Episode 17 | Make It. Don’t Fake It. January 09, 2022

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GUEST: Sabrina Horn, Author, Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success

Is the popular expression “fake it till you make it” a harmless meme or bad advice for those who follow it? Our guest Sabrina Horn sees it as problematic for society and business leaders, but does she ever think “faking it” has its place in business? What’s the difference between a healthy stretching of the truth and outright fraud? Are there benefits to promising more than you think you can deliver and then delivering on those promises? How does such an accomplishment affect an individual’s confidence and a company’s growth? In this episode, we ask her those questions and more.

GUEST BIO:

Sabrina Horn is the author of the recent bestseller Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success. The book is based on the lessons she learned during her highly successful 25-year career as the founder, CEO, and president of Horn Group, as well as an executive adviser. With a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Hobart/William Smith Colleges, and a master’s in public relations from Boston University, she launched – at the age of 29 – the Horn Group, the well-known U.S. tech communications agency that was based in Silicon Valley. The firm counselled thousands of tech executives and their companies through brand transformation, global expansion, IPOs and acquisitions, and crises. Sabrina sold the business in 2015 to the global marketing agency Finn Partners. Today, this mother of two is CEO of HORN Strategy LLC, a consulting firm focused on helping entrepreneurs and CEOS navigate the early stages of their companies.

LINKS:

Sabrina Horn 

Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success

Full Transcript

BRAD PHILLIPS, HOST, THE SPEAK GOOD PODCAST:

I’d like to take you back to the fall of 2009, when I boarded an early morning Amtrak train from New York to Washington D.C.

A couple of weeks earlier, I had submitted a proposal to the General Services Administration – the GSA, which is the procurement arm for the federal government – to deliver 45 media training sessions over the next year – which at that point would have instantly become the biggest single contract, by far, in our company’s history.

Our firm had made the final list of the top three vendors, and I was on my way to attend an in-person meeting with the agency’s top decision makers, where I would make the case for why I thought our firm was the best-qualified for the assignment.

But the truth is in the back of my mind – actually, very much in the front of my mind – I worried that they might challenge me about the size of our firm. Because, our proposal stated that we had six trainers, which was superficially true. But most of them were subcontractors with whom we had only the most tenuous of relationships. I would have, in real life, had to perform most of the work directly – which I knew I could deliver well – but first, I had to convince them that we were really a big enough player in our space to earn their business. So, for that reason, I was already nervous when I entered the lobby of the vast federal office building where we were to hold our meeting.

I checked in at the front desk, which called my contact to come downstairs and greet me. And to understand what came next, I’ll need to sidetrack for just a moment and share something with you that might not be all that flattering.

I like having mints in my pocket at all times. Not just any mints – they have to be those little white Tic Tacs. But you know if you put a box of Tic Tacs in your pocket, every time you take a step it makes that loud clinking noise. Well, I hate that. So, I got into the habit of just keeping a few loose Tic Tacs in my pocket at all times. As I say, I know that’s gross, and I’m willing to accept your judgment.

So, back to the story. As the assistant came downstairs to greet me, I was about to go through the security magnetometer. I emptied out my pockets to place my keys and phone in that little black plastic bin, and at that moment several Tic Tacs came tumbling out of my pocket. They scattered, loudly, across the granite-topped floor. It seemed like every head in the lobby turned toward me to see what the commotion was all about. I could feel my face turning beet red and I am well aware that four-letter words were forming in my mind. And, there I was, in my freshly pressed suit, scurrying about the lobby bending over to pick up the rogue Tic Tacs – which, by the way, quite impressively, had managed to roll to virtually every corner of the lobby.

My contact who had come downstairs to greet me was barely able to stifle a laugh. If I had been nervous before, now I was nervous and humiliated. If there was a bright spot, it was at least I hadn’t met the decision makers quite yet. I still had time to pull it together even if I felt a little off.

We finally entered the conference room. The decision makers stood and welcomed me. After exchanging pleasantries, I asked, “Where would you like me to sit?” And one of them responded with what I perceived to be a somewhat patronizing tone by saying, “We don’t have any assigned seats here, Brad.”

That was it. On top of everything else, his comment made me feel small – and it tapped into all of the concerns that had entered the meeting with me – and I knew at that moment that while I’d find a way to muddle through the meeting there would be no coming back from that. I left the meeting knowing I had bombed and felt absolutely disgusted with myself.

