- Welcome to C-Suite Conversations, the FranklinCovey podcast where we talk with top executives about how they lead, build great cultures and drive meaningful results. I'm your host, Patrick Leddin, and today I'm joined by Sebastien Page, the head of Global Multi-asset and Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price and the author of Psychology of Leadership.
While Sebastien is well known in the investment world, we invited him today to the podcast because we wanna hear about what he's learned when it comes to leadership, culture, decision making, resilience, setting goals, and so much more. Sebastien has spent decades leading in a demanding, fast paced environment and brings a thoughtful perspective on how to lead with clarity and purpose. Sebastien, welcome to the podcast. - Patrick, I am absolutely psyched about doing this with you today.
- I, I, I love it. I'm absolutely psyched too. Now I'm ready to go. Maybe - I, I'm like, I, I've been looking forward to this, you know, I do a lot of live national TV on financial markets and this is much more fun to me. We get time to talk, you know, we get a half hour and I've just been looking forward to this - And you never get intros that good. Right?
- Thank you. You set me up. You set me up perfectly - Well, hey man, let's, you and I had a chance to chat before we got started, which is a nice thing too that you don't get to do on networks, but we had a chance to talk a little bit and then soon as we started I was like, okay, we need to get this in recording 'cause you're saying it's some great stuff people are gonna appreciate. But you told me a little bit about your career. I've had a chance to look it up.
I know you're known in the investment field really well, also in the leadership world as well. But some people listening depending on where they're at in their career journey, what they've heard so far may not know that much about Sebastian Page. So do them the honor, if you will, tell them a little bit about your career journey and maybe some of the chapters that you've lived out along the way.
- So, Patrick, 25 years in the rough and tumble world of money management and culminating in a chief investment officer position at t Rowe Price and in a deep interest in the practice and also the science behind leadership and psychology. So that's what has led me is this whole experience leading in money management has led me to write a book, the Psychology of Leadership. So here I am, Patrick. Sometimes when people introduce themselves, they like to use fun facts about them.
I can actually push this a bit further for you and your audience. I'm gonna give you three facts. One's not gonna be true. - Oh boy. Here we go. - Try it. So first of all, I will say I grew up on a farm. Second, I will say as a teenager I had orange hair and I was a skateboarder. And third, I will say that I lived, I've actually lived for two years in Japan. So two of them are true, one is false. - You did not grow up on a farm. - I actually did. I'm glad. Dang. I wear suits.
I, I, no one believes when I say I grew up on a farm, I wear suits. And in the, in the, in my book, I talk about how I'm very much useless. I can't change a light bulb in my house. So people don't pick me as someone who grew up on a farm, but I did. - Okay. So tell, tell me the rest of the story. Those other two, - Well, the Japan one is false. I - Just, oh, see, I thought it was, I thought that maybe that one was true.
'cause I know a lot of people who work in the money management world have lived in Japan. Yeah. At least the people, some people that I know. Okay. IIII was thinking the orange hair. I thought that was true. So at least, - Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. So I grew, so here we are. That's so - You, so you're the, you're the orange haired skateboarding farmer who never lived in Japan. Okay, I gotcha. That's your new intro. That's your new intro next time.
- Got it. - So let me, lemme, I, I'm curious, as you were saying that like you, it sounded to me, and you might be wrong, but you went into the money management world and then you found a passion for leadership when you were there. Or was it the other way around? Or kind of break those two apart? For me, - I started managing teams early and what's interesting about the money management business is that you have situations where you need to be a player and a coach.
And that is a kind of leadership that is more prominent nowadays. Leaders are expected to roll up their sleeves and participate in the work and contribute with the team. So over the years I've developed these skills in practice and one day, Patrick, it's recently I was just stressed, very stressed and I was stressing about stressing, which is not good. I was adding another layer of stress and I decided to talk to a sports psychologist.
