Impactful Leadership and Mastering the “Head Game” of High Performance: from CIA to CEO

Anything is possible, but everything is not possible at the same time. Chose your ambitions carefully and own the tradeoffs required to make those ambitions a reality.

Rupal Patel’s high-octane career has taken her from military briefing rooms in jungles and war zones to corporate boardrooms and international stages. During her thrilling career as an analyst and field agent at the CIA, she advised Four-Star Generals, earned War Zone Service Medals, and was recognized by the CIA Director for “superior support to the President of the United States.” After leaving the CIA, she earned her MBA and started her first award-winning business over a decade ago. Called a “Power Woman” by Harper’s Bazaar Magazine and a “super-strategist” by her clients, Rupal is a sought-after international speaker, corporate consultant, and executive advisor who has spoken in front of thousands and delivered leadership and talent development programs for Fortune 500 companies around the globe and the White House. Her trailblazing work has been incorporated into the MBA and Executive MBA programs at elite business schools across the US and UK where she serves as visiting faculty, and has been featured in USA Today, Business Insider, CNBC and other prominent media outlets. In 2023, Rupal was named “One of the Most Influential Women of the Year.” Her commitment to developing the next generation of leaders and change-makers extends into her pro bono work for Virgin Startup and Techstars, her roles as Entrepreneur in Residence at London Business School and Alumni in Residence at the University of Chicago, and as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. She is the author of the international best-seller From CIA to CEO: Unconventional Life Lessons for Thinking Bigger, Leading Better, and Being Bolder, which has been translated into multiple languages and been hailed as an “essential manual” and “one of the best business books,” and and her TED talk explores the power of “owning your weird” to unleash personal excellence.

More Information at – https://www.entreprenora.co 

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to the non-profit exchange. This is episode 415 Every one of them’s a gem and today is no exception so you can find us at http://TheNonprofitExchange.org  I’m Hugh Ballou the found dot org. Sorry TheNonprofitExchange.org I’m Hugh Ballou founder and president of SynerVision Leadership Foundation. That’s the synergy of the vision that we represent as leaders. Center Vision Leadership Foundation. And I have a special guest. I’m in America today and Rupal Patel is in the London, England area. So Rupal, welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. Tell people a little bit about you, your background and your passion for the work that you do. And by the way, the title that you’ve chosen for us today is Impactful Leadership and Mastering the Head Game of High Performance, colon, from CIA to CEO. Rupal, welcome.

Rupal Y. Patel:
Thank you. Yeah, Rupal. Yeah. Thank you for having me here. So what do I do? Well, as the title would suggest, I spent part of my career at the Central Intelligence Agency, and I left that world behind just over 10 years ago and moved into the private sector. And the first thing I did after I left the agency was, well, went to business school. And during business school, started my first company, and then now have started, scaled, and grown two of my own organizations. And I guess the sort of the red thread, that has carried through from not just my career, but also in everything that I was sort of naturally drawn to even much earlier than as a, you know, sort of a young adult just starting out, is I love solving problems. I love helping others solve problems. And I really like naughty, challenging, big messes. Because I think that is when so many people throw their hands up in despair and say, oh, well, this is beyond me. This is outside of my abilities, or I can’t do anything with this. It’s too complicated. And that’s when I love going in and just breaking things down to their essence and helping those who are trying to make decisions.

Hugh Ballou:
Love it. Love it. Now, this thing, CIA to CEO, that’s a book.

Rupal Y. Patel:
It is a book that I wrote, came out last year and it came out in paper book version this year. And it basically encapsulates a lot of the lessons, the mindset techniques and the practical tangible techniques that I was either trained in or developed in my career from, you know, working in the CIA into moving into, you know, being a CEO of my own companies, and all of those skills that are transferable in any context. So it’s not just about, so you know, the subtitle says it more accurately, to some extent, it’s unconventional life lessons for thinking bigger, leading better, and being bolder. And it is true whether you want to apply them in a business context, in a personal context, in any other context, you know, in the many sort of layers of each of our lives and all of the many hats we wear, the skills and the tips and the techniques are applicable anywhere.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s very profound. I want to make sure people got that. Now, if you’re listening to this and you can’t take notes fast enough, don’t worry. There’ll be a transcript on the website. When you go to the nonprofit exchange.org, there’ll be a transcript and soundbites like that and ideas. So leadership is transportable from different types of, so you said your CEOs of companies, what companies are you CEO of?

