1 Key for Home, 4 for Your Career

Carmine Gallo
Your Communications Coach

Sep. 19 2011 — 1:04 pm




Anderson Cooper: 4 Keys to Career Innovation

Anderson Cooper seems to be everywhere these days—hosting his own news program on CNN, filling in for Regis Philbin, co-hosting a New Year’s Eve event with Kathy Griffin and now hosting a syndicated talk show. Cooper is creative, talented and tenacious—attributes that would benefit anyone who wants to grow as a leader and advance their career.

Cooper offers an example of career innovation. Innovation, broadly defined, is simply a new way of doing something that results in positive change. Positive change can apply to new methods of doing business, product design, or even career management. How did Cooper bring innovation to his career? He had passion, vision, focus, and confidence.

Passion. Cooper said that he first heard these words—follow your bliss—from his mother, the heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. She gave Cooper that advice when he was deciding what to do after college. Journalism was Cooper’s passion and he pursued it relentlessly. But Cooper wasn’t interested in covering local news. He wanted to be on the front lines of war, strife and conflict around the world. This passion stemmed partly from a tragic event—Cooper’s older brother committed suicide at the age of 23. A couple of years later Cooper found himself covering famine in Somalia. “The only thing I really knew is that I was hurting and needed to go someplace where the pain outside matched the pain I was feeling inside,” Cooper said. “Somalia seemed a good place to start.”

Vision. Cooper began his journalism career as a fact-checker for Channel One, a network that broadcasts daily news to classrooms across the U.S.. Cooper did what he had to do to enter the profession and learn the craft, but his “vision” was to become an international correspondent—more specifically, a wartime correspondent. Vision is a key component of innovation. Great innovators don’t always know what’s coming next but by keeping a vision in their mind—a grander plan— they open themselves up to opportunities that others might have missed. The same principle applies to a career. Since no television network in the U.S would give him a chance, Cooper decided to leave for Vietnam to study the language, bringing a video camera along with him. Along the way he stopped in Myanmar and, thanks to faking some press credentials, covered the conflict in the region, sending video back to Channel One. It was the beginning of a career covering the globe’s most serious conflicts.

Focus. Innovation requires focus and so does a successful career. The inventor James Dyson failed 5,126 times before inventing his famous vacuum that “doesn’t lose suction.” That’s focus. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once said that innovation requires “saying no to 1,000 things” so you don’t lose your focus on the things that matter most. Cooper kept his focus as a journalist and a storyteller. When nobody gave him a chance he could have ended the dream of being a correspondent and gone to work in some other field. He refused to let anyone or anything distract him from his dream. Passion, combined with focus and vision give you the energy to outrun the competition. According to Cooper, “never underestimate the value of just out-hustling everyone else. I feel like I only got a job at CNN because I kept volunteering for the shifts no one really wanted.”

Confidence. Early in his career Cooper could not even get an interview with the major U.S. television news networks, so he says he had to make his own opportunities. Cooper had a dream that he was unwilling to relinquish. Rejection is a common theme among successful leaders and innovators. Author Kathryn Stockett said she was rejected 60 times before an editor agree to publish the bestseller turned movie, The Help.

Innovation sits in a lonely place because few people have the courage to follow their passion and to relentlessly pursue their vision, despite the naysayers. Cooper’s rise to the top of his profession teaches us that the same principles that fuel the growth of famous brands also apply to the growth of one’s career.

Carmine Gallo is the communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular keynote speaker and author of several books including the bestsellers, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs. His new book, The Power of Foursquare, will be released by McGraw-Hill in October, 2011 Follow him on Twitter: carminegallo