Jack Griffin Podcast Transcript
Jack Griffin joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Do you work in emerging tech, working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.coruzant.com/brand.
Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Jack Griffin. Jack Griffin established Light Up Ventures and is certified with an international coaching Federation to illuminate people through personal development.
He and his team have unique experience working with industry leaders, including Marissa Meyer and a range of reputable clients from fortune fifties, like Google Meta and Amazon to mid-market companies and startups. On a mission to illuminate tech leaders through story development. Jack Griffin is the CEO of Light Up Ventures, and author of the number one bestselling book, Luminary.
As a certified executive coach and leadership consultant, his expertise is dedicated to guiding ambitious leaders and their organizations towards transformative growth.
Well, good afternoon, Jack. Welcome to the show.
Jack Griffin: Thanks for having me, Brian. Great to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. You taking the time, especially I’m in Kansas City, you’re in the Bay Area, Northern California, and I really appreciate you taking the time.
I know it’s a couple hour difference, but again, the hard thing is getting calendars to sync up, so thank you. So, Jack, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna jump right into your first question. Light Up Ventures is built around the idea of illuminating tech leaders. What is the defining moment or insight that inspired you to create a company centered on story development and executive coaching?
Jack Griffin: Great question Brian. And for us really goes back to our roots and thankful for the opportunities. I’ve had to work with some really top leaders around the tech industry for a while, and I remember a time in particular in corporate before starting Lite Ventures, watching a senior leader drone on stage, seeing people looking down at their phones as this leader talked about themselves, uninspiring and really disengaged audience, which for me.
Broke my heart, both for the audience and for this senior leader. And so from that sparked Light Up Ventures really to solve for that pain of poor communication and ineffective leadership. And we also know from research that businesses around the globe annually lose about $1.2 trillion from poor communication and lack of leadership because of the lost productivity.
The turnover in employees and the customer churn. And so that was really a defining spark for us, and we’ve continued on that mission ever since.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And it’s funny, you learn from things like that. It’s painful whether you’re, that person or you’re actually sitting there and going, oh my gosh, I wish this guy knew or gal knew how painful this was for this audience.
So, I appreciate that. Jack, you’ve worked with some of the world’s most influential leaders, including Marissa Meyer. Yahoo. And executives from Google Meta and Amazon, what leadership traits or communication habits consistently separate top tier leaders from everyone else?
Jack Griffin: Yeah, so I have to give a big shout out to Marissa who did not fall into that category of poor communication, although I was very impressed over time working with her how much she did grow in her public speaking competence.
Especially coming from that technical background. And so, what really stands out to us really primarily focusing on technical leaders is two things from a leadership standpoint, systems thinking, and from a communication standpoint, it’s about that balance of being informative. Inspirational for systems thinking.
I like to reference a book, a Classic by Peter Sang the Fifth Discipline. He did research of top performing organizations around the world and found that the learning organization that thinks systematically about their work, those are the top performing organizations because those leaders think of themselves and their teams as a component.
And part of a bigger picture. And when you recognize you’re part of a bigger system, you also start to realize that you can either be seen as generating value, high leverage generation of your value, and the team and your output. Or seen as a dispensable cost center. And it’s the leaders that recognize how they can bring leverage to the system and really amplify their impact are the ones that stand out.
And then within that system, those leaders who communicate informative and inspirational. And so I like to use a metaphor ’cause I’m out in the mountains near Lake Tahoe. I love to burn wood in our wood burning fire. And my first couple years. Was humbled by how much goes into the system of burning wood from planning ahead and chopping trees to processing them with my splitter stacking, making sure things are seasoned, and even playing around weather patterns.
And so, thinking of that systematically, I can then be much more effective in burning my wood. And that’s the nice part is. The metaphor continues into communication. Informative is like a fire that is functional. It provides heat, but it also brings that emotional joy of sitting around and sipping coffee with loved ones.
That inspires us when we connect and communicate in that way. And so that’s how I think of leadership and communications with systems thinking and really thoughtful communication.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that and I always love the analogy. It really helps me, but it helps the audience as well. I appreciate that.
Leaders certainly have a lot they can leverage and it’s important when they are engaging with company staff, what the organization that they are certainly working together to get that message across to the organization in a trustworthy manner, in a, a transparent manner. So, I appreciate that.
