the back. They know all of this information. So, there’s multiple layers to this. You also want people who know the personal you and people who know the professional you and people who are two levels away that with one or two introductions you can meet. There’s a whole science to this.

And, Eddie, if any of your listeners want to start building out their mentoring team, I have a template they could just follow. Just go to RuthGotian.com/MentoringTeam and you can download it all there. There’s also articles if you want to read more about it. There’s a lot in there. Look, Eddie, I geek out when I have to talk about mentoring or success. I could be here all night talking about it.

Eddie Turner:

I bet you can. And thank you for summarizing that and saying that you have a template because I was sitting here thinking as I’m listening to you “Wow! It’s more evolved than many of us may think.” And for some people, they may think “Wow! There’s so much work. I’m not going to bother with it.” So, thank you for making it easy by giving us a template because people operate without a mentor at their own peril.

Ruth Gotian:

Yes. There’s actually research on the study. People who are mentored out earn and outperform those who are not mentored.

Eddie Turner:

Isn’t that something? I did not know that but I can see why that would be the case. And mentoring is different than coaching or sponsoring.

Ruth Gotian:

Yes, very different, very different. Mentoring is really long term. It’s really somebody over your entire career. And coaching is usually more nuanced, much more nuanced. And sponsoring is someone who talks about you when you’re not even in the room. They will recommend you for opportunities. They will recommend you for choice projects, committees, awards, promotions, recognition. So, you really need to have all of these people on your team.

Eddie Turner:

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Ruth, I thoroughly have enjoyed talking to you and I think that you have just shown me even more so why Thinkers 50 said that “You are a prolific mentor and educator leading important research into the secrets of success.”

Ruth Gotian:

Oh, thank you, Eddie.

Eddie Turner:

What’s the main message you’d like to leave our listeners with?

Ruth Gotian:

Eddie, I don’t believe anybody wakes up in the morning aiming to be average. I think people really want to be successful. And I am so excited that I was able to figure it out, create a blueprint and give you options that you can choose from as to how to implement it that works with your life. So, I am really excited about The Success Factor. I’m excited that it’s already available on pre-sale and it’s going really well because I was told by my mentor do something important, not just interesting because when it’s interesting, it’s a hobby; when it’s important, it will have an impact. And I want to leave this world a little better than I found it. And I’m hoping that by helping people who want to achieve greater success, however they define it, I’m hoping The Success Factor helps them do that.

Eddie Turner:

Do something important, not just interesting.

Ruth Gotian:

Yeah.

Eddie Turner:

I like that. I like that. That is definitely a quote that we can use to help us keep leading.

Ruth Gotian:

Yes.

Eddie Turner:

You’ve given us your website but is there anything else we should know about how we can connect with you?

Ruth Gotian:

So many ways. So, absolutely on my website RuthGotian.com. All the social media is just my name Ruth Gotian. You can also go on Forbes and just put Forbes Ruth Gotian and you can click to follow my articles which come out every week and you can learn something new all the time because I’m always leaking out this information. And there’s also profiles on some impressive high achievers and leaders that I have come across including the host of the show.

Eddie Turner:

That is true, actually. Yes, yes, I was honored to be covered by you.

Ruth Gotian:

That was fun.

Eddie Turner:

Indeed, it really was. I almost forgot about that. That’s true.

Ruth Gotian:

That article did really well. I think that article on you inspired a lot of people.

Eddie Turner:

Thank you, Dr. Ruth Gotian. Nice way to sneak that in there on me.

Well, folks, listen. I really am crazy about Dr. Ruth Gotian. She is amazing. pick up any scholarly journal and follow her – Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Psychology Today and a plethora of others – and certainly pick up the new book when it hits the market in January 2022, The Success Factor: Developing the Mindset and Skillset for Peak Business Performance. Follow her on social media. Connect with her. You will learn a lot because she is just a big deal.

Ruth Gotian:

I’m going to go get my tiara now, Eddie.

Eddie Turner:

Thank you for being a guest and thank you for helping us to understand success here on the Keep Leading!® Podcast.

Ruth Gotian:

Thanks, Eddie.

Eddie Turner:

And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I am Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our position or our title. 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.