You've got courage to lead, courage to lead, be brave and be bold. Let it roar! Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courageconsulting.com where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courageconsulting.com. Now here's your host, leadership courage coach CB Bowman.
What did you learn from this book? I just every time I listen to Lisa or get to work with Lisa or write with Lisa, I spent I don't know how many months in this room over there in that chair typing up the stories that Lisa had told me during our interviews, typing them up and massaging them so I could give them back to Lisa. And then the conversations that we'd have, and every Friday we met and we'd either interview or we'd read back chapters. So Lisa was the reader, she would read the chapter so we got to hear it in her voice. And I learned so much about how to handle situations that come up, just like she was just explaining to us just now about how to navigate situations where I'm not getting what I want, somebody's telling me no, I'm achieving a great success. I mean that's also in the book, you know, all these wonderful successes that you've had and how you've navigated those, or navigating personal issues that are happening at the same time as huge events at work. And I learned so much. And so sometimes, not very often, I did pretty good, but every once in a while, I mean you have a leader like Lisa, they're answering interview questions, you gotta like ask her, so if you were in this situation how would you handle this? And she would tell me how to rise above certain situations or how to not let emotions get in the way of asking for what I want or trying to achieve what I want or working with certain people or navigating challenges. I mean there's one chapter in the book about the greatest failure that Lisa ever faced and how she navigated that, and we spent a lot of time going through that. So I got to, I'm lucky. Peter Drucker says there's three ways to learn, right? You either learn by visual or you learn by maybe taking notes or you learn by auditory. I got Lisa in all three ways. Wow, wow. I got to learn full immersion in great leadership, so I'm pretty fortunate in that I would say.
Ladies, we're running out of time and I want to do part two, so audience, stay tuned for part two. Hello ladies and gentlemen, it's CB with a rusty voice. We are going to do part two of an incredible interview with a new author, new author and an old author, and what do I mean by that? They co-authored and the book is called Making Waves and it is a riveting story about how a woman took a man's role and became CEO of a cruise line and president. Welcome back Sarah and Lisa.
Okay so part two, let's talk about your role as CEO of a cruise line. What the heck, first of all, can I ask you a stupid question? How did you learn how to drive a ship?
Yeah, no, I never did CB. I left that to the experts. I learned early in my career, leave certain things to the experts. You're not an expert in everything and you don't know everything. So that's one thing I never got to do. I got to go on the bridge, I got to blow the horn, I got to see all the technology and things that worked, which was really cool, but they never put me behind the wheel.
So how do you become a CEO and you don't drive the ship? So how can you direct the captain to say I think you're screwing up or I'm very proud of what you've done?
Well, the good news is I didn't have direct oversight of the captains. They were very accomplished men, actually, because it is a lot mostly men, who were leading the captains and telling them if they screwed up and being able to monitor the things that they did, again through all the technology we had. And I knew the metrics, I knew what our key performance indicators are. Safety was at the forefront of everything we focused on every day, fuel consumption, on-time arrivals and departures, the logistics. And it's one thing I will say is the cruise industry is an incredibly complex industry that most people, even those who sail with us, don't understand what it takes to make it all happen. And I was fortunate enough to work with tens of thousands of people who were just really great at what they did.
So I just realized it was a question I didn't ask you as a follow-up to how you landed this position. What was the decision, what was the trigger to Marshall that finally made the offer to you of being president and CEO?
I don't know, I don't know what that one thing was. I think time was something that worked in my favor in terms of just continuing to lead a very large and complex operation. I think the performance and the results that I got when I was in that role, I think some of the successes and failures and how I recovered from those played a key part in that because I do believe that how anybody recovers from a failure, big or small, is a good indicator of what kind of a leader they will be and how they manage those types of situations. So I would say it was probably a myriad of things that one day convinced the person that was ultimately making the decision that I was ready and I would be really good in the role. And they did. I think also in hindsight as I look at it, I think they took their time making a decision on who was going to come in, which gave me an opportunity. And I think that they were very fair in giving me the opportunity to again convince him that it was the right decision to give me one of these roles. They're very critical roles, there's a lot riding on these roles. And so I think that there were a myriad of things. I'm not sure if it was one thing CB, it was probably a culmination of things.
In your role as communicating this wonderful story, what failure of Lisa's stood out in your mind and why?
You know, there's a chapter in the book about Lisa's greatest failure, biggest failure, epic, we called it the epic fail, remember? Yeah, that's how we described it, epic. And what she did is she was the failure first, go ahead Lisa, it's a good one.
