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Future-proof your leadership with High Octane Leadership, a place where business leaders—whether by title or aspiration—share cheat codes for unlocking workplace excellence, lessons learned along the way, and insider tips for future generations of next-level professionals. With a career rooted in building people and businesses, Donald Thompson is an award-winning CEO, speaker, and author who empowers leaders to scale with purpose. Over the last 25 years, he has helped startups and enterprises alike drive cultural change, unlock performance, and deliver exceptional results through strategic leadership.
Find him on LinkedIn, and listen here to learn how you can become future-proof too.
Cold Open
[00:00:00]
Donald Thompson: Now watch this. When things are broken, it's my fault. When we miss a sales number, it's my fault. When there's pressure from above, it gets to me first, and I filter it out in the appropriate level to my team. I don't bring the same level of heat that I get as a leader that I'm responsible for for my team. So part of building trust is are you a protector Or are you a blame assigner?
Intro
Donald Thompson: Welcome back to High Octane Leadership, the podcast built for leaders who are serious about winning and serious about doing it in the right way.
I'm Donald Thompson, and today the tables are turned. I have someone I deeply respect in the guest host chair, and I'm the one asking the questions. Jackie Ferguson is a two-time founder, best-selling author, and an award-winning strategist.
She was named to the Inc. Female Founders 200 list, wrote the best-selling book, "The Inclusive Language Handbook: A [00:01:00] Guide to Better Communication and Transformational Leadership," and hosted the globally recognized podcast, "Diversity Beyond the Checkbox." She's one of the sharpest minds that I know, and that is not flattery, it's just accurate.
Jackie, the mic is yours, and, uh, thanks for spending time with our audience today
Jackie Ferguson: Thank you, Don. I appreciate that introduction. I'm really excited about this conversation and about the ability to turn the tables and interview you today. That said, I appreciate that introduction. It was very good. Now let me return the favor. Donald Thompson, 25 years building and scaling companies across industries, uh, multi-exit entrepreneur, managing director of the Workplace Options Center for Organizational Effectiveness, which is a global platform supporting more than 88 million individuals across 127,000 organizations worldwide.
Author of [00:02:00] Underestimated: A CEO's Unlikely Path to Success, the Employee Engagement Handbook, and co-author of the Inclusive Leadership Handbook, EY Entrepreneur of the Year, Forbes Next 1000, three-time Inc. 5000 winner, and honorary doctorate from William Peace University. Did I cover that, Don?
Donald Thompson: You, you, you did, and I, and I, and I appreciate it. But you, but you hit the highlights
Jackie Ferguson: Love it.
Don is not a theorist. He's in the room coaching the executives, working with the data inside organizations at a scale very few people in this space can claim. And today he's answering my questions about his pillars. So Don, let's go ahead and get into our topic for today
So let's start with the big idea.
You've built your 2026 work around a single overarching theme, how culture drives performance. [00:03:00] That sounds intuitive, but a lot of executives hear culture and think soft or slow or hard to measure. Let's make the business case. Why does culture belong in the same sentence, in the same conversation as performance?
Donald Thompson: One of the things I share with, business leaders and I try to keep things in terms that we can all understand.
Clip 1 - Culture and Performance
Donald Thompson: When you look at a quarter, right? Uh, US currency, there's heads and there's tails, and without one, it's not money. It's not something that you can use to buy a thing. And culture and performance are two of the key elements when combined together, actually allow you to create the enduring business results that you're trying to go after.
So now let's get even a little bit more granular. Let's say two technology companies are implementing software, right? And one has a culture of change is [00:04:00] good. One has a culture of quality communication. One has a culture of growth mindset. And that company, because they're used to working together collaboratively, can dial in and implement this new technology change in six months.
Then you have a culture of dysfunction, where everyone's trying to one-up one another. There's a culture of fear. "How is this gonna take my job?" And that same technology implementation may take two years or never actually get done. So culture has an impact on the way your team shows up on the playing field of work and how they interact with clients, how they drive performance engines within the organization.
And culture is that enduring engine that is not necessarily independent. It is actually cohesive with how a business performs. And one of the things that executives talk about all the time is that people are our most important asset. That shows up in how you treat people in [00:05:00] every interaction so that they can perform not only at, but above standard.
So culture and performance to me, when I was looking at what I wanted to focus on in 2026, it wasn't culture, it wasn't performance, it was that combination of the two, because that's really where the high impact of leadership lives
Clip 1 End - Culture and Performance
Jackie Ferguson: That's great, Don. Thank you for level setting that for us. So let's get into your pillars. You chose four content pillars: leadership excellence, employee engagement, AI in the human workforce, and trust-based brand authority. Walk me through the logic. Why did you choose these four?
