Wayland Lum
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Yeah, absolutely, Vince. So the eight principles are our perspective, our copper box, our ethos, if you will, about how we think about modern leadership. So at the end of the day, you must help business leaders achieve their outcomes. And so that is first and foremost. And that being said... Working with them is an opportunity to go for transformational change for the leader.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And we know that when they achieve transformational change, when they become stronger leaders, not only in work, but also in different aspects of their life, there is a much more powerful cascading benefit and impact that is much more far-reaching. And that's what we want to help them achieve.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And so when we think about the eight principles, we have that in mind, that it's not simply about business outcomes, but we are confident that when we help leaders to become more modern, to achieve transformation, inevitably, that is going to have great impact on the businesses that they lead and they run.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
So when we think about the eight principles, first, it really, it does start with getting grounded in core purpose. And there's a lot of talk about purpose. There's a lot of talk about finding your purpose or finding your why. And in essence, it is where everything starts.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Core purpose is understanding both your deeply held values, how you move in the world, what's important to you, what you'll put a stake in the ground for. It's also about the values and gifts that you bring to the world and that you want to use. We call them your superpowers. And the combination of your values and your gifts are very powerful.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And when you are able to combine both of those and then channel that into your purpose, you really do become unstoppable. So I've seen that in my own life, being able to have the renewed energy to really drive my business and to have the impact on leaders. But I also see that in the lives of others, both my team members and also our clients.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And the last thing I'll say about getting grounded in core purpose is that we talk a lot about inspiration and leadership, but really to be inspirational, you yourself have to be inspired. And so what is it in the world that inspires you, that gets you up in the morning and how you're able to bring that energy, which by the way, other people can see very quickly whether you have it or not.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
But as a leader, it is important to have inspiration. And so how are you bringing that? So therefore, those that you lead can also be inspired because, hey, Wayland got a light and energy, a spark that's being driven deep within. And that intrigues me. And as my leader, I know that he's operating from a place of a real inspiration, a real purpose. And I'm inspired by that.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And secondly, it's interesting because I found time and again, and this is very consistent across organizations, is that leaders, certainly they've got big titles, right? We work with leaders that have really big titles, really big roles, but they sometimes see leadership as a responsibility as opposed to a choice, right?
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
and what i mean by that is yeah there are responsibilities to leadership but leadership really starts with the choice and so we talk about picking up the torch of leadership and picking up the torch is a conscious choice and there's two things to that when you pick up the torch you can certainly and it's a great metaphor you can light the way for others as a torch bearer but at the same time if you pick up the torch
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
There is a bit of playing with fire. You can get burned. So you understand that as a leader. There is going to be a certain level of personal discomfort. There's going to be sacrifice. If you're not sacrificing, then there's an aspect of leadership that is about sacrifice. So I would argue if you're not sacrificing, then there's not full or true display of leadership on your part.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Because if you didn't have to sacrifice, it'd be easy. And leadership isn't easy. And so picking up the torch, I think, is really critically important. And making that decision for every leader is this first step. And I guess the last thing I'll say about picking up the torch is leadership can be scary. I've found myself fearful in different situations and
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Yeah, no, it's great. Thanks for having me, Vince. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
just had to clench my teeth and move forward. But I think one thing perhaps maybe might be comforting to leaders, or at least a good reminder of what you're there for and why you're there, is that fear is a precursor to courage. So these two aspects of the human condition, they always appear in that order. You do not get courage without first experiencing fear.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And so as you understand that, when you understand yourself in those kinds of situations, you understand that you're probably in the places that you need to be making the decisions that you need to be making, and that's leadership.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Yeah. So it's Vincent. I love what you're sharing here. And actually I need to catch that movie myself. I've been meaning to do that because I've been hearing such great things.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And when it comes to these, these sort of like these emotions that are juxtaposed or two sides of the same coin, it's a good lesson for us as leaders, generally speaking, you know, another one, as I was listening to you, that comes to mind is love. For example, love that you have for somebody else, a deep love and with deep love,
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
can also come profound grief right when losing a loved one let's say and so these these strong emotions and the best of the emotions that you can experience in the world such as joy such as love they do come with also other profound emotions that can also be
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
at times devastating in one's life right understanding both of those things accepting that and going seeking love out anyways or wanting to be joyful knowing that there'll be days when there will be profound sadness and understanding and accepting that i think it's a bit of wisdom that that we're talking about here in terms of modern leadership because it's really an understanding of human nature both the human experience for oneself but also for others
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
I'm doing well, Vince. Yeah, it's another balmy day in Austin, Texas. And I'm looking forward to the summer as we chatted about before. So yeah, and also excited to be with you and have a great conversation.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Vince. So I think early on, going back to undergrad, I knew early on that I had a desire to meld the disciplines of psychology and business. And so it was a very easy choice for me to study industrial organizational psychology. I did that at San Jose State, go Spartans.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And from that experience launched my career into HR, which got me close to talent, organizational talent, first in Silicon Valley and high tech, and then more broadly across to New York and then other parts of the country as well. And I would say against the thing that has been a prevailing theme in my career is how to work with and provide value to the best talent in the world.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And so if you look at my career trajectory, it's really been a journey and a sort of quest, if you will, to find who those individuals are or those groups of people and be able to work closely with them to really help them to develop their maximum potential and become the now the folk that I have now, the leaders that they are meant to become.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And by doing so, we know that the world is more positively impacted and becomes a better place.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Yeah, so the decision was really many years in the making and it really started, Vince, as I coach a lot of the leaders that I work with and understand more about them, it really does start with early formative experiences, right? Growing up when I was thinking about career and stuff, I actually thought I was going to be an artist. Like my dad, he was a graphic artist.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
I enjoyed oil painting, using Prismacolor, drawing, et cetera. And that creativity has always stayed with me. And then when I moved into business psychology, industrial organizational psychology, that creativity and wanting to innovate really manifested itself in now this new area of interest for me that became my career. And so I always had that. And when I was at these larger organizations,
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
I felt that I wasn't fully able to express that sort of creativity and maybe perhaps fully work with leaders in the way that I wanted, which would be much deeper, more transformational and really wanting them to make significant changes in terms of who they were and then in turn make changes in who they were as leaders. One thing that I often coach my clients on
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And indeed, as coaches and consultants, particularly as coaches and leaders, we've got to walk our talk. And so we cannot simply be coaching other leaders on what they may need to do and how they need to change. But we also need to step into our own change ourselves and be held accountable for that.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And so I'd often coach my leaders to be bold, courageous in their decision making, to really go with their intuition, follow their heart, and really step out into the directions in which they believe they need to go. And when it came down to the fundamental question I asked myself was, Wei, are you going to stay within a large organization, rely on the reputation of this firm, the resources?