Rupal Y. Patel:
I’ve got one that’s a real estate investment and construction company. And then the other one is consulting practice, where we do leadership and talent development programs.

Hugh Ballou:
So who needs you? Who comes to you and gets advantage of your wisdom and your strength?

Rupal Y. Patel:
Usually it is leaders, either very, very senior executives or leaders of other leaders, who are just trying to unblock something within their organization, sometimes It’s a performance blocker, sometimes it’s a strategy blocker, sometimes it’s an ambition blocker, but there’s something just not working. They’ve set their sights and they know they’ve got the capabilities and the talent to do certain things, but there’s a disconnect from where they wanna go and where they are now. And so they bring me in to help identify again, where is the problem or where are the problems? And then what can we do to restructure our organizations, retrain our organizations and the people within them to help us bridge that gap between where we want to be and where we know we can be and where we are right now.

Hugh Ballou:
Right. And I do similar work in a very different way. You know, I was a conductor of orchestras and choirs, so I see team empowerment in an ensemble sort of way. That’s why I like the word synergy. So I find in my conversations with people and with clients who are working with me or even not working with me, that leadership is a very misunderstood word, isn’t it?

Rupal Y. Patel:
Yes. And I think for so long, we’ve had these paradigms of leadership as very hierarchical, as very dictatorial, you know, it’s my way or the highway, the leader is one person at the top who knows everything and decides everything and everybody else just has to fall in line and salute, you know, and do whatever that one person suggests or says. And there are still many leaders who operate in that very old fashioned paradigm, but I think they get far more airtime, then the reality would suggest, because the reality of the hundreds of leaders that I’ve worked with at this point, or by this point in my career, is that leadership looks like everyone, right? The types of personalities who are great leaders, the types of skill sets that make up great leaders are so much more varied than that one archetype would suggest. And it’s not the loudest, the most brash, the most in your face, the most assertive. I mean, sometimes it can be that person, but leaders can look like anything and successful leaders can have many, many different kinds of traits. And I think that is where there’s this growing, there used to be this friction between this is what people thought a leader was, and this is what leaders actually look like. And now there’s a growing acknowledgment that actually leadership can take many forms. And it’s not just about telling people what to do. It’s about sometimes you lead from behind. Sometimes you sort of join and you get your hands dirty with your team members. And sometimes, yes, you do have to be that visionary, that one who’s setting the agenda, who’s setting the intentions. But it can ebb and flow in many different ways and in different contexts. For me, fundamentally, leadership is about showing up with whatever is needed in that moment, you know, having that sensitivity and that empathy to understand, well, this is where my team or my organization is right now, this is how I need to show up to help them get through whatever they’re facing, and also to acknowledge that one person doesn’t have all the answers. your conductor analogy is brilliant. Because for me, I think the best leaders are often those who are able to conduct those around them, who are the experts in sales, marketing, business development, strategy, whatever. And they’re just there bringing them all together and making that music more coherent and helping manage those pieces as opposed to being the one who’s deciding everything.

Hugh Ballou:
Thank you for that. So you mentioned something a couple of times there that I think is a big misconception that people have about leadership. We don’t have to have all the answers, do we?

Rupal Y. Patel:
No. And no one person can. And I think that is another real source of stress and a disservice done to sort of the leadership practice, which is people expect and assume one person to be able to accurately predict and accurately navigate every different thing that is thrown your way. And that is just not realistic. And I often joke, the role of the CEO is not to be chief everything officer. Again, it is about asking the right questions, about bringing in the right people, regardless of where they sit in an organization, and then letting the experts sort of come up with ideas. Of course, finally, the final decision rests with the person who has that title. But it’s not about knowing it, this being this sort of all knowing, all seeing, you know, sort of omnipotent and omniscient being. It’s really much more, it’s much more muted than that. And I think there’s a real humility that I have seen amongst the best leaders in, you know, they’re the ones who acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers and that they are willing to ask for help from those around them. And they are willing to fill the ranks around them with those who will make up for some of their blind spots, who will bring in the skills that they don’t themselves have. and not pretend to be something or someone that they’re not.

