123: Walking the Ridgeline: Balancing Ego and Humility in Leadership with Gary Cohen

Have you ever considered that your leadership style might be trapped in patterns established when you were five years old? 

That's just one of the eye-opening perspectives shared by Gary Cohen, managing partner and co-founder of CO2 Partners, in this thought-provoking exploration of compassionate leadership.

Gary introduces us to the powerful metaphor of walking the ridgeline – the delicate balance leaders must maintain between excessive ego on one side and debilitating humility on the other. This balance, he argues, is essential for authentic leadership that inspires rather than demands compliance. Through compelling stories and practical insights, Gary illuminates how our earliest experiences with authority shape our leadership approach, creating what he calls a cascade of fear that ripples through organizations.

Perhaps most provocatively, Gary challenges conventional leadership wisdom by exposing how permission-seeking and permission-giving dynamics undermine trust and accountability. He shares how true leadership requires breaking these patterns – illustrated perfectly by the story of Mike Harper, who transformed ConAgra from near bankruptcy to a $20 billion company by refusing to give answers when his executives sought permission. Instead, he returned responsibility to them, building a culture of ownership and decision-making confidence.

The conversation travels through unexpected territory – from Gary's accidental car theft to the profound impact of authenticity in leadership and how our current social climate influences leadership styles. Throughout, Gary offers practical approaches to measuring psychological safety and building genuine trust within teams.

Whether you're leading a large organization, a small team, or simply interested in the psychology of leadership, this episode offers fresh perspectives on creating workplaces built on trust rather than fear. Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit manyachalinski.com to continue the conversation about compassionate leadership.

Gary Cohen is an executive coach and leadership management consultant and the Managing Partner and Co-founder of CO2 Partners, LLC. He probes his clients with the only kind of questions that can produce change: unexpected ones. From the client’s answers, he offers not just insights but alternative courses of action. He has yet to meet a client who wants to be ordinary, and he helps them enjoy unusual success by employing unusual approaches. He is also the author of Just Ask Leadership: Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions.

You can connect with Gary on LinkedIn.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 0:00 Walking the Leadership Ridgeline
• 3:32 Breaking the Permission-Seeking Pattern
• 10:17 Balancing Ego and Humility
• 15:43 The Authenticity Challenge for Leaders
• 23:17 Measuring Trust and Compassion
• 29:14 Finding Hope and Creating Ripples

Transcript

Gary Cohen: 1:15

We talk about walking the ridgeline, and on the side of the ridgeline, on the top of the mountain, you could fall off to one side, and that would be humility. So we often find clients come to us when they're feeling really humbled by what's happening to them in their business right, and the thing we ask them to be leery of is the other side. We will help them get to the top of the ridgeline where they have to balance, and on the other side is ego.

Manya Chylinski: 1:49

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. My guest today is Gary Cohen. He's the managing partner and co-founder of CO2 Partners, an executive coach offering their clients insights and alternative courses of action. We talked about the role of permission style management, the role of fear in organizations and how do you find the balance as a leader. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. I know I did, gary. I'm so excited that we found time to sit down together. Thank you for being here.

Gary Cohen: 2:29

Thanks for having me. I am also very excited to be on your show.

Manya Chylinski: 2:34

The first question. I start with everyone what is one thing that you've done in any part of your life that you never thought you would do?

Gary Cohen: 2:45

Steal a car Really Right, isn't that funny? It turns out that somebody was supposed to leave a car for me.

Manya Chylinski: 2:55

Okay.

Gary Cohen: 2:56

And at the airport with the keys in under the mat. Well, I shared that with the two people I was traveling with and they went to a car that is exactly how it was described and the keys were in the center. We drove off, we used it for a week, we tried to track it down, we tried to do everything. It turns out that we didn't break a law until such time as a case is opened about the car. But the police wouldn't tell us if a case was open. So we weren't willing to reveal anything. So it just went. But that's the one thing. It's right. Who would have ever thought?

Manya Chylinski: 3:37

No, I would never have thought it was possible to accidentally steal a car.

Gary Cohen: 3:43

And we spent a lot of money on lawyers to try to figure it all out and do it the right way, and the institution did not want to have it.

Manya Chylinski: 3:53

Sure, I'm glad that the end result wasn't some sort of high or low speed chase across the highways. Nothing like that, oh my goodness. Well, thank you for sharing that.

