Alan Guarino
Vice Chairman of CEO and Board Services, Korn Ferry
Without inspiration, there is no leadership. It’s very simple: you either work for a boss who gets you excited about the work, or you work for a boss who gets you to do the work.
Summary
On this episode of Leadership Matters, Alan Fleischmann sits down with Alan Guarino, Vice Chairman of Korn Ferry and author of the groundbreaking new book, The Greatness Code. From his formative years in a tight-knit Connecticut community to leading soldiers at West Point and building global businesses, Guarino shares lessons that shaped his belief that greatness comes from the inside out. He introduces his “Greatness Code” formula — five key qualities paired with social capital — and offers practical guidance for navigating an era defined by rapid disruption and artificial intelligence.
Mentions & Resources
Guest Bio
Mr. Guarino is a founding member of Korn Ferry's CEO Succession Practice, an industry leading model that transformed the approach to CEO succession management. He also launched Korn Ferry's Execution Accelerator initiative, helping business leaders better execute their strategies by optimizing talent.
Mr. Guarino leads major consulting initiatives across industries with deep expertise in FinTech, financial markets, digital assets, digital transformation, and disruptive technology. He also leads senior executive search and C-suite succession assignments for large Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller growth companies.
Alan is a member of the Board of Directors of The Union League Club. He is an advisor to NYCA, Axoni, Censia, Sustainable Holdings, Arva, and FinTech TV. He is a Limited Partner with FTV Capital. Alan was appointed by the Secretary of the Army to serve on the Army Science Board to advise on talent strategy for the U.S. Army. Alan currently serves on the Admissions Committee of The Economics Club of New York.
Alan has served as a public company board member of The Chef’s Warehouse (NASDAQ: CHEF) where he was the chair of the Compensation Committee. He is the past chairman of the Saint Pio Foundation and was founding chairman of the board of Boy's and Girl's Town of New York, president of the West Point Society of New York, and as finance chairman of the Capuchin Youth and Family Ministries.
Mr. Guarino graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and earned his master's degree in business administration from Embry Riddle University while on active duty in the United States Army. After commanding an Armor Troop as a Captain, Alan left the U.S. Army to pursue a career in financial markets.
Episode Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
Welcome to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM and LeadershipMattersShow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann. Today I’m joined by a leader whose career has spanned military service, global business, and leadership advisory. It’s Alan Guarino. Alan is Vice Chairman at Korn Ferry, where he’s helped shape how CEOs, boards, and enterprises think about talent, organizational performance, and leadership planning. Alan is a West Point graduate who received his MBA while on active duty, going on to build a successful career in financial markets, entrepreneurship, and global leadership consulting. He’s also the author of a new book, The Greatness Code: The Formula Behind Unstoppable Success, a powerful exploration of what drives exceptional leaders and how individuals and organizations can cultivate greatness in themselves and in others.
I’m excited to explore Alan’s early influences, his career across sectors, his unique views of leadership and the science behind greatness. The Greatness Code is an amazing book, and I’m hoping that we’ll dive in and learn some of the lessons in leadership that he has explored in this book. I would urge each and every one of you to go get it.
Alan, welcome to Leadership Matters. It’s a pleasure to have you on.
Alan Guarino
I’m really happy to be here. And hats off to you for having such a valuable program for people to raise their game when it comes to leadership.
Alan Fleischmann
Your book inspires me. I’m one of those people—I’m a sucker for these kinds of books, in a good way, meaning that I love them. I was so taken by the fact that your book feels incredibly timely right now. We all talk about leadership all the time—we do it on this show—but the idea of greatness, and to be so bold as to talk about codes to greatness, and how you define greatness, is powerful.
It doesn’t have to be the most famous person in the world to be great. In many ways, cultivating your own greatness has very little to do with the outside, and much more to do with the inside‑out rather than the outside‑in. But we’ll get to that.
Tell us a little bit about your early life—where you were born, where you grew up, any values or family influences that most shaped your worldview as a future leader. What was life like at home? What did your parents do? Any brothers or sisters? And anything else, including mentors along the way that may have influenced you, even as a young kid?
Alan Guarino
Happy to do it. I actually wish I had more mentors. I reflect on that, and I often question why I didn’t have as many as I think I should have. My upbringing was a big part of where I’ve ended up. Most of us would probably say that, good or bad. I was very fortunate.
