Lead From the Heart

As co-executive Chairman of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s most successful private equity firms – & host of his eponymous podcast on Bloomberg – David Rubenstein has had unparalleled access to many of the world’s most influential leaders. Over the past 5 years, he’s sat down with corporate heads including Eric Schmidt, Phil Knight, Jamie Dimon and Tim Cook – and also with uncommonly accomplished leaders from all walks of life including Warren Buffett, Christine Lagarde, Yo-Yo Ma, Lorne Michaels, Oprah Winfrey and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And just a few weeks ago, he published “How To Lead: Wisdom From The World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders And Game Changers” a book that instantly soared to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and which distills all of his revealing conversations. Mr. Rubenstein joins us to discuss many of the key insights he took away from all of these conversations noting he himself is a dedicated student of leadership – not to mention a master of it in his own right. “How to Lead” shares extraordinary stories of thirty pioneering agents of change, & reveals how each luminary got started & how they handle decision making, failure, innovation, change, & crisis. From Eric Schmidt, we learn that the reason Google first introduced free food was because co-founder Sergei Brin believed that people who eat together are more inclined to perform well as a team.  Despite Amazon being a highly data-driven company, David tells us that its founder, Jeff Bezos, relies on heart & intuition – & not analysis – to make his most important decisions.  And from the late U.S. Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, we learn that her fellow justices treat one another with great civility even though they often have great philosophical disagreements. Listen in as David Rubenstein shares many more provocative insights, and the most important lessons to be taken from the success of these global titans. Few people on the planet have ever had such remarkable access to the world’s most accomplished people – while at the same time being so profoundly interested in what they had to say. And when you’re done listening, you might just decide David Rubenstein is the most impressive leader of them all. The post David Rubenstein: “How To Lead” appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

A recent Fortune Magazine survey shows that nearly two-thirds of American CEOs have committed to taking meaningful action to advance racial equity within their organizations . Just this week, JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, committed $30 billion dollars in support. But, it’s not just money that organizations must spend in order to attain greater diversity and fairness, of course. Facebook, for example, has devoted millions of dollars to diversity efforts; but its latest report card shows the proportion of Black and Hispanic employees only increased from 8.4% in 2018 to 9.0% in 2019. So, spending a lot of money isn’t the solution. Today, Black people represent just three percent of workers at the top 75 tech firms – and only three percent of people holding management roles in companies with 100 or more employees. There’s a lot of room left for improvement. What individual managers need most today then, is clear guidance on how to fulfill their CEO’s mission and help create greater diversity within their own teams.  CEO pledges are directionally important, but most companies evidently have little experience or success in these matters. Minda Harts, assistant professor of public service at New York University, has just written a rather down-to-earth and honest guide to career success for people of color (women especially) called “The Memo: What Women Of Color Need To Know To Secure A Seat At The Table.”  As our guest, she shares intimate and practical insight on how workplace managers can better understand the challenges and countless barriers people of color experience, not to mention equally useful ideas on how to make meaningful improvements within their own teams – and within their own organizations. Minda’s book is a national bestseller and is both thoughtfully and humorously written.  One of the nearly 600 Amazon on-line reviews helps to capture the overriding intent of this episode of the podcast: “As a white-presenting person in leadership in my field, I’m not the primary target audience for this book, and that’s important. Fellow white folks in leadership roles: when was the last time you read a career book that wasn’t *for* you? If you can’t remember, read this with the goal of learning more about people with different experiences from yours. Think about why she’s saying things that feel surprising or uncomfortable, and what that means for how we can do better.” We all want to do better in this regard, and Minda Harts brings warmth, candor and rather wonderful perspective to a discussion intended to help, inform and enlighten.  Our conversation couldn’t be more timely – or useful. The post Minda Harts: A Conversation With The Author Of “The Memo” appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh An underlying objective of all leaders is to help maximize the full human potential of every person they manage – to effectively coach them and elevate their overall effectiveness. But in an era where many people are working remotely & managing remotely, the process of teaching, developing & stretching employees proves to be more challenging than in the pre-COVID era when we could sit in the same room with someone, and have a real heart-to-heart. As the need for coaching employees has only become more important during the work-from-home era, managers now must elevate their skills to match the need. And Marshall Goldsmith just happens to be a coaching Jedi who, in this podcast, shares truly uncommon wisdom on how to successfully help people keep growing & becoming more. For anyone not already familiar with Marshall Goldsmith, he is the author or editor of 42 books including “Triggers,” “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” and “How Women Rise.” His books have sold over 2.5 million copies & have been translated into 32 languages. Over his career, he’s coached CEOs from 200+ companies around the world. And two years ago, he was inducted into the “Thinkers50″Hall Of Fame – the same year the “Marshall Goldsmith Distinguished Achievement Award for Coaching & Mentoring” was created. He has been ranked as the World’s #1 Executive Coach & Top Ten Business Thinker for eight years – & was the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Award for Leadership by the Harvard Institute of Coaching. It’s a profound understatement to say that Marshall’s insights will prove invaluable to coaches & coachees alike. And his wisdom on how to successfully maneuver one’s life & career during the COVID pandemic makes this a truly remarkable, worthwhile and especially inspiring episode. One thing for sure is that it will leave you feeling extremely hopeful tied to Marshall guidance that we “accept what is” & “be happy now.”  The post Marshall Goldsmith: Lessons From A Coaching Legend appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our work lives. It’s forced many of us to work from home, away from our bosses, and has us worrying about the long-term security of the jobs we hold. And all these sudden changes have us asking ourselves, “How do I make sure I’m seen as indispensable at work?” For decades, Bruce Tulgan has been studying “go-to” people, those workers who are most consistently valued highly by their colleagues and bosses. And he’s just published his twenty-first book, “The Art of Being Indispensable at Work: Win Influence, Beat Over-commitment and Get the Right Things Done.” Regardless of what position or role someone holds in an organization, this is a book that shows how indispensable, “go-to” people think and behave – and how they build up their uncommon influence with others.  With new technology, constant change, uncertainty – and far-flung virtual teams – getting things done at work is tougher and more complex than ever. We’re also in the midst of a collaboration revolution, working across silos and platforms with everyone, all the time. On top of that, it often feels like we’re stuck in a no-win cycle—dealing with an overwhelming influx of asks, with unclear lines of communication and authority. And so, this episode is especially focused on sharing ways individual managers can ensure they’re personally seen as being indispensable – and how they can build an entire team of indispensable employees. Bruce is the expert on the subject. He’s the best-selling author of “It’s Okay to Be the Boss” and “Not Everyone Gets A Trophy,” and he’s spent over twenty-five years conducting intensive interviews with workers across America for the purpose of identifying generational and workplace trends. Through his research, he’s discovered that go-to people think and behave differently, They build up their influence with others not by trying to do everything for everybody, but by doing the right things at the right times for the right reasons, regardless of whether they have the formal authority. There’s far more to becoming the go-to person at work than by always saying ‘yes,’ or by being a subject matter expert.  Listen in as we introduce the most effective ways of making yourself truly prized by everyone with whom you work. The post Bruce Tulgan: The Secret To Becoming Indispensable At Work appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

