The emPOWERed Half Hour

Overcoming Leadership Shock and Reconnecting with Purpose with Pete Steinberg

• Becca Powers / Pete Steinberg • Season 1 • Episode 67

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What if unlocking your full leadership potential is all about getting clear on your purpose and aligning it with your top priorities? When those two things come together, the possibilities are limitless!

In this empowering episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca welcomes Pete Steinberg, an expert in authentic leadership. They dive deep into the importance of purpose in leadership and how understanding time as a resource can transform your effectiveness.

Pete shares his unique Authentic Leadership Model, outlining how leaders can align their priorities with their true purpose, leading to greater energy and fulfillment in their roles. 

With insights drawn from years of coaching, Pete emphasizes the significance of reflection and creating space for authentic leadership in our hybrid work environments.


Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:

  • Unlocking Leadership Shock - Pete Steinberg discusses the concept of Leadership Shock and how it can impact even the most successful leaders when their old strategies stop working.
  • Purpose vs. Vision - Discover the distinction Pete makes between purpose and vision, and why connecting to your true purpose is essential for sustainable leadership.
  • Reinventing Yourself as a Leader - Becca and Pete share personal stories of career reinvention, highlighting the power of self-awareness in transforming your leadership approach.


About Pete

Pete Steinberg is a leadership and innovation expert with extensive experience consulting with top Fortune 500 professionals. He also has more than 20 years of experience as an elite rugby coach, coaching the USA Women’s Rugby Team at two World Cups and the Rio Olympics.

Connect with Pete Steinberg


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Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies

Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of the empowered half hour and in this interview pre talk before we hit live. I was just so excited to talk to today's guest and I can't wait to bring him forward for you guys to meet and to hear his name. It is Pete Steinberg, and Pete is a leadership and innovation expert, and he's a former Olympic rugby coach, which I think is just pretty cool.

And there's probably a lot of lessons in there, too. also, one of the things that we'll be talking about on today's episode is his new book, Leadership Shock. Which I cannot wait to get into, uh, Pete, welcome to the show. 

Pete Steinberg: Thanks, Becca. I'm excited to be here. 

Becca Powers: I know, I'm excited too. So, can you share the subtitle of your book, just so the audience can hear it?

Because when I read it, I was like, this is going to be a good conversation. 

Pete Steinberg: So instead of sharing the subtitle, what I'd like to do is to share the essence, because I think the title is important, but I want to share. The thing that's really important for me about the work that I do with leaders as an executive 

Becca Powers: coach.

I would love that. 

Pete Steinberg: Okay. so I think one of the things that is, really hard for leaders to be, is to be authentic. because I think partly because, we feel like we need to be someone else a lot of the time. And so what happens is that when you're successful, In your career, what you tend to do is you tend to adapt behaviors and patterns that may not be true to you.

They may not be authentic. And so leadership shock is a state that you get into when you've been very successful. But what's happened in your career. the tools and your leadership approach of the past no longer works for you. And the only way to get out of it is to truly understand yourself and what's important to you and bring that forward with authenticity.

And I think that's where the authenticity piece helps you get through some of the pitfalls that you might have in your career. And by the way. Normal. This is like not an unusual thing. Getting stuck in your career because you've been successful in the past is a very normal action that most people go through.

 so that's how authenticity helps you navigate your way through career success. 

Becca Powers: So one of the things that I really like about this concept of leadership shock. Two is like, you I'm at the point of my corporate career where I'm on the 20 plus side. And I have had to reinvent myself a couple of times because I have fallen into kind of like a leadership shop.

Like I've had a certain level of skills that I've built up. They've worked, they're no longer working or is no longer working for me. I still might be driving a high performance team. But inside, I'm like, I'm unfulfilled. I'm not satisfied. Um, so I think that there's a level of, that within your, your storyline too, right?

Where Oh, I think completely. Yeah, hitting an unfulfillment, unsatisfied level as well. 

Pete Steinberg: Yeah, I would argue that, we talk a lot about wellness and we talk a lot about, sustainability. I talk a lot about, sustainability with my clients and, the way that you're sustainable is not I think there's often amount of time challenge, like people are spending too much time or that they don't know how to manage their time effectively.

