Play & Book Excerpts
Deliberately Different
(Amplify Publishing)
© Diversified Search Group
The world is changing faster than ever before. And that rapid rate of change means that the expectations for modern leaders have become vast and varied. No matter the arena, we expect today’s leaders to communicate openly and with total transparency, take stands on key issues, and drive performance in an ever-evolving, complex, interconnected, and deeply polarized environment.
But in the midst of all that change, a few things have stayed the same, including the fundamental need for leadership. No technology, not even AI, can replace the human dimensions of leadership that have stood the test of time. Regardless of the decade, the geography, and the industry, some elements have persevered: Leaders operate with integrity and character, they take risks and are willing to learn from failures. They take responsibility and accountability for missteps and shortcomings, but always share their success with their teams.
We know this because we’ve been fortunate enough to have front-row seats to multiple arenas of leadership, having spent time in politics, the military, philanthropy, and business. And the work we do now—in executive search and transformational leadership advisory at Diversified Search Group (DSG)—affords us the privilege and opportunity to advise and guide C-suite executives [in a wide range of industries and sectors.] Through that wealth of exposure and experience, we’ve been observing and assessing leaders for decades, taking careful notes, and seeing how important these behaviors (among a handful of others) have remained relevant.
And as we’ve observed and assessed, we’ve also tried to live up to, embrace, or embody those qualities ourselves. It’s an ongoing journey, to be sure.
We began our careers at very different times and in very different places. Judee started out in Washington, DC, during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and Aileen in the military on the heels of 9/11. Judee made the leap into entrepreneurship fairly early on, while Aileen learned the inner workings of the public sector from the inside out. Each of us was fortunate enough to work for and alongside great leaders, and to learn from how they operated. The two of us have evolved in different ways and adopted different leadership styles, but we maintain many of the same core principles. We seem like polar opposites, and in some ways, we are—but in others, we are perfectly and completely aligned.
The stories we’ll share with you in these pages follow us both along our paths, noting where we’ve diverged and where we’ve intersected. We’ve each found success in our own ways and in our own times. Learning and growing as we go.
Judee had to bust through barriers. In the 1970s when she founded DSG, executive search was a $100-million-a-year industry with fewer than a dozen major players.1 (By comparison, it’s now a $25 billion industry, and the United States alone has 5,630 executive search businesses.2) At that time, women could not take out business loans under their own names,3 and by 1972, only one woman had ever made it onto the Fortune 500 CEO list.
All this meant that Judee had an uphill battle to fight, and she did so with her characteristic mix of charm, grit, business acumen, and innovation. Today, five decades later, Diversified Search Group is one of the top ten firms in the industry.
Aileen grew up and came of age in the 1980s and ’90s, and saw a world where Title IX had been in place for decades and women leaders were on the rise. She felt it was her generation’s responsibility to lower a rope ladder to the leaders coming up behind her. During the 1990s and 2000s, Aileen’s path took her through Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Kennedy School, the US Army, the Department of Defense, Capitol Hill, and the private industry.
We are just two leaders among many, and we have such different styles, different strengths, and different approaches. But what we have in common is a willingness to pursue our North Star. A drive to be Deliberately Different as leaders, to break from the pack in thoughtful and strategic ways—at times when doing so will have the most positive impact. We fully agree with what Bill George wrote in his seminal book True North, that “successful leadership takes conscious development and requires being true to your life story.” We rely on our past observations and experiences, but aren’t afraid to evolve, change, and grow. (Perfect example: at age eighty-four, Judee is mastering LinkedIn, while GenXer Aileen, at age forty-eight, is diving into the world of generative AI tools.) We’ve both taken roads less traveled, taken swings (and struck out on occasion), taken stands grounded in our values, and made bets on others and ourselves. We try to stay humble, but we’re also not afraid to stand out.
Our positions at DSG have given us amazing opportunities to see how leadership has evolved, how new roles have emerged while others have been sunset, and how nonlinear paths have become the new norm. We’ve noted how access to leadership positions has changed dramatically over the past decades—not just for women leaders but for all leaders—and how the circumstances in which leaders must lead have changed and will continue to do so. But we’ve also observed that certain timeless leadership traits are always part of the equation. Every time. And we hope this book will help you see those qualities in yourself and in others.
We also hope you’ll read our stories and learn to discount the idea that simply working harder, longer, or more intensely is likely to lead to success and fulfillment.
In our view, it’s not about leaning in; it’s about getting in (and staying in the room where it’s all happening).
But in the midst of all that change, a few things have stayed the same, including the fundamental need for leadership. No technology, not even AI, can replace the human dimensions of leadership that have stood the test of time. Regardless of the decade, the geography, and the industry, some elements have persevered: Leaders operate with integrity and character, they take risks and are willing to learn from failures. They take responsibility and accountability for missteps and shortcomings, but always share their success with their teams.
