Scott Syphax joins Dr. Jessica Kriegel to reflect on his dynamic career as the former CEO of the Nehemiah Corporation and current strategic advisor to Fortune 500 executives. Scott shares his unique blend of strategy and emotional intelligence, often serving as an “unlicensed therapist” to some of the most powerful leaders across industries. In this conversation, Scott opens up about his purpose in helping others rediscover their own magic, the challenges of leadership in sectors like healthcare and financial services, and how he aligns the personal with the professional for maximum impact. Dive in to learn how Scott crafts strategies that transcend business and touch the human spirit.
Finding Your Why: Scott Syphax explains his purpose of helping people rediscover what’s special about them and use it as a foundation to pursue their dreams.
Leadership as Therapy: Dr. Jessica Kriegel explores Scott’s reputation as an advisor who not only builds strategies but helps CEOs and senior leaders align their personal and professional lives.
Blurring the Lines: Scott discusses the inseparability of personal and professional strategies, especially when advising older generations in legacy industries like healthcare and financial services.
The Boardroom Disconnect: Scott shares how he helps corporate boards understand their roles and overcome cultural disconnects with management, especially in high-pressure industries.
Healthcare and Financial Services: Scott identifies these as key sectors where he spends most of his time advising leaders on both organizational and personal strategies.
Building Inclusive Leadership Pipelines: Scott reflects on founding the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program and the importance of creating pathways for diverse, high-potential leaders to enter the C-suite.
CEO Therapy: Scott elaborates on how he serves as a safe space for high-level executives to unburden themselves and navigate imposter syndrome, while helping them develop robust strategies for leading their companies.
Empowering (and Powering) Leaders: Scott emphasizes the importance of vulnerability for CEOs, reframing it not as a weakness but as a way to gain more power and make impactful decisions.
Personal and Professional Alignment: Scott shares a personal story about how his mentorship helped Jessica Kriegel make a life-changing decision that aligned her career with her personal values.
The Secret to Success: Scott reveals the most important lesson that has driven his success: balancing theoretical knowledge with real-life experience, a skill he first honed in the nightlife industry before entering the corporate world.
Scott Syphax is a dynamic strategist and the founder of Syphax Strategic, where he advises boards, CEOs, and senior management teams across sectors. He also founded the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program, which has helped hundreds of high-potential leaders reach the C-suite.
Jessica Kriegel:
Website: https://www.jessicakriegel.com/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicakriegel
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jess_kriegel/
Culture Partners:
Website: https://culturepartners.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/culturepartners/
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Today I’m thrilled to introduce you to Scott Syphax, who retired as CEO of the Nehemiah Corporation and turned his attention to his consulting business as a dynamic strategist who brings decades of leadership experience advising Fortune 500 CEOs, senior management teams, and boards of directors. But what truly sets Scott apart is his unique ability to act as both strategist and unlicensed therapist, guiding some of the most powerful leaders to align their professional and personal lives. He’s also my personal mentor, and I do not know where my career would be without this person. He has been my unlicensed therapist for many a phone call. In today’s conversation, we’re flipping the script on Scott. He’s often the one asking the tough questions, and here he is in the spotlight. As I dig into his why, his purpose, and his perspective on leadership in industries like healthcare and financial services, where he spends most of his time, we’ll explore how Scott helps even the most successful leaders rediscover their magic and craft strategic directions that aren’t just about the business but about the human spirit behind it. Welcome to the Culture Leaders podcast, Scott Syphax. Scott Syphax, I’ve been on your show and you’ve peppered me with questions for 45 minutes, but now the tables have turned and it’s time for me to pepper you with questions. It’s payback time, baby. So let’s start with why. What’s your purpose?
Scott Syphax: My purpose is to help people elevate themselves, really to discover what’s special and magical about them that they may have forgotten about or that they may have never discovered. And then to help them frame whatever it is that is magical about them so that they can use that as a stairway to reach for their dreams. And I know that that sounds trite and crazy, but the fact of the matter is all of us go through periods in life where we start out perfect when we’re first in our mother’s arms, and then life kind of throws dust, mud, and everything else on us. My greatest joy in life, particularly at this moment, is helping people rediscover what’s special about themselves by reminding them that if we can just remove some of that dust and the things that the world has accumulated on them, they’ve always had the capability of doing amazing things. And my greatest joy comes from that moment when they finally rediscover that about themselves or believe in that about themselves, and then to see them actually seize whatever it is that’s the future. That’s always been in their mind’s eye.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: What’s interesting is that when people hear you talk that way, I would imagine they think you’re talking about today’s rising stars, which I know you’ve invested in, but you’re talking to big-time CEOs in the financial industry. I mean, do big-time, well-paid, successful CEOs need a lot of help finding out what’s special and magical about themselves?