Gary Cohen: 4:07

You're welcome.

Manya Chylinski: 4:08

That is a very interesting story. So we're going to pivot and now we're talking about the concept of compassion. And just to get us started, I'm curious how do you define compassion?

Gary Cohen: 4:23

I don't think that I've ever really defined it other than like feeling or knowing it in me. For someone Like, it's so clear when somebody doesn't have it right, there's like an edge to it. They're not reading the room or the person and how they're reacting to whatever's being said. I think when I reflect on my own leadership in the early days of my company, we grew a company from two to 2200 people and there was a lot of growth. And I think the adult me, the older me today has embarrassment around some of those moments of youthful pursuit of something at all costs. When I say all costs, not breach in ethics but breach in compassion and I don't know if it's fully true meaning if we talk to people who worked with me, whether they would say that I suspect if they were being honest they would and they'd also would have seen a growth and development of me over time with compassion.

Manya Chylinski: 5:38

And I think that's one of the keys. We all have those youthful mistakes. We'll call them or learning opportunities, and it's. Can we grow from that as we get older and we learn more. As they say, when you know better, you do better. One thing I think of when I think about the concept of compassion that I think is foundational is the idea of trust. Think, if someone isn't compassionate with you or isn't compassionate with me, I will say I don't necessarily trust them. And when we're looking at an organization, we're looking at a workplace. What do you think leaders most misunderstand about their role in creating that trust and, by extension, psychological safety?

Gary Cohen: 6:34

Before I answer that, something dawned on me as you were sharing with us around how I choose a doctor.

Manya Chylinski: 6:42

Okay.

Gary Cohen: 6:43

I choose a doctor by asking people who may know them and I say I want somebody really smart, graduating near the top of their class and incredibly empathetic. Because I have had the doctor who's incredibly smart without the empathy. And the reason it hooked me what you had said was I don't listen to them, like, even though I'm very clear they're much smarter about whatever the subject is than I am. There's a, there's a distrust in it, right, distrust in it, right. And so, to bring that to kind of organizational life, I think leaders really misunderstand the whole nature of permission giving and seeking.

Gary Cohen: 7:29

Okay, so if I'm an employee and I'm permission seeking, I'm looking for yeah, I agree with you the nod of the head, the confirmation that I, as the boss, a blessing to whatever it is you're coming to seek permission for, or I'm going to tell you how you should do it, and I'm the one telling you Okay. And so immediately in that dialogue, immediately in that dialogue, the boss is taking away all accountability from that person and the trust because the person sees that they have can leave without permission of what the boss would do and go do it, that they feel that sense of trust. Now there's the other side of the formula too, which is permission giving. So what's in it for the leader? Right, there's all those psychological things. I feel good, I'm addicted to knowing I'm worthy, I'm addicted to knowing I'm worthy, I'm not an imposter. So all these things for the leader are taken away from the employee so that the leader can feel good about themselves. When you can reduce that permission giving and seeking you immediately raise the level of trust between subordinate and boss.

Manya Chylinski: 9:06

Right. Is there something inherent in the way many workplaces are structured that causes that gap?

Gary Cohen: 9:17

I think it starts earlier. I think it starts with mom and dad at school permission seeking. I used to do a lot of work in school districts with the superintendents and you could see you know I call it the cascade of fear all the way down from the board to the superintendent, to the assistant superintendent, to the principals, the principals to the department heads, to the teachers, all the way to the kids. And you go, it is. And when you look at all the research on education, what do they say? Fear is the worst thing to put in a learning environment, right. And so it starts there. You raise your hand because you want permission. You want permission to go to the bathroom, you want permission to answer a question or whatever it is. And then you know at home it's not so you know different and you build up credits with your parents, maybe or maybe you don't, and it's always permission seeking.

Gary Cohen: 10:17

And there's a period where Jung said individuation between the parent and the child, where the child actually feels independent enough to separate from the parent. In that permission giving I remember the moment it happened for me and I was quite old. I was totally surprised because in so many parts of my life I could be independent, but there were certain tethers there that you hang on to. So now bring that into the workplace and you go. A lot of tethers, a lot of background noise, a lot of. There's a lot of people out there in the world who think that we bring our family systems into the workplace. This permission seeking, I think, starts so early for all of us.