The Wall Street Journal calls London Business School professor, Gary Hamel, the world’s most influential business thinker – and his landmark books have been translated into twenty-five languages. His brand-new book, Humanocracy: Creating Organizations As Amazing As The People Inside Them, just launched as an Amazon “Number One Release” & is the focus for this special podcast episode. In a nutshell, “Humanocracy” thoughtfully outlines why the time has finally come for organizations to abandon their bureaucratic ways and bring humanity back into the workplace. He and his co-author Michele Zanini, assert that companies around the world are disabled by bureaucracy – and that fact is validated by declining global productivity growth and entrenched employee engagement scores. In a bureaucracy, Hamel tells us, human beings are treated as instruments of the organization. Management empowers few people at the expense of the many, prizes conformity over originality, wedges workers into narrow roles, robs them of agencies – and inherently kills their spirit.  In a ”humanocracy,” however, the organization itself becomes the instrument – and it’s the vehicle human beings use to better their lives and the lives of those they serve. “We must do our part to emancipate the human spirit,” the authors write. “We must start over. We need a new organizational paradigm; one that empowers and equips every employee to be an inspired problem solver and a business-savvy decision maker. We must cross-train every worker and treat them as indispensable.”  And what their book proves is that the very best organizations intentionally give human beings the maximum freedom to excel. Famous German sociologist Max Weber famously said that “bureaucracy develops more perfectly the more it succeeds in eliminating all purely personal, irrational and emotional elements which escape calculation.”  In effect, his insight is that bureaucracies are designed to weaken the hearts in people – and to subvert their humanity. What would the world be like – what would all of our lives be like – if we worked in organizations that valued people over products, that emphasized trust and transparency, and whose management models were built to maximize creativity, competency, collaboration, commitment and courage? Listen in as Gary Hamel shares his remarkable research and vision. The post Gary Hamel: How To Create Organizations As Amazing As The People Inside Of Them appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

