The Joy of Leadership

Chapter 6Absorption: Revealing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary through Mindful Engagement

“Einstein didn't invent the theory of relativity while he was multitasking at the Swiss patent office.”

—David Meyer, cognitive psychologist, University of Michigan¹

Kevin Glynn has always enjoyed being just slightly stressed out. In 2010, as a university student of law and business, Kevin traveled to New York City for an internship with the financial firm Raymond James. “I liked the hustle and bustle of the New York Stock Exchange and the Mercantile Exchange,” he said. “It's a high‐paced, aggressive, competitive industry. I was drawn to that.”

After returning to his studies Kevin began working for the multinational banking firm Goldman Sachs. He continued his studies, earned his business and law degrees, and went to work full‐time on the firm's high‐yield and distressed debt sales desk. All told, he spent four years at the firm. “The skills and the mentorship I acquired at Goldman were brilliant,” he said. But the more he learned, the more he began to yearn for his next adventure. In 2015, near the end of his second year of full‐time work, Kevin—who had always been something of an entrepreneur, starting three of his own business ventures while in college—signed up for our 10X leadership program.

One of the things Kevin hoped to achieve was to develop skills that went beyond sales—but interestingly, one of the first things the program helped him to see was that his salesmanship could ...