And that's causing, you know, people to feel like they're overwhelmed, but actually, I think sustainability is about being true to yourself. can work 60 hours a week. If I truly believe what I'm doing is important, 

Becca Powers: like that, I'll give you a high five 

Pete Steinberg: Because isn't the time.

It's the time spent on things that aren't actually important to you. That's draining. when I coached at the Olympics, it was crazy. And it was stressful, but at no point did I feel like it wasn't sustainable because I was doing something that was important to me. And I was doing it in a way that was important to me, at least for most of my career.

I can share a story a little bit later about where I wasn't doing things that were important to me, and it wasn't sustainable. people go through their careers they find themselves and love the fact how you said you had to reinvent yourself couple of times.

That's really what leadership shock is. In leadership shock. There's a model called the authentic leadership model, and it's a way of reinventing yourself as a leader. Becky, you were able to do it because you're self aware, and you probably realize something's not working. But for many people, it's very, very difficult to do that because success creates beliefs.

And those beliefs are what drive your behaviors. And so the authentic leadership model really goes into your beliefs and what's important to you and helps you pull out a new way of leading. 

Becca Powers: want to come back to that, model. but I want to start with a different question first, but I do want to table that and explore that because you were saying all the right words and all these things that I'm super passionate about.

I'm like, Oh, I already just want to go there, but, I do like to start for the listeners, With the back story. So let's start there. where was leadership shock born? Why was it born? 

Pete Steinberg: this is like one of these things where when I tell the story I will be authentic back on this podcast.

So, for about 20 years, I coached elite rugby. And I had a leadership consultancy where I did executive coaching, right? So for about 20 years, I did both. And mostly the leadership consulting work was to support my rugby habit, because if you're going to go to the Olympics, you're like, I've got to take four months off.

What job gives you four months off, or I want to go spend three weeks and I want to go to New Zealand and like,you just can't do that with a real job. So I created this role that allowed me to do my rugby stuff. But in my executive coaching, I found myself meeting leaders in the same situation.

and what I'll say is it took me a few years too long to make the connection that this was happening. Their calendars were crazy, They had no time. They had no control over their calendar. Their teams were confused. They were exhausted and they felt like they just were not.

being successful and they weren't fulfilled. And I kept seeing these, symptoms and I would work through it as the coach and I'd help them think differently and move forward. And then what I realized is that all of these people were going through some change in their context.

In most cases, it was a new job that was very significantly different in scope than their previous job, director of finance, Becoming VP of finance, right? marketing VP becoming chief marketing officer. often it was that it could also be that there was a change in the organization, a new boss, a restructure, but something around them had changed.

And I started to see this pattern like, hold on, I'm now doing basically the same thing with these leaders. Every time there's something here I'm seeing a pattern here. So what I did I ended up, seeing this pattern, and creating and evolving this model called the authentic leadership model, which helps leaders through that transition.

 so that's really where leadership shock became a thing, it's called leadership shock because it's just like when your body goes into shock, you breathe, your heart pumps, actually alive, but you have no control. That you can't do anything. by the way, this happens when I say leaders, right?

This happens. Yes. When someone transitions to the C suite. But if you take your best sales person and make them the manager of sales, the same thing happens, Because what made the best salesperson is not the thing that makes them a great sales manager, And so it can happen in your very first role.

The only thing that's different about your very first role is you kind of know that's going to be different. When you go from the VP of marketing to CMO, You think it's probably the same and that's the track. 

Becca Powers: I got this. 

Pete Steinberg: You got this like, Hey, I've been successful for 20 years, but it can happen in that very first management role that you get.

Becca Powers: I really like that because,it just does pull you out. I love that. You referred to it a shock because it is you're coming out of something you're familiar with. You're starting something. New. And then typically, whether you're that high performing salesperson and you're going into your first leadership role, or if you're a leader and you're going into a new role, you're not really expecting to be in shock, 

Pete Steinberg: right?

Well, because you've been really successful. That's why. it's like career success leads to leadership shock, If you aren't successful, you don't go into leadership shock because for the last 15 years of my career, I have been very successful.

I mean, I have a story of, a client who was like 30 under 30, 40 under 40 kind of like people, just super successful and his company gets bought. And one of the reasons why his company gets bought is because he is actually so important to that, that they'd have to bring him.