I found one here in Maryland and he's a very interesting person. His name is Dr. Daniel Ziman. And he has 40 national titles in the sport of handball. This is like squash, but you whack the ball with your hands. - I know handball because one time we have, we have some really good friends in Denmark and one time I was in Denmark when the Olympics were being played and they were all the rage with handball. And I was like, I don't even know what that is.
But then I picked it up so you could tell the audience, but I am, I am a handball aficionado these days. - Interesting, interesting. So I'm not, but he ha happens to have 44 0 national medals. - Wow, that's amazing. So - He's a PhD sports psychologist who has the mental game of an athlete as well. And we started talking and he told me a story about his best match ever. And he remembered everything about the story. Hmm. It was a decade prior, but he remembered every point.
He remembered where the ball was at some point in the story, he talks about how he was on his knees and made an extreme shot to win the point. And then Patrick is a total let down because he goes, then I lost next two points and I go, wait, you lost that match and that was your best match ever. And that's when we got into the mindset of sports psychology and how it's not about winning at all, it's all about losing and what you learn from your losses.
And in money management you can't get everything right. And in leadership you can't get everything right. And this was his way of introducing me to the science of sports psychology. And it kicked off Patrick a whole project for me of researching with him, with his help, their research in the field of positive psychology and sports psychology. And that's what culminated in the book The Psychology of Leadership. So that in a nutshell is how I got to this.
It took a few years to write the book about about two years just to write it. 'cause I do have a full-time day job. So it took, I did just a little bit at a time consistently. - You know, you mentioned the player coach thing that I jotted that down as you were saying that 'cause there are so many people, I'm sure there's people nodding their head right now as they're listing go, yeah, I'm the player coach. And, and that is a tough gig to pull off.
I mean, you think about it, you mentioned sports, you know, in sports, when I think about a player coach in the US at least baseball, you would sometimes see that come out. It doesn't really go that well because it's, it's hard to do both, yet we ask people to do it all the time. I mean, what would you say to people who are in those roles right now? They're like, yeah, I'm, I'm a player but I'm also leading the team.
And sometimes that happens because I got, I got tapped and got promoted, but there was nobody to backfill me. Sometimes they're like, well you have so much expertise, we need you to keep doing this. Sometimes it's just there's not enough bandwidth to handle it. I mean, what have you, what did you learn about that? What, what can you tell folks who are in that situation? - It's a huge problem for leadership in all industries across organizations.
We pick high performers in role and we go, you're really good at what you do now. You're going to manage a team and become a leader. And this transition from player to coach is very difficult for many leaders and is not discussed enough and supported enough in common leadership training seminars. It is very much important in money management because it speaks to how you spend your time. Are you gonna still manage a portfolio but then manage a team?
But in a lot of industries where there's expertise required in white collar jobs or in blue collar jobs, we take high performers in role and we promote them. And the skills are not the same. They're not the same as an individual contributor versus as a leader, as a leader, it really is no longer about you. It's about the team and how you empower the team to perform at their best. Very different mindset. - You know, we do a lot at Frank Coy with developing leaders.
And one thing that jumped stood out to me years ago, I remember reading, and you probably have seen some stat like this listeners may have as well, but they may be experiencing it, that the average agent of study said that people are 30 years old when they get their first formal leadership position in work. Some might be younger, some might be older, but 30 years old. But their first formal training about how to be a leader comes about 12 years later on average, about 42.
Now obviously that accounts for some people who just never get any training, but that's, you know, that's a pretty big gap, right? A 12 year gap where I'm trying to figure this thing out in the throes of it. And like you said, it's different skills, it's different, it's a different mindset to do this. It is a tough job. I mean, a lot of times you get the job thinking, well I get, I'm gonna get paid a little bit more money. That sounds great, or a better title or a spot in the parking lot.
But none of those things are gonna get you through some of the tough conversations. You have to have some of the, the level of care and, and expectations you need to have just because of the, you have to want it. - And, and a lot of it is the transition from iq, your own intellectual merit, your own expertise to eq, emotional intelligence, however you define it. And that transition is not easy for everybody.