Scott Syphax: Oh yeah. It’s funny, Jessica, I started out earlier in my career, I actually worked in government surprisingly, instead of the private sector, and I ended up being the CEO of the entity that licenses all of the therapists in California. Today, when people ask me, “Well, what is it that you do all day?” I do many things, but probably the one that I spend the most time on is working with boards of directors, CEOs, and their senior management teams. And I’m basically an unlicensed therapist because CEOs, once the door closes and they take off their armor, they have the same sets of foibles that the rest of us have. Even if they have the title, they still many times carry the imposter syndrome badge as well. So my job is to be not only a strategist and advisor but really a safe place for them to unburden themselves. And because I’ve had 20 years as the CEO of a national corporation, I can walk in their shoes in a way that most people can’t and give them a space not only to unburden themselves but to put together a strategic direction that allows them to march back out and lead their corporations.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: When you say strategic direction, do you mean a personal strategic direction or an organizational strategic direction?
Scott Syphax: I end up doing it all. The professional is the personal, Jessica, because what happens is that we try to bifurcate and separate our lives, and particularly people from older generations. I think, much like you talk about in your book, younger generations are better at integrating the personal and the professional. One of the things that surprises people a lot of times is that while I work with people from your generation and sometimes younger, a lot of the people still in the c-suite, particularly in legacy industries and boards of directors of publicly traded companies, tend to be from my generation or even older. They don’t have that same dexterity and flexibility that younger generations have shown in integrating the different parts of their lives.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: That’s interesting.
Scott Syphax: So I end up working a lot on personal issues with these CEOs as much as I do their professional strategy pieces.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Give me the top two industries you find yourself working in.
Scott Syphax: Financial services and healthcare. Healthcare has been a huge sector for me. One of the reasons it’s been very attractive is that in both areas, one, I understand healthcare very, very well. The other thing is that healthcare is full of very, very smart people. You have advanced practice nurses, physicians, administrators of multi-billion dollar institutions, and policymakers. Then there are banks and financial services—I’m a real estate developer, a mortgage guy, and a person who has worked around banks, insurance companies, and pension funds for years. So those are my sweet spots. But I go pretty far afield—anybody who needs help on strategy or charting their own course forward, I’m there.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So when you say you’re an unlicensed therapist for the CEOs and boards of directors, is that conflict management you’re doing within relationships, or is it personal coaching like “you’re not an imposter, go do it”?
Scott Syphax: It is both. Sometimes I work with senior management teams, and for whatever reason, they are not in alignment. Sometimes it’s bigger than that—senior management teams and CEOs are not in alignment with their boards of directors. These are some of the most interesting cases where I do a lot of training and development, coaching boards of directors on what their jobs are. Jessica, you would be shocked—sometimes you put 12 people who are nationally known, sitting on a corporate board, and it becomes like a kindergarten room. They act in ways that, if they knew a camera was watching, they wouldn’t. Many times it’s because they lack an understanding of what their role is, and they act contrary to the best interests of the corporation, which is not conducive to alignment with their management teams.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: I think that’s a bit of a black box for most people in corporate America—the board of their organization. Even who’s on the board isn’t talked about in day-to-day life. What impact does the board have on the day-to-day life of your average employee in a publicly traded company?
