Cathy Engelbert on Leadership

Corinne: 

Hello and welcome to another episode of Lehigh University's Executive Edge. I'm Corinne Post, Chair of the Department of Management in the College of Business here at Lehigh. We are so excited to be here today to speak to Cathy Engelbert, the very first commissioner of the WNBA and Lehigh alum class of ‘86. After graduating from Lehigh, Cathy went to work for Deloitte in New York City, rising through the ranks before being named the company's CEO in 2015. She has been recognized in many publications for her work, including being named one of Fortune's 'Most Powerful Women' three years in a row. She has also made Glass Door's 'Employee's Choice Awards' list of the 50 highest rated CEOs, been recognized as one of ‘New York's 50 Most Powerful Women’ by Cranes and was named the Working Mothers' ‘50 Most Powerful Moms’. She is also the first female to be appointed CEO of a big four firm. It's my distinctive pleasure to welcome Cathy Engelbert here today. Thank you so much, Cathy.

Cathy:

Thanks, Corrine.

Corrine:

So Cathy, you're currently Commissioner of the WNBA. You're the first commissioner ever. Tell us a little bit about what those responsibilities entail. What does it mean to be Commissioner of the WNBA?

Cathy:

Yeah, so first I think what the NBA, which we're an affiliated league, wanted to signal is that women’s sports is here to stay. This is a major professional sports league and major professional sports leagues have commissioners, so that's number one. And so I’m responsible for all league operations. We have 12 teams, 144 players. The players are in a union, so we're in collective bargaining as we speak and so really it's just really running the league and I have a lot of transformation to get done because well, this is the only women's professional sports league that's been around two decades. We just concluded our 23rd year. We need to build an economic model that's sustainable and will make the league right for the future. We need to work on our player's experience. They're professional athletes, the best in the world, and the most diverse league in the world and we need to bring in more fans and provide a fan experience so they really love the game.

Corrine:

So you took on this role after spending close to or about 33 years-

Cathy:

33 years since I graduated from Lehigh.

Corrine: 

Right, so tell us a little bit how this opportunity came about and also why you choose to pursue it. 

Cathy:

Yeah, so at Deloitte, I was the CEO and you have a 4 year term and the 4 year term was concluding this past June. And so when I got to about February, I started to think "What am I going to do next?" I was looking at some other big corporate jobs, but I really set 3 criteria for myself: something different, something with a broad women's leadership platform, and something I had a passion for - never thinking it would bring me back to basketball, which I have a lot of DNA around.

My father was drafted by the Detroit Pistons in 1957, which is an NBA team. I played here at Lehigh University for Muffet McGraw, who's now a Naismith Hall of Fame coach at Notre Dame. So never thinking it would bring me to another purpose-driven organization, but I can't be happier with kind of coming back to my roots, my DNA. It's really an exciting time when you think about the moment in women's sports coming off the US Soccer World Cup, this momentum around the WNBA. As I visited our 12 cities and then this movement around women in power, it was kind of just happened to be calling them the three M's: this moment, this momentum, and this movement that we can capitalize.

Corrine:

And you often mention how sports is a way in which one can learn or develop as a leader. I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit. Tell us what are some of the lessons you learned on the court and that you took with you, or just insights you gained from playing that then you could apply at work.

Cathy:

Yeah, so there are so many - but you don't really know that you were building your leadership skills until many years later. You know, I always say that's one thing I learned at Lehigh is you must be your best in your ordinary moments because it's those ordinary moments that prepare you for the extraordinary moments in your life. And there's no better place than Lehigh that did that, for me at least.

Corrine:

How would you describe your leadership style? And I would say specifically as you move through different roles, what is the core of you as a leader that stayed, which parts did you find you shed along the way or have to kind of add on?

Cathy:

It's a really good question because I've always been what they call an integrator and I think in today's day and age with 5 generations in the workforce (so I'm one of the last, baby boomer, Gen X, Y, Millennial and now Gen Z or the digital native) that collaboration is really important.

But what I've gained over time is authenticity, at being an authentic leader. I think when you look at the Millennial and Gen Z population, that's what they're looking for in their leaders- someone authentic, someone empathetic. [Being] an empathetic leader and listening is such a skill today that I worry about the next generation and I would say, you know, listen with- I heard this once- listen with the intent to understand, not with the intent to reply. That's a skill that you actually have to build over time and I did not have that when I first came out of Lehigh. I was like “go”. I was ambitious. I wanted to do really well, be proud of my work. And as I went in the upper levels of my profession, I was meeting CEOs from all the major corporations in America and I was listening to what they were talking about, what was bothering them, how they were transforming, and that really helped me ultimately rise in my role as CEO.