Those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s grew up in what I call “The Wonder Years.” We were a pretty standard middle‑class family. My father immigrated from Italy. We grew up in a blue‑collar neighborhood in Danbury, Connecticut. Danbury was a factory town for many years in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and then ultimately that factory town fell on hard times. But the neighborhood was filled with parents from the Greatest Generation, and that was a special group.
I always felt they were a cheering section for all of us kids. We all had this sense that the world was our oyster. Even though we weren’t born into high privilege by any means, we felt like we had a real shot to go do things in a great country, in a great economic model that allowed us to pursue “the American Dream”—whatever that was—it sounded great. I never felt I was starting from a deficit and would have to climb out. I certainly didn’t think I was starting at the top, but I didn’t think I had a disadvantage. That came from the nurturing of the neighborhood.
I felt like I had three or four parents in that neighborhood. It was that kind of environment. I have two older sisters, and in the dedication of the book, I say they were huge for me. They filled me with confidence, and they set me straight when I was getting a little too full of myself. At the end of the day, I felt like I had three moms—my mom and my two older sisters. That’s a pretty supportive environment. I really feel like I had a good start, and there wasn’t much that I felt would hold me back from dreaming about, and aspiring to, achieve something.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. You got me nostalgic a little bit with how you described it. It’s kind of like the way we want our world to be. We want that village, that community, that neighborhood where not only do the kids get to be together, but the parents know it’s part of their responsibility to be there and nurture, and wag their fingers at you and tell you what you’re doing wrong. It sounds like your sisters played that role too, which is amazing.
What did your parents actually do?
Alan Guarino
My father immigrated as a child from Italy. He only had education through eighth grade and immigrated, as many did, straight into New York City. As a teenager, he was getting into trouble, which was very common in the neighborhood. His parents had a family friend who was a chef outside of New York City, up in Danbury, Connecticut. At 14, they sent my father there. Imagine a 14‑year‑old being sent to Connecticut to live in a dormitory behind a hotel, which in those days was common: all the busboys lived there as part of the model.
That’s how my dad found Danbury. He eventually got out of that situation and had the opportunity to do what many did—join the military. At 17, he probably lied about his age and joined the United States Army. This was pre‑World War II, and that eighth‑grade education didn’t get in his way. He joined the Army, ended up in the Army Air Corps, and became a navigator, where he learned things like the Pythagorean theorem and all kinds of math. He was quite smart but didn’t have formal education.
He left the Army and came back, tried to start a small business with his brother, and then ultimately got into the construction trades, which was common for Italian Americans in those days. He started out as a laborer. By the time I was born—probably 20 years after he got out of the Army—he had become a building superintendent for the public schools in Danbury. He helped build 27 public schools as part of the staff. Today we would call his job “Head of Facilities Management,” where all of the janitors and maintenance people rolled up to him—a couple hundred folks—looking after 20‑plus schools in the city, keeping them running and in tip‑top shape. That’s what he made his career.
Before I graduated from high school, he wanted to apply for another civil service job that required a high school degree. He had worked in the school district and was friends with the gentleman who ran adult education. He asked if he could sit for his high school equivalency exam. He did, passed it, and ultimately had his high school equivalency diploma before I graduated. That was my dad.
My mom was a stay‑at‑home mom until I was around nine. Then she went to work as a bookkeeper for the school lunch program in the same city school district. So both of them worked for the public school system. Pretty common in those days: they became a two‑career couple, albeit both blue‑collar jobs.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s great. You went to West Point, which I mentioned in the introduction. Did you aspire at a younger age than you normally would have to want to go to West Point—because of your father’s military experience—or did that come later?
Alan Guarino
I think most people who grew up in my generation had a dad who served in World War II. We all heard those stories. The ones that weren’t horrific combat stories were often very positive. My father said his seven or eight years in the Army were the most formative of his life, and he wouldn’t have traded them for anything—even though he was at Pearl Harbor the day it was bombed.
I got interested in West Point by attending the New York Military Academy, a school in upstate New York about 20 minutes north of West Point. My older cousin was sent there out of Brooklyn. It was a prestigious private school: smart kids in the city whose parents had some means and whose kids were probably getting into some trouble; diplomats’ children—many UN diplomats would send their sons there from second or third grade through high school.
As a young kid, eight or nine years old, we would go on Sundays and watch them parade at the school. My father said to his brother one day, “Hey, isn’t West Point near here?” And my uncle said, “Yeah, it’s right over the hill.” I said to my dad, “What’s West Point?” My dad wasn’t a guy to show much emotion, but he got this sort of reverent look on his face and said, “West Point—people like General MacArthur and General Patton went there. It’s a very important school. Somebody like me would never have a chance to go there, but maybe you could.”
