Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Marc Lesser of ZBA Associates Is Helping To Change Our World

Start by loving yourself: We tend to be judgmental and critical of ourselves in ways we would never be with others. We mistakenly come to believe that we need to be self-critical to be effective.

As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marc Lesser.

Marc Lesser is a CEO, executive coach and Zen teacher with more than 25 years of experience supporting leaders in reaching their full potential, both in business and in life. Prior to his business and coaching career, Lesser was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years and director of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen monastery in the western world. He also leads the weekly meditation group, Mill Valley Zen, which is focused on Zen teaching and practice. Lesser’s newest book, Finding Clarity: How Compassionate Accountability Builds Vibrant Relationships, Thriving Workplaces, and Meaningful Lives (April 11, 2023 / New World Library), is a groundbreaking path to professional communication and success that melds essential concepts previously considered incompatible: compassion and accountability.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood to working-class parents in central New Jersey. From the outside, I probably looked like your typical, sports-obsessed teenager. In high school, I fell in love with wrestling and became captain of my high school wrestling team. I also played baseball, bowling, and golf. I actually helped fund my tuition at Rutgers University with a caddy scholarship. Through sports, I learned a lot about success and failure, effort and effortlessness, and being part of a team.

That said, there was a lot of pain in our household. My father fought on the front lines of France and Germany in World War II, and he was later diagnosed as bipolar. His struggles dominated our lives, and my mother was often paralyzed by his condition. From a very early age, I could feel their stress deeply, and looking back now, my desire to help both of them, as well as to heal myself, set me on my path. All these experiences were the seeds that inspired me to pursue spiritual practice, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?

My freshman year at Rutgers, for an introduction to psychology class, I read Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow. It’s no exaggeration to say that book changed the course of my life.

When I read it, my first serious romantic relationship had ended. I was feeling sorry for myself and depressed, and I didn’t know where my life was headed or who I was. Maslow’s concept of “self-actualization” was my first genuine “aha” moment. Reading Maslow, I realized just how asleep and unaware I had become, as well as how much possibility existed not only inside of me but inside each of us. That vision fired my imagination. Maslow succinctly described what felt missing from my life — both how to cope with my pain and how to become the fullest, best person I could be — and he provided a path of growth and emotional development that I knew I needed to follow. I remember reading the book from cover to cover in one sitting, and then rereading it, and then, a year later, dropping out of college to pursue meditation and Zen practice in San Francisco.

My parents were not pleased.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

So many mistakes, I don’t know where to start! Interestingly enough, when I was twenty-eight, I became the head cook of a Zen monastery kitchen, at Tassajara in the mountains of central California, and this was the real start of my leadership training. This is when I learned that you can’t live on mindfulness alone. Our kitchen provided gourmet vegetarian meals every day to seventy-five overnight guests, who came with high expectations about the quality of the food. This itself represented a significant challenge, but another was that, at the time, the nearest grocery store was two hours away along a remote fifteen-mile dirt road that went over a five-thousand-foot pass.

My first weekend on the job we were cooking for a special donor event. These were people whose generosity supported the San Francisco Zen Center, and we couldn’t screw it up. Fairly quickly, I discovered I had not ordered enough food. I hadn’t correctly calculated the amount of eggs, milk, and vegetables we needed for our predesigned menus.

I and my team had to improvise and be creative. Fortunately, we had plenty of cabbage and potatoes, so we whipped up a special dish for our donors, one that wasn’t on the menu! I learned many lessons from this: the importance of fostering creativity in a team, of not panicking when things don’t go to plan, and of counting your eggs twice before it’s too late to get more.

Another important lesson I learned during my time as head cook was the importance of clear communication and accountability. We were all fellow Zen students at the monastery, in addition to our jobs, and I had a bad habit of avoiding conflict. I wanted to be a “nice” person, and this got me into trouble again and again. My leadership was at times confused and contradictory — which could be humorous, but was more often painful. Yet these are exactly the lessons that have stayed with me all these years, the ones I’ve tried to embody in my own companies, in my executive coaching work, and in my books.

Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?

This book is about helping people be better leaders in their own lives and workplaces. It is meant to help improve companies and workplace cultures through increasing clarity, accountability, and compassion. And it is intended to support people to utilize and leverage these lessons into our communities and beyond.

Each of the chapters in my book are essential lessons, as well as practices for making a social impact:

• Be curious not furious: Imagine, more curiosity and less reacting, in your relationships, in politics, in working toward solutions to critical problems.
• Drop the story: This is the practice of opening up to creative solutions and seeing from multiple perspectives.
• Listen for understanding: One of the most underrated skills is listening, to ourselves and to others, with an open mind.
• Mind the gaps: Bring attention to what is and what your vision is, without unnecessary frustration. Learn to see these gaps as opportunities.
• Cultivate a clear vision: Embrace vision as a skill and practice. Envision the communities and the world you most want.
• Turning breakdowns into breakthroughs: Learn from mistakes and failures, again and again.
• Don’t wait: Work with a sense of urgency.

