An Award for Leadership Champions:

As part of our mission to champion leadership that works in the 21st century, this year we launched a recognition program aimed at celebrating leaders who embody the principles of leadership that works. The Champion of Leadership That Works Award, presented quarterly, is one way to say “thank you” to people who are visibly committed to empowering others to serve with greater impact. All potential recipients of the award are submitted to us exclusively through nominations from our community. Nominators can recommend leaders who excel in any one (or all) of the 7 practice areas of the ConantLeadership Flywheel — and they also have the opportunity to share with us how their champion has touched their lives or shaped an organization or community.

Dorie Clark (Photo by Marilyn Humphries)

Our First Winner:

While we had many spectacular nominees to choose from for our inaugural award, we arrived at an extraordinary and highly-deserving winner of our first ever Champion of Leadership That Works Award: Dorie Clark. Congratulations to this accomplished business and marketing expert, consultant, professional speaker, professor, leader, and journalist! Dorie was nominated by Kare Anderson as a shining example of the 6th pillar in the ConantLeadership Flywheel, “Produce Extraordinary Results.” Kare, in her nomination, referred to Dorie as one of the most “mutuality-minded” leaders she’s ever encountered. After a thorough audit of Dorie’s work and principles, we enthusiastically agree and find that her gifts for connectivity and relationship-building are inspiring and exemplary — and undoubtedly lead to “extraordinary results.”

The Top 3 Things That Make Dorie a Champion:

Contribution. In her career as a consultant, professor, journalist, and keynote speaker, Dorie has amassed an impressive amount of expertise about marketing, branding, leadership, business, productivity, and communications. She shares that expertise freely and with great clarity, contributing her insights to a large range of publications including Harvard Business Review, TIME, Entrepreneur and many more. She has also authored two books aimed at empowering people to achieve breakthrough in their lives and careers, Stand Out, and Reinventing You. Overall, the breadth of her contribution to the leadership conversation is exceptional.

Altruistic. One of the biggest contributing factors to our decision to honor Dorie as our first ever champion is that at the heart of all her success and expertise is an abundant mindset that is selflessly hyper-focused on helping others succeed and thrive and finding ways to build mutual value between contacts. In her own words, her passion is,”helping others take control of their professional lives and make an impact on the world.” In the words of her nominator, Kare Anderson, “her strategic specificity is a strong, authentic, and interesting connective leadership talent.”

Integrity. At ConantLeadership, we believe the best leaders do what they say. And do it well. Dorie’s actions are consistently aligned with her words. She doesn’t just preach the power of building and strengthening relationships, and empowering other professionals — she lives it. As her nominator wrote to us, “Dorie embodies what she writes and speaks about — concrete ways to identify your unique method to Stand Out and one of the ways she stands out is by offering specific, actionable insights from others . . .”

I’m passionate about helping others take control of their professional lives and make an impact on the world. – Dorie Clark

Q&A with Dorie:

True to her admirable spirit of contribution, our champion was happy to impart some wisdom that can help other leaders on their journey.

Q: What are your top 1-3 tips you would give to a leader who is looking to deliver results in a quality way?

Dorie: The key to a leader’s success is self-awareness. It’s hard for most of us to really know how we’re perceived by others, because we’re our own baseline of ‘normal.’ That means we may not be fully capitalizing on our strengths, because we assume that other people are wired the exact same way. 

Every leader needs to assemble a trusted group of advisors around him/her – people who can provide us with honest feedback and serve as a mirror to help us understand what we’re good at and where we can improve. By carefully selecting this group, we ensure that we’re only listening to people we respect, and whose motives in sharing advice with us are unimpeachable. 

The key to a leader’s success is self-awareness.

Q: Is there a lesson you learned from a crucible moment in your career, or from overcoming adversity, that might help 21st century leaders?

Dorie: I was laid off from my first job when I was 22 years old. I had just started my career as a newspaper reporter, and expected that I’d probably do that my entire life. But a year into it, the newspaper industry started to crumble, and I was one of the first casualties. I had to reinvent myself and learn to adapt. 21st century leaders need to understand that no job, or company, or industry, is sacrosanct these days. The best thing we can do for our careers is to adopt a mindset of learning and growth, and recognize that reinvention is a muscle we need to flex. The more prepared we are to be nimble, the less ‘disrupted’ we’ll find ourselves when change does come.

I had to reinvent myself and learn to adapt.

About Dorie Clark:

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, TIME, Entrepreneur, and the World Economic Forum blog. Recognized as a “branding expert” by the Associated Press, Fortune, and Inc. magazine, she is the author of Reinventing You (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), which has been translated into Russian, Chinese, Arabic, French, Polish, and Thai. Her most recent book, Stand Out, was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine.

Clark consults and speaks for a diverse range of clients, including Google, the World Bank, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Yale University, the Mount Sinai Medical Center, and the National Park Service. Learn more about Dorie’s professional bio here, read her blog here or send her a word of congratulations for winning this award on Twitter here and on Facebook here.

Know somebody amazing who deserves recognition? Nominate them as a Champion of Leadership That Works!