We know this because we’ve been fortunate enough to have front-row seats to multiple arenas of leadership, having spent time in politics, the military, philanthropy, and business. And the work we do now—in executive search and transformational leadership advisory at Diversified Search Group (DSG)—affords us the privilege and opportunity to advise and guide C-suite executives [in a wide range of industries and sectors.] Through that wealth of exposure and experience, we’ve been observing and assessing leaders for decades, taking careful notes, and seeing how important these behaviors (among a handful of others) have remained relevant.
And as we’ve observed and assessed, we’ve also tried to live up to, embrace, or embody those qualities ourselves. It’s an ongoing journey, to be sure.
We began our careers at very different times and in very different places. Judee started out in Washington, DC, during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and Aileen in the military on the heels of 9/11. Judee made the leap into entrepreneurship fairly early on, while Aileen learned the inner workings of the public sector from the inside out. Each of us was fortunate enough to work for and alongside great leaders, and to learn from how they operated. The two of us have evolved in different ways and adopted different leadership styles, but we maintain many of the same core principles. We seem like polar opposites, and in some ways, we are—but in others, we are perfectly and completely aligned.
The stories we’ll share with you in these pages follow us both along our paths, noting where we’ve diverged and where we’ve intersected. We’ve each found success in our own ways and in our own times. Learning and growing as we go.
Judee had to bust through barriers. In the 1970s when she founded DSG, executive search was a $100-million-a-year industry with fewer than a dozen major players.1 (By comparison, it’s now a $25 billion industry, and the United States alone has 5,630 executive search businesses.2) At that time, women could not take out business loans under their own names,3 and by 1972, only one woman had ever made it onto the Fortune 500 CEO list.
All this meant that Judee had an uphill battle to fight, and she did so with her characteristic mix of charm, grit, business acumen, and innovation. Today, five decades later, Diversified Search Group is one of the top ten firms in the industry.
Aileen grew up and came of age in the 1980s and ’90s, and saw a world where Title IX had been in place for decades and women leaders were on the rise. She felt it was her generation’s responsibility to lower a rope ladder to the leaders coming up behind her. During the 1990s and 2000s, Aileen’s path took her through Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Kennedy School, the US Army, the Department of Defense, Capitol Hill, and the private industry.
We are just two leaders among many, and we have such different styles, different strengths, and different approaches. But what we have in common is a willingness to pursue our North Star. A drive to be Deliberately Different as leaders, to break from the pack in thoughtful and strategic ways—at times when doing so will have the most positive impact. We fully agree with what Bill George wrote in his seminal book True North, that “successful leadership takes conscious development and requires being true to your life story.” We rely on our past observations and experiences, but aren’t afraid to evolve, change, and grow. (Perfect example: at age eighty-four, Judee is mastering LinkedIn, while GenXer Aileen, at age forty-eight, is diving into the world of generative AI tools.) We’ve both taken roads less traveled, taken swings (and struck out on occasion), taken stands grounded in our values, and made bets on others and ourselves. We try to stay humble, but we’re also not afraid to stand out.
Our positions at DSG have given us amazing opportunities to see how leadership has evolved, how new roles have emerged while others have been sunset, and how nonlinear paths have become the new norm. We’ve noted how access to leadership positions has changed dramatically over the past decades—not just for women leaders but for all leaders—and how the circumstances in which leaders must lead have changed and will continue to do so. But we’ve also observed that certain timeless leadership traits are always part of the equation. Every time. And we hope this book will help you see those qualities in yourself and in others.
We also hope you’ll read our stories and learn to discount the idea that simply working harder, longer, or more intensely is likely to lead to success and fulfillment.
In our view, it’s not about leaning in; it’s about getting in (and staying in the room where it’s all happening).
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Judith M. (“Judee”) von Seldeneck, founder and chair of Diversified Search Group (DSG), was executive assistant to U.S. Senator Walter F. Mondale before buying into and then acquiring a small Philadelphia firm founded to help women find professional roles. Over five decades, Judee built it into a national top ten executive search firm and the largest such woman-founded one in the world. A longtime advocate for women, she recently established the JVS Philadelphia Fund for Women, which provides funding for women entrepreneurs. She’s served on numerous public company boards, has been named to the 2022 Forbes 50 Over 50 list, and is the only two-time Lifetime Achievement Award winner from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. |
Judith M. von Seldeneck
Photo Courtesy: Diversified Search Group |
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Aileen K. Alexander, whose career spans the public and private sectors, is CEO of DSG. She advises boards and executives from Fortune 500 to private-equity-backed and mid-market companies. Beginning her career in the military, she became a U.S. Army captain. She’s also served in government, working on national security policy at the Department of Defense and in the U.S. House of Representatives. Aileen is a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School and Johns Hopkins University. She has received numerous awards and has been quoted as a thought leader in various publications, including Barrons, Bloomsberg, Forbes, and Fortune. |
Aileen K. Alexander
Photo Courtesy: Diversified Search Group |
