If You’re Not Trying New Things Every Day, You’re Not Going To Be An Innovation Engine

David A. Steinberg, CEO of Zeta Global, a marketing technology company, shared his key leadership insights on player-coach leadership, creating safe spaces for innovation, and empowering executives to grow through trust and accountability in this Art of Leading interview with The ExCo Group‘s Adam Bryant.

Q. You’ve been leading for a long time, and you’ve started seven companies. What are the core ideas in your leadership playbook?

A. When I started my first company at 21 years old, I was always the youngest person in any room I walked into. I’m now 55, so I’ve been doing this for 34 years, and I am almost always the oldest person in any room I walk into.

When I first started as a leader, I was absolutely, positively sure that I could do everything better than anyone in our organization. I micromanaged by trying to go very deep in every part of the organization. I now know what I’m very good at, and what I’m not good at.

My main job as a leader today, as it relates to the people in our organization, is recruiting, hiring, training, and empowering people. I couldn’t do that even 15 or 20 years ago. We had great people, but I had a hard time keeping them because I didn’t really empower them. I wanted to tell them what to do, and I didn’t understand my main role.

What I do best is relationship management and strategy—what’s the long-term strategy and vision for the company, and how do I build deep and meaningful relationships with other CEOs and leaders? Building those relationships is all about intellectual curiosity. If you’re not interested in other people and you’re not interested in learning about them, they’re going to see through that very quick.

Q. You mentioned the importance of empowering people. Tell me about your approach to managing and leading your executive team.

A. I tell them that I’m here to help you solve problems. I’m not here to tell you what to do.  It’s my job to make sure you have the resources that you need, because I have the ability to help you when you have a problem. In order to do that, I have to create a safe space for those conversations. Because if your senior people don’t feel comfortable telling you about their problems, then you can’t help them solve them.

All 14 of us on the leadership team meet every Monday for 30 minutes. That meeting is not for people to report out on what’s going well. I want to hear about their biggest challenges, and then we can discuss how the group can help solve them. If you don’t create an environment where people feel safe sharing their challenges with their colleagues, it’s not going to work in the long run.

If you’re not trying new things every day, then you’re not going to be an innovation engine. That’s why that safe space is so important, because people need to feel comfortable trying things and failing. If you don’t create that space, then they are not going to try things, and you’re not going to have an innovative company.

Q. Hard to imagine that 30 minutes is enough for a productive meeting with 14 people.

A. It forces people to really prepare for their part. It takes a lot of work beforehand to do these meetings in 30 minutes. People have to come in and know exactly what to say. If you’re a business leader here, you have to quickly share how you are trending against budget, the deals you’re working on that others might be able to help you with, and one big challenge you’re working through.

Q. Your leadership approach of course relies heavily on your ability to hire the right people. But let’s talk about when somebody you’ve hired doesn’t work out. What’s the pattern there?

A. People coming out of a very senior role at a large organization can fall into the trap of wanting to tell people to do things rather than tactically doing the work themselves. It’s a dynamic that I’ve learned the hard way. When you’re building a start-up, you want to be able to say you’ve hired somebody from a really big competitor because it helps build credibility for your organization.

But culturally, those same people are used to having a team of people around them who will do what the leader tells them to do. At every level of our organization, from me all the way down, I want everybody here to be a player-coach. And we’ve changed our interview process to make sure we screen for that. The other problem I’ve seen over the years is when we hire somebody to do a certain job, but then the job pivots and they don’t want to do the new job.

Q. Over the decades of leading teams of senior executives, what are the themes that come up most often when you’re giving people 1:1 coaching?

A. Sometimes senior leaders get ahead of themselves, and they start creating challenges with other leaders as they try to take either more control or move out of their lane into others’ areas of responsibility. That often creates ripple effects through organizations, because great leaders don’t want other leaders telling them what to do.

I’ve had to pull a number of leaders aside to say to them, “This is your opportunity to really create something great here. I believe you can be a really valuable part of that, but you’re blowing yourself up because I’m one of those leaders who doesn’t want politics in our organization.”

I’d be naive to think we don’t have any politics. But I’d also be naive if I didn’t know that’ it’s an important component of my job to mitigate it as best I can. When people are trying to curry favor or trying not to empower another person, I nip it in the bud.

The other the way I like to coach people is by taking a walk with them. Getting out of the office and taking a 30- to 60-minute walk with them really opens people up. My job as a leader is to understand the biggest challenges my people have and help them solve them or surmount them. That is my single most important job. The hardest part of that job is getting people to be super honest about their challenges with you, and that’s what I focus on.