I was eight years old, and I never forgot those words. I’m well over eight now, and I can still hear them like they were yesterday. I always knew there was this place called West Point. Then I watched some of the nostalgic movies about it.
My dad was a hard‑working guy. His health wasn’t great. My sisters found ways to get scholarships, and my parents came up with the rest. But I knew that if he had to pay for me to go through four years of engineering school, I probably would have killed him. So I was serious about West Point because of the economics and the full scholarship.
I applied to Georgetown and some others, but when West Point accepted me, it was an easy decision. That’s why I chose to go.
Alan Fleischmann
And obviously it was a great experience. When you talk about your leadership philosophy, the discipline, what you think about high‑performing teams—did that come from that experience, or did that originate earlier?
Alan Guarino
I don’t think I would have achieved what I’ve been able to achieve had I not gone to West Point, full stop. My father and mom raised us in an environment where it was tough—you were accountable for what you did and didn’t do. That basic raw material I learned at home was perfected at West Point, which is what West Point is perfect at doing.
I took to the environment where the demands were high, the discipline was high, and there’s a certain satisfaction in powering through that. It was critical to my formation. Without question. Many of my classmates feel the same way.
Alan Fleischmann
Are you close with the kids you grew up with, and are you close with your colleagues from West Point as well?
Alan Guarino
I played football in high school, so we had a pretty solid community around that. There were over 700 kids in my graduating high‑school class, so Danbury High was like a small college. My friends tended to be the guys I played football with and some of the students in student government, where I also spent time.
When you leave home at 18, versus staying in town like many did—working in the trades or going to Western Connecticut State College and then working locally—obviously they have a lot more friends in town than I do. But I’d say there are 10‑plus people I left at 18 whom I still feel quite close to, even though we only spend moments together, typically on the phone, by text, or through LinkedIn. I also know that if I needed anything and I called them, they’d be there. That’s pretty special, and it’s a testament to Danbury at the time and to Danbury High, and the closeness we all had growing up in those “Wonder Years.”
From West Point, it’s a smaller group. My company—West Point is broken into 36 companies that make up the Corps of Cadets—had probably 30‑plus guys. Every Sunday, starting a couple of years ago, there’s a Zoom call. On that call there’ll be anywhere from five to fifteen guys. In our case it was all guys, but there were a little over 100 women in my class overall, and they are great friends. One of my classmates went on to be the Dean of West Point as a general officer before she retired.
So, a small group of folks from West Point, a very small group from the Army because the Army is transient, and then a small group of people I went to high school with.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s cool. I think I’m right that you applied to Embry‑Riddle University while you were on active duty. What made you think you wanted to go to Embry‑Riddle while still on active duty? That sends a message of ambition—you were clearly building big. How did that come to be?
Alan Guarino
A few things: ambition, survival, and influence from my wife and my family.
Alan Fleischmann
You were already married?
Alan Guarino
I got married at 22. My wife was actually on the faculty at West Point. She was the first nutritionist for the Corps of Cadets. She is five years older and had graduated from Columbia with her master’s. She had a strong bias toward education. Both my sisters had graduate and postgraduate degrees. In my upbringing, there was never a question that our parents expected us to get master’s degrees. They didn’t necessarily know what they were, but they knew that all the smart people around them who worked in the schools had them. If that’s what those people did, that’s what their kids would have to do to have an opportunity at the American Dream. So that was in my head.
The Army was quite smart. By the time you became a tenured officer in the United States Army, you almost definitely had a master’s degree, most often by going full‑time as part of your duty after commanding a company. It was part of the 10‑year journey: two years at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Duke—you name it.
In my case, they also offered programs that were the equivalent of night programs. You’d finish work and then go get your degree. USC had a program in systems engineering, and Embry‑Riddle had an MBA. My bias was toward an MBA. Embry‑Riddle was a bonus because I knew that if we left the Army, we would end up back in the Hudson Valley, where my wife grew up. That was the deal we cut—if we ever got out of the Army, we’d settle near her parents, which wasn’t that far from mine.
Being practical, there is a regional airport in Newburgh, New York. I said, “I’m going to need a job in Newburgh.” It’s not exactly Wall Street; it’s a modest labor environment for professional jobs. You were either a banker, worked for IBM, or worked at Stewart Airport. Embry‑Riddle is the premier aviation school in the country. At one time, Embry‑Riddle graduates were the equivalent of the CEOs or general managers of almost every major airport in the country. It’s kind of the West Point for aviation.