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
The beautiful steel and glass building that you walk into every day and with all the nice facilities and the office environment that you have privilege of having access to? Or are you going to go step out and bet on yourself? And when I framed the question like that, Vince, the answer became very clear.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
I had to go step out and bet on myself as I would have coached and encouraged my leaders that I work with to do. And I can say that I have not regretted a single moment. It's been absolutely amazing.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
I absolutely agree.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Yeah, early on in my career, when I was just starting out at HR, I actually did hire a coach for myself. And my coach, the reason why I hired him, and this is way back in the, gosh, early 2000s, I wanted to become a coach. And therefore, I thought a good way to do that would be to get mentorship and be able to learn from a really experienced executive coach.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And I remember, I think one of the most important things that he taught me because he used to continuously push me and say, Waylon, you can do this. You can work with these types of leaders. You can have the type of impact that you want to have with a certain level of leader. And at the time, Vince, I didn't quite believe him or I didn't feel ready.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And that's probably understandable given I was much younger and didn't have the experience and the tools and I would say even the life experience that I have now. However, that experience of working with him has influenced the way that I develop others. And so I'm always pushing them to be more than what they've envisioned themselves being at this point in time.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And I do that with my team and certainly do that with the client leaders that I work with as well. And what I found is that when you have that expectation of people
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
more often than not they're able to rise to the occasion and they will become more than they have thought possible and that's really awesome to see i think in terms of coaching area how they recommend that to anybody and and whatever sort of aspect of your life that you might want coaching for i do encourage you to explore that of course you need to find the right person the right fit um but i found it for myself to be tremendously rewarding
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
I still work with some business coaches here and there to help me with thought partnership and just being a good counterpoint or a good thought partner as I think about growing my own business and also how I am leading others.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Yeah, absolutely. And that statement, talking about walking the talk event, we develop modern leaders to face their biggest challenges. That is really a derivation also of what the vision of Copperbox is, which is to prepare leaders to confront and address the greatest challenges of our time. And that is both our vision, it's also an aspirational goal that we have for our firm.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And it goes beyond the realm of business and into areas such as government policy, certainly large, big problems that the world faces, such as climate change and misinformation, loneliness, et cetera. And so that's our aspiration. Now, how do we do that in more sort of purposeful and day to day terms is through our work with business leaders.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
And so one area that we are very focused on and do a lot of work in is private equity and supporting private equity operating companies and their executives. As we know, private equity moves at a very fast pace. Firms have investment theses that they need to achieve and fulfill, and they do that through the talent that they have at their portfolio companies.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
A lot of our work is really helping those leaders to quickly identify The areas of their leadership that need to be, the gaps need to be quickly closed and to really partner with them closely at pace in order to do that. And when I mean at pace, I really mean on a quarter by quarter basis, which is the cadence of business in general.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
That's certainly the cadence of business within private equity where they're trying to achieve very specific objectives and goals quarter by quarter.
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
Yes, so modern leadership is really about the many demands of a leader today that didn't exist or they didn't have those expectations put upon them even, let's say, four or five years ago, pre-COVID. But in a post-COVID era, and particularly with the challenges that we face today, societal, not to mention in business, right?
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
modern leadership is required and so how i define it and i know we'll talk in a moment about the eight principles but how i really define it is taking a more timeless view on leadership based on understandings of human nature based on understandings of patterns that we've seen occur throughout history
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
and based on an understanding of the on the ways in which people typically react and respond to different types of stimuli in their environment. So those are just a few examples. But what we're really looking at here is understanding leaders and leadership and how to lead from a much more systemic point of view and not simply
Chief Change Officer
#178 Wayland Lum: From Art Supplies to Executive Boardrooms —The Art of Betting on Yourself
oh i'm into i'm interacting with this individual or this group but really understanding that individual and that group within the context of a system and more timeless principles about how individuals and groups operate yes your eight principles of modern leadership i read them all before our call today i'm so impressed