It was no surprise when, the following week, I was notified that we didn’t earn the contract. They asked me to schedule a debriefing call so I could learn more about their decision. I tried everything I could to duck it, but they were insistent – so I reluctantly agreed. And I’m glad I did, because during the call one of the decision makers uttered two lines that I’ve never forgotten:

“You were the frontrunner coming into our meeting. Unfortunately, the quality of your presentation didn’t match the quality of your proposal.”

She was right. At that very moment, I decided NEVER to allow my own stuff, my own imposter syndrome, to get in the way of my success. That bungled meeting cost our firm a six-figure contract. It was an expensive mistake. And in hindsight, as I’ve said, I’m sincerely glad that I made it. Because the only thing worse than an expensive and self-sabotaging mistake is an expensive and self-sabotaging mistake from which I didn’t learn a vital lesson.

Looking back, I realize that my imposter syndrome was driven in large measure by the fact that I knew I was faking it. My anxiety came from the fear of being exposed as a smaller firm, and my response to that, my psychological attempt to manage that, was to pretend that we were something we weren’t. But imagine instead if I had leaned into what I perceived as a weakness, our firm’s small size, and sold it as an advantage and truly owned it instead by saying, “Look. We are a small firm. I’m the principal, and unlike some of our competitors, I, the principal am going to be the person who delivers most of the work directly. I’m not going to pass you off to a less experienced trainers – and if you speak with our current clients, you’ll see that I’ll be able to deliver the quality work that you expect from me.” If I had taken that approach, would we have gotten the work? Honestly, there is no way of knowing that. But I’ll bet that leaning into what I perceived as a weakness and redefining it as a strength wouldn’t have put me on my back heels during that meeting. And perhaps I would have just come across as I truly am – as an honest and capable person with a weird Tic Tac habit – instead of as an imposter who, on top of it all, is a goofball who can’t even keep his mints in his pocket.

My guest today knows something about the dangers of faking it. She, too, has learned lessons about what happens when she claimed to be something she wasn’t. In fact, Sabrina Horn, a successful entrepreneur whose PR firm, Horn Group, grew to become one of the best-known independent tech PR firms in the United States, wrote an entire book about it, called Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

So, first of all, Sabrina, I wonder if you could just help us set the context here by sharing a little bit about the company you started and how big it grew. And then I know that you ultimately sold it a few years ago,

SABRINA HORN:

Right. Okay. That’s a good place to start. I was about 29 years old and working in the public relations field in Silicon Valley. And with my parents having been both serial entrepreneurs, immigrants from Germany, I had that kind of entrepreneurial spirit in my blood. And I figured, I knew I had like maybe four or five years of real job experience. I’d probably had managed an intern, but yet I thought that I could start a company. (LAUGHS) And so, I went out and I pitched my first client, which was a little company back then called PeopleSoft that made HR software. I pitched my heart out and beat the competition. So, I was in business, and I grew that business and ran it for almost 25 years. We expanded to multiple tech hub locations in the United States, Boston, we were in Seattle for a cup of coffee. We were in Virginia and New York. We worked with mostly B2B software companies, but also some consumer tech companies, a lot of startups, but also some in the Fortune 500. We had global reach. We built a network of national partners when our clients needed support overseas. Then after we turned about 20 years old, I thought like, I need to land this bird somewhere. And so, I started thinking about an exit strategy.

PHILLIPS:

And, at that point, how large had you grown the business? How many people did you have working for you? And I don’t know if you ever talked publicly about billings, but just to give us some sense of how big you grew this business of yours that you started when you were in your late twenties?

HORN:

Yes, well, I think at our largest, we were over a 100 people. And that was when I realized that we were getting too big. You know, PR is a high service, high touch relationship kind of business. When you get too big, particularly I found in the tech industry, it was all about, you know, making the connection and the personal service that I started the company with. And so, I think when I sold the business we were around eight, seven or 8 million, but I sold it to Finn Partners in 2015.

PHILLIPS:

Obviously, there are so many subjects you could have written a book about, and you settled on this topic that is counterintuitive and goes against a lot of the advice that you hear consultants and researchers and academics and others giving, which is fake it until you make it. And you really challenged that concept. In fact, you flipped it on its head by saying, “No, make it don’t fake it.” Why did you decide to make that the theme of the book? Why was that so important that you wanted to challenge that conventional wisdom?