And it took me years to understand that one of the superpowers in leadership is to stop talking and start listening. And even Patrick, in recent years during COVID had a sticker on my computer screen that said, talk less, listen more. So as part of a transition from a high performing individual contributor, you might be outstanding at expressing your views and expertise as a leader. You're now asked or expected to be a listener. Yeah. It's greatly underappreciated how important that is.
- Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, it's so true. Right? And the, and the, the idea that some things that you have done in the past as an individual contributor, you can knock those things out really quickly. But then to realize my job is not to do all these things. My job is to, like you said, listen to them, help them, enable them to, to do these things and build their own skill sets. And sometimes that's hard to do because you figure like it's just faster for me to do it or it's just whatever.
And that's not your job anymore. - And build your own personal resilience. Because I was listening to one of your prior podcasts, you were talking with an ex-military Keith Wk and you know, he was talking about how everybody looks at the leader and takes their cues. - He - Had this story where he put monograms on his shirt with his initials and then six months later realized his entire team had their own monogram on their shirt.
It was his, his interesting example I thought on your podcast of how everybody's looking at you as the leader. So as a new leader newly promoted from individual contributor, you might not immediately get that. And if you let your emotions go in an unconstrained way, you're underestimating the impact that might have on the team. - So let me ask you this, you mentioned sports, you talked a little bit about yourself with kind of stress and stressed about being stressed.
And we talked about people maybe as they're listening to us right now going, gosh, I'm in that role where I've gone from individual contributor to leader, or I'm trying to develop other leaders. Everything we just talked about between sports and your own experience and people in these roles, there's lots of stress that can come with these things. I, I'd love if you could share a little bit about like how do I build resilience in these times of stress?
- That was the kickoff of my exploration in the whole field of sports and positive psychology. It was, how do I handle this? And the number one realization, which I talk about in the psychology of leadership in the book itself is, yes, stress is bad, Patrick, we know it's bad. And if you're too stressed, chronically stressed, your cortisol levels are through the roof, you're not gonna be healthy.
It'll kill you. However, the idea that we should all go through life at a stress level of zero is incredibly misguided. First of all because that's not possible. And you think top athletes, top performing athletes don't get stressed. The sports psychologist Dr. Daniel Ziman told me they're all very neurotic and very anxious about their performance. So optimal performance does not happen at a stress level of zero.
There's something in sports psychology and popular psychology that's called a yurts dotson's curve, let's just call it your stress curve, which shows that as your stress level increases from zero, which is like total boredom, right, your performance increases up to a point. There's an optimal point of what sports psychologists would prefer to call activation instead of stress. They, they like to reframe it.
There's a certain stress level where your performance will be optimal and after that it's too much stress. You choke, you don't perform well and it's unhealthy. But to me that was an amazing revelation. And there's a lot around these stress curves where you can find a way to maximize your performance.
One interesting thing about those stress curves, whether you're leading people and setting goals and trying to figure out the level of pressure you want to put on the organization or whether it's your own self is different tasks will command a different optimal stress level. So take power lifting, I can stress you out and there's about no level of adrenaline that is gonna impede your performance.
Your peak performance at power lifting or sprinting a hundred yards is gonna occur at a very high activation or stress level. However, archery or taking a math test, it's not zero, but you're gonna perform optimally at a lower stress level. So different tasks require different optimal stress levels. And I thought that was fascinating. And then you start looking at these stress curves everywhere, right? Yeah. If you need a simple task, repetitive, you can crank up the pressure.
If you need to do something like research and development, I'm not gonna go to my r and d team and say, scream at them and say innovate and I need five innovation by tomorrow. They need to be activated and and anxious and motivated. But the optimal performance is gonna happen at a much calmer level. I mean, put it this way, Patrick, like do you want your surgeon who's about to operate on you to be at a stress level of zero really like, and kind of relax and Yeah, that's fine.
