Leadership Isn't Charisma. It's Knowing Which Lever to Pull with Marissa McCourry

Charisma gets too much credit and clarity gets ignored. We sit down with executive coach and leadership development expert Marissa McCourry to unpack what actually creates influence when the stakes are high: knowing which lever to pull, and doing it consistently when things feel fast, messy, and uncertain.

We walk through Marissa’s “seven levers” framework, built from academic research, enterprise leadership development, and years of coaching Fortune 500 leaders. First, we get honest about what leadership is (and what it isn’t): not a title, not prescriptive authority, and not “having all the answers.” From there we dig into self-leadership levers like inner wisdom (calm and decision quality under pressure), values-based leadership (your moral compass in chaos), and strategic confidence (moving without perfect data and escaping analysis paralysis).

Then we shift to leading others: your internal brand and the reality of what your team experiences day to day, plus how anonymous 360 feedback can surface the truth without eroding trust. We also make the case for emotional intelligence as the multiplier lever, because EQ determines your relational impact and whether people feel safe enough to speak up. Finally, we connect leadership to execution, including vocal precision in communication and the hidden strengths that are often sitting right under your nose.

If you’re a founder, manager, or executive working on leadership development, executive presence, communication, and high-performance execution, this is a practical playbook you can apply immediately. Subscribe, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with the lever you’re going to pull first.

Transcript

Welcome And The Influence Myth

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Scaling with People, your weekly playbook for turning chaos into compounding growth. Each week we go under the hood with battle test experts in all areas of business, from marketing to sales, operational finance, and people, plus product and leadership, to unpack the plays, numbers, and systems that turn chaos into compounding growth. Learn straight from founders and experts who've done it and continue to do it successfully. There's zero fluff, just moves that you can still immediately. This podcast is brought to you by Guide to HR. Human expertise, AI-powered impact. Welcome everyone to today's Skilling with People podcast. I'm Gwynnaver McCurry, your host and executive advisor from all CHRO with Guide to HR. So most leaders think influence is about charisma. It's not. It's actually about knowing which lever to pull when everything is on the line. On today's episode, we sit down with Marissa McCurry, executive coach to Fortune 500 Leaders and the force behind 35,000 plus transformed careers. We're going to break down the seven levers that separate leaders who stall from those who scale. If you've ever felt the gap between your title and your true impact, this is the playbook that closes it

Marissa’s Leadership Development Background

SPEAKER_01 1:16

fast. Well, Marissa, welcome to today's podcast. Happy to have you on the call. But before we jump in, tell the audience a little bit more about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Glenn Vier. So, yes, I'm an executive coach. I'm also a speech coach. And the realm of corporate America that I've worked the most in is leadership development. So a lot of folks come from corporate being a corporate marketer, or they were in product, or you know, they they were in IT. I was in leadership development, which is a sector of the HR world. So what I've done in those spaces, namely Vanguard and Visa, and have been an external consultant to many Global Fortune 500 companies over the years. And what I do is create programs, learning programs, developmental programs for leaders of all types, first-time leaders, leaders of leaders, leaders of functions, leaders of businesses, and all the way up into secession planning and the C-suite. And sometimes those programs are academic in nature. Sometimes they're very pragmatic, sometimes they're a combination of the two. And a lot of times coaching is a part of how we develop leaders. So what I do now in my own practice is that I'm able to bring some of the best world-renowned leadership development techniques to my small and mid-size clients and founders as well. So I'm happy to be here with you and talking about how we can bring some of these tools and techniques to those who need it, need it the most.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Absolutely. I mean, I love this. This is such a hot topic from my perspective because a lot of leaders, a lot of managers become manager and then work into leadership because they're really good as an individual contributor, but then they get put into management without the proper tool support and training. And then 10 years later, they're like, yeah, I have 10 years' experience of being a manager leader, but they really have not built the right skills and know the tools to use to be an effective leader. So I think this is such a hot topic for sure. So in your experience, you've likely seen different types of leaders. Let's just kind of reset for everybody. Tell us what leadership is.