HORN:

Yeah, I think first of all, a combination of my background in PR, right? Because everybody thinks PR is about spin.

PHILLIPS:

Yeah. We deal with the same thing in media training. They think we’re teaching people to evade and obfuscate and, in fact, it’s teaching people how to communicate complex information in a way that’s relatable and engaging. So yeah, I I’m very familiar with that challenge.

HORN:

Yeah. So, I thought that with my background, that was kind of a unique angle from which to talk about integrity and the truth. But, you know, I think in the last five to 10 years, so many people have forgotten about the fact that integrity matters, right? It shouldn’t be an option in a multiple-choice question, and unfortunately fake it till you make it, has permeated society. It like mutated through social media. It’s like air and I think people have taken it too far to an extreme where it basically, if you listen to it, it’s telling you that it’s okay to lie in order to achieve success. And everything is wrong with that because ultimately the truth always comes out.

PHILLIPS:

Well, I’m so glad that we have that as our shared principles going into this conversation because one of the things I think maybe the best place to organize our conversation came from a chart that you have in your book, which is a spectrum of fakery. And on one side, the left side, is pretty innocuous stuff. And on the right side, you have the outright, and we’ll get into the real extreme versions of fakery as we continue, but on the left side of the chart, I was glad that you acknowledged that there’s some forms of, and this is my word, not yours, fakery that are okay. And one of the things that fit into that category is the psychological theory of acting as if. Can you begin with what that is, where that originated, and how people can use that concept of acting as if in their daily lives, in a productive and useful way.

HORN:

Yes, of course. And you know, in all fairness, fake it till you make it is a phrase that does have innocent origins, right? And that date back to the 1920s. I believe there was a psychotherapist named Adler who came up with this concept of acting as if.  And what that is, very simply, is picking the behaviors that you wish you had. The confidence that you wish you could exude and practicing what that behavior would look like, and act acting if you were confident, literally. And it’s a very productive form of self-help, just like dressing for success or power posing, which is another tool that Amy Cuddy came up with over a decade ago. And you know, that’s all fine. There’s no nothing wrong with that.

PHILLIPS:

Right. So, if I’m not feeling confident and I walk into a meeting and try to infuse myself with confidence – and I’m aware of Amy Cuddy’s work of power posing – for me, and I’ve said this to a few other people who laugh at me whenever I tell them this, so at the risk of making myself look ridiculous, when I am introduced on stage somewhere, in the pre-COVID landscape anyway, especially when I feel really nervous, oftentimes it’s because I’m speaking to an industry group, which is where I guess my imposter syndrome comes out. Because I think this group knows the real stuff, so they’re going to know if I’m faking it for lack of a better word. So, in my mind if I’m being introduced, I will play the Rocky theme music (in my head), you know.

HORN:

Sure.

PHILLIPS:

Almost to kind of physically make myself feel bigger and more confident. So that’s faking it in some way, because but that’s okay. That’s the innocuous form of it.

HORN:

That’s OK! Listen, I play Earth, Wind and Fire when I need to get myself going or U2.

PHILLIPS:

Is it your September your ..

HORN:

I’ve got a few (LAUGHS). But yeah, I mean there’s nothing wrong with that. Look, where you cross the line is when you start to say and do things at other people’s expense for personal gain. So, the difference there is the intent to deceive. That’s the difference.

PHILLIPS:

Before we get to the one thing that maybe comes right before the intent to deceive is people who are the deceiving themselves or who don’t want to reveal themselves to be lacking information. You share this really memorable anecdote in your book. I think you were working at the counter of some kind of what was it like a local corner store where you grew up?

HORN:

Yeah. (LAUGHS)

PHILLIPS:

And you didn’t have the skills let’s say. So, would you share that anecdote?

HORN:

Let’s just say I couldn’t do like basic addition and subtraction. I think it was like a job I had in summer in high school, and I worked for a stationary store in town that was run by this really lovely elderly, Polish couple and selling like magazine and chewing gum, cigars, cigarettes, you know, stuff like that, candy. And their business model was just an open cash register. So, they never really rang up the sale. They just had the register open, took cash and gave the change back. And so, people who come up to me, they’d have like a couple magazines, you know, a pack of chewing gum, some cards and some comics for the kid. And I’d be like, oh, that’s $12 and I just would make the number up because I was too embarrassed. I couldn’t do the math in my head. And I didn’t have the courage to ask for a pen and paper. I felt so embarrassed. I basically had, what we know today, is imposter syndrome. They finally, you know, realized what was going on and they gave me a pad of paper and a pencil, but then I was so nervous. They kept watching me. And, and so ultimately I got fired.