Corrine:

And you've also been described as a first - the first female CEO of a Big Four, the first ever WNBA commissioner. What does that mean to be a first leader? What are some of the challenges but also responsibilities or opportunities that come with being a first?

Cathy:

I talk a lot about how all these firsts have to become more the norm and not the novelty. And while we hail and celebrate first in a lot of different angles, whether it's women of color, whether it's women, whether it's people of color, underrepresented minorities, I do think we, for me personally, I never aspired to any of these positions. I did aspire to lead, though, and there's a difference between aspiring to a box or a title and I think that was important as I rose because people say you know "Oh you must have always aspired to be the CEO or the commissioner." Absolutely not. I'm not even comfortable with titles and things like that.

But what I do think, especially for women, we need to raise our hand more and build our capability so that these first are now seconds, thirds, and fourths. Some of the best advice I've gotten along the way was that as a leader, one of your number one jobs is to find the next generation of leaders behind you. So I took that to heart and started a program that we dubbed Project Pinnacle - to take 30 enterprise leaders, not people who necessarily we were going to put in the box or title called CEO but they could be enterprise leaders, and really worked and really reshaped our leadership development. Not a next generation program, but an enterprise leader program.

So it's all those kind of things that I hope will lead to not just the firsts that I've been able to break ground on but have the second, third, fourth and then just being normal. It won't be novelty anymore.

Corrine:

In addition to some of the things you mentioned, what do you see as potentially the ways in which these numbers are really going to move- is there something we haven't looked at or where do we need to be more persistent?

Cathy:

This is something Catalyst is working very hard on. They're actually having a great platform of men as champions of women, because we know whether it's on Wall Street or whether it's in my professional services, or in pharmaceuticals, there aren't enough women leader. So I think one of the things is to get more men to champion and sponsor.

So we talk so much about mentorship, I got to where I was because I had sponsors behind the scenes pounding the table on the behalf of Cathy saying “she needs to build her capability, she needs to have this technical capability, she needs to be on this big client, she needs to run a business before we can put her up for CEO”. And there's not many men who are all in these power positions who believe that sponsorship is a part of their legacy. We have to make it and elevate it to be a part of a male or female's legacy.

Obviously as females we are always told to pay it forward when you get to the top and a man has to advocate and has to influence and has to use their power to sponsor the next generation of leaders and I've never been just women. It's the best leaders for the future and I think more and more women - if you think about it, I'm the first generation of women to go to college in my family. My mother didn't have that opportunity or chance and she's probably the smartest person I know.

And so you know, while progress is not where we need it to be. We're seeing signs at least in the fortune 500 CEO ranks. They're growing- not as quickly as we all want, but I think we need to make sure we're focused on men and women, what the future of work looks like, and how to build the next generation of leaders and what those skills are. Is it authentic leadership where I think women are so talented? Is it empathetic leadership? Is it innovative entrepreneurial leadership- where I think women need to raise their hand more to play in that space?

Corrine:

In what ways do you feel the qualities that we're looking for, or that are desirable and valuable to leaders - how have qualities changed over time?

Cathy:

Yeah I think they have changed because of the pace of change that business is going through today. I think there's no more masters. You have to actually be a master of all or you have to know a little about a lot - because if you don't know tech and technology's driving so much of the US and global economy, you know that's a gap in your skill set.

You actually have to know- I mean I had 100,000 employees- you have to know how to build a culture into an employee base that has the diversity that ours did. We were 75% Millennial, you know, how do you run a people first agenda? How do you put in programs that people are actually going to use versus programs that look good on paper or an application but really people aren't benefiting from. You have to do things for diversity of your population whether it's diversity of thought or diversity by background.

Even over the last 5 years as I was just finishing at CEO of Deloitte- what changed a lot is employee activism. Everyone always talked about when I came in the role shareholder activism and other activism, but employee activism… I was not spending one moment on it in my first, I'd say, three and a half years and then the last year and a half, every week I was spending significant time on how our employees were viewing the firm, how they were viewing the stances we took, what the CEO voice means. I had a philosophy that if you use your voice all the time as a CEO, you lose your voice.