Hugh Ballou:
Oh, very well. And we resonate in our philosophy. So the orchestra model works for me because we don’t play the instruments. And we hire an expert oboe player. You don’t have to know how to play the oboe, but you know the sound you want. And so one of the biggest challenges I guess you might call it a dysfunction, but problems of leaders is over-functioning more than they should. So the reciprocity is under-functioning. So I brought a few descriptive words of leadership, and pick a couple if you want to elaborate. Listening, influencing, creating synergy, asking questions. Any of those traits you want to elaborate on?

Rupal Y. Patel:
Yeah. I mean, I think the one thing that unifies all of those traits is another one that I mentioned, which is humility. But it’s a very confident humility. It’s not saying, oh, I know nothing, and I shouldn’t be here, and all of that. It’s, I don’t have all the answers, but I’m curious about what other options there are, what other people have to say. I’m open-minded enough to know that I can’t be all things to all people at all times. And so I’m going to try to be that sort of conductor of others. So it is that confident humility that brings all of those traits together and not being afraid to acknowledge, not hide behind, but to acknowledge when you don’t know the answer. And to be able to say with confidence, hey, I don’t have the answer right now, but this is what I’m working on, or this is what we are doing as a leadership team to try to see us through this challenge, to navigate this uncertainty. It’s not, oh, yeah, of course, I know everything, and I’m going to just go out there guns blazing. It’s, again, that confident humility to say, this is what I know, this is what I don’t know, but this is what we’re going to do in the interim.

Hugh Ballou:
Absolutely, it takes good, strong self-esteem to be able to do that. And two words I didn’t mention, you kind of referred to indirectly, was transparency and vulnerability. Those are also, they’re assets. And if you’re going to debate which is an asset, not a liability, it’s a skill, not a weakness.

Rupal Y. Patel:
Yes. Sorry. Go ahead. Well, all I was going to say is that I think all attributes can be on both sides of the ledger, right? In some contexts, it can be an asset. In other contexts, it can be a bit of a vulnerability. But again, it’s acknowledging, well, what am I qualified to do? What are my natural attributes? And what situations are the best for me to bring them to the forefront? And which situations do I need to dial those down? Again, having that self-awareness and that emotional intelligence, first and foremost about yourself as a leader, is really, really important and often underestimated and was often, especially sort of up until I would say the past 10, 15 years, was dismissed as a so-called soft skill, right? All of these things that you can’t touch to or point to or can’t get a certification in, people used to dismiss as, oh, those are just nice to have. They are absolutely critical, and especially in the world in which we’re now moving into where technology is going to be doing more and more and more, those people skills, those alleged soft skills are going to be the hardest ones for folks to master, and they’re the most essential ones for them to master.

Hugh Ballou:
So well stated, you know, it’s a soft skill, but if you don’t have them, it’s a hard stop. So you, great answer. So before I go to my next, here’s something that I want to eliminate from that. So self-awareness, Understanding our blind spots, of course, the most successful people have a coach. And the people that are trying to make it don’t have a coach. And maybe more than one type of coach for different parts of what we’re doing. But how do people find other ways to get a feedback system, like a mastermind group or other? And check in, how am I doing with some peers?