He comes to a new company. So a new culture. the way I put it is like this guy has lived and been very successful by being idea driven. if you have the best idea, you win. Super smart guy, articulate, has the best idea, wins, moves, gets bought, moves to a company that is people driven.

It's not idea driven. one year in he, Ends up almost getting fired by the CEO 

Becca Powers: because 

Pete Steinberg: culturally, he's idea driven, but this is a people driven culture. And so he pulled himself out. And I'll tell you if I can do a plug, Becca, there's a podcast that I just launched called Leadership Shock This is a client that talks about this story on the podcast.

So you can actually hear this story for real. 

Becca Powers: Yeah. 

Pete Steinberg: So, it was a great example for me about someone who had been not just successful, but hyper successful. Those people are actually the ones most likely to fall into leadership shop. The more successful you are, the higher. a flyer you are, the harder it is for you to really reflect and understand yourself because you are just getting off to the next thing and you're just being successful and you're killing it.

 next thing at no point have you stopped and said, why am I successful? What is it about me that's making me successful? No, you're just being successful. and so leadership drop fundamentally is finding that time. The authentic leadership model is stop. What are you good at? Where are you now?

What's important to you? How should you lead? 

Becca Powers: That's really cool because what I was going to say before that, and I want to come back to that model one more time too, cause I want to put myself in the listener's shoes and let's just say that they're going into a transformational role and they might be coming into leadership. 

 I'm going to share where I start with most clients. The challenge is time. So the way I like to talk with my clients about time is time is a non renewable resource.

Pete Steinberg: I like that. Therefore, it's precious, and therefore you have to treat it like it's precious. We don't do this. we don't treat our time as precious at all. And I'll give you the great example. Like,Becca, if I was going to call you up as a vendor and I said, Becca, I want to sell you something. Do you have time next week to me?

And you look at your calendar and you're like, no, next week is crazy. And I'll be like, Oh, Becca, do you have time in August? And you'll be like, yeah, I have time in August. Let's put it on August 15th. Now, on August 7th. When you look at the week of August 15th, what's your calendar going to be like? 

Becca Powers: Crazy.

Pete Steinberg: Crazy! So, but you just put something that's not important enough to put in next week's calendar. You think you discount the time. You think the time two months from now is worth less, but it's not. It's as valuable. So, time is the biggest thing. So, to really be intentional about how you use your time. 

 So in 2011, I was appointed the US Women's Rugby Head Coach. And my very first game was against England. It was up in Canada, in a place called Appleby College in Canada. The U. S. Women had finished six at the World Cup the previous year.

The England had finished second. They'd beaten us by 40 points. If you don't know about rugby, rugby scoring is like football scoring. So 40 points is a blower. Okay, we get together. We gather on Monday. We play England on Saturday. We have six hours of practice. Never worked with this team before I had a new coaching staff.

 in that moment, you have to realize that every minute that you have. On the practice field and every minute that you have with the team in the meeting field is so precious because our challenge is so great. Like for us to be able to play the 2nd best team in the world where we have 6 hours of practice only in the week because you can't practice too much.

You have to be fresh and we probably had about 6 hours of meeting time. Over those five days again. You have to keep them fresh. like you have to truly treat time is precious. And so we did that. We laid out exactly every minute and how we were going to use every minute and we would take two minutes here and put it over here.

We take three minutes here. Put it over here. It was so precious. And we ended up having this week that was so organized and so intentional. We play England. And the story is rugby is 80 minutes long at 80 minutes. We're beating England 11 9. So it's a very close game. It's low scoring, but very close. Right?

 game doesn't end at 80 minutes. The game ends at a stoppage. And so the game keeps going and it's 82 minutes, like, at any moment, if there's any stoppage in play, we win the game. We beat the second best team in the world. Like, it's amazing. 84 minutes. 85 minutes in the 86 minute England score, and they beat us 14 

Becca Powers: 11.

Pete Steinberg: It was heartbreaking. I but it was an amazing performance by staff that work. There was an amazing performance by the players to be able to get and be in a play in England side that close that well, and that's where I learned about the value of time. is in those moments when you absolutely have no choice but to look at every minute and say, are we using it effectively?