PHILLIPS:

And that’s one of those situations where, as you say, the fake it until you make it, I gather from the story, you weren’t trying to cheat this couple out of money.

HORN:

No, of course not.

PHILLIPS:

But you were nervous to expose your own, maybe lack of knowledge of how to work a cash register and do the quick math. And, I wonder, you know, as I was reading your book. I couldn’t help but thinking because I thought you did a nice job of articulating that one of the signs of a great leader is someone who admits what they don’t know and is very candid about their lack of knowledge and also their willingness to ask people around them for more information when they lack it. That takes a certain amount of confidence. I wondered if that confidence is easier for a leader to have, because they’re the ones obviously who have the power, than it is for somebody in an entry level position or that teenager working the counter. I think they have a concern that if I reveal myself to be ignorant in this area, I may not get the job in the first place if it’s during a job interview. And if I do have the job, as you said, you might not keep it very long. So how do you think about that line between being willing to share that which you don’t know, but also then potentially the vulnerability that opens you up to.

HORN:

Yes. I think you’re absolutely right. When you’re young, you’ve got so much to prove. And you don’t have the confidence and the security in yourself to say, I don’t know how to do this, but it’s very hard to admit that. By the same token, if you are a leader, sometimes as a young leader, I didn’t have the experience or the wherewithal to stop and say, you know what, that’s really an interesting concept, but tell me more about that. I not familiar with that. Can you share some more about that? And instead, I felt like I had to have all the answers. And it’s such a common problem among leaders today where they think just because they have those three letters after their name, CEO. That they have to have all the answers. And, it is your responsibility to help find off forward. But in the moment, it’s okay to say, wow, that’s a really cool idea. Tell me more. How does that work? How did you find out about that? And that sort of levels the playing field for everybody else. And everybody can sort of take a deep breath and be like, well, it it’s okay to collaborate and talk about this and it’s safe to say I need help.

PHILLIPS:

You know, you’re reminding me of something. When I interviewed for my job, I worked years ago at Nightline at the old ABC news program, and I interviewed with the executive producer of the show. And it was probably a 20-, 25-minute. I wouldn’t even call it an interview. It was more of a conversation than an interview. But over the course of, let’s say 25 minutes, he did 23 minutes of the talking and I did two minutes of the talking. I walked away saying, there’s no way I’m going to get that job. He doesn’t even know anything about me. And long story short, I got the job. And what I came to realize, and this I think goes exactly to what you are saying is sometimes if you ask the right questions or just let the other person talk, they end up forming a more positive impression of you. You don’t even have to do the hard work. So, you’re right. That resonates with me a lot that we kind of create this false notion that we need to have all of the correct answers.

HORN:

Yes.

PHILLIPS:

When, in fact, sometimes it’s just being curious. That is the thing that forms a positive impression.

HORN:

Yes, you are a thousand percent right. You don’t have to fill the silence with words and noise. It’s much more interesting to have a conversation with someone. Because, guess what? They’ll tell you something you didn’t know before, and then you can really be on top of your game and really nail that point rather than sort of floundering and you know, talking about a whole bunch of stuff that may not be on point.

PHILLIPS:

Yes. So, talking about that spectrum. On the left side, we’ve talked about acting as if which is harmless and even positive. Then you move over to, I don’t want to reveal my own ignorance in a certain area. So, I’m going to kind of mask my lack of knowledge. That becomes more problematic. If you continue going down that scale, more to the right. I, I guess the next step on that is, let’s say for example, a client puts out a scope of work, so requests for proposals, and we do 90 percent of it. We’ve never done that other 10 percent. The client has made clear we’re only going to hire one vendor to do everything. We think that we’ll be able to figure out that 10 percent and yet we kind of have to position it in our response to that proposal, like, we got it, we know how to do this. Where do you see that? Is that acceptable? Is that putting you at risk for pretending something you don’t, which could harm both your reputation and ultimately the clients you’re hopefully going to serve?