So I chose Embry‑Riddle because I wanted the MBA, and I knew it would be marketable for a job at Stewart Airport if we settled there and, at the ripe old age of 27, I had to figure out what I was going to do when I wasn’t an Army officer in the combat arms.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s so cool. How did you do that and still serve on active duty?
Alan Guarino
It was designed for officers on the post. In those days in the Army, we had a saying: “We do more before nine in the morning than most people do all day.” Sleep was optional.
I would finish whatever we were doing in our unit. We were a combat‑arms company—tanks, real soldiers with real combat missions and training requirements. We would typically wrap up around 6 p.m. It was the Cold War—Ronald Reagan’s Army. We’d finish work at six, grab something quick to eat, and my wife was 20 minutes away, living off‑post. I would go three nights a week to my graduate program, get home at 10:30 at night, get up at 4:30 the next morning, run physical training with my unit, and rinse and repeat. That’s what you did Monday through Friday. Every other Saturday or Sunday, you were on some kind of maneuver duty. School again Monday through Friday. It was two years.
You didn’t think twice; it was just part of the schedule. Your workday ended at 10:30 p.m., you drove home 20 minutes, got some sleep, and got up the next morning and kept going.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. That’s where you learn a different kind of discipline—how to juggle, and juggle seamlessly.
Alan Guarino
West Point was great at that, and it started early in the curriculum. When I was there, we took 22 credit hours a semester. The average Harvard student in those days took 16. We went to school six days a week, with classes on Saturday. After that we had what we called “mandatory fun”—intramurals like boxing, football, soccer, or varsity practices for the athletes. Then we all came together for dinner, and then it was study time. There was no hanging out at the student union Monday through Friday.
They had this motto called “scraps of time.” They taught us that if you wait to have an hour to do whatever you need done, you may never get it done, because you may never have an hour. So when you had eight minutes, you filled it with something you needed to get done. Eventually, enough of those eight‑minute segments and you got things done. You build a muscle memory of using scraps of time.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. You’ve been a great influencer, leader, and advisor on culture and organizational performance. Are there things from those experiences—developing discipline, dealing with diversity, being introduced to people from different backgrounds through the MBA and West Point—that have been at the core of the Guarino blueprint?
Alan Guarino
I was blessed. I was at West Point when women were already there. I never spent a day there without an integrated class. The Class of ’80 was the first with women. For many years it had been all men, so the senior class when I was a freshman was all men. Having women in my class was a blessing. It was as diverse as you could expect at the time, though the numbers should have been 50/50, and it took many years to increase the percentage of women in the Corps. Beyond gender, it was fabulously diverse in terms of racial and ethnic diversity.
I learned about prejudice being the son of an Italian immigrant. My dad told me he made $7,500 a year in 1965 as a laborer because he was Italian and wasn’t allowed in the carpenters’ union; Italians weren’t allowed. He grew up in a neighborhood where he was an Italian immigrant, and there were waves of immigrants who came before, and they discriminated against the Italians. My father had a couple of scars—one was from a rock thrown at him when he was nine walking through the wrong neighborhood. He would talk to me about prejudice as not a good thing, and not something our family was allowed to consider.
When prejudice impacts your ability to put food on the table, you don’t forget it. The military was hugely integrated. It took longer than it should have, but it was still ahead of society. It was pretty color‑blind when I was there.
Alan Fleischmann
When I think of you, I think of someone with extra‑sensory empathy and understanding. You’ve had military discipline, the financial and operational side, and what you’ve been doing at Korn Ferry around talent placement and strategic advisory.
Those experiences—West Point, Embry‑Riddle, seeing discrimination and inequity, then trying to build “uncommon tables”—must have been profound. Knowing your story and reading your books, it seems obvious now that you would be who you are, but it wasn’t obvious then.
Alan Guarino
You’re formed through your experiences. We all have DNA we don’t control, and then the environment is the rest of the equation. West Point taught me to be responsible and blame myself first. I can remember being a kid and being inclined to make excuses for why things went poorly that weren’t because I did anything wrong. That was probably natural.
At West Point, a switch flipped where the first thing you did was say, “How did I screw this up?” Maybe that was out of survival, because you had to figure it out; you didn’t want to do it again. If you rationalized it away, you were bound to repeat it. The first step in being able to accomplish things and create a system for successful execution is personal accountability. After that, you can figure out all the others who were part of the problem, and that’s worthwhile too. But if you start with all the others, you don’t really get to the common denominator—which is you.