You 

Becca Powers: know, really love that example. And I'll give you an example back because I think it's just really, important for the listeners to value time as precious. Now, I think that I've had that belief, but I've never Worked with anybody or been on a podcast with anybody who's actually said time is precious and like that concise of a statement and I couldn't agree more.

And, at one point in my career, I experienced extreme burnout and worked myself into a nervous breakdown or an exhaustion breakdown. I look, I fell Because I was resilient as hell. I actually stayed in that state, kind of what you're saying for a long time. if I was paying attention to my own body signs, my red flags, things like that, I would have altered my situation 18 months before I hit that bathroom floor.

Time became my most precious thing because by the time I hit the bathroom floor, I ended up having autoimmune disease. I was extremely sick. And time was so precious to me because I only had a few hours a day where I had energy and I just realized like how valuable time was.

And I'm just so happy to be having this conversation because it's 1 of those things that if you don't think about, it's just it's like breathing. It's just. 

Pete Steinberg: It's just there, especially the way that we work, What happens is that other people put meetings on our calendar. 

Becca Powers: Yes, 

Pete Steinberg: they fill it up, and also they fill it up with things that we don't even know what it is because it's like, client. Is the name of the meeting. You're like, what's going on? they just put it. And by the way, even if you have something on your calendar, they put it on there. And then you're like, how am I supposed to do this?

It it is so interesting. And, you know, back here. And I appreciate you sharing that story with me and the listeners. cause I think it's a really powerful one. so I was working with someone who I, it was very close to burnout. and what I told her, she was a C suite executive at a pretty big company.

What I told her is you should take Fridays off. And she said, I can't take Fridays off. I'm too busy. I said, let's try it. Let's take Fridays off. I said, actually, our work is very fungible. we are not working at 100 percent all day. We work at different percentages.

But this woman, she only knew how to work so I said, let's take Fridays off. And she said, I can't do it. I said, do me a favor. I want you to block out Friday afternoon for the next four weeks. Tell your EA nothing on Friday afternoon, and I want you to go and have time on your own. And then after four weeks as an experiment, and I want you to track how you're doing relative to your objectives and things like that.

So after four weeks, guess what? She was able to do all the work. I said, okay, now, all of Friday off. She goes, I can't, I'm too busy. I'm like, let's try it. Let's do four weeks. Hold a Friday off. Guess what she was able to do. She was able to do all of her work because actually we can do probably all of the work that we have to do in maybe a couple of days.

Now, that's not sustainable because there's other things that you have to do in your life and there's connections and there's other things, but we can squeeze our calendar If we want to, and give us more time, you need to draw bright lines. give an example, Becca. When my kids are awake and I'm at home, I travel a lot I don't work when my kids are awake. So when they get home from school. I put the work away. That's my deal. I travel enough. When I'm home, that's really important to me. Now, sometimes when they go to bed, I have to work a bit. But most of the time, that my daughter's coming home at 3. 30 timeline on my calendar makes me be more intense.

I know what I have to get done, and I get it done, and then at 3. 30 I have everything done. Where, guess what, if my day ended at 5, I would get exactly the same amount of time done. the same amount, I just gave myself an extra hour and a half to do. 

Becca Powers: I think this conversation ended up being just a really practical takeaway for the listeners too.

We're all managing time or mismanaging time or not thinking about time. 

Pete Steinberg: I think most people don't think likeI've had this conversation with CEOs. They've been working for like 30 years and they've been really successful and they have never really thought about time as a construct, companies say all the time we are only our people, we're only as good as our people.

I'm like, no. You're only as good as your people and where they spend their time. 

Becca Powers: Ooh, I like the, and 

Pete Steinberg: yeah, because my people could be great, but if they're doing the wrong stuff, that's not successful for an organization. 

Becca Powers: So let's go back to the authenticity model that you created again, because now I think that the listeners have a little bit more.

 context to the overall concept. We're talking about let's repeat the model and then give an example of, how the listeners might be able to apply it to their lives. 