HORN:

Yes. This is really a question about a matter of degree. I think first of all, authenticity and integrity are like beauty. It’s in the eye of the beholder. So, what I think is authentic, you may disagree with and vice versa. And so, you yourself have to decide, within the confines of the truth, where those boundaries are and how willing you are to straddle them, stretch them, and go beyond them. I think every situation is different. If there’s a 10 percent factor here,, maybe it would just be a smart idea to have a conversation with your team. Like, okay guys, here’s the deal. Can we pull this off? Is there a straw man? You know, if there’s another service we’ve never offered, can we partner with another firm to deliver it? Like, is it just completely ridiculous? Are, are we fooling them? Are we lying? Or, can we actually maybe do this? I did give an example in my book about a fintech company that we pitched. It was after the recession when we really needed the money. We pitched this huge deal. It was an enormous, almost a million-dollar deal, which was huge for us. It was for everything. And I went against my values. I faked it and we sold them all this stuff, and could we do it? Yeah, sure. We’ll get our best people on it. You know, can we build you a whole new website and do new branding and do your SEO and like do it all at once. Yeah, sure. Do we, you have the resource. Yeah, no problem. but you know, that was bad because in fact we couldn’t do it. I didn’t have a plan for how I would even begin to deliver that. And so, we lost pieces of that account until we lost it all. And you know, that was bad. That was really bad.

PHILLIPS:

Right. I have a friend of mine who used to run a PR firm and he used to say, get the work and then figure out how you’re going to do it. And I always kind of, I understood where he was coming from. But yeah, I see for people who were listening to the podcast, you made a face and a sour face. When I said that. See, you had a strong reaction to that.

HORN:

(LAUGHS).

PHILLIPS:

So why don’t you take it from there?

HORN:

Yeah. I mean, look, again, it depends on, do you have the expertise to do it? Do you have the people, can you find, like you have to have an honest conversation and look at yourself in the mirror and say like, can we really honestly do this? How are we going to communicate this to the client when push comes to shove? It’s not good business to sell stuff you can’t do. And if you don’t even know the first step of how you’re going deliver it, then you’re really putting yourself in jeopardy and your reputation. You’re hurting the client. We set the client back by three months, because they had to find another firm and they lost that time to get their message out.

PHILLIPS:

I do wonder if you are really well positioned to do 90 percent of the work and you don’t have experience with the other 10 percent, if you would say to that potential client, look, I’m going to be direct with you. We’re really well positioned to deliver this 90 percent for you. I think we’re going to do a really great job. And, and based on our knowledge of the competitors, I think we’re well positioned to be able to deliver it better than anybody else. We have not had experience with that other 10 percent. I want to be direct with you about that. I also want to tell you we’ve been in that position before and we’ve made it work. So, I’d like to talk to you about how I, and, sure there are going to be some people that turn you down because that 10 percent’s important to them. But I also wonder if maybe the matchmaking works out that the right client and the right vendor who have that conversation will have a much better relationship for the long term.

HORN:

Well, I mean, absolutely. Like what you verbalized there, that is honest. And that builds trust. It’s like, “Wow. Well, thank you for being honest about that. You know, I’m going to have to think about that. I’m going to talk to the other vendors and see what they offer, but what you just said makes you so much more likable and you were willing to tell me the truth.” Bottom line in business, we do business with people we like, and that we trust, you know, and it’s all about the relationship. And that is a relationship moment right there.

PHILLIPS:

Yeah. Have the bravery to be real, which is you bravery. So okay, back to this spectrum. Now we’re in the middle of the spectrum, and we have a different kind of fakery. You describe it as the ostrich, with burying your head in the sand. You describe it as procrastinating or minimizing the issue. And when I read that, I thought these are psychological defenses that people put on themselves, not necessarily with an intent to deceive others, but maybe to prevent themselves from having to face some tough truths. Nonetheless, it has the same negative impact on yourself and on the client you’re serving. So how do you force people to confront reality in the mirror?

HORN:

You’re absolutely correct on the fakometer or Fake-O-Meter

PHILLIPS:

(LAUGHS) The Fake-O-Meter

HORN:

There in the middle is sort of interesting place where not every time you fake it is, is a lie, right? But faking it is a result of being under pressure, when you don’t know what you’re doing and you, frankly, you’re just completely overwhelmed. And say your company’s not performing well, and you have to do a lay-off or you make a product and it’s not working. So, you have to do a recall. I don’t know too many executives who like, love the idea of having to deal with that. And it’s what happens in a crisis. We just want it to go away and give it the space to disappear. We want to pretend it it’ll just all get better. And so, we wait, and we wait, and the problem gets worse and worse and worse.

