Empathy and Agility

Todd, in creating Out Leadership, it sounds like you have found your true north. What would you say are the top two personal values that guide you in your decision-making and in your life?

I would agree with you that I have found my true north and I'm very lucky to have found such an opportunity to create an organization that does create the change that I want to see in the world. In terms of values, I do think that empathy and the agility opportunity that leaders have are two of the values that I like to see in everything that we do, and from an empathy perspective, I will share the Out Leadership piece about it and also the LGBT leader side of that. From all of our research and data, and personal experience, LGBTQ leaders actually have incredibly high levels of empathy. When we walk into a room, we actually read the room for safety because in almost 70 countries, LGBTQ people are still illegal and can be jailed, penalized, or even killed, we can lose our jobs, our housing, our families, and so there's always this level of seeking out safety and making sure that everyone around us feels comfortable, and that creates huge levels of empathy which translates into great leadership skills, and so I know that I have that, I know so many gay leaders have that, and that opportunity to create empathetic conversations with leaders has been hugely successful and also very, very gratifying. From an agility perspective, I share that word because I do think that the most impactful leaders, gay or straight, have an agility framework, and the idea behind agility is that you can take in lots of data and you grow and you morph, and you are able to amend your leadership style and you're actually able to shift how you approach problems based on taking in new information, and I think too often, the last at least four years in particular, people get very stuck in one particular mindset especially in the political realm and that agility mindset has really disappeared in so many firms, so I think the opportunity to create an organization globally, which we have, that does focus on those two key aspects of leadership has been something that I've been very excited about, and it's really paid off for us because we've grown to be the first and still only global LGBT business organization.