What My NYU Professor Suzy Welch Taught Me About Creating An Authentic Life

Sep 23

Preview

Lately, it feels like everyone on the internet is an expert or guru—everyone’s got a course to sell you on how to get more followers, manifest the life of your dreams, get fit, etc. So, when I was invited to attend a 3-day intensive of Suzy Welch’s NYU class “Becoming You: Crafting the Authentic Life You Want and Need,” I’m not going to lie; I was a little skeptical. Yes, it’s an official NYU Stern School of Business class, but what qualified her to guide people to their life’s purpose? I requested a call with her to learn more, and within minutes, I knew… Suzy was the real deal.

In fact, after our call, I thought, “I need this woman as my mentor.”

Suzy Welch is not only a professor (and the Director of Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing at NYU Stern School of Business) but also a former reporter, a 3X best-selling author, business advisor, tech entrepreneur, podcaster, and Libra. Her energy is so warm and infectious, and I was instantly pulled into her orbit. She’s passionate, straightforward, sincere, vulnerable, and funny inside and outside the classroom. She’s a true expander.

Becoming You is a methodology she developed to help people figure out what they’re meant to do with their lives, so I felt a bit like I was cheating entering the class, knowing that I’m pretty clear on my life’s purpose. But, I consider myself a student of life, and I know there’s always room to learn more—and that I did. In three days, Becoming You affirmed the path I’m on—but it also equipped me with the language to talk about the values that are driving my decision-making in my personal and professional life.

Are you living in alignment with your values?

Day 1 of Becoming You (my favorite day) was a deep exploration of our personal values. Suzy guided us through various exercises, from writing a 6-word memoir to completing the Proust Questionnaire. She has spent years developing her own framework around values, identifying 15 key categories. We reflected on our current positions within each category and envisioned where we hope to be in our ideal lives. Suzy challenged us to set aside outside influences and get honest about our true desires—how much money we want, the importance of fame, community, and our aspirations to change the world.

On Day 2, we focused on aptitudes rather than skills. We reviewed the results from aptitude tests we took a week before class, and thankfully, we weren’t graded on them. I was never a good test taker, but it was illuminating to discover that my interpersonal style is extroverted. I have a “specialist” approach to work (meaning I like to go deep into a particular subject) and ranked highly in vocabulary. We also discussed our Enneagram types: I’m a 4, the Individualist, also known as the sensitive creative (shocking, I know!). Using another one of Suzy’s brilliant inventions, the PIE360, we assessed ourselves and gathered anonymous feedback from our network about how good we are in personal relationships, ideation, and execution—three factors Suzy says are crucial indicators for long-term success.

To wrap things up on Day 3, we combined our most important values with our aptitudes and economically-viable interests to land on our “area of transcendence”—essentially, what we’re meant to do with our lives. Witnessing my classmates have their “Aha!” moments was arguably the highlight of all three days. The class was filled with people from all walks of life; some flew from halfway around the world just to take Becoming You. Seeing them light up as they shared their deeply personal discoveries was a moving experience for many of us in the room.

In the weeks since finishing this class, not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about my values and shared them with anyone who will listen. What Suzy has created is profound and inspiring, and honestly, she makes something very complex seem so simple if we’re willing to get existential. I know so many people will benefit from this brilliant method. I’m honored to have the opportunity to interview her for this newsletter today so we could share more of her story and wisdom with you all. This is one of those interviews that I think you’ll want to listen to rather than read. Suzy and I discuss her journey from Miami crime reporter to NYU professor, the key signs when you should move on from your job, how to find a mentor, and the values I struggled to define.

Listen here (1 Hour)

Before we dive deep into what Becoming You is all about, what were you like when you were younger?

Suzy: You wouldn't expect me, okay? My family called me the little quiet one. Occasionally, my mother says it was super affectionate, they called me the little stupid one. I've had trouble deriving that, but whatever. I think my older siblings were super smart and then I just didn't say much, so it was like, "She's the sweet little one." I raised myself because of the nature of my family ecosystem. I love my family, but they were not directive. But I would say I was curious and I was funny. Those two traits held me in good stead, but I was very busy raising my own self. I'm 64, so parenting was really different. You weren't in your children's faces. My parents didn't know that I had applied to Harvard until I got in. When my kids applied to college, they literally felt my breath on their necks. I was in the room where it happened.