I was in a situation like that when the internet bubble burst and business was vaporizing around us every day. I was also eight months pregnant with my second daughter. And I just really wanted to focus on having a kid, not doing a layoff. But finally, and to answer your question here, you’ve got to make a commitment to being grounded and facing reality for the privilege of being a leader. No matter how hard it is, you have to make a commitment to facing reality. And secondly, you need to surround yourself with awesome people, a leadership team, and this is critical, advisers and mentors who are going to give it to you straight. They’re going to tell you when you’re faking it, they’re going to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. And it was one of those people who pulled me aside and said, Sabrina, you need to protect the financial health of your company, or you’re going to lose it all. You got to take the layoff. So, the price I paid was having to cut even deeper because I had waited too long, and I lost some credibility with my people.

PHILLIPS:

How do you think about situations where, maybe as a leader you know that you are in some financial trouble, and you haven’t made decisions yet? You don’t know that you’re going to have to lay people off, but you know that if things don’t turn around soon, you’re going to have to face tough choices. So, if you’re completely honest and transparent, you’re going to tell your staff, “Hey folks, we are running into some rough waters here. I don’t know how we’re going to come out of that,” but that’s a tough leadership style that has huge risks. Like people fleeing the firm, like recruiting suddenly going downhill. When do you have to disclose before it becomes dishonest if you don’t? And how do you balance those two imperatives of keeping morale up on the staff and infusing them with hope, but stopping short of outright deception?

HORN:

This is a really delicate subject. And it’s why being a leader is so hard? You can’t tell your employees, “You know what, things aren’t going that great. We might have to do a layoff. That’s not helpful. But you are obligated as a leader to come up with a plan. First of all, you make the announcement when you need to make it. And more than that, you have to have a plan to provide hope for the future. It’s not just about these people, these beautiful people who we love, who we hired, they’re going to have to leave us. There are probably other things that are wrong with your company that also need fixing. And so, the message is much broader. We’re seeing a shift. We haven’t performed well in this area. And here’s what we unfortunately have to do today. But, but here’s how we move forward. Here’s the different direction we’re going to go in. Here’s who’s going to help us do that. And taking those top performers who you don’t want to lose.

PHILLIPS:

Yeah.

HORN:

And giving them new responsibility and shifting things around to keep them motivated and incentivized. It’s always about providing hope and protecting the whole of the company. Not just, we know one or two people.

PHILLIPS:

So going back to your Fake-O-Meter, now I’d like to go to the far end, the far right end of that.

HORN:

Jail time.

PHILLIPS:

(LAUGHS) Yeah, jail time. I don’t know about you, but I am absolutely fascinated with these stories about people like Adam Neumann of WeWork and Bernie Madoff and Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. It’s the Icarus story, flying too close to the sun. And obviously I hope that the people listening are not, you know, sociopaths. But, I want to say something maybe controversial. And I suspect some people listening will disagree with me, but I have watched a lot of documentaries about those figures and Bernie Madoff himself, I know you can’t believe everything that that guy said, but he did make the case that he thought he was going to be able to fix this problem. It started as a small lie that metastasized and became something when the stock market crashed, that was beyond his control to be able to fix.

So, he was clearly faking it. I mean, what a great example of fake it until you make it. But I do believe, and maybe this was just an act of severe self-deception, but I got the sense that he was faking it until he made it, that he thought he was going to be able to turn this around, that he was going to be able to, even though it was a Ponzi scheme, give back the money. And so, I walk away going, I don’t know that his intent was to defraud. I think his actions were clearly fraudulent, but I kind of got the sense he thought he could fix it. And I wonder as you look at the Adam Neumanns and Elizabeth Holmes of the world, if you have drawn a similar conclusion or, or not.

HORN:

Hm-hmm. I have thought about this, too. And he did say, Bernie Madoff, that he thought he could fix it, but every time he faked it a little bit and he faked it a little bit more, it became sort of a way of life. It consumed him and it, and perhaps it was easier to fake it and to keep playing that game than to right the ship, until, of course, he was caught, what was that 10 years later, or something like that. The issue with faking it is in those examples of just the extreme, off the charts stuff like Elizabeth Holmes, who is on trial at this very moment waiting to hear from the jury. You know, lies beget lies, and you have to keep telling them and you keep telling them, and it gets to be easy, unfortunately, and it consumes you.  And then you become this person, this imposter. You actually become the imposter and you can’t stop it because you have to then you have to disclose all these lies. Psychologically, these walls just come up and protect you from then actually telling the truth. It’s sick. Right? so who knows what went on in the minds of these people as they were going through this process. Do I tell the truth? Do I stop? Well, maybe not. It’s going pretty good right now. And then it becomes impossible to stop because then it’s, will I go to jail for this by telling the truth? Or can I just keep pulling it off?