Leadership Beyond Title And Authority

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Yeah, it's an interesting question, right? Like I'm a leadership development expert uh and subject matter expert and leadership coach. So what is leadership really? Um I I'll tell you what it's not. Um it's not title. Yeah, that is true. It's not title. And it is not um prescriptive authority. So leadership comes in lots of shapes and sizes, and leadership can happen at any level of an organization. Um, I'm sure you know some of your listeners today have probably had some really good leaders in their past, um, and maybe some not so good leaders. And and that is title agnostic, right? So sometimes some of the best leaders can be some of the the the um ones at the lower end of the of the organization. And um, so experience does not necessarily uh connote better leadership the higher up. You know, there we go. And you can be a leader does, but yeah, in actuality. Yeah, in actuality, um it uh it doesn't necessarily positively correlate.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Right. And it doesn't have to mean you're a manager of people either. You can be a leader as an individual contributor as well, people who look up to you, especially on like I think more on the culture side, but even as as someone who is a subject matter expert as well. And I actually was just thinking about this lot literally last night. I'm like, man, if I could rewind my time and go back into my career, I would probably try to avoid being a manager of people as long as possible. Because there is just so much tied to that. That takes away some of the freedom as an individual contributor and a subject matter expert that you kind of get

Where The Seven Levers Come From

SPEAKER_01 5:24

drowned sometimes with that management of people. So seven levers. Oops, let me say that again. Seven levers of um things that people can pool to become better leaders. First of all, how did you create this? Where did this come from? And what is the first one?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Sure, sure. So um my experience in leadership and executive development sort of spans three three different areas. Um it spans the academic realm. So I've worked in some of the top um business schools. Uh, University of Arizona is one of them, Thunderbird School of International Management is another one. And at both of those places, um, I was the director of executive education, which is where uh you know business schools, they always have a stream of revenue of tuition-paying students who are there to get their master's programs or their executive MBAs, let's say. But then there's also another stream of revenue for business schools where they package up their content and their knowledge and with some of their most skilled professors deliver that into corporate America and global corporations worldwide. And so that's the side of the house that I worked on. So taking academic frameworks and making it work in a pragmatic sense, um, that is part of my career. Part of my career, a second piece of it is being an external consultant to uh large-scale organizations and enterprises specifically for leadership development. How do you develop your leaders? How do you tag which leaders might be appropriate for secession planning, and how do you assess the gaps that leaders have and then shore up those gaps? And then the third thing that I did was as an in-house um expert, so an in-house director of uh enterprise-wide leadership development at um at Vanguard and Visa. Um and so, you know, the answer to the question um uh how do leaders um, you know, need to show up. Um leaders show up leading others, but they also show up leading themselves. And so when you ask how did I put together sort of these seven levers, it was through academic research, external um uh consulting, and in-house um uh specialization that that led me to these seven things. Um, and the the seven things are, you know, a lot of times leaders know many things of what they need to do correctly, but they may not know all the things. And so a leader may say, Hey, I know I do this really well, I know I'm not so great in this, um, but they may not even know what they don't know in terms of other aspects of leadership that are really important for their effectiveness. So um, so these seven things are um are really um sort sort of some of the keys for effective leadership. And they fall into three different realms, three different buckets. So the first one is how do you lead yourself? So just as you said, you can be an individual contributor and be a leader. Leader does leadership does not come with title, and it doesn't have to mean that you're a formal leader. So, how do you lead yourself? How do you comport yourself? How do you show up in various environments? The second bucket is how do you show up with and to and for others? So, how do you lead others formally or informally? And then the third is how do you operate and execute within the business? So the seven levers fall within those three key buckets, and the first one is how do you lead yourself?