Rupal Y. Patel:
Yes, 100%. And I refer to them in my book as your ops team. So for example, you know, in for a place like the CIA, you would have a certain team that you would pull together for a specific operation, a specific mission. And it would, they would be handpicked for specific skills that they would be bringing to this very specific outcome that you were trying to achieve. And I think the same, uh, fundamental sort of approach is relevant in every capacity. You know, so I have, for example, an ops team that I have pulled together people who will help me when I have questions around parenting. or questions around relationships and marriage or others who I bring together that I rely on for advice for, you know, for being a leader, for growing a business, for doing different things. And that those same people, you know, the same five people don’t sit on all of those ops teams. It’s curating a very specific handful. It could be sometimes as few as three other people or two other people, but those who are qualified to give me insight and expertise. those who share my values as well, because I think that is sometimes, you know, there are many ways to lead, there are many ways to parent, there are many ways to be in a successful marriage, but I want to be around people whose values are aligned with mine so that the advice they give me isn’t going to be more difficult for me to implement than, you know, if it was something that, you know, if in some ways it comes against one of the things that I really value. So those two things are my fundamental criteria for choosing anyone, Are they qualified, either through experience, expertise, or having done the thing that I want to do, and do our values align? And then I will build this team, and it evolves over time. So the people who are on my parenting ops team won’t necessarily be there forever. The people who are on my CEO ops team aren’t going to stay there forever. As I grow and evolve as a person, as a leader, as a parent, as a spouse, the people on those respective ops teams, for example, will also need to change or at least be updating themselves. so that it is always relevant. But I think we often forget that, you know, especially for those of us who are leading organizations or who have started our own organizations, we could previously take for granted, oh, I’ll meet peers, I’ll meet colleagues in my workplace. But especially as you move higher up into different leadership roles, or again, or if you’re doing something that you are building, You won’t always have those peers. So those relationships and that peer group that you could previously take for granted, we now have to make an effort to build and curate for ourselves. And that’s where I see so many people sort of flailing around not knowing what to do and then relying on the wrong people to give them advice for who they are now.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. That’s so insightful. So you’re listening to the nonprofit exchange. If you just happen to come by on the video, um, find us at V T H E nonprofit exchange.org. And you’ll see this in many other episodes and you’ll have a transcript for all these really helpful things she’s telling us. So go back to the beginning from CIA to CEO. Why, what was calling your name to do this business?

Rupal Y. Patel:
The CIA is a relatively straightforward call in that, you know, I wanted to, so I joined the agency post 9-11. And so it was a very present experience, you know, sort of the 9-11 attacks were very, very present in my sort of young adulthood. I was a senior at an undergrad when the attacks happened, and I was in New York at the time. And so it had a real impact in so many different ways. And as I was making my decisions about where I wanted to spend my career, I thought, I want to do something that has impact. I want to do something that’s going to be important, that has some sense of something bigger than just me, and where there is a sense of common purpose, common mission, and camaraderie. And so initially I thought that it would be the State Department because you can do many of those same things you know in within the State Department. And then when I was in graduate school the CIA recruited me and I thought, wow, this was not on the radar but let me see you know again that curiosity asking good questions. And as I learned more and more about what I would be doing at the agency, it just seemed like a perfect fit. Again, sense of mission, sense of, you know, sort of global importance, something bigger than me, something that was relevant and important, where I could bring my talents to these big, naughty challenges. And so that was an obvious one. And then when I left, the reason I left was because part of it was I was burned out. You know, I’d worked for over six years on some really, really heavy issues and very, you know, literal life and death. issues. And after that long, it just started to take an emotional toll on me. And I thought, if I’m going to do this, I need a break. And so let me go out and see what else is out there in the in the rest of the world and the more sort of civilian world. And if I like it, great. And if not, I can always come back and you know, do this work, but I do need to reset a little bit. And I also wanted to test myself in different ways. I thought, well, you know, now is a good time because as I’m approaching my, you know, sort of early 30s, I still have the youth and the energy to try different things and be a bit more exploratory with my career. And so when I left, all I knew was that I wanted to test myself in new ways. And throughout my two years at business school, I experimented with lots of different types of careers and explored different ways of working and doing things. And I realized very quickly that actually, for me, I really wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to test myself in that most ultimate way of, can I build something from scratch? Can I lead myself? Can I lead others? And do something that is meaningful and important. And so that’s how that transition happened. And initially, it was through real estate, which is very, very different. But from what I was doing before, but it was a nice change, because there was something very tangible, right, I could see the impact of what my work was, I could touch it, and I could see it. And I could point to something, whereas at a place like the CIA, everything is is intangible, right, you sort of deliver this brilliant briefing to the president, but there’s nothing that you can sort of show for it. And so there was that there was there were multiple different reasons as to why I did what I did in that first instance. But it was always that for my first property business, the real estate work was always with an eye towards, OK, see where this goes, but keep your eyes open for what else might be drawing you. And so about six years ago, as that that company needed less and less of my time and attention, I started formalizing all of the informal consulting, advisory work, advice, all of that stuff that I was doing anyway, as I was doing my own business growth journey. And that is really, like I said at the beginning, you know, that’s always been part of my life. I love complex challenges. I love helping other people. I love solving problems. And so now that is the main focus of my work with my second company, the consulting business.