- Yeah. I, I would feel like they almost realize that the stakes, there's no stakes in this game type of thing. If I'm at a zero level, right, I want them to, I mean, I don't care if they have classical music playing in the background, that could be great. But on the other hand, I kind of wanna be, I don't want 'em to be on their game, - Right? And so to me, just realizing that optimal performance does not occur at a stress level of zero for anybody was really important.
And you start embracing stress. Tim Ferriss, who's a great author influencer podcaster, said, embracing stress is a superpower. And so that's why I have two or three chapters on this in the psychology of leadership. 'cause I think it's super important. And one more thing about this, Patrick, is we have to recognize that we all have different stress curves. So some people will reach optimal performance at a lower stress level.
Others will need to be more stress, more activated to perform optimally. I have the example in terms of stress resilience of Neil Armstrong in my book. And the first man moon landing story is well known. It kind of changed the course of history, But what there's a tidbit that people don't know there. So we all know it went wrong. As the lunar module was coming down, the lunar module lost communication, the computer went down, they ran outta fuel and they veered off course.
And Armstrong took manual control of the module and landed it in the wrong place, but landed it. And then everyone knows what happens as he came and walked on the moon and said, it's one small step for a man, but or giant leap for humanity. What most people don't know, which I found researching the, the topic of stress and resilience is it was hooked to heart rate monitor. And for the majority of that mission, with the exception of the absolute landing moment, his heart rate.
Can you guess Patrick, his heart rate? It was 75. - I was gonna say it's not gonna be off the charts, that's for sure. - 75, which for most people is, is close to a resting level. So Neil Armstrong had a different stress curve than you and me. And he was resilient to stress because he had a lot of repetition. He was a, he was flying fighter, jet fighter jets in the war. So he had a lot of high pressure repetition where he was building resilience and skills to handle the stress.
So there are ways you can change your stress curve and be more like Neil Armstrong. But the point is, different tasks command different stress curves and different people have different stress - Curves. So, so lemme ask you this, Sebastian, from a practical standpoint, when you're applying the, the, the stress curve and the idea that, you know, that kind of the bar is different from every one of the curve is different from everybody based upon their own experiences and what the task is at hand.
You mentioned setting goals. So I'm just trying to think like, how do you as a leader, or how would a listener as a leader, whether it's leading themselves and setting goals even for their own performance or their own, you know, health goals or whatever they might be, or leading or setting goals with your team members at work. How do you kind of set goals that encourage and push and let people stretch a bit, but also recognize kind of where, where their curve is at?
How do I, I just love your thoughts on goal setting in regards to that. - So there's a lot around goal setting where you want to make the goal difficult enough and you want the organization to have the skills to match the challenge, but not impossible. And you don't wanna make it too easy either. 'cause then, you know, everyone's kind of bored and there's no real motivation, there's not enough stress in the system. Doesn't that sound like the famous theory of flow?
Famous theory of flow also from the broad field of positive psychology says that people are most engaged when they're in flow, when they lose track of time and they're fully into what they're doing. So right now we're having a conversation. It's one way to get in flow. We're kind of both losing track of time and at least in my case, I wish it could go longer. Like I'm fully engaged in what we're doing because I think I have the skills to match the challenge of having that conversation.
It's not impossible, too hard. You're not asking me absolutely impossible questions. And it's not too easy when there's no motivation to kind of perform. So that's part of goal setting. Now stepping back on goals, Patrick, the, it is the job of the leader. I, I really want to remind everybody, a listeners, like what is the job of a leader? You are setting the goals. 'cause if you're not setting the goals, who will?
So it is so important to leadership for you to think about which goals you're setting and why. And in the psychology of leadership, I argue for thinking about long-term goals in the context of positive psychology and just we all, we all have the bias to think too short terms. And, and when we, we, we think short term we can develop what I call goal induced blindness.
But look, you know, if, if you ask millennials the survey data, what their goals are, 80% of them want to become rich, which is fine. I mean, it's measurable, it's go ahead and nothing against that. But 80% want to become rich, 50% want to become famous. If you think a long-term perspective and you read about positive psychology, those aren't the goals that are gonna maximize your ability to thrive in the long run. - That's really interesting.