Donald Thompson: I've talked to a lot of business leaders. I have my experience as an entrepreneur and as an executive that I, rely on lots of things that I've read and, and, and different things. But I really don't like to just have the theory, the theory of what will work. So I have [00:06:00] fallen back on the things that have allowed me to be successful as a business leader.
Leadership excellence, number one, talks about the accountability that I take and that I try to convey to other leaders, that we set the tone and the tempo, right, of how the company will operate. Our behavior shows people what is acceptable. So that means if we are solid in our communication, if we are transparent, if we demonstrate empathy and the ability to achieve economic goals, that will be emulated throughout the rest of the organization.
So I think leadership excellence is first because people follow those behavior models of how the leaders operate in the business, right? And I'll be really specific there.
Clip 2 - Leadership Excellence
Donald Thompson: Some organizations, it's only your financial metrics that matter.
Then when you come back and say that we care about people and different things, if that's not what's rewarded, if that's not what's recognized, if only the numbers matter, that will be a downstream impact that will create a cultural impact in the business.[00:07:00]
So that leadership excellence is about the behaviors that we model to achieve the goals we set out. The second component is a very significant driver, and, and I am a really strong example of this. You can't build something great or enduring without an amazing team that's doing it with you. You can have an amazing idea.
You can be really, really bright and accomplished. You can be a great engineer and have a great product. But I've not seen anybody do anything significant in business without a great team. And in order to achieve greatness in a team, you have to have employees and team members that are highly engaged in the mission, highly engaged in how the mission of the company also is beneficial to them as individuals, an environment where they can see their career navigation matters to their employer, that their benefits are such that they can take care of their health, their wellness, their mental acuity as they [00:08:00] grow, and then also meet the demands of the workplace.
So employee engagement is business critical because you can have great leadership behaviors, great modeling, but if it doesn't convert to how your employees behave when you're not there Then you don't have something that is strong and enduring and that you can build on the global enterprise.
Clip 2 End - Leadership Excellence
Donald Thompson: AI as a pillar is not AI from a technology standpoint.
I think there's many people that can cover that, talk about that in ways that are much stronger than I. But I do believe that there's a very important niche in this space around AI's impact on culture and, and performance that I really wanna dig into, and I'll give a really quick insight here.
I was talking with a chief information officer at a company, their engineering manager, and their head, and lead of marketing. I won't name-drop the company because I've, I'm really thankful that I get to have a lot of conversations with business leaders at a lot of [00:09:00] levels, and they speak freely to me.
And so I can talk about what I've learned, but I keep things really close to the vest about who I'm working with and what they're working on. But anyway, in this conversation, we were talking about AI's adoption amongst technology folks within their organization, and there was some challenges there.
There were some things they were working on, and so they sought out some feedback, and so I asked a few questions. And one of the questions that I asked is, "When you all were briefing your board about your AI strategy, was someone from HR and people in culture in the room with you?" And they all looked at each other, and they said, "No."
Like most companies, they built an AI strategy around the technology, and then after they made decisions on the technology and the path and the adoption, then they thought about how they were going to get the people on board, when really the technology decision should have been made in conjunction with the impact of the people.
And so in asking that question, we created a really nice dialogue [00:10:00] about what some of the next steps could be for their organization. But most people think about people second. So as a part of my pillars, the third pillar is AI's impact on culture and performance, and that's something I think we can really dig into and, and be, uh, unique in the market in how we present it.
And then the final pillar is trust-based brand authority, and this is both for individuals and for the enterprise. And a lot of times I will chat with folks that are working on their personal brand and trying to grow their expertise and turn that expertise into revenue and all the things, and they might get pushback from their corporation that they're talking about self and not the corporate brand.
And I have to help them step back and say, "Wait a minute. If you have experts in your organization that are well thought of in the industry, that are speaking and generating information insights for leaders, they create a halo effect back to the corporate brand." It's not in [00:11:00] spite of the corporate brand, it's in conjunction with.
And so when you create that trust brand authority, right, it is a benefit both to the enterprise when we talk about thought leadership, but also the individual to share three things: what you do, why it matters, and how you can take what you do and help achieve the goals of your clients. And when you think about those things in that way, we all understand this.
People want to do business with people they know, trust, and like. And trust-based brand authority builds that foundation so that you can operate in this kind of noisy AI environment where there's so much content out there. You can create uniqueness because you're delivering an authentic message in a unique way with a very specific impact for customers that choose to work with you.
Jackie Ferguson: That's great, Don. Thank you for that. One of the things [00:12:00] that stood out in what you were saying earlier on was regarding leadership excellence and how that's rewarded and recognized. When I started with question one in saying that some people view culture as it being soft or hard to measure, it's because those people with regard to leadership are only measuring the numbers.
They're not measuring employee engagement and how your employees experience work under you, right? And so I think that's so important, uh, for leaders to understand, recognize, and then action on. Um, so thank you for sharing that.