These practices describe the essential elements of what I’m calling compassionate accountability. I firmly believe that clarity and compassionate accountability are essential elements and practices not only toward our well-being but toward the well-being and perhaps the survival of the human species.

Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?

Homer Simpson, The Buddha, and Alice In Wonderland walk Into a bar…This story from my book has received the most attention, though of course, it’s a story from my imagination. It begins with a problem that Homer so beautifully elucidates when he states loudly: Why does everything have to be so Hard?! Homer has a great way of expressing a feeling and a state of mind that I think we all share at times — a sense of overwhelm, fear, frustration, and powerlessness.

The Buddha provides more nuance and understanding to Homer’s dilemma. It turns out that being human is hard and fraught with pain and challenges. Buddhism and this book describe a path of awareness and compassion through facing and transforming challenges and pain into possibility and effective action.

And then there is Alice, who provides a simple answer to the question, how? — Be curious, really curious. Let go of who you think you are, let go of your fears and fixed ideas, and see the world through fresh eyes.

What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?

I had the great privilege and opportunity to develop and teach a mindful leadership training at Google headquarters. During these training sessions, I experienced the hunger that Google engineers had for what I’ve come to call compassionate accountability. That includes creating a safe space for sharing problems, time for stopping and reflecting, and fostering honest, caring conversations that help us clarify goals and work together more effectively. As I led the training with Google employees, I was amazed and gratified by how quickly people could open their hearts, connect with themselves and each other, and shift how they collaborate and lead.

My Zen training influenced much of my work at Google. Zen practice develops deep listening and fosters a profound sense of confidence and humility, shifting how we relate to ourselves and the world. I wasn’t always certain businesspeople would be interested in these skills nor how to apply them in a work context, but seeing how eager people were to transform their work and personal lives, I realized that this was what I wanted to do.

And I knew if these ideas and practices could be so impactful for Google engineers, this type of mindful leadership training would be well received by companies and corporations worldwide.

Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?

I’ve been the executive coach to many CEOs but one engagement stands out as a particularly successful and influential engagement. “Bill” was the CEO of a large and complex company. He was an excellent leader in many ways — super smart, aware, and well-respected for his leadership effectiveness. He also had a way of leading that made him often feared by his other company leaders and staff. His patterns and habits of leading contributed to a culture with a good deal of stress, a lack of warmth and vulnerability, that negatively impacted the organization’s collaboration and creativity.

This CEO engaged me to help him be more empathic, caring and compassionate. He wanted to shift his own leadership style as a way of shifting the culture of the organization. We worked together for several years. He grew and developed as a leader by cultivating his empathy and learning a variety of strategies for empowering others. Little by little, his relationships and the company culture shifted.

I remember a lunch meeting that I facilitated with his leadership team where I stood up next to Bill and said to his team “I know that Bill is really scary. However, he doesn’t want to be. He needs you to be more open and courageous. He values your insights and together wants to create a culture that is more compassionate and accountable.” This is an example of creating a safe space that opened doors for greater collaboration and creativity.

Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?

The book provides more than three tools, obviously, but these could be condensed into three essential practices.

1) Start by stopping: There is tremendous wisdom and effectiveness in taking time to notice and reflect on what we are feeling, how others are feeling, and how we take part in creating our world. We all fall into common traps: feeling defensive, wanting to hide discomfort and problems, judging and blaming others. Seeing clearly comes before any solution, and this can take the form of meditation practices, journal writing, and working with a therapist or coach.

2) Define gaps: Noticing the gap between what is and what we want or envision can be uncomfortable and empowering at the same time. By defining gaps, we shift our relationship to challenges and problems. This is part of seeing clearly, but to do this within teams, everyone needs to feel safe enough to raise problems, suggest solutions, and consider multiple perspectives.

3) Work toward alignment and solutions: After stopping and defining gaps comes the hard work of aligning with others and working together toward solutions. At this point, I like to ask two great questions. First, “What does success look like?” This helps define the shared vision everyone is working toward. Second, “How are we doing?” I call these the four most important words. This question focuses people on how they are working together, as well as on what they are trying to accomplish. This second question reminds me of a question the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggests asking in our most important relationships: “Please tell me, how can I love you better?”

Through these three simple practices, we can shift our underlying approach to working and living together.

How do you define “Leadership?” Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

I believe we are all leaders, even if we are not in a traditional leadership role. We all lead our own lives. We lead as parents and as children. We lead from our own political, economic, and ethnic perspectives. And no matter where our job lands on the company chart, we need leadership skills to work with others.