So even though you were, as you say, affectionately referred to as the little stupid one, you were actually really smart and applied yourself in school?

Maybe I was smart. I definitely applied myself in school. I was hardworking, but I also was curious and I was industrious for industriousness' sake. I liked studying. I liked getting an A. That was validation. It was affirming. But I found a ton of stuff really interesting. The plague was interesting to me. Medieval history was interesting to me. I also thought calculus was interesting. These are just inborn traits, so I was very lucky to be curious.

You said your parents were hands-off and you had to raise yourself. Did you have any feelings about that as you got older? Was that something that you had to contend with? At 38, I have a lot of conversations with friends who are still coming to terms with a dysfunctional relationship with their parents and how that has affected them. For those of us who are seekers, it's a very common place to be in.

Yeah, I think I didn't have the luxury of being anything but pragmatic about it. I had to get myself a job, I had to get myself a life, I had to raise my children, and I wish, going back I probably should have reflected on it and I should have calculated what it meant for me. I should have said, "Well, because of that, that explains this." There were just some rough economic times in the beginning of my life and I didn't stare directly into it. Now, I claim that's pragmatism, but it may have also been just a sheer emotional inability to stare into it because where do you go with it?

I remember, one time, I was unbelievably sick. I think it was untreated strep because all my kids had it. I was working. I was running around. And I remember a really close friend of mine said, "Oh, don't you just wish you could call your mommy to come take care of you?" And I said, "I'm so past that. People do that?" I had this point of view and it carries through to Becoming You, which is like, "I don't care about the whys. I'm just going to take you exactly as you are, okay? Where you got your values is for you and your therapist, but let's talk about how we put those values to work to make a life you really want."

So when you got into Harvard undergrad, did you have any idea of what you wanted to do?

Oh my God, no. I was just a floating cloud. I certainly didn't have anybody asking me, "What are you going to do?" I thought there were two professions in the world: artist and architect. That's what my parents did. Luckily, I got very involved in The Harvard Crimson. I was a capable writer. I loved the news. And it felt like everybody but me at The Crimson had very directive parents and all those parents were saying to them, "You're a great writer. Why don't you all become journalists?" and they all were like, "We're becoming journalists." I was like, "I'll come along."

I got offered a job at The Miami Herald, and started my career there. I think because I'm a Libra, I was very attracted to being a judge. I like the women in the robes hitting the gavel and controlling the courtroom. I dug that, but I also thought about being a curator in a museum because I loved art so much. I was just all over the place, but I knew I could get a job in newspapers, and that's where I went.

What was it like covering crime in Miami?

It was unbelievable. It was the luck of the draw. They put a lot of the new reporters on crime. I just happened to have an aptitude for it because I was thick-skinned. I was very comfortable talking to policemen, firemen, construction workers, and priests, and they liked me and adopted me because I just wanted to hear their stories.

I had a lot of stamina, which helped me to be a crime reporter because, in Miami in '81, those were very long hours as a crime reporter. I have to say, in my first year, I definitely saw a lot of violence and carnage. There were days when we had 17 shootings, and you would go to the morgue and meet the cops there, and they would walk down and talk about what each case was.

I was surrounded by other good, smart reporters, people who had gone on and had amazing careers. I had a partner, Sandra Dibble, who's still a reporter, and she taught me a lot and we worked shoulder to shoulder. I had one big problem, which was that, while my aptitudes were strongly aligned with being a reporter, I was a fast, capable writer. I had a lot of curiosity. I could make friends with people easily, blah, blah, blah, but it didn't match my values.

So, my values were that I actually love people. I'm not skeptical about humanity. I believe the center will hold. I tend to want to believe people. To be a really good reporter, you have to have a certain meanness to you. You have to doubt people. You have to think they're lying. And I was, in a way, just too good, kind. You know what I mean?