Don, what did you... Before we move to the next major topic area, right, what did you consider and leave out in your four pillars?
So to arrive at four pillars, right, you thought of 20. What were some of the things that you left out or integrated within those four pillars?
Donald Thompson: [00:13:00] So that's really-- This is a great question. There's so many layers when you talk about building an enduring brand, growing a business in really a very interesting time that we're in from an economic standpoint. Um, I tried to move away from business cliches, right? Using words like digital transformation and things of that nature, and really focus on things that everyone can understand at each level, right?
That leadership is a relationship, right? Leadership excellence. How do you show care while still delivering the impact? So I stayed focused on the things that we could really make tangible. I stayed focused on the things where I thought I had a unique point of view, and the set of things that I left to the side are things that are out there that are more common knowledge, right?
That are more compliance related, kind of business 101, right? Make more money than you spend, right? Building a revenue funnel, right? Different things of that, that nature. Um, [00:14:00] in the leadership standpoint, and I'll be really, really specific here, one of the things that I left out is one of the things that people talk a lot about is speed and agility, ?
And it's fine. These are good things, but I tried to take those things and layer them into leadership excellence in tangible ways. So it's not necessarily what I left out, it's how we integrated in, but we have four main pillars that most people can get their mind behind. Uh, and that allows us to educate people faster, right?
By keeping it really, really focused on four lever points that most people can control
Jackie Ferguson: Makes sense. Thank you so much. Um, there's a version of thought leadership that is essentially sophisticated self-promotion, and you talked about that just, just slightly, uh, earlier. And some people are afraid of that, right? There's, there's also a version that moves the conversation forward in a field, [00:15:00] within a concept, right?
So when people are feeling that, awkwardness or uncertainty about the self-promotion versus moving the conversation forward, what do you tell them? How do you stay on the right side of that line, and, and how do you move them into the thought leadership for the sake of learning, for the sake of giving piece?
Donald Thompson: I, um, really appreciate that question, and it is a real consideration, right? Because it's all about how your communication lands with an audience, right? And self-promotion feels like the name, right? It feels selfish, right? Where high quality thought leadership means you're sharing information and insights that's gonna help that leader be better at their job tomorrow.
So for me, it's about how does the information [00:16:00] empower? How does it increase capacity? How does it accelerate learning for the audience I'm presenting to? My goal is to help people be better in a fast-paced environment, be better in a highly complex environment, and if I can do that, then I've won. If I leave a meeting and that person says, "Donald was really impressive," and that's the only thing, then that's more self-actualization.
That's not my goal. My goal is that I come across as competent so that you'll listen to me, and that I can share things with you that help you win in the marketplace. So thought leadership, the goal, the design of this effort, is to help the executive function better, not be more impressed with me as an individual.
So when I'm sharing something on LinkedIn, when I'm writing a white paper, when I'm building a workshop, I'm looking at it through the lens of the audience member, and I want them to leave with that they got information and insight [00:17:00] that they can put in use tomorrow, and that to me is the distinction. It is a line that you have to be thoughtful of.
When I talk about my background, when you talk about the awards and different things that I've won, those things are not for additional pats on the back for me. They are triggers for the audience to say, "This person is worth listening to, to see if he can be helpful to the challenges and the opportunities that I'm facing."
And that's how I balance those two things, because I really want to be helpful, which is my goal
Jackie Ferguson: That makes so much sense. Thank you for that level set. Don, let's now go deeper, right, into the pillars. Um, pillar one is leadership excellence, and you lead with diagnostic tools. So you have LeaderView and then the upcoming Receptive EQ. Most leadership development is still built around frameworks and training programs, but you're building around measurement and behavioral data.
What do [00:18:00] leaders learn about themselves from these tools? Let's talk about them a little bit, and then what do they learn from the tools that they can't get from a book or a keynote?
Donald Thompson: So really appreciate the question, and let's talk about LeaderView for a minute and why we built another assessment tool, there's 360-degree feedback, there's DISC, there's all of these different ways that you can assess a leaderships, a leader's capability, uh, and get feedback from others and peer review and all the different things.
Clip 3 - LeaderView Tool
Donald Thompson: LeaderView looks at the whole team leadership's impact on the organization, and so what's really, really important about leadership excellence is not how I behave as an individual, but how I contribute to the impact of the leadership teams that I'm partnered with so that we can represent the organization in a way that the entire business is better because we work together well.
So what we do with LeaderView is we, yes, we have an [00:19:00] assessment tool. Yes, there's a peer review component, but the leader gets a dashboard that looks across all the different functions that roll up to them. And then we have individual action plans that address communication, break down silos. That address growth mindset so that people can think about the future in a new and a different way.
