82 REAL-LEADERS.COM / SUMMER 2022 MENTAL HEALTH How have relationships influenced your professional development and leadership style? Cook: It would be impossible for me to overstate how critical and valuable relationships have been to the trajectory of my career. The relationships I have been privileged to share with phenomenal, wellrespected humans yielded opportunities and new relationships that could never be achieved from a marketing budget alone. It can sound obnoxious for someone to say, “They owe me,” but there are people who I owe and I know precisely who they are — and I am extremely grateful for them. In my family, my parents used to say, “It’s not who you know; it’s who knows you.” Throughout my career, but especially over the past 11 years, my professional development has been enriched and supported because people said my name in rooms that I was not in, which provided me with the opportunity to prove them right to people who had no idea who I was in the beginning. Yes, I will be exceptional when called upon to produce, but you have to get called upon first. Relationships provided those opportunities. I consider it a responsibility and a privilege to pay that forward. In terms of leadership style, I have crafted much of my leadership framework from anecdotal experiences of what I should be doing from a position of power (which of course is relative), as well as what not to do. Relationships aid in that framework because ideally, your relationships are across spectrums (socioeconomic, gender, religious, race, age, etc.) and they provide an anecdotal basis. The world is changing, and communities are changing. What was acceptable from leadership historically is often out of favor now and could lead to career destruction. The ability to read the tea leaves proactively stems from the dialogue and conversations had with those in my intersectional community. The saying, “a calm sea fails to yield a skillful sailor” is true. The value in relationships is having community and dialogue with the people who will offer the wins and the losses and how to guide teams through those turbulent times without ego and with the ability to navigate through fear. The level of trust required for those candid and consequential conversations are produced from relationships that have also been developed by trust. Do you have any tips for maintaining and building strong relationships? Cook: When I graduated high school, a friend gave me a package with a note that read, “Make new friends and keep the old; one pair is silver, one pair is gold” along with two pairs of hoop earrings — one By Susan McPherson Candice S. Cook is the founder andmanagingmember of the Cook LawGroup and an awardwinning leader at the intersection of business, legal, and strategy. She shares what it takes to lead through turbulent times and how letting go of fear canmake way for themost meaningful relationships that last a lifetime. STRONG RELATIONSHIPS WILL DISSOLVE YOUR FEAR OF LEADERSHIP
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