Scott Syphax: Well, it’s interesting. You can answer that question from two vantage points. One, as someone who was a CEO for two decades, I can tell you that while I wanted the board’s help, I didn’t want them sort of in my sock drawer every single day. On the other hand, I would say that for far too many companies, the board, you put all of these high-powered people on this board, and then you don’t use them, and frankly, you so limit the information that they receive that they’re not able to actually provide the added value that you sought them out for in the first place. I’ll give you a prime example. Recently there was a young woman who was in sales, and this is at the very bottom of the company working for CloudFlare, and you may have heard about this, where she was a salesperson. She had been there for only a couple of months during the holiday season at the end of the year, and they laid her off with no reason. And the way that they laid her off was they went and had two people who she had never met before, get on a Zoom call with her and essentially say, “We’ve decided to go in a different direction.” They couldn’t point out one thing that she had done wrong and had no knowledge of her beyond the phone call that she was having. She went on TikTok and did a video that went completely viral because she recorded the call. And in recording the call, it showed that this company, CloudFlare, which is one of these high-tech, razzle-dazzle companies in the tech industry that everybody admires, had really bad business processes. So then the CEO, in response, because there’s so much heat, gets on there and says, “Yeah, we just basically kick people out, and we know within a very short period of time whether somebody’s going to work out.” And he sounded like a low emotional intelligence jerk. What it really spoke to, if you get really underneath the hood, Jessica, is this company makes hires that they don’t have any systems in place to manage. And frankly, it was their mistake in not supporting this woman. So she was positioned to be successful and then treated her like a piece of garbage and exited her. Well, here’s where the board comes in. What the board doesn’t understand is that when we receive financial projections and estimates of our growth and everything else, and the CEO is telling us the markets and particularly publicly traded, and we’re making assertions that people pay attention to with their investing decisions, we’re trusting that that information is accurate. Many times what happens is CEOs and senior management teams sweep their bad decision-making under the rug and explain it away in ways that if the board isn’t armed with information, we have no idea until it’s too late. So it is a black box exactly as you say. The hard thing that I spend my time doing is trying to find the appropriate balance on how to thread the needle between making sure that boards have noses in but fingers out. And they are working in a way where hopefully they and management can get on the same page, and they can provide rigorous and appropriately skeptical oversight, but at the same time not interfere with the people who know the business best on running that business.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So is the board involved in culture at any level?
Scott Syphax: Not enough. The answer is no. The short answer is no. And I would expand that to say not enough. And the reason that they’re not involved enough is because what I consider to be an insecure CEO or an unsophisticated CEO will not invite the board in to have interactions and observations that really leverage the board’s strengths in terms of being able to say, “Hey, did you ever think about this? Have you ever considered pulling in this resource?” Because I see that you’ve got a good platform here and you’ve got a good strategy, but if you really want the people that work for you to buy into it, you really need to amp it up. It might be hiring someone like Culture Sync to come in, but the fact of the matter is that far too many times, unless the idea is invented by the CEO or the senior management team, it’s too quickly dismissed.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So that’s where the therapy comes in, right? They’re insecure, and your job in helping them leverage their board more effectively is to show them that they’re making fear-based decisions, and they will actually be more empowered if they become more vulnerable.
Scott Syphax: Well, actually, you said it exactly right, except I’m going to change one word just because it appeals to CEOs. It’s not empowered—you’ll be more powerful.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: It sounds so much better. All I want is power, Scott.
Scott Syphax: That’s why people climb to the C-suite in the first place. They want power.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Oh man. Okay. So I was just writing a paper for Divinity School, and it’s about the circular lack of accountability in corporate America where I’ve had an interview with a CEO, and it struck me so deeply because what he said was, “I feel just as exploited as the frontline worker.”
Scott Syphax: Really? How so?
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yeah, because there are so many decisions that he would like to make to help his employees thrive, to help the business advance, but he is being put into a particular lane and forced into certain decisions by his board that prevent him from making what he thinks are the right decisions. And I wonder how often you see that. He’s like, “I would love to invest in culture. I would love to spend more time focusing on how to make people feel whole, fulfilled, complete, and wonderful at this company, but shareholder value—the board is so focused on helping people create value in this corporation that I can’t do that because there isn’t an ROI.”