This allows people to say, "Wait a minute. Number one, I'm not alone of being a part of a leadership team that is not as functioning as well as it should. And number two, there's ways to solve for it. And then number three, our company's willing to invest in that whole team leadership concept." And so that uniqueness allows now that executive function leader, whether you are a C-suite leader or a mid-level manager, anyone that has five, six, seven direct reports, the issue is not typically your leadership relationship with your marketing leader, your leadership relationship with finance.
It's how all of those teams interrelate [00:20:00] together that impacts the organization's success. And that's why we created LeaderView from the ground up and the 60 questions that we ask each individual, the dashboards that we develop, the analytics that are behind it. And then the final thing that we do is we look at the data that we capture, but we also combine it with individual interviews of the leadership team to make sure that the data and the real-world feedback align or if there are gaps, then we go for deeper discovery on doing that.
And so we think it's a unique way to position leadership. It's a unique way to look at the real impact of a team. And all of those things together build the foundation for a championship organization, and that is the missing element to have an enduring business. And so what LeaderView does, is it looks at the strength and weaknesses of how we behave as a unit and help you break those silos, improve communication, and drive productivity
Clip 3 End - LeaderView Tool
Jackie Ferguson: Awesome. Thank you [00:21:00] for that. Yeah, I, you know, one of the things that I wanna dig into quickly, and I also wanna touch on, receptive EQ is you mentioned growth mindset. The way that we have learned about growth mindset is it's rooted in learning. You, on the other hand, root growth mindset into resilience and adaptability, which is different.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Donald Thompson: I really appreciate that, that question, and I think part of it comes from, uh, having an athletic background, being the son of a coach. Um, if you're playing and competing at any level that's significant, you're not gonna win all the time, and you've gotta figure out how to take that loss, learn from it, take that loss, train differently, take that loss, but keep your enthusiasm for the next game or next event and really move forward.
Now let's move that back to a corporate standpoint. The world is changing so [00:22:00] fast that resilience, being able to address yourself when you have a setback but not let it drain your enthusiasm so low that you're not able to look for and fight for the next opportunity, these are things that are very different in this new economy.
It's both the learning capacity and the resilience capacity with the production because
Clip 4 - Resilience
Donald Thompson: everyone now is trying to do more with less. But executives say those words, "We need to tighten our belts and do more with less," but nobody shows you how. Nobody shows what resilience looks like. So let me give you an example.
Let's say you lose a big account that you were hoping to win. You go through the RFP process, and for whatever reason, they, they pick someone else. Are you on to the next account, or do you have a very deliberate after-action review process to where you look at all of the components of why you won or lost that piece of business?
And are you able to have those conversations inside your [00:23:00] organization without finger-pointing but with learning and assessment and growth as the mindset? Most organizations that lose or revenue's down or they have to go through something, it's political. It's finger-pointing. It's not me, it's them. That's not a learning environment.
Clip 4 End - Resilience
Donald Thompson: That's an environment where everyone's covering themself. That learning environment is where you take those things that you have to do better and different, and that resilience is you go after the next one with that new information, with the same organization, uh, organizational enthusiasm, right, that you went the last one.
And so I really do believe that resilience as a part of growth mindset starts to round out what growth mindset should really mean.
Jackie Ferguson: Awesome. Don, tell us a little about Receptive EQ. That sounds very slick, so I want to know more about it.
Donald Thompson: Uh, I gotta give a shout-out to my creative partner, Bob Batchelor, and we've worked together on a lot of different projects, over the years. And so [00:24:00] we spend time just thinking about the future and thinking about how we can make a leadership impact and create content that really moves the business needle.
And one of the things that we were really struggling with as we were just talking about leadership one day, is that there's a construct called psychological safety, and at Workplace Options, we have the psychological safety study that we've been doing for the last several years, and it covers multiple global geographies.
What do you do as a leader when you feel like you've done all you can to create that psychological safe environment, right? You've created that environment where people can speak up. You've created that environment where your leaders have gone through education. Why, why still don't people take advantage of it?
And we wanted to dig into that because most of the time when you talk about psychological safety, you think about the changes that leaders need to make. Receptive EQ is about how you get messages across at the right time, tone, and [00:25:00] tempo for people to actually receive the insight and do something with it.
IQ is that intellectual horsepower. EQ standalone is that emotional intelligence. Receptive EQ, to now break it down very different, is this. Let's say you have, full-time job, partner at home, kids, and one of your kids, for whatever reason, is not doing well. Maybe they're sick, maybe they're struggling in school, maybe they've got some mental health issues.
They're just not doing well for some reason. You're probably not receptive to high-level criticism or critique from your manager when you're working through something at home that's very personal, very emotive, very stressful. But if that leader doesn't look behind the corporate smile, doesn't build those trust-based relationships, they just can say, "That employee's out of touch.
