Doug Conant played division 1 collegiate tennis at Northwestern before serving in the corner office as President at Nabisco, President and CEO at the Campbell Soup Company, and Chairman at Avon Products.
Today, Doug serves as founder and CEO at ConantLeadership, a mission-driven community of leaders and learners who are championing leadership that works in the 21st century. To learn more, visit https://conantleadership.com.
In this episode of Down 40 Love, former Campbell Soup CEO Doug Conant shares leadership insights from his life story and bestselling book, “The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights.”
Doug’s Top Quotes
On Leadership
“Leadership is personal.”
“Your life story is your leadership story.”
On Northwestern
“Northwestern opened doors for me beyond the tennis world.”
On 100% Responsibility
“If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”
On Business
“What I loved about the business world is it was really just a community of people trying to get something done.”
On Introverts in the Marketplace (citing best-selling author Susan Cain)
“The most untapped resource in any company are the introverts because companies aren’t built to listen to them.”
On Self-Esteem
“Businesspeople are hustling for their worthiness every day.”
On Courage
“It’s hard to display the courage of your convictions if you don’t know what your convictions are.”
On Generosity
“It’s not when you’re done that you start being generous. It’s the whole journey leading with generosity and helping others every day.”
On Legacy
“I want to be known as someone who honored all the people that I was with on my journey.”
Doug Conant: A Fortune 100 CEO’s Leadership Playbook
1: Be totally accountable.
(In tennis), I had to be totally accountable for my performance. I couldn’t have somebody else doing it for me. If it’s to be, it’s up to me. You gotta own it on the court and you gotta own it before you get on the court. Total accountability is essential not only in tennis, but in life.
2: Work at your craft.
Practice may not make you perfect, but it is required to get good. Practice is hard work. If you want to excel at anything in life, you’ve got to work at it. I wanted to excel at tennis so I poured myself into it. I had to be a student of the sport, see how people were playing points, and learn the craft.
3: Embrace pressure as a privilege.
I went into the corporate world ultimately, and I saw a lot of people wilting under pressure. I did not because I had learned through tennis that it was up to me, that if I was prepared when I went on the court, I could handle anything that was thrown at me, even though I might lose.
I started to engage in my matches and then in my life with this mindset that I’m lucky to be here and I can handle this pressure better than the other guy so let’s go. Let’s mix it up now. I may lose, but I started looking at pressure as a privilege.
4: Build your courage muscle.
When you’re going into this chaotic world whether athletically or professionally, you have to be well anchored in who you are and how you want to show up. It takes courage, which Maya Angelou said is the mother skill. If you don’t have courage, you will wilt. You have to have courage.
A lot of people want to have courage, but they don’t know where to get it. It’s hard to display the courage of your convictions if you don’t know what your convictions are. And I think that’s the root of the problem. Most people don’t know where they stand on things. They’re just trying to get by and respond to this crazy world coming at them.
5: Define what you stand for.
Your life story is your leadership story. It’s where you will find the courage to perform. You’ve got to go deep into your world and figure out what you stand for. Then, you’ve got to bring it forward to the world at large.
We’re all listening to what everybody else wants us to do, but we’re not sure what we want to do. Businesspeople are hustling for their worthiness every day. What I learned in tennis was if I was really grounded when I went into a situation, I could show up there and do it effectively in the fullness of time.
6: Rise to the occasion.
Down 40 Love means “let’s get it on.” It’s time to rise to the occasion. Let’s kick it up a notch and let’s bring it on. You need that mindset when you’re in business. If you’re not ready to kick it up a notch and deal with the pressure of the moment, then you’re not going to have many more moments where you’ll have the opportunity.
7: Engage in the commonalities.
Wherever you are in the world, whatever organization you’re in, the organization has a set of values. There are the organization’s values, and then there are your values, your life story.
In every organization there’s this big cross-hatched area in the middle where your life story can overlap meaningfully. It’s not about seeing how I’m different from everybody else and trying to protect myself there. It’s more about engaging on the things that are the same.