Wharton Business School management professor, Sigal Barsade believes too many leaders focus on how employees think and behave at work & largely ignore how they feel. This is because few managers realize that human feelings matter just as much – if not more – to their employees’ commitment, engagement & productivity. And by lacking a deeper understanding of what truly motivates people in their work lives – feelings & emotions – leaders unwittingly handicap their own performance, not to mention their teams’ performance. For a very long time in business, emotions have been viewed as noise, a nuisance, something to be ignored. But one thing we know now after a quarter-century of research (much of it Barsade’s), is that emotions are not noise – they’re leadership data. They reveal not just how people are experiencing their work lives, but also how they’ll go on to perform. In fact, in order for workplace leadership to truly advance, we’ve reached a point where it’s become essential for managers at every level to not only maintain an ongoing pulse of their team’s emotional culture, but to also be highly intentional about creating an environment where employees can fully thrive. As we kick off the fourth season of the “Lead From The Heart” podcast, Sigal Barsade represents our consummate guest. Her brilliant work reconfirms that paying attention to the emotional side of work remains a huge gap in workplace leadership. And, as we discuss in great detail, emotions like affection, caring, appreciation & compassion prove to be the ones that really connect & inspire people. Researchers call this, “companionate love,” a term that, for some, might take a little getting used to.  But in Barsade’s words, “I’ve yet to see any research results indicating a positive outcome from an organization that has a systematic, strong culture of fear or sadness or anger.” We’ve led exclusively with our minds for generations, & low engagement scores around the world reflect it.  To drive employee engagement where it can and should be, we must achieve a greater balance between mind & heart in how we manage human beings in the workplace. Listen in as Sigal Barsade wonderfully explains both the “why” and the “how.” Please note, Wharton business school professor, Sigal Barsade, tragically died in February, 2022.  She was a mentor to Mark in writing the second edition of his book, but did not live to see it published. The post Sigal Barsade: What’s Love Got To Do With Leadership? appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

In 2017, ride-sharing innovator, UBER was in serious trouble. The company was facing a lawsuit from drivers that alleged the first had cheated them of pay. Various media reports described UBER as having a “asshole culture: where women were sexually harassed and the firm’s CEO, Travis Kalanick was caught on video berating an UBER driver. Seeking someone to help restore UBER’s imperiled reputation – not to mention help create a sustainable workplace culture going forward – the company selected Harvard Business School’s Frances Frei as its SVP for leadership and strategy. Perhaps the main reason UBER sought out Frei is because the cornerstone of her leadership philosophy is the belief that trust is the foundation of everything we do. Frei has since performed extensive research on trust – how to establish it, sustain it and even re-build it – and went on to share her findings in a TED talk that’s now been viewed nearly five million times. All distilled, Frei says there really are only three component parts of trust; and if we “wobble” in any one of them, we put ourselves in harm’s way: (1) Authenticity:  People trust us more if they sense we are being authentic with them. (2) Rigorous Logic: We’re trusted when people respect the process we use to arrive at our decisions, & when we communicate them effectively. (3) Empathy:  Trust is lost when people feel we focus mostly on ourselves – not on them. Just this week, Frei published her new book, Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide To Empowering Everyone Around You,” co-written with Anne Morriss. And we’re honored to help them launch it. In this podcast then, we go deep into Frei’s discoveries and explore how each of us can earn and sustain greater trust will all of the people in our lives.  What makes this episode so additionally compelling is Frie’s remarkable blend of intellect and compassion. As you’ll hear, she has both an extraordinary leadership mind, and an extraordinary leadership heart. As of February 2023, this is the fourth most downloaded episode of the podcast series. The post Frances Frei: How To Build And Rebuild Trust appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

Who isn’t impressed by a highly confident person?  Confident applicants are more likely to be hired, & self-assured politicians are more likely to be elected. Because we believe it produces a winning edge, we all strive to be self-confident. In fact, a surge of confidence can feel fantastic. It offers us a rush of energy – & feelings of invincibility – that help propel us in those moments of adversity when we’re called upon to be courageous & decisive. But surprising, extensive & eye-opening research by U.C. Berkeley business school professor, Don Moore, finds that while some confidence is good, overconfidence is often a leadership derailleur. In fact, no problem of judgment & decision making is more prevalent and more potentially catastrophic than over-confidence.  In Moore’s words, “self-help books & motivational speakers tell us that the more confident we are, the better. But this way of thinking can lead to enormous trouble.” Over-confidence has been blamed for the sinking of the Titanic, the loss of two space shuttles, the sub-prime crisis & the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. Despite what we may commonly have accepted as truth, there are huge risks to being over-confident. In this podcast, we discuss Moore’s brand-new book, Perfectly Confident, which marries the best psychological & economic studies to explain exactly what confidence is, when it can be helpful, & when it can be destructive in our lives.  A theme throughout the discussion is that human nature guides us to seek out information which confirms our already held beliefs. Too few of us naturally ask ourselves, “How might I be wrong?” or “Is my hypothesis true?” But just by considering that we might be wrong, we open the door to listening to people who disagree with us and to gaining information that we not only lack – but that could influence us into making far better choices. Disconfirming our own beliefs & convictions is difficult for most humans, but Moore’s book – & this conversation – explore the most effective ways for us to maneuver.  And as you’ll hear Moore explain, instead of attempting to pick a winner in the competition between over-confidence & under-confidence, we’re wisest to pursue “the middle way.” The post Don Moore: The Mindset You Need For Making The Best Life Choices appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