Manya Chylinski: 11:04

That's so interesting and we could have a whole episode just on this topic. I know I an independent professional, I work for myself, I've got team members, but we're loosely you know, Confederate, loosely connected. One of the things that was the biggest thing for me and going out on my own was exactly this I was tired of having to ask for permission to do things and or doing things and then getting dinged because I didn't ask for permission to begin with and I wanted to free myself of that.

Gary Cohen: 12:09

Yes, Now let's think about all those people that are listening, who are in organizations where this is going on and you can't really specifically say it's the leader's fault or the follower's fault. Right, it is within the system, within the ecosystem, but it doesn't mean it can't change. It's that if the only way out is independence, which is a clear choice which you made and a healthy one, right? There's also how do you change the system? How do you change what's being at play between the leader and the followers? And so often, when people seek our company out, we're ask like, how do I create this accountability in the culture other than putting in these kind of technical fixes like have a meeting on this day, have a report on this day, use this software?

Manya Chylinski: 13:12

right. Yes, I'm seeing things through such a different lens now. So many of those kinds of activities are to provide a structure or sort of I'm going to say fight against, but I'm not sure that's the word. I mean this quality that so many of us come into the workplace with. Well, by the time someone gets to a leadership position in their firm, they have likely spent several years as an employee, maybe working their way up, maybe went to business school, maybe took some training. What do you think we're missing in leadership development programs when it comes to overcoming this? That we're talking about? This permission seeking and permission granting, and building a place that really is compassionate.

Gary Cohen: 14:03

I think there's a lot of experts out there like the folks who talk about psychological safety and things like that. They obscure it a bit Like I use that language, but it obscures it a bit, rather than saying what really is happening. And when I think of I went to Harvard Business School, I did Covey, I've sat in on some Tony Robbins, I've done oh, so many of these programs and in the end I don't think I've ever heard anybody really talk about it. And I think I stumbled upon it when I was writing my last book, just Ask Leadership, on why great managers always ask the right questions, and it was in an interview with Mike Harper and I spent four hours at his house, which was such a gift and the guy took ConAgra from $ million, almost bankrupt, to 20 billion in 17 years and we had this discussion about how he wouldn't give the answer.

Gary Cohen: 15:09

So somebody would come into his office and these are presidents reporting because they run big businesses within ConAgra and they'd say so, mike, what do you think Mike would say? I asked you all the questions that I had. Doesn't really matter what I think what matters is what you're gonna do. What do you do? He goes I'm gonna do this, this and this, but what do you think? Now, you're not gonna trap me in that and so, um, they'd be shaking hands, goodbye. And at the door they would try again. They'd be shaking hands, goodbye. And at the door they would try again Right, and then during lunch they might have bumped into each other. Hey, mike, you already know I'm going to tell me. Come on, tell me what you think. No, that's when it dawned on me, that is. That was the first like ah, how is he? He knows this so clearly. Never heard it from other leaders, aspen Institute I hang out with some of the best thought leaders and nope nada.

Manya Chylinski: 16:07

Wow, why not? Why aren't we? Why isn't this something that that is coming to the fore? Or we're teaching in business schools?

Gary Cohen: 16:17

I wonder if it has to do with how we feel about ourselves. So, from the leadership standpoint, our insecurity. So why has Brene Brown been so popular? One is she delivers the best speeches ever, oh my God. Talk about authenticity and it's very hard for people, humans to be vulnerable and they think that it gives a power. So I think there has to be a part of that in it. And yet we all know, when somebody shows up, authentic about their inauthenticities, authentic about their inauthenticities, we tend to love them immediately, we trust them higher trust, right, but the risk that it seems for people, because of this notion of needing to be a perfect leader or a iconic leader, I think, gets in the way, or a feeling that it would give away power if we were to not give the answer.

Manya Chylinski: 17:28

Right, and that's a desire to have power is to in. A shocking lack of creativity is very powerful draw for people to.

Gary Cohen: 17:43

It's a draw and when you think you're immune. Some of my closest friends have gotten quite famous. In some of them I've had to be distant because they don't see how the ego has taken over who they are, with name dropping, not only where they've been, who they've been, with the wealth creation that they're making from that fame. And when you call them on it, this sense of thinking of leadership and self-deception the book by Harbinger they'd say in the box they can't even see how self-deceived they are about who they are in a world.