Inner Wisdom Values Strategic Confidence

SPEAKER_00 8:52

And so that really takes us into defining what is our inner wisdom. So that's the first lever is inner wisdom. Um, how do you unlock some calm and some clarity and the decision quality that is needed for leadership? Um, so I work with leaders on how do you slow down under pressure? How do you really get clear when challenges and change are happening so fast? Um, and I work with leaders on how do they respond rather than react. So if you can access a certain level of internal wisdom, internal clarity, then we can quell the uh reaction and have responses instead. That's lever number one. I have a feeling we love all of these. Lever number two is really oriented around your values. It's your moral compass, it's the values that really help drive your decisions. And many leaders um know some of their values. They can rattle off maybe one or two things that they really earnestly value, but unless you've done really deep um reflection, it's hard to sort of say, here's my 10 top values. Um, and and it's necessary for leaders to do some of that deep reflective work and know what their deeply held values are, so that that can help as a grounding force, so that that can help as a compass to navigate when complexity and chaos uh ensue. So this is about really understanding, you know, what you stand for so that your decisions can be guided in a really um um consistent manner. And when leaders talk about authenticity, you know, I want to be an authentic leader, and you know, some of the best leaders I've worked with have been so authentic, you know, what really drives that definition of authenticity is when people are aligned with their own internal compass. So alignment in what my values are, how I show up, how I speak, when when there's real, you know, meshing and interwovenness there, that's when someone will say, Wow, she's an authentic leader. When there's inconsistency and there's incongruency in what we believe and what we and what we say, it shows up and it can so easily be sniffed out.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

So uh so that second lever that that leaders effective leaders need to pull is make sure that they know what their moral compass is, that they really are defined and what their values are.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

And I I find when you have that defined, it actually helps you in the first one to not be reactive.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Exactly. Exactly. You can make sure that that your decisions are grounded in in the values that uh that you are um espousing. Yeah.

unknown 11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

So the third lever specifically for self-leadership and self-management is um about strategic confidence. How do we make sure that we're projecting confidence in a way that's not arrogant? Um, how can we be confident when um things are uncertain, we don't have all the data? Um, we may have market conditions that are unpredictable, and yet how can we act and move forward with confidence? Um, and you know, founders and and leaders often get stuck in you know what we call analysis paralysis, and they're waiting for the feeling of being ready, they're waiting for the feeling of confidence, they're waiting to feel certain. Um and and we often can't wait. We have to act and then the certainty and the confidence come after the action, which is counterintuitive to what we sometimes think. We sometimes think I need to feel certain before I take action.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

The exact opposite is true. We need to take action in order to get to certainty, in order to um have some of that confidence build.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Yeah, exactly. I I kind of say fall forward fast, because you can always pick yourself up. Um and I also see this could be used even for new leaders where there's a little bit of that imposter syndrome, too, right? How you get that confidence to get past that and show up in a way that you know you can and that you want to for the business and for yourself.

The Trap Of Having All Answers

SPEAKER_01 13:16

So, what's a behavior you see um high-performing founders and leaders uh refuse to let go that ultimately eventually actually hurts them as a leader?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

What is something that I see that they refuse to let go of? Um I think most really good leaders know to surround themselves with really good people. Most really good leaders know that they don't have to have all the answers. But that is sometimes a sticking point with leaders. They feel like, hey, I'm I'm I'm chief here, I'm I'm the one in charge. I need to be the one place that answers get that problems get solved. Um, and that's not true. It's actually not a leader's role to solve problems. It's not a leader's role to have all of the answers. So really leaning into your team, surrounding yourself with the best folks, and really focusing on collaborative discussions, uh, not necessarily consensus-made decisions, but collaborative decisions where every voice is heard. Um, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're going for a um a unanimous uh, you know, democratic vote here. The leader sometimes still has to make the hard decision, but um really focusing on hearing folks from all levels of the organization. Um, that's something that I think some leaders sometimes forget about. They think that they have to be the one-stop shop for answers and solutions.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

That is so powerful. I mean, I literally got chills as you were saying that because I find that when I'm working with leaders, no matter the level, but especially higher up, that actually recognize that and take seek counsel and advice from their other leaders and their peers, they actually make more like solid decisions that are going to be beneficial for the business because now they're looking at different perspectives and viewpoints. They're hearing about data and other aspects of the business that they might not be aware of at that time, or maybe they remembered it, but it, you know, got lost in all the other noise of the day. So that is so impactful and powerful. If the listeners only hear that, that's what I want them to hear as they walk away. You know, they say hire smarter people. And I think that's so important, especially as you get higher up. You're your department head, your chief. Like it is impossible to know everything all the time. So definitely rely on your subject matter experts. That is so powerful. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

So what's the second as a fractional CRHO, you might say that that um, you know, lean on your internal experts, but also your external experts rather than subject matter experts, people that you can hire to bring on, um, you know, surround yourself with the best. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a reason why I kind of pulled that employee relations uh card here. There's a reason why there are so many employee uh employer or legal firms, right? Because a lot of the legal counsel inside of corporation is more on the sales and operations side, not employment side. So of course you end up pulling your subject matter expert from a legal counsel, and that's just one example. But uh I I really uh I really love this