What percentage of people would say they’ve ever had a really great boss? In an ideal world, most of us could recall a long list of past and present managers who fit the bill. But we know highly caring & supportive managers remain rare in most workplaces. As evidenced by consistently low employee engagement scores around the globe – & record high turnover leading up to the COVID pandemic – the signs are everywhere that too few managers possess an ability to inspire people while concurrently driving performance. According to long-time Wharton Business School emeritus professor, Stewart Friedman, one reason business has a legacy of having so many poor leaders is because it’s only fairly recently that companies placed a premium on leadership development. In fact, only in the past several years have top MBA programs begun to put leadership training on par with traditional curriculum elements. This means many people who graduated from elite universities, & are now at the top of the ladder at major organizations, had an education that emphasized accounting, financial analysis, marketing & operations – but provided only a cursory exposure to ethics, trust & human motivation. In this truly wonderful conversation, Friedman describes why business schools mostly ignored leadership for decades, & shares how world events effectively forced them to begin teaching more humane managerial practices. As we slowly emerge from the COVID-crisis, the experience that millions of people around the globe are having in working from home will have permanently changed them. One key outcome of this is that organizational leadership will need to quickly pivot and begin to authentically care about people not just as employees, but also with respect to how their work experience affects all the other important aspects of their lives. With the exception of two years spent running Ford Motor Company’s leadership development program, Friedman has been at Wharton since 1984. He’s the founder of his school’s leadership development program in addition to its “Work/Life Integration Project. He’s also the author of “Total Leadership: Be A Better Leader, Have A Richer Life” & co-author of the brand new, “Parents Who Lead.” As genuine of a human being as it gets, Stew Friedman has amassed a truly comprehensive understanding of personal and workplace leadership – and graciously shares much of that knowledge here. The post Stewart Friedman: Be a Better Leader And Have a Richer Life appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

Author Erik Larson has written six New York Times bestselling books including “The Devil In The White City,” a National Book Award finalist. On the day we recorded this podcast, his new book, “The Splendid And The Vile” ranked as the number-one work of nonfiction on both the New York Times & Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. The Splendid And The Vile focuses on Sir Winston Churchill’s first year as England’s Prime Minister (exactly eighty-years ago) – “the year in which Churchill became Churchill, the cigar-smoking bulldog we all know, when he made all of his famous speeches and showed the world what courage and leadership look like.” The central question at the time – almost exactly eighty-years ago – was whether the British people could endure a ferocious assault by the full-force of the German army. And as England went on to suffer fifty-seven consecutive days of merciless bombings that killed 45,000 citizens including nearly 6,000 children, Churchill’s leadership not only proved to sustain human spirits – it ensured his country’s remarkable victory. By demonstrating extraordinary courage, hope, candor, optimism and inspiration (all qualities of the heart), Winston Churchill not only earned a spot as one of the most renowned leaders of all-time, he stands perhaps as the greatest leader ever in a time of crisis. While Erik Larson openly admits that he didn’t specifically set out to write a book on leadership, The Splendid And The Vile proves to be one. And, if you’ve ever read any of Larson’s extraordinary books, you know his writing is clear and articulate – and that he’s masterful story-teller. And as you listen to him bring Churchill to life in this podcast, you’ll hear these very same gifts shine through. At a time of our own, twenty-first century, crisis, when leaders around the world are seeking guidance on how to act, Erik Larson couldn’t be a more timely or informed voice.  Larson is also convinced that Churchill’s crisis-leadership practices are learnable and absorbable: Were we to adopt the behaviors that made Churchill great, we ourselves can be great as well. Promise yourself you’ll make time to listen in – it’s Leading From The Heart at its best! The post Erik Larson: Why Winston Churchill Is The Greatest Crisis Leader Of All Time appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.