Ep 239: Rick Brim - In 20

Edited highlights of our full conversation.

What do you know about who you want to be?

Rick Brim is the Global Chief Creative Officer at adam&eveDDB.

Rick was on the podcast four and half years ago in early 2019. I called that episode, “The ‘I Don’t Know’ Leader”, to highlight Rick’s point that it’s okay for leaders not to know the answer every time.

I suspect, if you asked him today, he’d feel the same way. As would I. Leaders are not supposed to have all the answers.

But Rick has been changed by the last four years.

The leadership journey is personal.

And complicated, because it involves other people.

And sometimes it’s overwhelming, because all the gaps in your leadership are filled with emotion. And a lot of that is the emotion that comes in the middle-of-the-night darkness that keeps us all awake.

The last four years have brought most of us a hosepipe full of emotions. And every day the news adds more angst and anxiety and uncertainty to that drink.

For some people, the answer is to meet that with a determination to focus on the task in front of them. To get back to work and to deliver results, come what may. That comes, inevitably and eventually, with a heavy price - for them and the people around them.

But for others, the last four years and the maelstrom we live in today have given them the chance to learn about themselves. What matters and what else they are capable of.

They have discovered, to use Rick’s words, a clearer perspective of the person they want to be.

They know that.

And that, I promise you from the bottom of my heart, is the beginning of everything.

What do you know about who you want to be?

What questions are you asking of yourself and about yourself?