And so then you made a switch…

I had started covering business, and I thought, "Man, business is very interesting, but I don't know a damn thing about it." I don't know debt from equity. I don't know what a credit default swap is. I don't know the difference between LBO and MBO, and they're all talking this language and I think it matters. So, I thought I'll apply to business school. I had to be in Boston, my husband's job was there, and I applied to Harvard Business School. I literally thought I would never get in, and I did. It's still one of the greatest mysteries of all time.

I really liked it, and I liked the values of many of the people I met who were in business. They wanted to build things. They wanted to create life. They wanted to create jobs. They were much cheerier and more sincere, and that was just much more values alignment for me. None of this language did I know at the time. I did not know values, aptitudes, nothing, but I was discovering it. Then, I ended up getting a job at Bain. They got the candidates they wanted by paying their business school loans off, and they said, "We pay your business school loan off if you come work here," and I was like, "How soon can I start?" I worked there for several years, and it was a great education. I had my four kids in that period, and I was just traveling nonstop, and it was hard. I always wanted to work, and I knew I was going to be a working mother. I never had one moment where I thought, "I'm not going to work," but this was work on steroids with no flexibility.

There was nothing for working mothers period in those days, but consulting was at the far extreme. Then, I was recruited to run The Harvard Business Review, and I remember thinking to myself, "I don't want to run a business magazine at all, but this is the accommodation I will make."

At some point during class, you were talking about how when you're good at your job, you then get elevated to these managerial roles. You end up elevating yourself out of what you love to do the most. So many people who want to be creative or write, they don't want to manage people. [Note: Suzy also teaches Developing Managerial Skills at NYU]

Oh, it's awful. I was initially terrible at it. I started off as a regular reporter and writer, and I was very good at it. Then, the editor left, and there was a bake-off between three of us, and I got it. I think they were like, "Fingers crossed, she can manage people," and at the beginning, the early results were not very good. I had to learn how to become a manager. But I learned, and I was going along pretty well until I met my [second] husband.

Right. So, you met your late husband (Jack Welch, then CEO of General Electric), and that sent things into a tailspin.

It did. This was pre-internet still, so everybody's personal life was not known to everybody. In the big picture, two people falling in love was not really a news story as we know them today. It would be like, "Oh, look, Suzy and Jack are together," and that would've been it, right?

Technically, I did the right thing; I stepped back from the article, and we killed the article. They let me go in a very unpleasant way. It was a tough time, but I learned what it was to lose what you loved professionally. I've been a sheer achiever up until that point and it taught me empathy towards people who have had their careers hit terrible roadblocks or landmines.

What did you do after that?

I cried and cried and cried. I felt sorry for myself. I felt ashamed and I sucked my thumb. I threw a pity party, which no one came to. Then, I got a call from O, The Oprah Magazine, and they said, "How would you like to come work here?" I went in, and it was surreal because it had only been a month that I had been pitying myself that I was never going to work again. Very quickly, a gigantic world of exciting business opportunities opened up to me.

I got my show on CNBC. I started writing for other things besides The Harvard Business Review. Then, Jack and I wrote Winning Together, and the success of that book was extraordinary and very gratifying, and that led to a TV show that we did together called It's Anybody's Business, which was wonderful and fun. We had a podcast, then we started to do the back page column for Business Week. On my own, I kept on working for O, and that's when I wrote 10-10-10, this decision-making tool [which became a book].

It's truly the epitome of when one door closes—

Yes, a lot of that, ones opened. You don't know that when it's going on. I'll tell you, the shit from being fired for a little achiever like me was devastating. It took the wind out of my sails, and I had a lot of self-doubt. Even when things were going really well, there were years where the thought bubble over my head was always like, "Do they know I was fired?" It really stayed with me. Then I realized everybody's been fired or everybody's had a bomb in their grid. And I was like, "Get over yourself, okay? It's part of you and you learned a lot from it."

Did you ever dream that you'd become a professor?

No, I didn't. When I was at HBS, they recruited me to be a professor and I said no. First of all, I was in too much debt to even consider such a thing. I never had seen myself as an academic, but after Jack died (in 2020), I was not sure what I was going to do with my life. I had no idea. I didn't want to go back to TV. And honestly, I had just sold Quadio. I loved working in tech, but I had to sell it at the end and I learned that I love startups.

