You are a leader!
And Sydni Craig-Hart reminded her audience at B2B Forum that they, too, can lead—even if they’re not in charge.
Get inspired to exercise your leadership with this clip from Sydni’s B2B Forum 2024 session, or read the transcript below.
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How many of us have ever not taken action because we were scared to mess it up?
And all of you who didn’t raise your hands, I know you felt like that at one time or another.
It’s okay to be scared, because making a mistake is not something any of us want to do. But that’s a constraint that becomes an excuse.
So yes, have a reasonable expectation of risk, and assess that risk, but don’t let fear hold you back.
Be the one who’s bold and who is a leader.
Lead from where you sit.
Whatever role you happen to be in at the moment, you can start to implement all of these things that we’ve talked about.
Whether or not your team is doing it. Whether or not your boss signs off on it. Whether or not this is the culture at your company. Lead from where you sit, and don’t let fear hold you back.
And don’t get frustrated because things don’t move as fast as you’d like.
Man, the wheels in corporate America turn slow! We are not able to just adjust and pivot. I can pivot all day long. I own my own companies, so I can pivot tomorrow.
Most of you who work at a corporation, you can’t do that.
You’re trying to support change and implement change, and it takes time.
But you can still take consistent action toward the things that we’re talking about today.
So don’t get frustrated because it takes other people a little bit longer to catch up with you.
You were here and you got to hear this, and now you’re trying to implement it, and that’s a good thing. And they’re going to follow your example, even when you don’t think that they are.
So let’s talk about some ways to implement what we’ve discussed, right?
We’ve talked about why we fall into these traps and mindsets.
We’ve talked about what listening should really mean in a space of thinking about customer centricity and creating authentic connection.
I hope every person in this room has at least one person in their life that they’re authentically connected to, that you just feel like this person gets you and you get them. You always enjoy the conversation. You fill each other’s cup.
I hope each one of you has that, and when we talk about authentic connection, that’s what I’m talking about, that feeling that you feel when you think about that person that you have that connection with.
And are we actually creating that type of connection with the people that we have been charged to serve?
So one of the first things we can do to create that and to shift our own behavior and habits is to be intentional about expanding our network inside the company and outside the company.
Now, I was told there were 130 people registered for this session. I don’t know how many of y’all actually showed up.
Let’s assume it’s 100 of you in here.
You now have 99 other people that you can connect with and learn from and discuss this with.
This room just gave you a chance to expand your network by 99 people.
Also, internally, we can be proactive about that.
That leader that you’ve heard about? That you’re so impressed by their trajectory and their career path and that you’re kind of intimidated by?
Reach out to that person and ask them for 10 or 15 minutes, just because you want to expand and you want to support the work they’re doing.
You want to get to know them better.
Expand your network intentionally.
If you’ve heard that there’s some guy in another team or another department that is working on something interesting or cool that you feel like is customer-centric, go meet him.
Spend 10 minutes having coffee and get to know him.
Be proactive about expanding your network.
And this doesn’t apply just if you’re in a leadership position.
Now, if you are, you should be setting the example with your team and creating space for them to do this and you doing that. You should be expanding your network internally.
But let’s not, again, let’s not let this become an excuse.
Wherever we sit, we can certainly expand our network and do that with a proactive strategic spirit.
And it does require sometimes getting out of our comfort zone.
It can feel a little awkward.
Or you might feel self conscious about reaching out to someone. “Are they really going to want to talk to me?”
But yeah, they probably are.
Do you think you’re the only person in your company who feels awkward or self-conscious?
You’re not.
There’s someone else who would love to create authentic connection because if that happens inside of your company, that’s going to infuse into the work you’re doing and it’s going to just magnetically attract your customers.
So again, this is a space for you to lead by example.
Regularly allocate time to talk to your customers.
Now, I know this is hard. I am not trying to minimize how stressed you are with your time.
But I want you to think about the time that you’re spending on different activities and the time that you’re spending to improve your work habits.
Just like you’re here now. You’ve taken time out of your schedule to either fly here or travel here.
You’re sitting here for two days. You’re trying to stay off your computer so you cannot answer emails and actually pay attention so you can buy out some time because I’m sitting here looking at you right now.
So figure out how you can regularly allocate time to talk to your customers.
And you can try to build it into activities you’re already doing.
So one great example I have of that is the company called Stripe. Have any of y’all ever heard of Stripe? Yeah, we know Stripe.
So every year, Stripe has what they call Stripe sessions.
It’s really a gigantic all-hands, right?
It’s like they bring together all… everyone from the company comes to San Francisco, they have all their team meetings and they talk about roadmapping and all of their plans for the next year.
But what they also do, which is brilliant, is…
They invite in a bunch of their customers.
And I know this because I’ve been invited to attend, because Stripe is our merchant processor.
So they invited us to lunch. They sent us an Uber voucher to come in and join the festivities.
We were met by, which was really a handler, but that’s okay. We were met by a handler at the door who walked us around and introduced us to people.
They sat us down and asked us questions about our company and our goals and what we’re trying to do and how we do it, and just really actually got to know us.
And they listened. Not with the view of responding. They listened to understand.
And those are two very different things.
So if you think it’s just too hard to create time to talk to your customers, just invite them into the other things that you’re already doing.
You already have offsites. You already have all-hands meetings. You already have meetings with your ERGs, right?
There’s places where you’re gathering with your colleagues on a regular basis.
Can you bring in some customers so that all of you can get to know them better?
Published August 14, 2025
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