Ideas in the Wild: Dennis O’Neil and Greg Hiebert Are Helping Leaders Succeed as Their Altitude Changes

Leaders strive to be their best in every step of their career. But when they’re starting a new leadership role, one with more responsibility in areas and organizations where their experience is limited, the template for success they’ve always relied on may no longer apply.

What they need is an adaptable roadmap based on shared values and thoughtful strategy. They need improved clarity, renewed confidence, and deeper capabilities.

But first, they need a starting point. In Changing Altitude, Dennis O’Neil and Greg Hiebert provide leaders with a comprehensive framework for optimizing their impact and maximizing personal and professional growth. When it comes to leadership, character counts.

I recently caught up with the pair to learn more about what inspired them to write the book, their favorite idea they share with readers, and how their clients have applied that idea.

What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment when you realized these ideas needed to get out there?

Dennis: As a professor, I used to teach a strategic leadership course and I would spend a year helping people transition from answering somebody else’s question to making sure that the right question got asked. The premise was then that leadership at different levels isn’t just doing more of the same. It requires a fundamentally different skillset. We have to be able to identify not only what that skillset is, but how does that fit into our own personal strengths and opportunities, then be honest about the opportunities and seek self-development.

One of our clients, a corporate client outside of Chicago, was, was being promoted from running a 250 person organization to almost 2,500. Overnight, he went from one business unit to two, six business units. He went from being a master of your own domain to now operating in a world where you are no longer the subject matter expert in everything that happens.

He asked us, “What is out there? Any articles or books that I can read? How can I best prepare for this massive transition?” Greg and I spent a lot of time researching it. We found a tremendous amount written about our first leadership experience and a tremendous amount written about our culminating role as a CEO, but making that transition in between—well, there was very little that existed to help people in a practical way with that.

With no roadmap out there for people like our client, we took a look at leaders, those they were leading, the environment around them, and put all that into a narrative under the onus of “changing altitude.” How do we rise above the clouds and get to the right position where we can see what we need to see? Sometimes that involves going up and other times it means coming down, but the whole time, you’re informed by the instrument panel in front of you.

Greg: If you look through the great errors of leaders in positions of immense power and authority, invariably they made decisions based on what they thought they knew and what they thought was right. When you unpack it, there were dimensions and complexity of the situation that were never fully appreciated. We think that humility is often underrated in leadership.

It was Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who said, “There are known knowns—there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns—that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” We believe it’s these “unknown unknowns” that can get leaders in trouble.

In the book, we provide tools to the reader so that before they proclaim, “I know exactly what to do,” they can follow a process to be sure they truly know everything they can know.

What’s your favorite specific, actionable idea in the book?

Greg: Leaders need a balance of empathy, self-reflection, and self-development.

When you look at the foundations of leadership, emotional intelligence comes up over and over again. You should never leave your feelings at the door because they’re an important part of not just being human, but making decisions. We know that without emotional reasoning, we make terrible decisions—or we can’t make decisions at all. So, it’s something that needs to be nurtured. If you look at the leadership principles of the Marines and the Army, one that they share is “know yourself.” It’s the idea of looking in the mirror and asking, “What do I see?”

Then, having the courage and empathy to say, “I can’t be perfect, but I do have gifts and strengths that I can use.” Yes, you have liabilities—we all do—but you can’t let those liabilities become the reason why you’re not successful. You’ve got to manage those, but you’re really going to soar when you know what your strengths are and you focus, hone, refine, and cultivate them because that’s where you’re going to really flourish. So, that’s how these three ideas tie together: knowing yourself and having the courage to take the journey of development.

What’s a story of a client who’s applied this idea in their life? What did it do for them?

Greg: One particular leader was telling us about her experiences as a director of the emergency department at a large hospital. During the pandemic, she has gone through hell. She remembers the first patient that she encountered in early March of 2020. We didn’t know anything about protective equipment then, so she responded instinctively when this patient collapsed in front of her—she took care of that patient. Well, lo and behold, a week later, she had COVID, and lo and behold, a week and a half later, her kids had COVID, too.

Not too long ago, she got a call from the CEO who oversees 35,000 employees. He had heard about her sacrificial leadership and reached out to say, “Hey, I’m checking in on you. I want to see how you’re doing.” She admitted to us that oftentimes when people ask how she’s doing, she always responds like, “Oh, I’m doing great.” So, she pulled that answer cause it’s the CEO, but then after a pause, the CEO said, “No, how are you really doing?”

Just the way he said it, and the care in his voice told her, “It’s OK for me to tell him that is this is hard. That these past eighteen months have been a huge challenge.” We love to tell that story because it’s such a great reflection of that CEO leading with empathy.