I am 100% Becoming You's first beta tester, okay? I had this idea for a methodology to figure out what to do, and then I got this letter from a friend who said, "I'm working at NYU now," I was fixated on it and thought, "Maybe I could teach that class." And I went there and I was scared. They were wonderful and said, "Well, we can do a little test of this class. Sure." Next thing you know, the class was a success. And some of that is because a class called Becoming You, which really helps people figure out what to do with their life, is going to succeed no matter what. But I also think that I realized that I had aptitudes I didn't know I had in terms of teaching. I just didn't know it. I ended up feeling very alive teaching, and it all came together.

Now, I was 60 years old when this happened. Do I wish it had happened 10 years earlier? Yes, but could it have? My 50s were taken up with Jack being very sick.

Right, it’s quite a demanding job. How did you come up with the idea for this class?

So, I would say I was coming up with it my whole life. As a person who had to find out what she should do with her life completely by chance and circumstance, and trial and error, and I thought to myself, "There just has to be a different way." I had done all this values work when I was working at Oprah, and I had actually written about values in all of our books. Then, when I wrote 10-10-10, which is this decision-making system, it says, "You've got to know your values to do this. Here's some way to get it in your values."

I was never happy with the lack of methodology for identifying your values, so I was impelled to develop a methodology. I knew aptitudes really mattered because I saw a lot of people chase their passion and trip because they didn't have the actual aptitudes and skills. And so I became a student of aptitudes on my own, and then I was very lucky, too, along the way. I have met some incredible scholars and academicians who have come right up alongside me and really helped me in this. I met a great teacher and researcher, Betsy Wills, who invented YouScience and she taught me a huge amount. And Alexis Kenney, a PhD in clinical psychology, taught me a lot about values formation and discovery.

All the values work that we did on day one was the most eye-opening. Even as you were just starting to get into it, in my notebook, I started writing down, "Oh, I know what my values are. I value authenticity and freedom." And of course, I think most people are going to think, “I value my family and this," and you have just created this entire system that’s just perfect ... You just created these 15 perfect buckets.

It took a long time. Thank you for saying that. The codification of those values and the dimensions they're on has been revised roughly 2 billion times, but I had a lot of empirical data. I had thousands of students telling me their values, and then I would say, "But that's on this continuum, that's on that continuum." There were 10 originally, and then they did not capture everything and so I had to tweak them. It’s a vocabulary. The problem is that we have no language to speak to each other about values. So I hope we do now.

I never really realized how much Beholderism (a measure of visual attractiveness, like wanting a beautiful home or spending money on your appearance, as a life-organizing principle) is important to me.

It totally is, and it’s really important because Beholderism costs something and takes time and so, it is a value and it changes a lot of things. People fight about it. Couples fight about it. And families fight about it, and that immediately qualifies it as a value.

I thought Enoughism (wealth as a life-organizing principle) was pretty easy for me to identify. I grew up with immigrant parents who came from nothing. So having money and being able to build something of my own and live comfortably has always been really important. Although, it hasn't driven my decisions, especially when it comes to my career.

Suzy: First of all, you're much more honest with yourself than most people are about it. Most people have a very gigantic struggle admitting what it is they want, so they struggle and struggle, and then my scale allows them to put their little bead where only they know where it goes, but it's hard. Achievement is another one where people struggle a lot.

Status is the one I struggle with the most. “Am I lying to myself? Do I actually want more status?” I don’t know. Sure, I don’t want Kardashian fame. I don’t need to be a household name, but I do want a bigger platform to be able to help more people. That’s what drives it.

I know it's blended, but if somebody said to you like, "Oh, if you use this functionality, you get a million more followers. If you'd use that functionality, you would." I'm just guessing, but I would tomorrow.

Has Becoming You ever affected people's personal relationships or romantic relationships? How many divorces and breakups have you caused?

Too many. I feel like, "Okay, it was going to happen," and then this process facilitated or expedited it, but I had a woman who came in the first week of the semester. She said, "I'm struggling with my values. I know my fiance has different values," and I was like, "Oh, no. I know where this is going." They broke off their engagement in the middle of the semester, and she literally said to me, "I'm so grateful to Becoming You for ending my engagement." I'm like, "Oh, God."