They just don't get it. They don't wanna learn something new." Receptivity is different for each one of us given the life moments that [00:26:00] we're working through. And so we wanna take a step back and talk to leaders about the willingness of someone to be receptive to change and growth and the capacity to implement against that change in approach.
And what are the layers of things that impact someone's receptive EQ? And so we wanted to align receptive EQ with psychological safety so that we can really see the results from all the learning and talking and teaching that we're doing, but how do we overcome those roadblocks? I'll give another example
aI is the big talk of the globe right now
Jackie Ferguson: Right.
Donald Thompson: People that love technology think AI is amazing. Business leaders think about the cost savings they can get with AI. But AI is single-handedly scaring the out of people. The fear, the anxiety of AI taking jobs, the [00:27:00] layoffs that are occurring so that big companies can invest more in AI.
So now you want people to be receptive about learning a tool that could replace them. How do you increase someone's receptive EQ around AI? Education. But not just education about what AI is, education about how AI can help them be a better professional inside your organization or outside.
Because the more our skills are upgraded, the more we understand about something, the more our organization allows us to be a part of the AI change that we're going to adopt, the more that we can be engaged with it, and our receptivity goes up. But if AI transformation is just something that comes from on high, then there's going to be resistance, and that's going to be a block for the executives to get the cost savings and the productivities they want to achieve.
So if you want to make transformational growth in your [00:28:00] organization, you have to think about the receptive EQ of the people that you're working with and how to manage with and against that
Jackie Ferguson: Thanks, Don. Let's talk about pillar two. That's employee engagement, and your employee engagement handbook and growth model make the case that engagement has to be a life cycle system, not a program. So here's the tough question. Engagement scores have been declining for years across industries.
Companies have spent billions on engagement initiatives. Why is it not working, and what are organizations fundamentally missing?
Donald Thompson: Yeah, I've, uh, our team, um, 'cause again,
just like I said in the beginning, I'm really proud of the employee engagement handbook. Uh, I'm really proud of the employee engagement growth model, and I have a wonderful team of folks that helped research it, that helped put that book together, and I did not do that [00:29:00] alone. So I, I wanna share that. But to answer your question, uh, very specifically,
Clip 5 - Leader Communication
Donald Thompson: there are some things leaders get wrong, and some of it is arrogance.
Just because you have a town hall meeting that you talk for an hour and you talk about all the things that you're excited about with the company, doesn't mean you've linked your enthusiasm to the mental model that an employee is going through when they hear about a change event. And so what leaders get wrong is they think that one-stop messaging handles it.
Now, let's take a, a look at something that all leaders would understand. If you're running a marketing campaign and you're doing digital marketing, you know how many touchpoints you have to inter- interact with a client or a potential customer before they're gonna buy something. It's between 12 and 15 touchpoints digitally before someone will really interact with your brand in a significant way.
But leaders think that if they say something once or twice, that employees are just gonna get it.
Clip 5 End - Leader Communication
Donald Thompson: And so you have to create an environment where your messaging is [00:30:00] consistent, multi-channel, and modeled by the downstream managers and leadership. And it's easier said than done, I get that, for leaders that are, that are listening, but internal communication is the missing link.
Most people are way better at their external branding and messaging than they are at their internal communication and comms with their teams, and that's one of the big things that, that leaders need to understand and do. The second thing in terms of, uh, engagement not working is people get not only survey fatigue, but people have survey distrust.
Most big companies do surveys and assessments and different things, and they're well-meaning and the questions are well-architected and they have lots of tools that do it, but most teams don't follow up in what happened with the survey results. What changes in the way the company is going to work and operate came from the results of the survey?
Most leaders that have a survey level, great place to work, any of the s- any of the surveys that are [00:31:00] out there, it's not about the survey. It is about the system of what you do with that information, and do you really follow up and follow through with the feedback that you've been given to the, from the team?
And be honest and transparent about what of the feedback you can action on, that you agree with, and what's gonna have to wait for another time. People don't think that all of their ideas are gonna be adopted by their leadership. What they want is understanding of what's next, how it impacts them, and that some of their ideas were thoughtfully considered, and a few of those ideas are acted on
Jackie Ferguson: Perfect. All right, let's pivot to, the third pillar, which is AI in the human workforce or AI's impact on culture, and performance. Your entry point is not the technology as you described, it's the people. Uh, you have access to WPO's global wellbeing data [00:32:00] across eighty-eight million employees. What is that data telling you about what workers are actually experiencing as AI enters their organizations, and why most executive teams are underestimating it?
Donald Thompson: So one of the things that is really important when we look at
engagement scores going down, when we look at the stress and strain that employees are feeling globally. And I'll, I'll come back to the specific AI question in a minute. But one of the big things impacting employees, if you think about all of the different wars that are going on globally, if you think about the job loss, all of the anxiety associated with that, You think about the rollbla- rollback, excuse me, of DEI programming.