Jack, the next question I have for you, in your book, Luminary, you emphasize the power of personal narrative. Why is storytelling such a critical skill for modern executives, especially those in tech?
Jack Griffin: It’s a great question. Our brains are hardwired for recognizing patterns and recognizing information that is delivered in the form of story.
Otherwise, it’s perceived as random. We’re surrounded, inundated, and overloaded with information. These days, executives in particular have around 120 plus emails hitting their inbox on top of 2000 plus texts a week coming through their devices, and we’re all exposed to 200,000 plus advertisements per year.
So, when we think of all that clutter, effective leaders know how to break through that with really effective storytelling because it helps present the information. With some recognizable patterns, with key messages and a narrative arc. I was actually just last week in Santa Clara, NVIDIA’s headquarters, and I have an executive coaching client who regularly presents to Jensen.
Jensen is known for expecting very direct, concise communication to be effective, and so we really need to consider storytelling as a way of communicating our work in a way that recognizes. Patterns for the people receiving the information. And when we do that, it both fosters relationships and enables productivity.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think it’s so important. Everyone loves a good story, and people are more engaged when there is a story behind the message. And I, again, I think that is so critical and that’s where a lot of times leaders’ kind of miss the mark and we have people like you that are out there helping, coaching and, and making the world a better place.
And Jack. The last question. Go ahead. Go
Jack Griffin: ahead. Sorry. I was just gonna add Brian to help clarify because one thing I always find when talking about storytelling, some people think of Disney films or just a little bit of. More thought on slides and the visuals, but we really need to break down storytelling into its two components, the story and the telling.
And so just to help encourage your listeners, if they’re at all considering storytelling, the story is that content? What are the key messages? How can you leverage the rule of three to be organized with what you want your audience to take away with your content? This is the what. But equally as important.
And sometimes for research, we see that the delivery, the nonverbal communication is even more important, how we say it with our gestures, our posture, our eye contact, the vocalization. So just a, a, hopefully a helpful tip for your audience to remember both the content for story and the telling in the way they deliver it to be really effective in their communication.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate the nuggets. I really do. That’s very helpful. And Jack, the last question of the day. Having explored 40 plus countries run youth camps in Haiti and led diverse coaching engagements, what culture or global perspective have most influenced the way you help leaders communicate, grow, and unlock their potential today?
Jack Griffin: It’s great question, Brian. I’m glad we’re closing with this because it’s near and dear to my heart. It’s one of the things I actually struggle with as well, but it comes down to humility. I think it’s a differentiator for leaders who bring a sense of humble awareness compared to those that we’ve seen, unfortunately, a little bit of arrogance or entitlement, and that’s one of the reasons we started Light Up Ventures.
There’s a lot of darkness in workplaces, this AI era that we are in right now, and a lot of automation replacing jobs. The human differentiator is gonna be that leadership and communication, and the leaders that bring that humility, as I’ve observed from traveling around the world, are the ones that are actually.
Liked to be followed. These are the ones that people actually enjoy following these leaders because they bring that sense of humility. And I am really blessed to have been taking teams down to Haiti for 10 plus years to work on things like leadership development. And it’s time and time again down there.
I’m reminded how good we truly have it if we have a roof over our heads, running water, food in our kitchens. It’s just a good reminder of truly how blessed we are in this business world. And when we bring that into our leadership, it makes us a little bit more easy to follow and listen when we have that sense of humility.
And I see that in one of my favorite clients being meta. I had an opportunity to work with a VP recently on their keynote. And he was talking about the power of human connection, referencing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And one of our needs is really coming down to that connection as humans, and it’s much easier to connect, build rapport, maybe even close deals if your listeners are on the sales side or achieve AI innovation if they’re on the engineering side.
When we connect with humility.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that and I think it’s important you, a couple things I highlighted from that is, a leader should have that humble awareness as you said, and that being grateful can really put you in that space, especially if you’re about ready to message, your organization, especially a large organization.
So, I appreciate that and Jack, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Jack Griffin: Thanks, Brian. If I can just close for your listeners, tied to humility, servant leadership, if we all just put others above ourselves, it’d be a little brighter business world and world in general.
So, thank you Brian for shining with your podcast. It was a pleasure to be on.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Jack Griffin Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