So you have to find the things that are important to your strategy, your talent platform to speak about and then kind of leave some other things for others who might be more expert or feel more comfortable. But it's- that's a very tough, evolutionary skill when CEOs today are around activism that is not necessarily easy to manage. You see, what happened to Google, Starbucks, Microsoft. All the big tech companies have been dealing with activism over the past couple of years and it's crept into even private partnerships like Deloitte or in public companies on Wall Street. But it's definitely something CEOs should be focused on.

Corrine:

I've heard you talk about importance of having a culture of courage and that's something that you put into place or nurtured at Deloitte. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Maybe there's a connection there-

Cathy:

It's a really interesting thing that I can now look back and reflect on that, because we started this signaling a culture of courage, and you know why we did it? Because we wanted to retain our best people and in the big corporation, and we were a partnership but like a big corporation, we were afraid our people were not going to feel entrepreneurial. And we actually didn't define the word courage for them. So courage could mean courage around diversity inclusion, could mean courage around innovation. It could mean courage around stepping into a different role.

So we let our employees define what courage meant, but just telling them that we represent a culture of courage and you put that culture word together with courage, it's pretty powerful. And luckily, I've had some great people around me on my executive team who actually came up with this culture of courage. But I said, "We're not going to define it," because we were trying to define it- spent hours and hours trying to define it. And then I said, "Why don't we let our people define it? If they want to think of themselves as entrepreneurs, tell them they have the courage to fail. But fail fast, learn from it, and recover."

Corinne:

I do have two pieces of advice I wanted to ask you for. One was maybe geared towards what you would say to some of your peers or executives or CEOs who have a passion that they've had for a long time and would love to marry that again with their career. I think the way you've come back to basketball is very exciting. It's kind of fun, and so do you have any kind of thoughts for anybody out there who wishes they could do this kind of circular-

Cathy:

Yeah, it's interesting. You're the first to actually ask that and I'm sitting here thinking. Since last October when I knew my term was ending the following June, you know, people were calling me for jobs and I kept saying not now, not now, not now. Then we get to Christmas and I said give me the Christmas break to think about it and that's when I came up with 3 things: something different, broad women's leadership platform, and something I had a passion for. I didn't have those in October and I literally reflected a little bit over the Christmas break, came back in January, and said now at least I have a vision of the 3 things I want in a second career.

And by the way, a second career is fabulous because you've already kind of made your mark in your first career and now you're actually more empowered and you can be bolder because you're no longer trying to make a name for yourself. You now just want to transform something or make an impact more broadly. I mean, really my goal now is not just make an impact on the WNBA but on women in society. Like if we can lift, you know, something we haven't figured out for 23 years in the W, I think it's actually a sign that we can actually move things societally about the perspective of women in business, and leadership in sports, whatever it is. So I'm excited about that.

Corrine:

Yeah, I'm thinking about your younger self here at Lehigh, running up and down the steps-

Cathy:

The best shape of my life, by the way- running up the hills here.

Corinne:

What was the advice you would give yourself if you could talk to the younger Cathy?

Cathy:

Yeah, I'd definitely say - and I say this a lot but it's so true when you're in college because you don't know until you get out - you have to think that you need to broaden your skills. You can't get comfortable in one thing. You have to raise your hand and build your capability more broadly, or again you're not going to be happy with whatever you're doing. Even if you have something you're following a passion in life, if you don't raise your hand and build your personal brand more broadly, your skill set, your capability more broadly, you're just not going to have the impact that I know these young men and women want to have on the world today.

You know, you hear everybody, "I want to change the world." We can only change the world if you can actually absorb and sense everything that's going on and find where you want to have your impact. Because otherwise it's too complex to just have a plot along in role. So raise your hand, build your capability, do different things, come outside your comfort zone, and don't be afraid to fail.

And people often ask me, "what were your failures?" And I don't have any amazing stories of failure. I do think I have amazing stories of resilience- when I was down and I wasn't thriving and I wasn't doing things that were kind of building my brand. And it's the resilience that I think is more important than the failure.

Corrine:

Super. Well this was fascinating. Thank you so much for your time-

Cathy:

This was great, thank you. And I always love to be back at Lehigh.

Corrine:

To delve deeper into any of these topics, make sure to check out a recommended reading list and remember to subscribe to our channel for future episodes of Executive Edge.