Gary Cohen: 18:30

At our company we talk about walking the ridgeline and on the side of the ridgeline, on the top of the mountain line, and on the side of the ridge line, on the top of the mountain, you could fall off to one side and that would be humility. So we often find clients come to us when they're feeling really humbled by what's happening to them in their business and the thing we ask them to be leery of is the other side. We will help them get to the top of the ridgeline where they have to balance. And on the other side is ego right, and this ego is so massively self-deceptive that they don't want to believe it. And it's interesting how quickly. The coach was so helpful to them until that point, and now they're idiots.

Manya Chylinski: 19:16

Yes.

Gary Cohen: 19:17

And so we think of it. As for leaders, how do they walk the ridgeline? How do you help them stay on the ridgeline? If they don't have enough ego, they can't lead, it's just if right. So if they show up with too much humility, no decisions will be made, no actions will be taken, and if they show up with too much ego, nobody wants to follow them, unless they buy their cooperation.

Manya Chylinski: 19:44

Yes, as you're saying this, I just think, well, the ridgeline. I love that analogy and I'm actually thinking of a ridgeline that I was literally walking on many, many years ago and looking down and realizing how much I had to be balancing, and it just makes me think leadership is really hard.

Gary Cohen: 20:11

It's really hard. And it's really hard to talk about the real parts of it. It's very easy to talk about the technical parts of it, yes, yes, but when you talk about the real parts of it, it's very easy to talk about the technical parts of it.

Manya Chylinski: 20:19

Yes, yes, but when you talk about the real parts of it, then you're talking about things like what I learned when I was five and how I learned to see the world, and how that's different from how you learn to see the world. So that's why we get along or we don't get along, and not that leaders need to be our therapists, social workers, but they have to have some of those skills.

Gary Cohen: 20:47

They do Well. I mean, there's plenty of examples of leaders who lead many people who do not have those skills. I think of that as they're leading through power right, and that's very different than leading and inspiring a whole community of humans to want to do the thing, the bigger collective action together, as opposed to being told and being paternal.

Manya Chylinski: 21:17

Right, and I'm coming at it from the perspective of admiring and supporting and wanting leaders the latter type that you just discussed. But I do recognize that is not how everybody leads. That is not what everybody's even looking for as a leader. Well, we're living in some interesting times. If you think about our politics and our social environment here in the US, how do you think that is influencing leaders and leadership styles?

Gary Cohen: 21:46

It's a challenge, and the challenge is we're seeing a form of leading that gives authenticity or permission to people to misbehave, and that misbehavior it's kind of like if the most powerful person in the world can do it, why can't I do it? And that's been going on now for decades, decade and a half around. You know the way in which we speak about language and what's okay. The other day, when the plane went down and the immediate response was that's because of DEI, and you're like, oh my goodness, like if that's the language we use in leading at the highest, most powerful place in the planet right now, then it really gives permission to some people who don't want to think deeply about their own leadership and realize, one is it's so unlikely that they could get away with it, but two, that they feel like they have permission to get away with it.

Manya Chylinski: 22:58

Yeah, that's one aspect of our current environment I find heartbreaking. Just knowing, I guess, knowing what it's like on the other side, knowing what it's like to work with a leader who is truly compassionate and supportive, and it's just hard to see and supportive, and it's just hard to see.

Gary Cohen: 23:18

I think it was part of my calling to move from. I'd still say I'm an entrepreneur because we're building a coaching business. It's very different, though, than the business that I built with my partner, rick Diamond, and it's the calling is how do you help leaders who are really good thinkers and lifelong learners be even better right, and that's where the joy is. We certainly work with people who show themselves as more authoritarian, but they have to know what they're getting into with us, because if they don't want to change, it won't be a good fit with us, because we don't think that's the best way to lead human beings, and it's just proving to be more and more so, with the exception of what we're seeing more global manner, and the good news is I don't do the global thing right Happy to work with people from different countries and have but I'm talking about world power. It's a very different beast.

Manya Chylinski: 24:25

It is Absolutely so. We're getting really close to the end of our time and I wanted to ask you one additional question before we start to wrap up. You know we're talking about compassion and psychological safety and trust and all of these. How, as a leader running your own company or you help other leaders do, how do you actually measure that or show that that's making a real difference? Is there a way to draw a straight line point A to point B? We did this and this got better because of it.