Clip 6 - Employee Silence
Donald Thompson: Most leaders aren't looking at the negative impacts within their organization, and here's why they miss it: because the anxiety is silent. When people are under high stress at [00:33:00] work, they don't scream, they don't misbehave, they don't yell at their manager. They become more reserved. They ask less follow-up questions.
They don't take organizational risk. They wanna do exactly what they're told so they don't get out of step with things that are going on. So the real issue and concern for leaders should be employee silence And that employee silence is impacted because people are looking above them, to the side, around, and no one has the full game plan of what's next.
And so that fear, that anxiety, that doubt gets everybody to be more individual-centered versus team-focused.
Clip 6 End - Employee Silence
Donald Thompson: And so that's one thing that people have to react to. Now, I don't like to make statements without giving people things to think about of how to address it. And so when you think about employee silence, it really does come back to that leadership component, which is what are the strengths of the relationships with your team?
And I'll, I'll give an example. I [00:34:00] won't drop names, but there's a member of my team that their daughter gave a speech at a school event, and this gentleman sent me a picture and a video, and we just celebrated in our next one-on-one that success, right, in their family. And I do those things, and I wanna know those things 'cause I n- one, one, I genuinely care.
Like I, I just wanna know. I like people. I want their life to be whole and, and successful. But number two, when you get to know people outside of just the, the specific tangible things they do in the office, then you get the ability to pick up clues when they're doing well and when they might be struggling a little bit and need a little bit of extra support.
And so I think it's really incumbent on leaders, and this is another pressure point for leaders. Leaders are being asked to do a lot these days, but I'd rather spend five minutes before a meeting gets started and really check on someone during the one-on-one versus having a bad meeting because I entered that discussion [00:35:00] with the wrong tempo for the moment that that person could actually receive. And so it's also strategic to get a better understanding of what people are working on, working through, and you can't force people to tell you these things, but you can thoughtfully pull and know that you're open. And when people get used to the fact that you really care, that you really wanna know, now you start to get information and insight that is pushed to you because you become a trusted source of insight, a trusted source of guidance, a trusted source of leadership.
And I think that is my responsibility, being a member of leadership teams, being on boards, being an investor, is to, to model that behavior every day. I don't get it right all the time. I do not wanna come across that way. I'm better than I was 10 years ago, five years ago, three years ago, last year.
That's what I, that's what I will say firmly, right? Is that it's something that I continue to work on. Now, back to [00:36:00] AI specifically and the psychological safety study There's just a lot of fear and concern that shows up across geographies about where people fit in within their career navigation. There is a lot of disruption and concern and anxiety of the relationship with their managers,
and all of those things show up pretty consistently across the, the, the study. AI is exasperating those things
Jackie Ferguson: Mm-hmm.
Donald Thompson: it is creating a faster pace of change with less information. Those two things are creating more and more workplace anxiety
Jackie Ferguson: Super valuable. Thank you, Dawn. So pillar four is about trust-based brand authority, and you've named what you call the credibility economy, a moment where institutional trust is declining, AI-generated content is everywhere, and individual executive credibility has [00:37:00] become a scarce asset. So what does it mean to build a trust-based brand, and how do you begin to do that?
Donald Thompson: One of the things in your opening questions as you were sharing, my bio is you talked about the difference between theory and practice. And what I do to try to build my brand, brand is talk about things I've done, talk about things I'm learning, and talk about things that I've experienced with other leaders and give them their due and credit.
I build trust by taking credit for things that I've demonstrated competency and commitment to, and sharing the limelight with others. I'll give an example. I was really, really blessed to, um, meet Robert Buday, and he wrote a book called Competing on Thought Leadership, and I read this book in preparation for one of my new roles, uh, in the larger organization I'm a part of.
But I invited Bob onto my [00:38:00] podcast, and he graciously accepted. And so we spent an hour just talking about enterprise thought leadership and its connective tissue to driving revenue, right? Now, when I went into the thought leadership meeting, I could've taken all the notes from the book and said my ideas.
What I did was recommended the team read the book. I talked to, about, Robert's experience and how he was willing to share, and the two or three tenets, and one of the big things he told me that people get wrong that I'll share with the audience, but then we'll come back to the question, is your thought leadership strategy is not marketing, it's your business strategy because it's gonna link with how the customers build trust with you And so I took that from Bob, but I'm sharing who gave me that knowledge nugget.
And so trust-based brand authority is own the things you've done, be proud of them, but [00:39:00] also make sure you widen the tent and share who you're learning from, how others can access that learning, and how that learning can impact their day-to-day work. And so those are some of the things. Again, I don't have it perfect, and sometimes I'll forget to do that and different things, but my intent, right, is to be a trusted source of information and insight because it's not just my knowledge.