Pete Steinberg: Sure. first of all, this is a great segue because part of the authentic leadership model is your priorities, which is where you spend your time, 

So you can actually have something. So am I spending my time where I should? So the authentic leadership model starts at purpose. Like, what's important to you? recently was working with, client actually last week. I was in Warsaw wandering around a beautiful park talking to my client because I like doing executive coaching sessions on a walk with my client because they don't leave the office.

I don't want to talk to you on a screen. You're on the screen the whole time. Let's get out. so anyway, I was walking around this beautiful park and we were talking and we were kicking off the authentic leadership model. the first part is purpose. And then there's role expectation and vision. So those are contextual.

So role expectation is in your job. What's expected of you, not your job description and your vision. What do you want to accomplish in the role? And so, my client, he had spent some time doing purpose, role, expectation, vision, and his purpose is like, Oh, I want to grow the business. I want to, empower my team.

I'm like, hold on. That's your vision. That's what you want to accomplish in the role. Your purpose is what's important to you. What gets you up? what gives you energy? And it was really interesting. I don't think he'd ever thought about it. Like there's something in all of us. That is important.

Fundamentally important, like doesn't change, when you make that explicit and you say, my purpose is this, it gives you energy because you can connect what you're doing to something that's important to you. If you don't make that connection, it's really hard to be sustainable. 

Becca Powers: I think that's a really important part that I just want to talk about a little bit more because.

when I look back at when I was a senior leader and I went into burnout, I had, my purpose was tied to the company's purpose. Right, and energy is associated with purpose. is what you're saying. and it goes back to what you said in the beginning of this conversation too like, whether you can work, 30 hours or 60 hours.

But your energy associated with that. If you're on purpose and passion, you can work 60 hours and still be energized. Right. but I learned when I had to heal myself from that situation that I needed my purpose. I needed my passion and now I have it. I still work full time, but I podcast and I write books and I taught I keynote and I do workshops.

And  I have a lot of hands happening, but I'm so lit up on the inside. That I, don't even feel like I'm working half the time and guess what? My performance at work 

Pete Steinberg: has 

Becca Powers: been my entire career. I mean, 

Pete Steinberg: it's funny. You were talking 

Becca Powers: to people. I 

Pete Steinberg: know we were talking about kids before the podcast 

 I'm an older dad. So when my son goes to college, I'm gonna be 68. So I'm like, I'm never gonna retire. I have no interest in retiring, maybe working a bit less having more choice, but I love what I do. what's so interesting is that I coached for 20 years at the elite level, and I loved coaching, but I didn't coach to win.

I coached to give the experience. To the athletes that was transformative to them. Rugby was just a tool to do that. And the reason why I don't miss coaching or miss it a bit, the reason why, it's not a big hole for me My purpose was fulfilled because it was about helping people become the best that they can be not in sport, but in life.

I do the same thing in my work. So I'm still fulfilled. purpose is really fundamental, So you have to get there. But if you take your purpose, And your role expectations. So what is expected? Not your job description, but he's supposed to be a challenger, a collaborator, those sorts of things and your vision.

You can actually identify your priorities. You can say, where should I be spending more of my time? thing on priorities. A 3rd of your time. It's not just like is company time. It's stuff that you have to do, right? a third of your time is, time that is for your boss or like, it's not linked to your priorities, but you have to do it anyway.

And about a third of your time, you actually have discretion. So it's really last third. Are you spending your time? Because now I can decide if I should be on a meeting or not, because I understand what my priorities are. I'd have to be in that meeting. That's not linked to my priorities, 

 also my priorities are linked to my team's priorities. What should my team do? And what should I do? So that's sort of like getting to priorities. Then you go back to purpose and you say, Hey, What are the strengths that I bring to this role? Not what are my strengths in the previous role?

This goes back to the sales manager, So I was a great at building relationships with clients. Guess what? As the sales manager, not important. 

 What are the strengths that I'm bringing to this role that I should leverage? And then what do I believe about leadership? Again, this is about being authentic.

There are some things that I believe about leadership. And so if I take my purpose. My strength and the things that I believe about leadership that I can identify how I want to lead. So you have your priorities, which is where do I want to lead? Which things are important to me? And then you have your leadership, what I call principles, which is how you want to lead.

they're all contextual, right? So get a different role. The role expect the purpose is static. Leadership beliefs are probably pretty static, too. But I get a different role. My role expectation changes my vision changes and the strengths I bring to bear change. And so people that go through the authentic leadership model, there's a client that is on the podcast on the leadership podcast again.