Gary Cohen: 25:02

Probably more of a mosaic than a straight line. There are measurement tools. I am trying to remember the one. Officevibe was the one we used for many years at our company. Officevibe was the one we used for many years at our company and we decided that we're so small that we didn't want to use it anymore. But what it did is it served up.

Gary Cohen: 25:23

It had about 360 questions against 12 categories and you could bring it down to the departmental level and actually see what people thought on an ongoing basis, not on one of these like Gallup does their thing, where 12 questions about employee engagement, but like annually or twice annually. I mean what this does is every week or every other week. You set the boundaries of that. It'll ask five to six questions in a gamified way around these topics, and so I found it incredibly interesting and every time, whenever there was an open-ended question, people answered. I'd write them back. What do you think we should do about it? Because they often offer it as a challenge or a disappointment and you know they quickly see that there was a desire in me as the leader to want to change the outcome and to me, no reason using those tools if you're not going to act on the feedback and it doesn't mean you have to do everything people are asking, but to respond to it, to be of inquiry to it.

Gary Cohen: 26:43

I think if you want a tactical measurement, I also know that I get waylaid by employees and it's one of my greatest joys. You go into the office and they go. You don't know me and I often do know who they are and they go. Whatever you're doing with the boss, keep doing it. It's working. And I'm like okay, that to me is the measurement for us of when we're doing the job well and clients, kids at like a bar mitzvah or a wedding, come up to me and they go. You don't know me Again, not true. And they go. You don't know me again, not true. And they say you changed my life and I'm like what? And it's the ripple of what has happened with that leader, that is, you know, permeating the organization. That is so yeah, I think it's what keeps me at this.

Manya Chylinski: 27:35

Absolutely. That is amazing because often we, especially as outside consultants, third parties coming in we often don't see some of the changes directly. So to get that kind of feedback and validation for the work that you're doing, so we are at time, but I'd love to know what is giving you hope. These days.

Gary Cohen: 28:03

There's two things. One is, if you look at human history, we're such a tiny little piece of it and we've seen how crushing and awful things can happen over our history. I mean, I don't know why the Crusades are coming to mind, but the Crusades right, and you go and it's not the Crusades anymore, right? So when you look at human history over a longer period of time and you say we're bleep in that, and you say we're bleep in that. So if I'm worried about humans, then I go there's something to be hopeful about, because so much has shown that there is, but it doesn't mean it will not be without contest. Right In the micro way. The work that I do individually with clients gives me hope all the time because you get to see those ripples firsthand and create meaning.

Manya Chylinski: 29:02

Absolutely Well, gary. Thank you so much. Before we say goodbye, how can people reach you and learn more about your work?

Gary Cohen: 29:10

CO2coachingcom is our website. I think if you type GaryBCohencom it'll show up on my bio page on our website. They can pick up my book. Just Ask Leadership why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions.

Gary Cohen: 29:27

We also have these two assessments that are free. We have one that we work with clients with, but we don't offer that, and the two that are free is called Peak Leadership and it will give people the style in which they ask questions. And what we learned from this was we all ask about 25% of the questions available to us because we tend to bias our questions to one style. Unlike a Myers-Briggs or a DISC, you're not wedded to the style. You can break it by understanding it. So it's open and you can do this as an individual assessment or 360.

Gary Cohen: 30:12

And there's no cost because I decided I'm not in the business of assessments and I went out there initially selling it and I'm like I don't want to be in that business. So we just give it away because we spend so much time and money on doing the research to make it work. And then the other one is offered through TCI, team Coaching International and we offer it through our firm where a leader can come on and do an assessment of their team and if they want the paid version, then it's a 360 and every team member does it. But we find it gives really good insights to the leader about how the team is showing up against. I think it's like 72 elements of 14 categories, so it's really insightful and they'll find that under resources on our website, co2.

Manya Chylinski: 31:03

Great. I will put links to those in the show notes to make it easier for folks to find you and to find those. Gary, thank you so much. I have loved our conversation.

Gary Cohen: 31:12

Me too, thank you. What fun. Me too Thank you.

Manya Chylinski: 31:18

What fun. Thank you for listening. I'm Manya Chylinski. I help organizations build compassionate, resilient teams that thrive by creating environments where well-being is at the core. Often people reach out to me during times of crisis or significant change, but the truth is that building a healthier, more supportive workplace can prevent issues before Thank you podcast or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us and if you'd like to continue the conversation, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.