PHILLIPS:

As you’re saying that I’m realizing it’s almost like a sick form of acting as if. Acting as if has the benign form where you are pretending to be confident when you’re not. Acting as if in the malignant form is pretending that everything’s okay when it’s not. So, I’d like to maybe end our conversation with pivoting for a moment from the individual. We’ve been talking about how we as individuals make these decisions and where we land on the spectrum. But you also talk a lot in your book about leadership. It is really a leadership book. So how do you think about this at a corporate level? How do you, as a manager or executive, create a company culture that keeps people on the right side of not faking it?

HORN:

Well, look, first of all, you got to be relentless about it. It’s tireless. You’re constantly sort of correcting human behavior. (LAUGHS)

PHILLIPS:

It’s not just like publish your list of principles. Hand it out at hiring and stop.

HORN:

No. If I had a nickel for every company that had like, you know, the company values, like in front of a sunset in a poster and it was above the door … that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s about building a business from the ground up based on core values that you’ve outlined that literally infuse your whole culture. What you celebrate; what you tolerate; your HR policies; how you talk to each other; how you do performance review; how you talk to your customers and deal with their complaints and the language that you use and your response time. There’s a saying on Wall Street, which I love, which is the fish stinks from the head down. It all comes from the top. It’s from the leader who makes a commitment to like every month we had a management team meeting where we talked about if something that went wrong, how would we fix it? And it came back to like, okay, that’s not what we stand for. We’ve got to be better. We’ve got to come back to those core values all the time. It’s about finding the champions in your company at different levels who really celebrate those values, who can help you also maintain that kind of vibe and that beautiful culture throughout. It’s about recognizing individuals and praising them publicly for what they’ve done that represents performing to a core value. You know, all that stuff. It’s the little things. There are so many little things, but if you don’t pay attention to that, it’s like a cancer that can spread. And then fixing a dysfunctional culture is so much more painful than it is to start one from a clean slate.

PHILLIPS:

Sabrina, before we go, I’d like to ask you a question about how gender plays a role in this. You were candid in your book talking about being the 29-year-old female executive, who was working in a male dominated tech industry. And I guess the thought I had in reading that was, is there a bigger barrier for women to admit that they don’t know something because quite unfairly, it could confirm a stereotype that some male executives might have. Do they pay a higher price in your experience for being honest about and admitting that they don’t know something that maybe the other party thinks they should?

HORN:

I think we’ve come a long way in that regard, but that certainly still does exist. It depends upon the industry and certainly the situation and the company. I think there’s much greater awareness now of equality and equal opportunity for all genders. But that said, you know, I do think that there certainly are occasions where a woman may pay a deeper price for admitting that she doesn’t know something. I think that’s happening less now. I will also add in terms of gender bias, like, look, I, I ran my own company for a long time. And so, I had a measure of control over who we wanted to work with and who we didn’t. And my advice to anyone who is afflicted by those sorts of situations is to certainly a.) take matters in your own hand, use the channels available to you to report bad behavior, and even get to know the ecosystem around that person who is behaving badly to see if you can influence behavior through them. And then, short of that, I will tell you, you can pick up your ball and take it somewhere else because there’s plenty of other awesome companies who would love to work with a person like you. You can’t change that sort of bias, it’s thousands of years old, like you can’t teach old dog new tricks. But as a CEO, you have to lead by example. And when you see that behavior occurring, you have to put it out. And, you know, even if that means firing the client, which I have done, you’ve got to change the at behavior and take action. Otherwise, you’re complicit in it.

PHILLIPS:

Yeah. Well, that’s a, a nice place to leave off. Sabrina, your book is great on a personal level and also on a company level. So, for anybody listening who’s a manager or executive, the book is Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success. Sabrina Horn, thank you very much.

HORN:

Thank you, Brad, for having me. It was great talking with you.

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• Make It Don't Fake It
• Sabrina Horn