Doing the Opposite: Doug D Gordon – From Near-death to a New Direction in Empathetic Leadership

The Doing the Opposite podcast is back for 2024, and the first episode of the year shines a spotlight on a truly inspirational disruptor. Doug D Gordon is CEO of D&S Performance Optimisation, a training, consulting and coaching company, but he also speaks on global stages with film stars, sports icons, and bestselling authors.

Between his personal journey — which includes stress-induced health issues and a near-death experience — and learning from some of the most successful people in the world, Doug had plenty of wisdom to share with me about leadership and purpose.

Keep reading to discover some of my favourite takeaways from this fascinating discussion.

Success doesn’t look like you’d expect it to

Initially planning to pursue a career in engineering, Doug eventually decided to follow his father into fund management, working his way up from a customer service role to becoming the Head of Sales and Management at one of the biggest fund managers in Europe.

During that time, he grew a business from $50 million sales per annum to $1.75 billion and was even featured in The Times and The Independent for his achievements.

But then the 2008 recession came along, and everything changed for Doug.

“Markets went down, I had to lay off a lot of people and I didn't realise how empathetic I was towards other people's energies, and I got very stressed,” he said. “The stress led to ailments and doctors and specialists, two operations that went wrong, four years of chronic pain where it felt like I was being punched in the stomach, waking up every single night and all this kind of stuff, eventually having a near-death experience.”

This critical moment made a huge impact on Doug’s outlook on life, as well as his perception of success.

“I realised that every single time I got big deals in, or met amazing people, it didn't truly make me happy,” he explained. “I kept thinking, ‘When I get this, I might be happy, and then when I get that, I might be happy’, and when I got there, I wasn't any happier.”

From then on, Doug was determined to help others discover their true purpose outside of the preconceived ideas most of us have about what success looks like, and it transformed his life for the better.

“When I started giving to others, and when I started helping them connect with their true passion, purpose and meaning, I realised that was the key to life — and I wanted to implement it in my lifetime as well.”?????

How to become a conscious leader

As the CEO of D&S Performance Optimisation, Doug spends a lot of time coaching people on how they can become better leaders for their teams, and he shared some of his advice with me in this episode.

He had a particularly interesting viewpoint on how we build relationships within the workplace: “I always break the word ‘relationship’ down into ‘relay’, in terms of conscious communication, and your ‘tions’: your expectations, your intentions, and your motivations. You then make sure that everybody's on the ship travelling in the right direction. You need to make sure you have diverse people to give different angles and perspectives on the problems to get better solutions.”?

Another one of Doug’s key principles for conscious leadership is very simple: be a good listener.

“Remember, you’ve got two ears and one mouth, and sometimes the most intelligent person in the room is the one that listens the most,” he said. “I think, as the leader in the room, you should speak last and let every single person in that room speak at some point. The slightly shy people might have a genius idea that could be hiding behind the fact that they don't have the confidence to stand up and speak in front of people.”?

Discover more of Doug’s powerful story and advice in the latest episode of Doing the Opposite.