As we went through the values, I found myself thinking, where would my parents be, and where are my best friends on this list? It made me think so much about a relationship I ended in April because I think scope (a measure of stimulation as a life-organizing principle) was the biggest dealbreaker–I want a big life!

There's a few that are like the divorce makers. So, scope is definitely one, place is one, and eudemonia is another because how much fun somebody wants to have or how much fun you think you have to earn can break a relationship.

From your experience with your students, do you think there are key signs for people when it's time to move on from their jobs?

Yes, when they're not feeling alive anymore, when it's work, when it just becomes drudgery. But long before then, is something dying inside of you? And if you're feeling like you're not living your purpose, what are you waiting for? I get it. I get it. There's money, there's convenience, but then those are the four horsemen, aren't they?

When the four horsemen come to take away our purpose, it's because they're coming at you. You're going to make the change eventually, and you're going to say, "What did I wait for so long for? The money came back and the convenience was stupid." We just do crazy things to not live by our values, and we always regret it.

But I get that this is part of the human condition. I don't feel any judgment over it whatsoever. I myself have done it. I gave up my values for years on end to be available, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. Like everyone else, I've also waited too long to say that. I waited too long with reporting to say, "This is against my values," and I just dripped and dripped along. And then, finally, there was a catalytic mechanism where I was like, "Okay, I absolutely cannot do this anymore."

What do you hope for the future of Becoming You?

The book's coming out in May, but that’s not for a long time. I would like to make it available to more people because I see that it can do some good stuff. It's very frustrating to hear people say, "I need your class," My daughter needs your class," "My husband needs your class," and for me to say, "Okay, I hope they get into NYU."

So, I'm excited about expanding the intensive. This was our trial. Thank you very much, it worked. I want make it more available. I want do it more times a year. I want to do it in different cities, and that would be super gratifying to me.

How do you scale this? Do other people start to teach it?

I think that it would be the dream to train people. It shouldn't just be me. I think the book will help, the podcast will help. So I would just like to make it more available and start the conversations it can start around living deliberately and then living by design.

Do you have any tips for people struggling to figure out their next move who can't take your class? How can they sit with themselves and think about what their future looks like?

The methodology is pretty straightforward: try to wrap your arms around what your true values and your priorities are. Everything can't matter at once. There have to be some tradeoffs to identify those. Wrap your arms around what your actual aptitudes are, not what people are telling you they are, not what you thought they were, not what you were good at in grade school. What are you actually good at? It can be like, "I am very good at making people feel welcome. I am very good at explaining complex concepts to people in writing." Just nail your superpower(s). The third is to try to figure out what your interests are, and a lot of people just don't take the time. That takes time because you've got to open that aperture.

Once you've got those three data pools to say, "What's at the intersection?" I think it's simple and complex at the same time. Then you start the journey there. Becoming You is not an overnight-y kind of thing, but that's its beauty. It's not a silver bullet because silver bullets don't exist. You will have detours, and you will fall off the trail, but at least you'll have a general sense of your destination.

I love how much you encourage people to own what they are good at because I think that is a huge struggle for people.

It is. First, you spend the beginning of your life with people telling you what you're good at. People with agendas, your parents, your teachers, whatever, and you receive information about what you're good at, and it may or may not be true, okay? Then you start living it out, and it’s like you're writing with your non-dominant hand, and one day, you start writing with your dominant hand, and you just like, "What?"

I also think women are often inclined to downplay or just, I don't know, act obtuse about what they're good at.

Right. There's a woman in the book that I profile extensively who was in this great state of despair when I met her. She said, "I just don't think I'm good at anything. I'm okay at everything," I was like, "Nope, there's something in there that you are uniquely good at, and we're going to drive down until we find it." Her presenting data was not very promising. She had extremely low stamina because of health issues, and she dropped out of college, so she didn’t have any official skills. She had been doing a lot of itinerary jobs, and she had no idea, but she ended up being so good at three or four things that she was able to build a beautiful career in trip planning for families.