Scott Syphax: Well, if I had heard that, if a CEO told me that, I would immediately be highly skeptical of the validity of that assertion because typically it’s not that CEOs don’t have enough power, it’s that they have power that is not regularly scrutinized and that they’re not accountable for how they expend it. But let’s assume in this case you’re correct. That also, I think, falls to the CEO and the chair or lead director because obviously, you have the wrong board and the wrong strategy. A board’s job is not to micromanage the operations and the day-to-day management of the corporation, and I consider culture to be part of that portfolio that the CEO has direct responsibility for. And frankly, if I’m doing my job on evaluations—you recently wrote an article on performance reviews—they’re going to be held accountable for those cultural learnings and achievements as part of their at-risk compensation that they’re measured on and rewarded on at the end of the year. So I am skeptical of the statement, but if the members of the board don’t understand how important culture is, then you’ve got the wrong board. And I see this problem all the time, and it’s another thing that my firm works with boards and CEOs on, which is how to curate a board that aligns not only with the objectives of the corporation but also serves as a foundation for achieving success and mastery over things like culture and innovation and process improvement. But too many times CEOs use and lead directors use who they can get, not by what it is that they’re going to contribute, but more like how much prestige landing this big whale or this big fish accrues to the corporation. “We’ve got a former Secretary of the Treasury or we’ve got the former CEO of General Motors on the board,” and that becomes their primary criteria, not the contribution and value that they’re going to bring.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Which probably explains why less than 2% of board seats are filled by people with HR backgrounds, right? HR is a hugely central part of what we need to focus on, and yet we don’t invite those people to board seats hardly at all.
Scott Syphax: No. And I consider it a prejudice that almost rises to the level of bigotry because—and here’s where I have to go after the CEOs and the board chairs that I work with, particularly not just the board chairs but the leaders of the nominations and governance committees who end up vetting potential board members—I have to go after them very, very hard. Inevitably, I can ask this question: “What is the importance of talent management and what we used to call years ago the war on talent to your organization?” And inevitably, it’s always the same answer, plus or minus 2%, which is, “It’s the biggest issue we’ve got. It’s the most important issue that we’re facing right now.” Okay. Well, I look around the board table, and there’s not a single expert on talent management. You’ve got someone on cybersecurity, you’ve got three former CEOs, you’ve got two former elected officials, you’ve got two people that were partners at major law firms, and one that’s the CFO of whatever the corporation is, but not a single one of those people brings really the talent management and optimization expertise to the table, yet you say it’s the most important thing that will allow you to win against your competitors in the marketplace. How do you square that?
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Because you know what I think they do to square that is they believe that all those people in the room have that covered because of their experience. Because they have been leaders, they understand talent management. They don’t, which is not the case. I completely agree, they don’t, but I think that’s the thinking. “Oh, we got that covered.”
Scott Syphax: Yeah, they don’t. But that is one of my primary roles in the boardroom or with the senior management team—to elevate that function. As a matter of fact, I’ll give you an example. A recent client of mine comes in, and my job was to work with the senior management team in this organization, but the senior management team did not have on it the chief people officer in this case for this corporation. And so I asked the team, “Why don’t you have the chief people and talent officer of this corporation, given the fact that you’re growing at like 20% per year, and finding the right people and putting the right butts in chairs is mission critical for your continued expansion?” And they’re like, “Well, we’ve always had it report to legal.” “To legal?” And I’m like, “What does the general counsel of the corporation have in terms of expertise on managing this function?” And the response was, “Well, if we get sued, it will go through the general counsel’s office and our external counsel. And so we figured the best place to put HR historically has been underneath the general counsel’s office, and the general counsel knows nothing about the issues that you and I are talking about. And while they sit on the senior management team, the lens that they bring is one that has to do with contractual obligations and litigation mitigation.”
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yeah. Well, that’s the question. Is HR there to protect the company, or is HR there to protect employees?
Scott Syphax: Well, I would say neither. HR’s primary function is to engage people in order to elevate and expand the success of the corporation by providing not only opportunities for individuals to make their own unique contributions but to do those in service of the overall corporate objectives where everybody wins from both an experience standpoint, from a compensation standpoint, and from an upward mobility standpoint.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yes, that’s lovely— theoretically.
Scott Syphax: Yes.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: And in addition, I think there is a growing anti-work movement happening amongst young people, amplified on TikTok, of people feeling like they’re getting exploited by corporations and that it’s not mutually beneficial. HR leaders are saying, “We can all win-win,” and I believe we can all win-win. I mean, I think that is what I am committed to in my career—finding that win-win. But what is the CEO thinking about that? I mean, there’s a perception, and it could be a false narrative, that CEOs are just in it for financial gain at all costs, at the expense of their employees. Oftentimes. What percentage of CEOs that you work with actually care about their people?