Internal Brand And Anonymous 360s

SPEAKER_01 16:16

topic. So you were talking about the second bucket, how you show up with others. What are the levers within that bucket?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Sure. So the first bucket is intrapersonal, right? It's it's how I show up within myself and for myself. The second bucket is interpersonal. How do I show up with others, for others? How do I show up around others? How do I lead others? And so um there's two levers in this one. And the first one is internal brand. What is your internal brand? What do the people closest to you think about you? Do you know? Are you surrounded by sycophants and everyone and you think everyone thinks you're fantastic because they're too afraid, or the the there's not psychological safety there for them to give you candid feedback? That is often the case with founders and leaders, is that um they may think that they're making it a safe environment to get true feedback from um from those that report to them, but that may not be the case. Um, and so do you really know what your internal brand is? Do people think you're decisive? Do they think you're avoidant? Do they think you're inconsistent? Would they say you're an authentic leader? Would they say you're an inauthentic leader? Right? How do you discern what your internal reputation is? So I work with leaders on figuring that out, figuring out what they want it to be, and then helping to um shore up the gap between reality and the desired.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

So can you can you tease a little bit, maybe give like an example of how a leader could try to get that pulse check or actually get that hard feedback without eroding trust with their teams?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

So um one of the best ways to get truthful data on this is to um have it be anonymous. And for that reason, it is hard to get truthful data when a leader asks specifically. So if I say to you, Guinevere, um, I know that I'm your boss, but please, you know, tell me honestly how am I doing for you.

unknown 18:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

You may think, oh, okay, well, this is an opportunity to tell her, but I still have to choose my words really carefully, right? So even if I think I'm making it so safe for you, it it just may not feel that way for you. And so the real, the safest way and the way to get the best data is to have an external third party do this. And so we do 360s. Um, um, and some of those 360s are assessment driven, and it can be through a form where you know there's 10 or 15 minutes that are devoted by um uh seven to ten people in your organization, and and then the data comes back and it's interpreted by a coach like me, and then we would share that with the leader themselves. So there's sometimes um survey-driven 360s, there's also what we call qualitative 360s where a coach like me comes in and has interviews with some of the people in the organization. Some of the board of directors might interview some of your clients, might interview um people um you know, lower than you, higher than you in the organization and laterally. Yeah, really 360s are are the best way to um to get really unbiased and truthful information.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

And I love working with leaders who come to me and say, Guinevere, I'd love for you to go and interact with people and come back to me and tell me what am I doing well and what am I, where can I improve? Because those are the leaders who are obviously recognizing that no one's perfect and we can always improve no matter where we are in our life, but they are hungry for it. I'm not telling them they need to do this, I'm not recommending it, I'm not going out and getting information and coming back to them with it. Like they are asking, and that is such a refreshing leader to work with because you know they're open. Uh, and by by just that alone, you know that what you're gonna bring back to them, no matter how hard it is, they're gonna want to improve. And um, so yeah, for all you leaders out there, think about it that way too.

Emotional Intelligence Drives Real Impact

SPEAKER_00 20:10

And that leads us right into the next lever, which is what you're describing when a leader says, Hey, I I want to hear open open feedback and I really do want to learn and change and grow. That tells me that that's a leader that has probably high emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence is our next lever. So relational impact, you know, pulling the relate the lever of relational impact. How high is your EQ? How high is your emotional intelligence? So most of us have heard of IQ, right? And we can have our IQ um uh uh tested, and really our IQ number does not grow after the age of 18. Once we are uh, you know, the age of majority, our IQ does not increase. However, our EQ number does increase, it can increase, it doesn't by default increase, but when we put time and attention and energy to it, we can increase our emotional quotient, our EQ. Emotionally intelligent leaders are proven to be um more effective leaders. And so being able to pull that relational impact lever. Um, it's not just what you say, it's how people experience you. So knowing what your level of EQ is is important for leaders too. So those are the first two buckets: interpersonal or intrapersonal and interpersonal.