How do you, how do you marry, you said like the leaders set the goals, but there's, I I often find in leadership that a lot of times it's, it's about tension. It's between, you know, almost one thought and another 1 1, 1 thing and another thing. And there's the, the tension sometimes between the leader setting the goals, but then having the voice of the, the team members in the goals.
'cause sometimes that they can see things the leader can't say or they can actually stretch further than the leader thinks they can stretch. There's also the tension between what the business needs and what the team can actually produce. I mean, how do you kind of thread those things when you think through setting goals? - Yeah, that's a good point, right?
I, I pontificate about how it's a goal, it's the job of the leader to set the goals, especially the long-term goals and the mission of the organization. I encourage leaders to stretch the time horizon. There's also something to be said for contributors to embrace their goals by setting them themselves. And so if you set it up at the top with broad long-term goals for your organization, and then yes, absolutely Patrick encourage people to then volunteer their goals.
But then it's a negotiation because as you said, you know, it has to match the broader mission. But the clearer you are about the long-term mission, the easier it becomes for people to set their own goals. The more people set their own goals, really the research shows the better they perform, they buy into them. 'cause it's, it's kind of, they have ownership of them. - Yeah, it's like psych, it's a psychological ownership. I mean, they own this thing.
It's just, we act different when we're owners than when we're renters. Yeah. We just do the, what I think you really, you made a lot of great points, but one point you were just saying there, I thought it was really important to kind of foot stop on there, is the idea that, you know, you set, you set that this is the peak we're gonna climb or the mountain, we're gonna go, you know, whatever, whatever analogy you wanna use.
This is the vision of where we're going directionally and where we're gonna be, you know, two years, three years, five years as we grow up. But then bringing the voice of the team members and saying, okay, what are the incremental kind of way points that we're gonna need to achieve along the way? And one part of the leader is to get them involved in them to offer up their best thinking on it. But not just blindly accept it. Because, you know, sometimes it may not be exactly aligned.
That's a great goal, but it's not gonna get us up to the top of that peak or that's an interesting goal. But gosh, we'd have to get about 400 of those accomplished before we ever got to the top of this mountain. So kind of regulating alignment and is and are they bringing enough to the party? - Yeah, exactly. And it's really important that there's clarity in what you as the leader want the organization to achieve. With clarity, everything comes, comes after.
So if I think about my business, there's great clarity that what we do, our mission is to make money for our clients so that they get better financial lives, better retirements. They can pay bills, they can take their kids to college. Like we're not solving cancer or world hunger, but in money management we go to work every day to make money for our clients. And that is very clear in the mission.
So then from there, if you have discussions about individual goals or tough decisions, it has to come back to what are we doing for the client and is this best for the client? Super important to have clarity at the top level. - That does make sense. I wanna, as we're getting close to the end here, I wanna circle back around a little bit more about your book. So it came out in April, so congratulations on that. You know, folks pick up a copy or in triplicate for your friends.
When, when you think about, you mentioned what's in a few of the chapters when you think about it, the overarching book itself, oftentimes when you're writing a book, at least for me, I'm always, I oftentimes think like, who's gonna be reading this? It'll be in their hand. What do they want? You know, what do you want the readers to get walk away from that book with? - So I'll tell you a story that's in the book to illustrate my answer. In 2012, Felix Bogart, does that name ring a bell?
- It does. I don't know why though. - So it kind of got lost in history. But in 2012, Felix Bogart got in a small capsule attached to a giant helium balloon. He got to space, went up 24 miles to space, and then he did something amazing. He opened the latch and skydived, - Was that like a Red Bull thing? - It was a Red Bull thing, - Yeah. Okay, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. - So he fell for 10 minutes and four minutes of which he was in free fall. And he broke the sound barrier.