She said, "I had no idea I could be so good at this," and I was like, "Yes, because it doesn't come to you. Somebody doesn't walk into your bedroom with a bugle and say, 'Girl, here are your aptitudes. You've got to go look at it.'" Unless you present as an incredible athlete, athletes know right off the bat because they're playing youth soccer and all the parents are like, "Holy shit, look at that," or as a musician, because your ear immediately shows up like, "Whoa, how could you play that music without looking at the score?" Those people are really lucky.

Let's talk a little bit about your PIE 360. What is it?

PIE 360 is like a home pregnancy test for the 360. My frustration with 360 feedback is it’s only available in corporate settings. So if you're very lucky and you were going to a big corporation, you are going to go through the 360 process, which is expensive and time-consuming, and you're going to find out how the world receives you. Well, sometimes that's very painful information, but sometimes it's fabulous information, but it's definitely not information we can get on our own. We have to be told anonymously what the world thinks about us.

So, my students go through the expensive, time-consuming process, but I knew that I wanted to take Becoming You to the world, and people deserve to have 360. I looked everywhere, high and low, for a cheap, good version of it, and it didn't exist. So, one day, in a complete fit of frustration, invented this tool which you saw and used, and it's like a blunt instrument. You have to send it out to at least 12 raters and ask them, "Compared to other people, how is the quality of relationships with people? How good are my ideas and how good am I at executing?" Those are the three factors that lead to long-term success: how good you are with people, how good your ideas are, and how good you are at executing ultimately.

And you get a picture back that says, "You think you're this good and the world thinks you're that good," on three different dimensions. For some people, it's their first time knowing that data about themselves. So that's coming to the world very soon.

I’m thankful that my variance wasn't very dramatic, but the one thing I was surprised about was that people rated me higher on execution than I rated myself because I am so hard on myself about execution.

It’s good data to know, though. You're better than you think. And that's a beautiful, beautiful thing to know. Think about that energy we take up beating ourselves up that we do not need to.

Do you have a mantra you live by?

So many. I quote the Jewel song, "In the end, only kindness matters." Another one I have is, "it's better to be in relationship than estranged." I think even when we have differences, it's very important to remain in relationship and that has held me in good stead, even with people for whom I am angry or hurt or whatever. I use it to counsel people all the time when they want to burn a bridge. And I'll say, "Just do what it takes to stay in relationship because life is long," so that's another one.

How many people are you mentoring at any given time?

Oh, I couldn't put a number on it. Sometimes, I don't even know I'm doing it when I'm doing it. I went to a wedding recently and the bride said, "And I want to thank my mentors." I was like, "Mentor? I thought we were friends!" I'm always talking about my secret mentor crushes where I'm watching people from afar. They don't even know I'm doing it, and they're absolutely my mentor. I'm just observing them.

Do you think there is a method for finding a mentor? Because I feel like people are confused about how to find one.

Mentors are earned. I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, "Will you be my mentor?" and it's like, "Well, that's not actually how it works. We have to really like each other. We have to have chemistry. I have to get something out of the relationship, too. I want to help everybody, but mentorship is a two-way street. I'm learning from you, I'm gratified by watching you grow. So I think that you really overperform at work, and the people you want to mentor you will start mentoring you because they'll say, "That reminds me of my younger self. That's what they usually do."

When you use the Becoming You methodology, and you start thinking about yourself in terms of your values, your aptitudes, and your interests, you start thinking about mentors differently, which is, "I've got to put together an army of mentors, who are teaching me about values and I'm watching their values, and I'm watching how they live them and others who've got aptitudes." Then you have a collection of mentors that you surround yourself with, and it's everchanging. There's not one mentor who gallops in on the steed and lifts you up off your feet and brings you to your perfect career. It does not work that way.

Last question. What's bringing you joy right now?

My granddaughter Lirael. When I'm in the classroom, I'm filled with joy. I could levitate. I'm like the drummer from Disturbed. I am the levitating drummer and I am very, very happy when I'm teaching. I'm happy when I'm creating curriculum, but I'm off my rocker, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs when I'm with Lirael, and I was not a coochie-coochie-coo mom. I was not on the floor with the children. I was not there a lot. And your grandchildren are a mulligan, to use the golf term, a do-over, and I am absolutely transfixed and obsessed with her. And then, honestly, my dogs. I love my dogs.