When I talk to CEOs and leaders and they say, "Well, Don, why should we pick you over others? Why should we pick your organization over others?" And I'll say, "I'm not sure, but let me tell you how I think about it," 'cause I don't know they have-- I don't know why you should pick me, but here's one of the reasons you should consider.
I talk to hundreds of executives, so I'm not bringing you just what I'm learning. I'm bringing you what's working and not working in the insurance industry, in the manufacturing industry, in the technology industry, in the financial industry, because I've talked to, worked with, done programming with executives and leaders in all of those different realms, whether it is in the US, [00:40:00] whether it is in Canada, whether it is in Asia-Pac, and now I'm consolidating it for better recommendations and advice for you.
So you're not hiring me because I have all the answers. You're hiring me because I have a really active network and connective tissue with a lot of data, a lot of experience that can bring that information to bear. When we look at the psychological safety study or the mental health index that Telus Health puts out, now I have evidence-based insight that I can deliver credible insights to clients, and I'm not making it up on the fly.
I'm using data, experience, and understanding of your business goals to give you the best advice possible. And the final thing in being a trust-based, kind of building that brand,
Clip 7 - Trust and Leadership
Donald Thompson: I am very comfortable with saying, "I don't know. I'll research it, and I'll get back to you." I learned very long ago that trying to spin a [00:41:00] phrase to an executive is the biggest way to lose trust.
Versus saying, "That's an amazing question. I should have the answer or the information. I don't. Give me a few days, I'm gonna get back to you on that," that builds trust. And so I talk boldly about what I know and have experienced. I talk eloquently about people that have helped me, and then I talk humbly about the things I need to learn and grow and research, and those things allow you to be a trust broker with the people that you work
Clip 7 End - Trust and Leadership
Donald Thompson: with, and I think that's super important.
I have a huge ego. I can fill, my ego can fill the room just like anybody else, but I don't let that cloud the information I give to my clients I take the responsibility of being a strategic business advisor to C-level individuals very seriously, and so I want to have a high degree of competency in everything that I share.
Jackie Ferguson: Thank you, Don. So you operate at an unusual intersection, so entrepreneur, [00:42:00] executive coach, author, you have a global platform, multiple businesses. But most executives or most people looking to build their brand, whether they're consultants or executives, they don't, right? They have a specific lane, and it's, it's a little narrower, right, than, than all of the things that you have going on. Tell me what is your advice for them in how they build brand authority without having that, that wide reach that you have but in their individual lanes?
Donald Thompson: It's, in some respects, it's easier for those that are more singularly focused, and, and I mean that humbly. I, I, I believe, you know, my personality, I, I just have to do a lot of little different things. I can have a main thing, but I gotta have some, uh, some sides and some dessert around the steak, [00:43:00] so to speak.
Um, but I think most people, it's not about the lane and the specificity of the lane, it's the fact that they've not codified the things that they know. They've not written them down. They've not shared them, right? So for most leaders and executive really, it's not about not having enough to say, it's about having the confidence to put something out there and really share your point of view.
Um, it is that excuse that a lot of executives make of, right, "I don't really have time to post on LinkedIn. I don't really have time to write an article or a blog." And, you know, if you think about a winning mentality, and then you hear yourself say, "I don't have time to," right? You just gotta hear yourself out loud, and then the reality becomes is that you don't think it's important enough, right?
Because we all have time for those things that we think are important enough. So then what I take a step back to leaders is I start to talk to them [00:44:00] about the importance of building their brand, the importance of thought leadership. And then
Clip 8 - Thought Leadership
Donald Thompson: here's a secret sauce that I was talking to a business leader, multi-billion dollar business.
Thought leadership is a way to drive culture
People wanna be proud of the company they work for, right? So when your article shows up in The Wall Street Journal, when your article shows up in Harvard Business Review, when your executive team is asked to speak at a major conference and that video's promoted, people wanna be proud of the organization they represent and the leaders that they follow.
And so I think that thought leadership is great for credibility with clients, and it's fantastic in research and all the things we've talked about, but I also think the internal miss is how valuable it is for employees that are looking up that wanna be part of a winning team, right? And, and that is so important to employee engagement that we're proud of the team that we're on and the leaders that we work with and that we represent.
Clip 8 End - Thought Leadership
Donald Thompson: And so that's another avenue that I think is really, really helpful [00:45:00] when leaders start to think about brand, to your earlier question. That is a self-serving item, right? 'Cause a lot of folks have that false humility, "I don't wanna brag on myself." Thought leadership isn't about bragging on yourself.
Building brand isn't about bragging on yourself. Your posts on LinkedIn should be about things that you've helped others do, people you wanna give limelight to, opportunities that you've developed. If I go on LinkedIn and post about an intern that joined our team in, in one of the organizations that I've invested in, and how that intern is doing real work after three days, and I talk about that experience and how much energy that, that new young person has brought to this small team, well, that's not bragging on me.