First human being to break the sound barrier. What most people don't know about the story is that every step of the way in training in the day of Felix Bogart was trained and coached by a sports psychologist. And the reason why I use that story is to say that psychology we all know is super important to treat clinical issues, anxiety and depression. It's also remarkably powerful and important to achieve high performance. And even in the Baumgartner case, ultra high performance.
And if you go on Google Scholar and you look at research, about half of the papers coming out in psychology are not clinic, are not about clinical psychology. They're on the positive side. They're about how you thrive, how you perform, how you handle your stress. And the whole point of the book is that the positive psychology aspect is completely underutilized in business and in leadership. So that's what I want to bring to everybody with the book.
There's all this research I dug into, we just scratch the surface with the uur Dotson curves, the stress curves, there's so much more. There are models for positive psychology. It's, you know, and, and I tried to make the book a really easy read. The reviews so far are really, really positive. I'm super happy about that. It's an easy read. There's research as much of stories and it's also a bit personal. So - There you go.
I love that. I love that because the, you know, the peer review journal articles can be a little bit hard to digest sometimes. So if you can take it and put it in ways that people get and put 'em in stories, that's always helpful as well.
You know, as we wrap up the conversation now, speaking of stories, I'd, I'd love one more thought from, from you in regards to the people listening, regardless of what, what their story is, regardless of where they are in their career path, whether they're just getting going or they're, they've been out of the workforce, they're coming back in or they're midway up, or maybe they're in the C-suite wherever they are, what have, what would you say in general is a good piece
of advice that has served you well and others might benefit from it as well? - I'm going to give you the one that I wish I'd given myself, I'd known myself in the early decade of my career. It's counterintuitive. It's not about business. It applies to everybody. And it's the following, take good care of yourself. And what I mean by that is simple, good diet or decent diet. It's hard, it's hard for everybody enough sleep and exercise. And what's underappreciated is you need to do all three.
You, you know, Patrick, if you tell me I'm gonna eat really well, but I'm gonna sleep three hours a day and I'm not gonna exercise, you're not, you can't take one of those three away. They - Will. Yeah. It's like one of those three legged stools, right? You pull one leg off, falls over. - Because look, if, if you sleep well, you have the energy to exercise. And by the way, if you sleep well, you're hunger. Hormones are kept in check. And it's easier to eat a good diet.
If you eat a good diet, it's, you get more strength to exercise. If you exercise, you sleep better. It's a complete virtuous circle. I'm not telling everybody, you all gotta be super athletes and kind of not have fun at all. But, but what I'm saying is it's so underestimated for business people.
- Yeah. And, and, and sometimes don't you find sometimes it's worn as like a bad badge of honor when it's like, oh, I did, I only sleep four hours a night, or I only, you know, with these type of things, it's like, eh, it's coming at a toll. - Yeah. And it's just, we all think about our jobs and achieving and making money and, and going up the ladder and leading people well and making a contribution. None of that, none of that is gonna occur at an optimal level.
If you don't take care of yourself first. Everything else falls from that. So it's kind of maybe not the advice your listeners expected, but I actually think it's the basis for everything else. - No, I think it's advice that all of us need to hear, myself included, as well as the listeners, you know, taking care of ourselves. It's, it's also the idea that as a leader, you know, you can't pour into others if you're not pouring into yourself, right?
If you have, if you're an empty vessel, you're not gonna be a very good leader. So the idea of taking care of yourself is so critical. Well, Sebastian, thanks so much for joining us today and for sharing your insights. It's been great to have a c-suite conversation with you. - Thank you. - Alright, folks, that's all we have for today's episode.
Thanks so much to Sebastian for your insights on, on stress and how to be resilient and how to set goals, and ultimately how to take good care of ourselves as a leader. Because ultimately taking good care of ourselves is the best way we can take care of those that we lead. As for all of you listening today, I hope that you take away a couple insights from the conversation and just look to apply them in your own work and your own life. I'm Dr. Patrick Ledon.
Thanks so much for listening to C-Suite conversations now. Go make it a great day.