Vocal Precision And Hidden Strengths

SPEAKER_00 21:26

And then the third bucket is really about operating and executing. How do you operate and execute in your business? And so one of those things is are you perceived as a good communicator? How are you influencing people? Does your tone match the moment? And so this one, this lever is called vocal precision. And one of the things that I do with uh executive coaching is also speech coaching. So I work with leaders who are taking large stages, they're giving big independent. Street conferences, they're sometimes speaking to hundreds or thousands of people, and I work with them on how to do that well with teleprompters and media in the room and all that good stuff, but also on being able to grab hearts and minds and change hearts and minds. And so, how good are you at that through vocal, vocal precision and uh precision and vocal communications? And then the last one is hidden strengths. Can you unlock some additional capability that you may not be aware of? So most leaders aren't necessarily maxed out, they're just misaligned with what strengths they're pulling on. So if we're operating from a place of strength, um, and some of our strengths are blind spots for us, we don't always know some things that that come very easy to us, we disregard them as not being strengths. So helping leaders mine what those strengths are, discover what they are so that they can lean into them even more. Um, and all of us have hidden strengths. We may know what most of our strengths are, but I can guarantee you everyone has strengths that they don't know about. So we also do some work on assessing what those are so that we can dive deeper into those. So those are the seven levers. Um, that's what I see that leaders tend to default to one or two of them that they feel really natural and comfortable with, but they ignore some that could actually unlock the next level for them. So um when leaders start to really work intentionally across all seven of these levers, that's when leadership really feels more effective and more sustainable.

Execution Wins In Micro Moments

SPEAKER_01 23:39

So I have a follow-up question on that, especially on the execution side. Like when execution is off, how do you diagnose whether it's a people issue or a leadership issue?

SPEAKER_00 23:49

It's a good question. Execution, when execution is off, it is almost always a daily issue. Execution is, you know, our our big strategy has to be executed on a daily basis. And it could be both a leadership and a people issue. It could be one or the other, but it happens in the micro moments. So execution either fails or succeeds in the micro moments. When execution is going well, when we are executing, that means every person in the organization knows exactly the right thing to do at any given time on any given day. If that's not happening, if I don't know what to do when I come into work today, if I don't know what the highest priorities are, if I don't know where to leverage my strengths, if I don't know how to address the challenge, if I don't know, if I'm questioning, if I'm in analysis paralysis, then execution is failing. So it happens in these micro moments, and it could be leadership issues, it could be personnel issues, it could be talent issues. Um, so we need to sort of do a little diagnostics there to better answer that question.

One EQ Move To Use This Week

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Well, Marissa, I love this topic. I feel like we could probably talk for hours on end, but as we wrap up, is there one lever that leaders can pull this week with their team that would feel immediate uh increase in their leadership functionality and capabilities?

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Um the emotional intelligence piece, when we increase our emotional intelligence, it's like a rising tide raises all ships, all of the other levers come up as well. So there are tips and techniques on how we can increase our emotional intelligence. The first one is to become more self-aware. Um, and that's a bigger topic than we have time to discuss. But um uh I work a lot with with some of my coaching clients on self-awareness and um, you know, why why we do what we do, how we show up, how sometimes our uh intention differs from our actual impact on others. And so one tip that leaders could take away is to um ask more questions about the leadership impact that they're leaving. Um, you know, hi Guinevere, how did that meeting feel for you that we just came out of now? Are you feeling excited about that thing that we talked about? Are you feeling daunted by the thing we talked about? Um, how did some of that land for you? Just asking questions like that, being truly curious can increase our emotional awareness.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Well, great. Thank you, Marissa. Appreciate all the insight for those listening. You can contact Marissa. Her information is in the uh details below. And we appreciate you joining us today. We look forward to having you uh join us on next week's episode. Until then, have a wonderful day, week, wherever you are, evening. We'll see you next time. Thanks again. That's a wrap for today's episode of Scaling with People. If you got value from this conversation, do me a favor, share it with someone building something big. And hey, I'd love to hear your take. Drop a comment, share me a message, or start a conversation. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss the bold unfiltered strategies we drop every week. I'm Gwynaver Crury, founder and CEO of Guide2HR, where we help high growth companies feel smart with people for strategies and AI powered systems that don't just keep up, they lead. If you're building fast and want your HR to move faster, head to guide2hr.com and let's talk. And remember, scale isn't just about speed, it's about people. Until next time, have a great one.