Scott Syphax: I would say virtually all of them.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: I don’t—
Scott Syphax: I don’t think it’s a question of whether or not they care about their people. I think many times it’s a question of not knowing what they don’t know. Feeling that in the crush of analysts, competitors, and all sorts of other issues, that it’s the issue that they know is important but they don’t get to because they don’t have anyone in their organization elevated enough or empowered enough to take their concern forward and actually make milestones happen that achieve that purpose. I think that many times, most CEOs—because most CEOs don’t come from the disciplines that you and I are talking about—they don’t know that they’re the frog in the pot and that the heat is going up and it’s about to boil them, so they don’t have an appreciation. But I want to come back to something you said about younger generations. Because of the other work that I do, I talk to younger generations all the time, and I can’t blame them. And this is what I carry into the C-suite and into corporate boardrooms—I can’t blame them for this movement of either despising or discounting work and that they have ice water in their veins in loyalty to the corporations that they happen to be affiliated with at this moment. I want you to think about this. A lot of the young people joining the workforce—and these are the people who are going to lead us into the future—they grew up in an era where they saw their parents loyal to corporations, and in the great crash in 2008 and going forward, their parents lost everything. Their parents one day showed up, and the place was shut down, and they didn’t even get the money that they were owed for working. They saw their parents lose everything—their homes, their savings, everything that they’ve got—and they saw the people who were the perpetrators of that crash not only walk away—no one was ever prosecuted in that crash as far as I know—no one ever went to jail. There was no frog march, there was no perp walk, there was nothing. And so they got away with it. And so young people who are now adults and they are emerging professionals, or they have been young people who are professionals or emerging professionals, and they’re entering into the workforce and moving up the ladder, they’re saying to themselves, “I am out for me because I don’t love the corporation because the corporation doesn’t love me.” And that is what it is that many people in the C-suite, CEOs and their teams, and corporate board members—there is a cultural disconnect that they don’t understand because of the fact that they’re all my age, they’re baby boomers by and large, and we live with a set of assumptions that are no longer operative in the worlds that you typically walk in, Jessica.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So you’re saying it’s a healthy skepticism that young people have, based on the experiences they’ve had, that has formed certain beliefs about the way the world works?
Scott Syphax: I would say it’s beyond healthy skepticism and it’s kind of a sneering cynicism.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yeah. Well, I mean, here’s the truth. I was at Oracle for 10 years. You used to ask me, “Why are you still at Oracle?” all the time because I felt like the truth of how I felt at Oracle was that I knew they were getting a lot out of me, but I felt like I was getting the right amount out of them to make it worth it, right? There were wonderful benefits, I was paid well, I got to work on intelligent projects with interesting people, and that was enough. I wasn’t loyal to Oracle. They earned my staying by making the right talent choices so that it was worth it to me to be there, and they got something out of it as well. Having said that, I mean, I’ve also worked at organizations where it wasn’t worth it because the amount of mental stress that I was put through and the obvious lack of loyalty was just in your face. So this loyalty idea, it’s disintegrated. It is now a transaction. You give me something, and I’ll give you something. And if it works out, it works out, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And so I think the end zone is moving for what people need to show up with, and that is very confusing for organizations. Everyone wants something different.
Scott Syphax: Let me turn the tables and ask you this: If you were to identify the one blind spot or bad decision that most of your clients make time and time again with regards to this issue, what is it?
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: They don’t understand what culture is, so they think it doesn’t work. It’s a lack of understanding that makes them ineffectual in leveraging culture to drive results. We did a study with 30,000 leaders, and we said, “When you’re trying to drive business results, what do you spend more time focusing on—strategy or culture?” And 96% of them said strategy. “We spend way more time on strategy than culture.” I think everyone can relate to that as being truth. But then we asked those same 30,000 people, “What do you think actually has more impact on results—strategy or culture?” And 75% said culture. So people understand that culture can help us win, but they don’t know how to do it. They know how to memorialize culture with some kind of plaque about our mission, vision, values, and then they call that culture, and they delegate it to HR and say, “Do that.” Maybe they do some competency rollout, and they call that culture, and that’s not what culture is. So they’re missing the mark, and then they’re like, “Culture doesn’t work. Let’s just drive people harder.”
Scott Syphax: Very shortsighted.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Yeah.