Hugh Ballou:
So in our nonprofit world, we attract board members and volunteers and money because of the impact of our work as coaches. And we are we are important is in the impact with people’s lives. You got any stories? You know, you mentioned impact. That’s a key point. What impact have you had on other people’s lives and their business and their work?

Rupal Y. Patel:
Yeah, gosh, it’s really amazing to to reflect on a question like that, because I think sometimes it’s so easy to forget that how many lives one can touch. But, you know, just off the top of my head, I’ve had business owners who started businesses that they never thought that they could start and they are now financially independent and, you know, not sort of creating the next Apple or Microsoft, but, you know, consistently bringing in enough income to take care of themselves, their families, live a comfortable lifestyle and have that independence from toxic workplaces or toxic relationships or things that previously they never thought were possible. So, you know, dozens of examples of founders who have either been able to start their business and then make a success of it, or who took a fledgling business and then was able to turn it into something that is flourishing. So that has been some of the most proud moments of the work that I do now, or in my pro bono work. And then in my sort of corporate work, it’s seen big companies like global household names just be better employers, right? And to be able to re-humanize the workplace so that folks don’t feel deadened or exploited. And look, you know, I’m not naive. It’s not, I’m not saying that, you know, I’ve taken companies that are hundreds of thousands of people strong and now they’re sort of utopias of happiness and fulfillment. But I’m seeing pockets of change. And for me, it’s that sort of classic counterinsurgency strategy, right? You create an inkblot. You create a pocket of excellence, of innovation, of fulfillment, of success, and then that spreads through other parts of the organization. It’s like a positive metastasis, right? And so I think for me, seeing that in the organization, the big multinationals that I’ve worked with has been just as fulfilling because they can have massive impact, not just in the people that, you know, the lives of the people that they employ, but those of their customers, their clients. And for me, that’s the main thing is how are they serving their people and how are they serving their clients? because I am part of an improvement in that area, it’s been really, really rewarding.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s important. I don’t know what kind of we’re in the business of a non-private or church or synagogue or corporate enterprise. How do we serve people? That’s the measure for me. Thank you for referring to that. So people can find you and then go to, and I’m sorry, mispronounce your name, RuPaul.

Rupal Y. Patel:
RuPaul.

Hugh Ballou:
So we’re going to go Rupal. Sorry. I’m from the South. We have our own way. So I’m going to show your, your website here and ask you what I know for people who are listening on the podcast. It’s, https://www.entreprenora.co. And it’ll be in the link on the web page, and it’ll be present. So what will people find when they go to your website?

Rupal Y. Patel:
They’ll find a really, well, a mix of things. They’ll find different ways that they can work with me. So whether you’re an organization or an event organizer, you know, I do one-off just speaking engagements and things like that. But fundamentally, this is where, you know, we can talk about how we could work together. And also an opportunity to get to know more about me and what I stand for, my values, my work, et cetera, through some of the other podcasts that I’ve been on or some of my other media appearances. But I am a very at face value person. So everything you’ll see on the website is exactly who I am. And you’ll get a flavor for how we could work together to unlock whatever you need to unlock in your team or your organization.

Hugh Ballou:
There’s a contact button. And there’s actually a place where it says, talk to a human here. What a nice thing. What do you want to leave people with today? I think the main thing I want to leave anyone, everyone with is,

Rupal Y. Patel:
Do whatever you can about whatever it is that you care about. Because the problems of the world, the things that are important to us can feel so enormous, so overwhelming, so outside of our control or our reach. And I often use the analogy, don’t try to boil the ocean. You cannot boil the ocean, but you can boil one bucketful at a time. Do whatever you can with that bucket. Make a phone call, register to vote, reach out to a donor, help the person next door to you. You don’t have to change the world by yourself overnight, but you can do something. And then ideally, do it consistently. Do one thing that will have a positive impact every single day. Focus on the things that you can control. And then where relevant or where possible, work with others who are trying to do the same thing to make a positive change or a positive impact. But yeah, just do something. You are not helpless. You are not powerless. Do whatever you can to fix whatever it is that you can.

Hugh Ballou:
You heard it right here on the Nonprofit Exchange. Rupal Patel, thank you so much for being our guest today.

Rupal Y. Patel:
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.