Yeah, yeah, it was. We were starting up a new brand and everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And you know, we were redoing the ship, renovating it, it wasn't ready, ovens didn't work, the crew wasn't ready, the rooms weren't set up, supplies hadn't arrived, oh my God, the technology on the pier didn't work and so we couldn't check people in. I mean CB, it's like I hope everyone reads the book because it was an epic fail and it was an epic fail on every level. Like there wasn't one thing I could point to and say oh that was a real success. Everything that went wrong that could go wrong did go wrong. And then I was the only one, like I was left kind of holding the bag. And I did not abandon ship, I stayed.
And how long after you had been made CEO did this happen?
No, it wasn't when I was CEO. This was a previous, it was my first foray into operations at Celebrity. It was 2008. And what I learned, I mean, and I'm gonna let Sarah relate her understanding and view of it because you know she was just sort of a listener and could think about it and process it all and what her reaction was to it. But I was new in my role and what I didn't know, I didn't know what I didn't know and I didn't know the right questions to ask. And I had a really weak team around me that didn't care. And I learned a lot about teams, alignment, vision, caring about each other, being mutually invested in each other's success. That epic fail taught me a lot about those things that I didn't know. I asked some questions, everybody told me that everything, they knew what they were doing and everything was going to be fine. I trusted when I shouldn't have and pretty much everybody let me down. And that was why it was an epic fail.
And was it for Celebrity or Royal Caribbean or what was it?
No, it was for a different brand that I don't name in the book, but it was a startup brand that those of us on Celebrity were tasked with starting up.
Okay, so it was in the same industry but...
It was in our company, yeah. It was in our company. It wasn't Royal Caribbean, it wasn't Celebrity, it was a different brand we were starting up, yeah.
Okay Sarah, so did you hear how she explained the epic fail? It starts with everything went wrong, new position, everything's going wrong, ovens, you know, people aren't showing up to do their jobs, everything is going wrong. Did you hear how she turned that into 'and I learned this and I learned that and I learned this and I learned that'? Isn't that just, I mean that is leadership, that is positive leadership. And that's why I love working with Lisa so much is she's real. There are real things that happen and they're really bad, really epic fails. And then she says I learned this and I learned that and she takes all those learnings to whatever she's doing next and it's so much better. The other thing about what Lisa does that I got to learn because I got to go on a cruise which was very exciting and so I'd never done that. So I got to learn what cruises are about and how there's the land side and there's the seaside and there is so much happening on one ship to get all of us passengers onto the ship where we're going to have food for the whole time we're there, we're going to be entertained, there's all these restaurants, there's so much happening. And so Lisa in that position was in charge of both, you know, or she was overseeing both the land side and the seaside. And she learned so much, she turned that epic fail into a learning experience, a positive learning experience that she took into the next venture she was going to have. That's what I love about working with Lisa is learning how she turns what's negative into positive. So when you asked about failure I wasn't really able to come up with one because we always end on a good note.
You mentioned something Lisa, you said you trusted when you shouldn't have. Tell me.
Yeah, you know, listen, because I'm a relentless optimist, I always think everyone's well-intentioned and that what people tell me is the truth. And you know, I always believe, I'm not a, you know, there's like somebody in our company used to sign their emails with 'trust but verify' and I'm more lean on the trust side. I just trust you. If I ask you a question and you give me an answer, I trust that it's the truth. I trust you mean what you say. And what I learned is that sometimes you just have to ask a few more questions because everything isn't as simple as it is on the surface. But what you also need to know is the questions to ask. And if you don't know the questions to ask, you take people at face value and you believe that this is going to work because they know what they need to do. And oh by the way, they probably did know what they needed to do but they didn't do it. And one of the things that I also did in that situation was I was the only shoreside leader that stayed.
What does shoreside leader mean?
Shoreside, I didn't work on the ship, I worked in the office, in the home office. I was not a shipboard employee, I was an employee that worked on land. And I told them I wasn't leaving until we were stable and it was fixed and that I was going to be with them every step of the way. And whether I was responsible for what happened or not, I took full responsibility and I told them I needed their help to recover.
And they rallied around me in a way that was unbelievable. And those people I was working with decades later, we all had that memory and we all got through it together. And they remembered I didn't leave and I probably gained more respect during that terrible situation than any of the other situations I've ever been in as a leader. And yeah, it was all for one and one for all. And then you know, I also learned that the best in people comes out in the worst of times and the worst in people comes out in the worst of times. And I was fortunate that I was left on the ship with all of those people where the best in them came out during that time. And yeah, we all helped each other fix it.