I study Kevin Cashman’s work—our partner here, who’s brilliant—and his book Leadership from the Inside Out. I tell people I’ve probably read it 10 times over 15 years. I go through it with a yellow pen and feel like I could underline every line; everything he says resonates. He knows it as a brilliant PhD organizational psychologist. I know it through experience and self‑assessment.
If you’re going to lead people, you have to be authentic. To be authentic, you have to go through a painful self‑awareness process. Self‑awareness is no fun because it shows you all the things you need to work on. Who wants that? One way or another, we all get the opportunity to know where we need to get better. Sadly, too many people rationalize those things away instead of owning them and working on them.
Let’s just assume that most of my shortcomings have been shown to me through life experiences that created self‑awareness. I’ve been able to fix a portion of them—maybe 50%. The ones I didn’t fix were not because I rationalized them away; it’s that I hit my limit. I’m just not that good at some things. But at least I knew what I could work on to get better.
Alan Fleischmann
The work continues; it doesn’t stop. I also suspect you wouldn’t accept the idea that you don’t have more work to do, even if everyone told you that you’d crossed the finish line.
You went from being a captain, with your own armored troop, to getting your MBA. Then you went to work in banking in the processing/securities area at Bank of New York. Not long after that, what made you think you wanted to be the founder of a firm? Cornell International was your firm, the beginning of your journey in executive search and strategic consulting around talent. I know you sold the company later, but how did that come to be? It became a lifelong calling that combined all those experiences.
Alan Guarino
Back in high school, we all took the Myers‑Briggs. I don’t remember much, but I remember it told me I could be four things: a forest ranger, a military officer, a chiropractor, or a personnel manager. In those days, the term was “personnel”—we didn’t have “human resources” yet. It’s ironic that I ended up in the human‑resources area, because it lined up with what it told me at 16 I’d probably be good at.
I ended up in the human‑resources world by accident. I had a penchant for personal investment going back to West Point. There was a personal‑finance course we could take, and I got enamored with Wall Street and investing. Some people collect stamps; some people love cooking. My hobby was personal finance. I learned to read the Wall Street Journal when I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. It intrigued me. I also found that Wall Street was a prestigious place for a career, and New York City was exciting. My grandmother stayed there many years after my parents moved out, and I was always drawn to the city.
My idea was that if I left the Army, I would go to Wall Street. I didn’t know what that meant, but that was my plan. The Bank of New York had a program hiring people into what they called “the back office” to infuse a different level of academic and leadership experience into what had been the blue‑collar part of Wall Street. I was hired by a guy named Tom Perna, who’s actually in the book. I learned quickly that I loved Wall Street—but I had left the Army to raise my kids in one place near their grandparents, with community and family. You couldn’t work on Wall Street and be two hours and twenty minutes away each direction on a commute.
Very quickly I knew I couldn’t stay there. I remember going in to Tom and saying, “This is a great opportunity, but you’re not going to move Wall Street 40 miles up the river, and I can’t do this.” I had gone home one night around 7 p.m., and my three‑year‑old daughter was really excited. I asked my wife why, and she said, “You’re home.” I thought, “Oh no, this isn’t going to work.”
So I told Tom I’d have to find a new career. I walked into a recruiting firm. They were gracious; they kept me there for quite a while while I figured out my next career outside of New York City. I walked into a recruiting firm, and they arranged an interview with a local bank. I got a compelling offer. The owner of the recruiting firm, a very successful woman named Donna Cornell, wanted to meet me when she saw the offer. She said, “That bank doesn’t make those kinds of offers to 27‑year‑old guys. I needed to know what you bring to the party.” It was a very lucrative offer.
She said, “I’d rather have you work here and help me grow this company.” I asked, “What do you do?” I didn’t know what a headhunter was, let alone a temporary‑staffing agency. I went home and said to my wife, “I can always be a banker. Let me take a shot.” Donna paid me the same deal the bank was going to pay—salary and company car—so it was a no‑brainer.
I told her that if I was going to be in management, I needed to know what the recruiters do. “Put me on a desk and teach me how to recruit. I’ll do it for six months, then I’ll take my managerial role.” So I started on a desk recruiting bankers—branch managers, mortgage people, and so on. It was base salary plus commission. I got pretty good at it pretty fast, and I was doubling my income because of the commission.