Scott Syphax: Okay.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: So let’s go back to the healthy skepticism of young people. I want to tell a funny story about when we first got to know each other.
Scott Syphax: Okay. Alright.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Can you talk about the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program and the work that you have engaged in there for over a decade?
Scott Syphax: Sure. I’ve sat on corporate boards for over a quarter of a century, and I got to the point back before the whole DEI movement and diversity and board governance movements and all that sort of stuff. I remember when I started on NACD with the National Association of Corporate Directors. It was like 40 of us back in 2001 in the bottom of the Washington Hilton Hotel. Now their annual conference for corporate directors has like 10,000 people at it. Well, what happened was is that that world was very, very small. And I would continually get asked to serve on corporate boards and they’d say, “Well, you’re a CEO, this, you know that, and you’re a black guy, and you’re the black guy, and you’re the only black guy we know who we think of as qualified to serve on a corporate board.” And I got sick of being asked because like there’s more people—black and otherwise, female, Latino, API, whatever—who are very qualified. How come you don’t talk to them? And they’re like, “Well, we can’t find anybody qualified.” The typical CEO response or board chair response, “We don’t know anybody.” So I got sick of it, and one year my board wanted to give me a huge bonus, and frankly, it was a bit bigger than I thought was appropriate. And I said, “Give me a million dollars and let me go around the country and curate the best leadership trainings that are available and put it into a program because I want to help high-potential young people, young professionals, start to get the championship, the mentorship, and the training to start to position them to be C-suite leaders.” And that’s what birthed the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program. And we started off focused on the African-American community, but I said, “I want this program to be so damn good that whoever are the best and brightest that they are knocking down my door to become part of this program.” And we succeeded in that. And so 15 years—this is our 15th year and almost 300 fellows later—we have CEOs, nationally acclaimed authors and scientists, elected officials, heads of major organizations both for-profit and nonprofit, all of whom serve, who actually do public service as well as their professional achievements and serve on over 300 boards and commissions throughout the United States and are making the world a better place. And so the whole concept for me was I wanted to take all of the investment my corporation put in me, which exceeded $20 million, and I wanted to give it all away without any desire for anything in return.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Now my part of the story comes in.
Scott Syphax: I will tell the next part of the story, which is that I was one of those fellows. I came knocking on the door, “Let me in. I want to be one of the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders that I have seen be so impressive.” I mean, the group that you curated—they were really outstanding people. And I remember attending a session as a visitor, and I thought, “Oh, I got to be in this.” And so I applied, and then I saw the amount of investment that you had made. This wasn’t just some training program, right? I mean, I think people need to understand this was an experience. I mean, I met Nancy Pelosi because I was in that program. I shook her hand and had a conversation with her because you made it so that me and Nancy Pelosi were in the same room. I mean, it is a networking opportunity. I had mentors from all walks of life that you connected me with. It was incredible. And I was so confused about why you were doing this. I mean, I was excited for me, but the price did not match the value I was getting. I mean, there was a tuition, but it wasn’t even—I mean, there were scholarships offered by you, and also it didn’t come near paying for the value that I got out of it. So I remember meeting with you, and the skepticism that I had, and this confusion just kept building and building. And one time we sat down, and I just said, “Scott, I don’t understand. What is in it for you? Why are you doing this? Tell me what the secret plan is. Are you going to turn all these fellows into your minions in some future takeover of the world?” I was trying to figure it out. I hadn’t run into that kind of service at that level. And do you remember what you said?
Scott Syphax: No, but I’m sure it was wonderful. What did I say?
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: I don’t remember either. But you laughed. I remember it started with a big chuckle. You’re like, “Oh, Jessica, you’re doing it for service purposes,” which I didn’t really believe at the time.