That's bragging on that, that young person. And so a lot of times executives with that little excuse of "you don't have time," you're not giving the recognition to people that you need to. You're not recognizing that scientific paper that some of the folks in your organization presented to a panel. Yes, it shows up [00:46:00] in an academic journal, but do you understand how proud that person will be to see their CEO shout out their work?
They'll tell their mom, their family, their d- like it, it's so important. And so when you're not engaged in that brand authority, that trust-based brand authority as a leader, you're missing some of the culture levers, right? That are low cost, high impact, and that's what we're all chasing as leaders. How can we move the needle, right?
Without spending another million dollars or $100,000. These are low cost, high impact strategies that everybody can employ, and you do have enough time. And you know how I know you have enough time? 'Cause most executives are wasting three, four hours a day in meetings that don't matter And so if you cut down bad meetings, you'll have more time on better branding.
Jackie Ferguson: I l- I love the passion. It's, it's valuable and certainly plays into why you do what you do, how [00:47:00] you do it. So last question, Don, and I want you to be direct with me on this one. What do you believe about culture, leadership, or business performance that most people in your space are not willing to say out loud?
What's the uncomfortable truth that your data, your coaching work, or your experience have made impossible for you to ignore?
Donald Thompson: I'm gonna give a shout-out to James. Well, he goes by J- his, his name is Jim Baum. And my mentor, Grant Willard, and, and Jim have been friends for a number of years. Um, Jim was an executive at one... when I was in the software business, at one of the, uh, partners, one of our largest partners. He went on to, uh, sell a business to IBM for $1.5 billion.
And so Jim is just somebody that I've admired for a number of years. And when Grant's daughter, Maggie, got married, I was invited to the wedding and went to the wedding, and [00:48:00] during the rec- n- to the reception. I didn't go to the wedding. They had a big reception. So at this reception at the, uh, Raleigh Art Museum, I got 10 minutes with Jim, just him and I one-on-one, and I was a brand new CEO at the point.
And so I said, "Jim, can you just give me some wisdom of things that I'm gonna face?" And he gave me 10 to 15 different things, and we talked for a good little while. But the one thing I'll never forget, he said, "You are responsible. And you need to understand that if people are doing well in the organization, you've chose them.
If people are not doing well in the organization, you picked them, you coached them, you are responsible." And so once you wake up every day with that, that, that honor to wear that responsibility badge and wear it well and proudly, what you do as a leader is you don't point fingers at others first. [00:49:00] Yes, it's a team, and everybody on the team has a role.
Yes, people need to be held accountable for the results they sign up for, for the salary that they receive. Yes. But as the leader, you are responsible because you have the most points of leverage on decisions you make and impacts that occur throughout the rest of the organization. And so from that moment outside of my office, and this was when I was the CEO of a technology company, I-- after this conversation, I put a little mirror.
And so when I was gonna walk out of my office and I wanted to give, uh, somebody some feedback on something they could do better, I looked in that mirror first. What could I have done better? What do I need to learn? What should I be doing different? Before I went to go and coach and work with my team. And so that biggest thing that I've learned that I think most executives try to tiptoe around or push the other way.
I'll read executive reports and they'll say, "There was leadership headwinds in the market," and [00:50:00] different... And there's all kinds of reasons people excuse away failure And take all the credit for success. But that moment with Jim where we were talking about the responsibility of leadership was one of the top moments and something I've carried with me, uh, for my leadership journey.
And I really appreciate that question.
Jackie Ferguson: That's amazing, Don. Thank you for sharing that. Don, this has been exactly the kind of conversation I was hoping for. You make the case for culture in a way that is actionable, not aspirational, and that's what makes it land
Donald Thompson: Jackie, I want to give you a compliment and, um, I appreciate this conversation. Hopefully folks, this was, uh, a worthwhile, uh, 45 minutes, hour for you. Uh, I think that High Octane Leadership, our goal is to create an environment of learning to where we can share experiences together, but we can learn and grow together so that leadership is a source of good, uh, not a source of pain and disdain for the people that we're [00:51:00] responsible for.
And so DT over and out. Again, Jackie, uh, thanks for, for being a guest on High Octane Leadership, but in this case, the guest host, uh, and, uh, and, and appreciate it
Jackie Ferguson: I enjoyed it. So for everyone listening, everything that Don is building is at donaldthompson.com, so you can find his Substack, his YouTube, obviously his podcast, and you should absolutely be following him on LinkedIn. Also, if this episode moved something for you, share it with one person in your network that needs to hear it.
That's how good ideas travel. Don, thanks so much for having me. It's been so much fun [00:52:00]