While I left Wall Street, I always wanted to be tied to financial services. I said, “They’ll be my clients instead of my employer.” I spent five years with Donna. It was a tough economic time. I helped her and her partner grow the company, then scale it back, and ultimately helped her sell it. That’s when I decided to start my own company, after five years of learning the industry and going through the trials and tribulations of working in a growth company.
Donna was my first investor. She funded the startup. I always thought “Cornell Group” would sound a lot better on Wall Street than “Guarino Group,” so we called it Cornell Group. Eventually, when we began working through a network outside the United States, we rebranded as Cornell International. About three years after we started, my wife and I bought Donna’s share out. She was always a supporter, but she was 15–17 years older and had a different agenda. She was happy to take her share and let us go on and grow the company through 2003, when we sold it.
That’s how I ended up from Wall Street into recruiting. There was a five‑year window before Cornell when I was working in Donna’s company, learning the business. When I started Cornell, I went back to Bank of New York and said, “Look, I’m not an amateur. I’ve been doing this for five years. I don’t need charity, but I need a startup client. What do you need done?” Tom Perna and another executive, Joe Vali—who’s in my first book—said, “We need jobs filled in relationship management in master trust and custody.” I said, “Great, retain my firm.” They said, “Sure, give us a discount.” That’s how it got started. They gave me my first retainers, we delivered, and we were able to grow the business from there.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. You’ve seen, through those experiences and now at Korn Ferry, many transitions in leadership and different ways one can lead. You’ve become one of the world’s leading experts on succession and having successful CEO successions.
When you think about your life so far—spent on identifying, building, and positioning leaders—what differentiates someone who can run an organization operationally from someone who truly leads?
Alan Guarino
People who lead organizations have a special ability to inspire. Without inspiration, there is no leadership. It’s very simple: you either work for a boss who gets you excited about the work, or you work for a boss who gets you to do the work. I like option one.
The option‑two leader can operate a company; things will get done. However, they’ll never get 100% of me. I, like anyone, can give 70% and stay employed. The other 30% is what I call discretionary energy. If I’m not giving it to my job, I have it to do other things. If I work for a great leader who inspires me, I don’t want to hold back that other 30%, because I’m having fun and getting a lot of intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction. That leader inspires me. It becomes a virtuous circle.
Alan Fleischmann
You talk a lot about leadership as both art and discipline. It sounds like inspiration—and knowing that your role is to inspire—is a skill.
Alan Guarino
Inspiration is an effect. Great leadership is the cause. The things you do as a leader are what inspire people to follow you.
What are some of those things? Today, clearly, providing people a safe environment—safe meaning they don’t think their jobs are on the line with the smallest mistake or failure. Having a place where I can work, exercise my innovation, and know that if we miss, I’ll be okay. I can’t miss every quarter for 10 quarters, but the behaviors—the causes—that lead to people being inspired are key.
Knowing that a leader really cares is one. People can fake caring; they’ll say, “How was your weekend?” and before you finish, they’re on to something else. Or they really care and listen. In the book, I say it’s a leader’s responsibility to help the people who work in their organization achieve their personal greatness. If they achieve their greatness, the leader will achieve the organizational outcomes.
If you bring leadership down to the simplest form, it’s not about the leader; it’s about the people. The leader needs to focus on the people and how to get them to give 100%, not 70%. Not because the leader demands it—because you’ll never get it that way—but because they want to. They get their own reward from giving more.
People who work for entrepreneurial, growth companies will often use the word “journey” in the first five minutes when they describe their company or job. People who started out with Steve Jobs at Apple would talk about the journey to change the world. People work harder, typically for a little less money, for entrepreneurial companies than for large corporations. Why less pay and harder work? Because there’s another reward besides pay that can be worth more, and that’s being inspired.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. Your focus is not on the leader, but on what the leader does and how the leader is seen by the people they’re leading.
What is the hardest truth about leadership—the thing that people don’t talk about enough?
Alan Guarino
The hardest truth is that while you need people to be inspired by you and to know that you care, that doesn’t mean they’re your friend. In some cases, them being your friend makes it hard for both of you. It doesn’t need to be part of the calculus.
Younger leaders blur that line and get into trouble trying to be cool and nice, hoping people will feel good about them and say good things about them because they’re “good” and “nice.” People don’t need “good” or “nice.” People need “safe.” They need to be inspired. Sometimes people are inspired when you’re tough, because they want to be in an environment where the bar is set high, as long as they’re rewarded and empowered.