Leadership means so many different things to different people; what’s important shifts in various contexts. I was once pitching a program of mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and leadership to the head of learning of a large pharmaceutical company. This executive told me that he and the company were interested in mindfulness but not emotional intelligence and leadership. He said I should talk instead to his colleague, a female executive, down the hall. This woman said that she and the company were interested in emotional intelligence and leadership, but not mindfulness. I had to smile, and I suggested that they speak with each other.

This is an important initial question in my work. How do people define leadership, and in what ways might that definition be causing problems and undermining effectiveness and teamwork? Further, what do people understand about mindfulness and emotional intelligence? I think there is tremendous overlap between these three concepts and practices. As we develop self-awareness and improve communication skills, we put these into practice to solve problems, and that is leadership.

Self-awareness is a core emotional intelligence competency. It means having a deep understanding of our emotions, strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and needs. This is improved by developing mindfulness, which can be defined as the awareness that arises through paying attention nonjudgmentally. Leadership, meanwhile, could be defined as inspiring and supporting people to foster their own mindfulness and emotional intelligence, while creating an environment in which everyone aligns around and works effectively toward achieving a shared vision.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.

Life is short and life is long: I wished I had known this, especially during some of my most difficult business transitions. For example, after founding and being CEO of a publishing company for fifteen years, I was fired by my board. This should have not been a surprise, since I had told them that I was ready to transition, but I still didn’t expect them to let me go first. This was the company I had founded! Ouch. The end of my tenure came sooner than I expected, and I thought maybe I’d made a mistake. Little did I realize that leaving this company was a necessary step for taking on bigger, more interesting challenges for me. In other words, we sometimes don’t live with a sense of urgency, knowing that all things come to an end, while at the same time, we often fail to see the larger picture.

No one has the answers: I wish I knew this in my roles as CEO as well as being a father. These are both rich and important roles that can seem impossible at times. Whenever I felt like I was failing at either, I often thought to myself: Someone must have the answers! What I’ve learned over the years is that no one has the answers. This is disappointing, terrifying, and empowering. Of course, experienced, wise people can help us and teach us, but we must learn to trust ourselves; to trust, question, trust, and question, again and again.

Be confident and humble: I wish I had known that these different qualities are not mutually exclusive, and how essential it is to embody both, often at the same time — to be fully confident and fully humble.

One of my consulting clients is a socially responsible bank. I’m working with their leadership team on collaboration and effectiveness. A core goal is for these leaders to be more confident in themselves, to work toward clarity and decisiveness, and at the same time to be more humble, to listen more, to adopt an attitude of serving others.

Start by loving yourself: We tend to be judgmental and critical of ourselves in ways we would never be with others. We mistakenly come to believe that we need to be self-critical to be effective.

I wish someone had told me that loving ourselves does not make us less effective. In fact, the opposite is my experience. Whenever someone I’m working with is skeptical of this, I tell them, try it — for the next week, love yourself instead of being hard on yourself and see how that impacts your productivity and effectiveness. They are always surprised. I was.

You are always in transition: Another mistaken belief is that one day, once we perfect ourselves and achieve our goals, we will be “finished.” We can relax, maybe retire. But so long as we live, life never stops, and we are always in transition from one phase to the next — whether that’s leaving college, getting married, the death of our parents, starting companies, leaving companies, and so on. An important lesson I’ve learned is the art of noticing and appreciating endings. When we get married, our life as a single person ends. This is worth noticing and grieving, even as we enter a new, exciting phase of being a married person. When my father and mother died, years apart, these were powerful endings. Even many years later, I am still feeling and learning from these endings.

Transitions — not knowing what will happen when one thing ends and something new begins — just comes with the territory of being human.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote?” Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Wendell Berry said, “Be joyful, though you’ve considered all the facts.” I’ve adopted this quote as my mantra for how I want to approach my life and the work I do with leaders and organizations.

Considering all the facts means facing yourself and the world with brutal clarity and honesty. No sugar coating. No shying away from problems, pain, and challenges. This isn’t easy, considering the state of the world. Then, having seen the facts, live with gratitude and appreciation, keep working toward change, and be joyful.

Here is a second, bonus quote that I also live by. It is a few lines from the poem “The Word” by Tony Hoagland:

Do you remember,

that time and light are kinds of love,

and love is no less practical

than a coffee grinder,

or a safe spare tire…

These lines of poetry remind me to come back to love as the most basic and powerful force in the world.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?

Wow, so many people. This is in part why I began a podcast called Zen Bones. As the podcast host, I have the opportunity to have conversations with people I respect and admire. Some of the people I’ve interviewed so far include Jon Kabat Zinn, Parker Palmer, Joan Halifax, Jane Hirshfield, and many others.

If I had to pick one person for breakfast, though, I’d choose the Dalai Lama. He is a most amazing person. He has experienced tremendous pain, having been displaced from his homeland, yet he embodies tremendous inspiration, wisdom, and possibility. Plus, he likes to laugh a lot!

This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!