Deborah Coviello has spent her career walking into businesses with quality crises and operational pressure, and walking out with stronger leaders behind her. In this conversation with Mark Graban, she shares the favorite mistake that taught her one of her most lasting lessons.
Episode page with links and more
At a global leadership meeting, Deb presented her plan to turn around the worst-performing region in her company by leading differently rather than firefighting harder. Her peers loved it. Her boss told her she had spent too much time on her leadership style and not enough on tactics. She left the room deflated. Eighteen months later, her region had moved from fourth out of four to second – by focusing on her people’s confidence, capability, and capacity instead of working them harder.
The deeper mistake, she tells Mark, wasn’t the presentation itself. It was skipping the change management step of running her new thinking past her boss first – and later, staying in a role longer than she should have because the title felt like security. The conversation also covers her lift-light-lead framework, why “you shouldn’t have said that” is the wrong response to an employee speaking up, and the argument behind her new book: peace of mind is a leadership outcome worth more than the next quarter’s results.