There’s nothing worse than having an impossible goal and not being empowered. That’s a recipe for demoralization. The higher the bar, the harder the job of the leader to empower and resource people to achieve it. You can’t ask people to do something if you don’t give them the resources. They’ve got to do the work, but they have to be empowered.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. What’s the bit of advice that you find yourself sharing even on a first meeting? Every situation is different, but I bet there’s one element you’re looking for and one element you leave behind every time you meet a new CEO or someone in a succession moment. What is that consistent message?
Alan Guarino
This exposes a trade secret, but that’s what it’s all about now.
Napoleon used to put officers and leaders in positions where he could give them a medal. He wanted them to be comfortable enough with him that, when he had to get tough in difficult situations, they would tolerate it because they’d had more positive experiences with him than negative. For every two times he kicked them in the butt, he probably genuinely patted them on the back a half‑dozen times. Net‑net, he was in a good place with them to deliver hard messages.
When I’m working with leaders, especially when I’m just starting to develop my place with them, I look for something they’re clearly getting wrong. They all have something that is a tragic flaw. As fast as I can, I find a way to say, “By the way, if you keep doing this, you’re going to fail.” Then a pregnant pause: “You’re going to fail.”
A couple of things happen. One, they’re not used to people telling them that. They’re used to people telling them they’re at the top of their game and never going to fail. Two, they’re human beings. Korn Ferry did research on this: something like 60–70% of CEOs suffer from imposter syndrome. I lived with imposter syndrome for two‑thirds of my life. I probably have moments every day even now. In their heart of hearts, they’re scared of failing or making mistakes.
It’s almost cathartic when someone who doesn’t impact their bonus and isn’t part of their board looks at them and says, “I know some stuff, and if you keep doing this, you’ll fail. How many people are willing to tell you that?” Suddenly, there’s real comfort. They feel there’s someone they can talk to.
It’s a fascinating human interaction. It very quickly gets us into a position to be authentic with each other. Authenticity and vulnerability are key.
The other thing I tell leaders today—probably for the last half‑decade—is: you have to slow down to go fast. All of us, and especially CEOs and top leaders, are challenged with delivering results at the speed of sound. The natural inclination is to be decisive and quick. Sometimes decisive and quick doesn’t progress us in the right way. We have to take five steps back, shift, and then step forward again.
If you can slow down enough not to make the wrong move, you never have to take those five steps back. In essence, slowing down allows you to go faster net‑net. Those are a couple of things I like to do that help me help them.
Alan Fleischmann
You purposely chose the title The Greatness Code, not The Leadership Code. I’m curious about that. Tell us a little bit about the book and why Greatness Code and not Leadership Code.
Alan Guarino
Talking with my colleagues at Korn Ferry, a lot of Korn Ferry intellectual property is in that book, because Korn Ferry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring some of the best intellectual property in the world. Much of what’s in that book is what Korn Ferry has perfected.
The reason it’s not The Leadership Code is that this book isn’t about leadership in the narrow sense. It’s about how people achieve their personal greatness. That said, the book is all about leadership.
I wrote my first book in 2007, Smart Is Not Enough. I thought I’d write another book every couple of years. Seventeen years later, I finally had another book. Everything in between didn’t need 60,000 words. I wrote a lot of things—pieces on CEOs, CHROs, the CEO’s HR imperative—but none more than three or four thousand words. I could get them done in that space.
I wrote The Greatness Code because I came to the conclusion that we have a crisis in leadership in this country. A crisis in leadership is not just sad; it’s criminal and horrific. The people being led are somebody’s mom, dad, son, daughter, niece, nephew, cousin, aunt, uncle. When people’s lives at work are disrupted, their whole lives are disrupted, and so are the lives of those around them.
Because of pace, complexity, and globalization, the environment at work is so hard today. Work today is a Super Bowl‑level playing field. Three decades ago—even a decade ago—it was Division II. It didn’t take much to look good, and many people could look great. It takes a lot to look great in professional sports, and that’s what business is today.
We have too many leaders, and Korn Ferry trains hundreds of leaders around the world every year, but it’s still a drop in the bucket. We’re not going to be able to fix every leader. I wanted to empower people to live through environments where they’re working for a bad leader.