She was like, Oh, yeah, I just got a new role. I went back to my leadership model. I pulled it up and I'm like, yeah, it's a tool. Like I have a very bad business model, Becca, but I have a very bad business model. once I work with a client, the goal is for them to never need me again. So that's a problem for business, but it's great for them.

Becca Powers: So this is 

Pete Steinberg: all in, the book leadership shop. And one more thing about the book that I'm going to add is I wrote a book that I would read. I get a third of the way through leadership books and I stop. I'm like, I get it. Don't tell me more anecdotes about how it works.

So the book is a fable. It's a story about a CEO it's the story of the CEO coming out of Leadership Shock, how he got out of leadership shock and became successful. And it's linked to the different modules. So it's also a bit of a do it yourself. At the end of each chapter there's like, Hey, if you want to identify your purpose, here are the questions that you should ask.

Here's how you should go about doing it. So if you get the book, you can actually build your own authentic leadership model. 

Becca Powers: That's awesome. I do want to ask you one more question. But since we're talking about the book, I assume it's with all major retailers and major 

Pete Steinberg: retailers. Yeah. 

Becca Powers: Okay, cool. listeners will have a link in the show notes as we always do too.

So if you're wanting to click your way there, you can or you can go look for it on any of the major retailers. So we're coming up on the bottom of the half hour. I knew this conversation was going to go fast. What is an empowering message you can share with the audience based upon your work? 

Pete Steinberg: the first thing I would say is that, the only thing you need to have to be a great leader is the desire to be a great leader. 

Becca Powers: That's nice. 

Pete Steinberg: Okay. so everyone can lead in their own way. So the goal is you can be a great leader, an authentic leader. That's great. you just, have to have that desire.

 and then to go on that journey, you need to find time. To think about your leadership and to truly reflect on it. And I actually think, Becca, this is one of the challenges that we have in the hybrid or virtual world is that people at the start of the day used to get in a car and drive to work, and they would have, 40 minutes or 30 minutes or something like that to think.

And now what we actually do is we open our laptops at the start of our commute. We don't open up our laptops at the start of our day in 

Becca Powers: this for a long time, because I used to be the inner off, you know, yeah, driving type of thing. And now I work from home and my commute time is 30 seconds, 

there's no transition, but we lost that thinking time, thinking time about what am I going to do today? How am I doing as a leader? We've lost it. So you have to find a way to find it. One of the things that I work with clients is to create a virtual commute. Okay. So take your dog for a walk before you go for a work, I even had one client who went for a drive because he just felt like he could put music on and he would drive around for 15 minutes and then come back because that was how he could process it.

Pete Steinberg: So I think creating a virtual community and then I can share one tip that's really useful for me to create lines around commuting. Is don't shut your laptop. Turn your laptop off. If you turn your laptop off at the end of the day, it's actually a lot harder to go back to work because you're going to press it.

And then you're going to wait. And especially if you're in the corporate world, you've got all these updates that have to happen. But as your commute, if you turn your laptop off, you actually won't go back to work. If you just shut it and don't turn it off, you'll go back to work. 

Becca Powers: There's this whole episode.

Thank you so much, Pete, because I feel like throughout the whole 30 minutes, there were so many teaching points and just such valuable, content. I was excited to interview you beforehand, but it was just a joy to have you on the show and maybe have you back at some point because I feel like there's more.

Pete Steinberg: yeah, I would love to come back, Becca. And I appreciate learning from you to this conversation was great. 

Becca Powers: if you can real fast, do you mind sharing your social handles? So the people can stay in touch? Sure. Yeah, yeah, 

Pete Steinberg: you can find me on LinkedIn at Pete Steinberg and then Pete Steinberg dot com.

I have a newsletter be great for people to sign up. I share my stories, my, my insights. What I'm doing with clients. So If you want to find me on Twitter and follow a bit of rugby discussion, that you can also find me at Pete Steinberg on Twitter, but that's mostly rugby stuff.

Becca Powers: That sounds great. Thank you so much for being a guest. Appreciate you. 

Pete Steinberg: Thank you, Becca.