Scott Syphax: It’s my why. It comes back to my why. It comes back to my why, which is that nothing gives me greater joy than helping someone to discover or rediscover what’s amazing about themselves and help them to reveal the path to themselves, to get to the star that they see in the sky that they’ve always wanted to attain and get to. I will tell you this—the theory behind the program was this. My board of directors was a great board of directors for the Nehemiah Corporation, and they invested so much money in me in training experiences, being in the right rooms, all that stuff. And I carried all this stuff around, and we used to reduce everything in our board meetings if we had a tough issue to one of the three Godfather movies. Funny story. And one of my board members said, “Scott, you carry around all of these relationships with politicians and other CEOs like so many nickels and dimes.” And that’s a line from Godfather One. And he said, “But what happens if something happens to you? What happens if we have to fire you, if you get hit by a bus, or something else?” And so I had heard this thing from all of the CEOs I encountered both on boards and otherwise, who said, “Scott, we would love to promote a woman. We would love to promote someone who comes from an underrepresented background, but we can’t find anyone who’s qualified.” And that was part of the impetus for the program. But the thing was that I was carrying around all these relationships and expertise, and so I decided to give them all away. And so the program became a vehicle for me to give away everything and to put it in each one of you, to give you access to whatever I had and to take it way beyond what I was capable of. And that’s what happened. And so my fundamental role has been to give away every bit of power, influence, insight, access—whatever it is—but to give it away without any desire of anything in return. Because what I get in return is the joy of seeing all of you—you, Jessica, who I am so proud of—and all of these other folks achieve amazing, remarkable things that I could have never conceived. And so that’s really good.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Beautiful. It really is the story. And I want to tell one more story about you, and then we’ll wrap it up with my last question. But there’s more layers to this. The thing—and I feel like I’m going to cry telling the story right now—but the thing that I remember about you was when I got offered a job as the head of HR at a huge tech company in Silicon Valley, and I didn’t want to leave Sacramento because I had a boyfriend that I liked a lot and I was in love with, and I was feeling all of this confusion about, “Do I give up this career opportunity for a guy? I’m a feminist. I can’t do that, but I really don’t want to leave this boy.” And you said, “Come over to my office, and we’ll talk about it.” And I came over to your office, and you spent three hours with me with a whiteboard, talking about what my values are, what my future could look like, and helping figure out whether or not this decision was aligned with my purpose and my values and what I wanted. And when I walked out of the room, I had decided not to go. And because of that, I ended up marrying that guy. I ended up having my daughter. I’m divorced now. Oh, well, but whatever. I had my daughter, and thank God I didn’t take that job. I mean, just thank God I didn’t take that job because I got to have my daughter, and everything is the way that it was supposed to be. But the investment in time—at the time, you were CEO of a national corporation, and you spent three hours with some 20-year-old talking about “Should you take this job or stay with the boy?” And I am so grateful for that time and that investment, and just to see someone care that much, to be able to be in that decision with me, and that confusion, and not dismiss it as like, “Oh, there’s some girl not sure if she should take a job for a boy.” I mean, it really meant a lot to me. So thank you.
Scott Syphax: It was my honor and privilege.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Okay. Now my last question—I’ll wipe the tears away—is what is one question that you don’t get asked in these interviews and all of the conversations that you have that you wish you were asked more often?
Scott Syphax: The question that no one ever asked me is, “What was the most important experience you ever had that drove your business success? Your professional success?”
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Do tell.
Scott Syphax: The most important lessons that I received in business was when I started out giving parties in order to meet potential partners. That’s the politically correct term in this day and age. And I grew it up to the point where I was doing major concerts, and I owned nightclubs and all that sort of thing. And I dealt with every aspect of society. And even though the people I worked with were everyone from Dr. Dre to Rick James to Prince to all of these folks, I learned human nature and profit and loss more from those experiences on Fridays and Saturday nights in bars, nightclubs, and concert halls and convention centers than I ever did in business school or in one of these major universities. And it’s not that those experiences aren’t important—I think that they are, and I’ve gained a lot from them—but I wish that more people balanced the theoretical with the experiential in how it is that they chart their course because we need them both. But too many times, people as individuals, and frankly people in hiring positions, focus more on the pedigree than the real-life experience and achievement levels, and corporations and organizations make that miss to their own peril because they leave a lot of talent on the table.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Beautiful. Scott Syphax, thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a pleasure.
Scott Syphax: Thank you.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Wait, I have one more question. Go back, Scott. Where can people go if they want to learn more about you and your business?
Scott Syphax: They can go to syphaxstrategic.com, S-Y-P-H-A-X strategic.com for me, and for the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program, nelpleaders.com.
Dr. Jessica Kriegel: Thank you so much, Scott. It was such a pleasure.
Scott Syphax: Thank you. Much success to you, Jessica.