That led to the Greatness Code formula: SCRiP. SCRiP is the five key qualities. If you’re working in a tough environment, these are great. If you’re in a not‑tough environment, it’s even better—they’re rocket fuel: Stamina, Courage, Resilience, Persistence, and Passion. You have to work on those five qualities in early, mid, and peak career, because they’re tools that allow you to achieve your personal greatness.
If you get those five right and really build those muscles, you’ll get 70% of the way to whatever you’re trying to achieve. The other 30% or so comes from social capital—the network of people around you who empower you, mentor you, kick you in the butt when you’re out of line, set you straight, and are a resource and sounding board. If you have the five qualities and social capital, you’ll achieve 100% of what you’re trying to achieve.
So the Greatness Code formula is: 5Q + SC = Greatness—the five qualities plus social capital equal greatness.
This book is about personal achievement and what people need to do throughout their careers to achieve their career‑greatness objectives. You can extrapolate this to being a great community member or a great family member; it still requires the same components, just applied differently.
I also dedicated the book to great leaders out there, because thank God for them. They empower people who work for them to achieve greatness, and when those people go home as moms, dads, uncles, cousins, they make the lives of those around them better, because they’re in a good place. Leadership is an awesome responsibility.
Alan Fleischmann
So being great as a leader—finding your greatness inside—you don’t have to be the CEO. Your book is about curating greatness in yourself.
One last thing before we close. In the age of artificial intelligence and all the transformation and disruption that’s occurring, does that speak to The Greatness Code even more? Does it challenge it? Or is your framework speaking to all forms of transformation and disruption?
Alan Guarino
The guy you really want to listen to on this is Dan Goleman—the brilliant guy who brought us emotional intelligence and EQ. I’m lucky to have the ability to interact with Dan. He and I had lunch a couple of weeks ago. Everything he says is a PhD experience; you can’t get enough.
He’s talking a lot about this. He asked if he could quote me on something. I said, “You’re Dan Goleman, you can quote me on anything.” He said, “You said that in the age of AI, EI is more important than ever.” I said, “I did—because it is.”
Emotional intelligence has many components, including giving us the agility to endure radical change. AI is going to be disruptive to our lives, positively and negatively. With disruption comes discomfort, and with discomfort we need as much emotional intelligence as we can muster to get through it.
The more machines dominate workflow, the more people‑relationships will matter. If you take it to the extreme and say that machines—agents, bots, you name it—are going to do a lot of work now done by people, then the skills in greatest demand will be those machines can’t bring. Clearly, relationship management and people interaction will be highly sought after. If you hone your EQ, you’re honing a skill set that will be in demand for decades and less threatened by machinery.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. What was the name of your colleague’s book you referenced? I want to mention that as well.
Alan Guarino
That’s Kevin Cashman’s Leadership from the Inside Out, probably in its 11th edition.
Alan Fleischmann
We’ll make sure people hear that. Your book is amazing; it’s not your first book, but it sounds like much of what you talk about in this book is built on your last book as well. If people had to pick one, it would be the current one, right? This is the one that really talks about the durability of greatness and the opportunity that comes from it, with EQ being a big part.
Alan Guarino
EQ is very dominant in both books. We want you to go to www.greatnesscode.com and buy this book first, and then go back and read Smart Is Not Enough. You’ll have the completed circle.
Alan Fleischmann
I love it. This has been so powerfully helpful. We need more time together, so this is not the last time you’ll be on the show. It would be great to distill more of your experiences and thinking. As we get into this next disruptive phase through artificial intelligence, your steady hand and your wisdom with humility would be irresistible for this audience. I want to encourage you to come back on.
For those who’ve been listening, you’ve been with Leadership Matters on SiriusXM and LeadershipMattersShow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann. The last hour with Alan Guarino has been very powerful. He’s the Vice Chairman of Korn Ferry and the author of The Greatness Code. I would urge you to buy it and visit his website, as he suggested, and you’ll see it there.
We discussed his early influences, his entrepreneurial ventures, his time as a leader at Korn Ferry advising CEOs and CEO transitions. This new book is more than just about leadership; it’s about finding your own greatness and your own voice. He gives great principles and a roadmap to figure out how your EQ can match your IQ—and maybe more importantly, lead your IQ in this very important time.
Thank you very much, Alan. This has been a real pleasure.
Alan Guarino
Thank you, Alan. Thanks for the work you do. I love what you’re doing. I really hope we can spend some time together, you and me.
Alan Fleischmann
We’re going to do it. I’d like to have you back on to talk about the book again and go deeper, because an hour wasn’t enough.
Alan Guarino
I’d love to do it.