Kate Johnson may have graduated from the Wharton School and is currently president and CEO of Lumen Technologies, but she learned one of the most important lessons of her business career when her husband coached her to become a better skier.
Johnson, a lifelong athlete, considers herself a “good” skier, but she “doesn’t pale in comparison” to her husband, an expert on the slopes. The gap between her talents limited the paths they could travel together. Then, on one of her ski trips to Deer Valley, Utah, Johnson learned that her husband could tell him a lot about how to become a better skier and asked him for help. train.
Her reaction was not what she expected. ” Of course not,” he told her.
Johnson told her husband she was looking for him to exercise for two reasons, and one of them had nothing to do with skiing.
“It’s vital for me,” he tells her. First of all, I need to be a better skier for us. We can have more fun together if I don’t slow you down on the trails or other tracks. Secondly, I need to better understand the comments in a constructive way. I need you to help me with this.
Getting back to her idea, her husband said he would train her, but there would be some ground rules if he sought her out. “There has to be regulations,” she said. “I’m out if there’s any kind of emotional reaction that goes along with it. “
“Perfect,” he said. “That’s great. That’s your limit. Well, I have a limit too. You can’t give me more than 3 things to paint at once.
His application is an essential component of Johnson’s, an important lesson he learned in his office over the years. Prior to leading Lumen, a company that owns one of the world’s largest fiber-optic networks connecting countless businesses and government agencies, Johnson led Microsoft’s U. S. department and was an executive at Oracle and GE. Johnson’s specialty is business leadership and virtual transformation at one hundred Fortune companies.
In a recent interview, Johnson said that one of the constants of his career (and his life on the slopes) has been to focus on improving at 3 things at once. Call it your rule of 3.
“I never make a progression plan with someone who has more than 3 priorities. I don’t think you can paint more than three,” Johnson said.
You can lose if you set too many priorities,” Johnson said. “I think if you take seven priorities and spread them across the company,” he said, “I hope no one works on more than three of them. “
In the interview, Johnson gave some tactical recommendations on how to excel in the workplace and added how to put his “rule of three” into practice in his leadership toolbox:
With this advice and her husband’s training, Johnson is now a better skier. They walked together on the double tracks of the black diamond, the most difficult slopes of a mountain.
“Simply put, I can ski anywhere on the mountain!” she says. “It helped me break through not only in skiing, but also understand that receiving feedback deserves to be easy for the user sending it to you. If you can create this safety within the confines of the applicable rules, it can have an incredibly impactful effect. ” giant.
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