Lead From the Heart

When hybrid cars first became mass produced over a decade ago, Honda and Toyota had two different strategies. Honda chose to produce a hybrid version of its wildly popular “Civic,” believing brand familiarity would help customers feel more comfortable with its brand-new technology. Toyota not only decided to produce an entirely new model car, they intentionally designed it so it would stand out. Which of the two models do you think ended up outselling the other one on a grand scale? According to Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics professor at the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego, Toyota’s “Prius” continues to dominate hybrid car sales today – specifically because Toyota’s senior management understood how incentives work. One might think that acquiring one of the first energy-saving hybrid cars would have been motivation alone for people already inclined to do their part to help the planet. But Toyota knew it wasn’t. They understood that people buying the first hybrid cars would also want to “signal” to other people that they were the kind of eco-conscious person who’d be willing to sacrifice personal luxury & horse power in order to help the environment. So, Toyota intentionally built an edgier (literally) car to ensure other people “noticed” it. This is just one of the myriad examples Gneezy cites in his new bestseller, “Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work,” to show that incentives send powerful signals that aim to influence behavior. But often – especially when it comes to workplace incentives – there’s a conflict between what a company intends with their incentives & the behavior they actually motivate. Consider the leader who urges teamwork, but unintentionally designs incentives for individual success. Or the one who invites innovation but punishes failure. It might sound funny, but organizations have been known to tell workers that “quality is job one,” while launching incentives that pay for quantity. To help workplace leaders especially, Gneezy highlights how the right combination of economic & psychological incentives can encourage people to drive more fuel-efficient cars, be more innovative at work, & even get to the gym. “Incentives send a signal, & your objective is to make sure this signal is aligned with your goals.” This is a fascinating discussion that will not only teach you how to more effectively create incentives for your employees and even children – it also explains how incentives are used to motivate our behavior (and not always favorably) by people we all interact with every day (think doctors, plumbers, sales people et al). Wharton’s Adam Grant named “Mixed Signals one of his highly recommended books of 2023. The post Uri Gneezy: Avoiding Mixed Signals: How To Align Incentives With Your Values appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

When you think about our world today, “turbulent” might be the first word you use to describe it. After a three-year long COVID pandemic fatigued us all, we’re now bewildered by a surprising number of employee layoffs occurring in all industries, & equally uncertain about how disruptive the AI-GPT technology will be to our work & careers. A crisis in Urkraine continues with no end in sight; it’s still undetermined where people will work most days – & unrelenting inflation is adding financial stress to all of our lives. To put it lightly, the world we live & lead in today is filled with uncertainty, ambiguity & complexity – & there simply are no signs suggesting we’ll ever again live in more simpler times. Our guest this episode is Jean Gomes, author of “Leading in a Non-Linear World: Building Wellbeing, Strategic and Innovation Mindsets for the Future, a book the Financial Times spotlighted as one its most anticipated books of 2023. Jean was the co-author with Tony Schwartz of the New York Times bestseller, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working – & his new book shows how our mindset, more than our knowledge & expertise, has become our greatest asset in facing an uncertain future – & to making important decisions when little or no data exists. Tapping into emerging science & research which proves our basic understanding of the term, “mindset” is missing some important dimensions, Gomes’ book shows that our mindset isn’t just a set of beliefs that shape how we make sense of the world, but actually the interplay of our feeling, thinking, & seeing. While a lot of us (those of us in leadership roles, especially) instinctively go to our minds when we’re having to make difficult or spontaneous decisions, it turns out we have far greater & supplemental intelligence to leverage when we learn to listen to what our bodies tell us. Remarkably, science proves that our bodies know significantly earlier than our brains when we’re about to make a bad decision – & our feelings tell us the truth about situations that our rational minds often cannot see. While the expressions “lead with the heart” and “heart-led leader” are suddenly gaining traction in business, they’re almost always used as a metaphor. But, in the case of Mark’s book & this podcast, the title “Lead From The Heart” was specifically chosen because of the emerging science which proves our hearts are not just blood pumps, they’re also a source of intelligence that holds great influence over human choices & behavior. Because we no longer live in a linear world where both our problems & solutions are clear, our rational, thinking brains alone cannot adequately respond to the non-linear world in which we find ourselves today. And, so, Jean Gomes joins us to explain why tapping into the intelligence of our bodies – which very much includes the heart – provides a profound competitive advantage in leadership because it consistently leads to better judgments. This is absolutely cutting edge insight, & learning how to do this is easy. Listen in! The post Jean Gomes: How To Develop The Mindsets You Need To Flourish In An Uncertain World appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

When Bob Chapman was thirty years old, his father died of a sudden heart attack – instantly making Bob CEO of a small, unprofitable manufacturing company his dad had only recently purchased. For the next two decades, leveraging an MBA from the University of Michigan, and a few years’ experience as a senior level accountant to prepare him, he led his company as most CEOs of his era did. He squeezed his workers as much as he could, and laid them off in times when the business’s profits were challenged. But in the late 1990’s Bob Chapman had a massive change of heart. He started caring about his employees in truly significant ways. With great intention, he reimagined the culture at Barry-Wehmiller, and went on to build a $3.7 billion (revenue) business via 60 acquisitions. And every time he took on a new team or a new plant, he went there personally to ensure his skeptical workers heard it from him: They were now working for a company based on trust and the ideal that “everybody matters.” During the Great Recession, Chapman never laid off a soul in any of his many locations. He personally forfeited 90% of his salary and then asked every employee to take a one-month unpaid leave. The way he saw it, “during tough times a family pulls together, makes sacrifices together, and endures short-term pain together. “If a parent loses his or her job, a family doesn’t lay off one of the kids.” As a result of his approach, Barry-Wehmiller remarkably emerged from the downturn with higher employee morale than ever before. In his book, “Everybody Matters,” Chapman says, “once you stop treating people like functions or costs, disengaged workers begin to share their gifts and talents toward a shared future. Uninspired workers stop feeling that their jobs have no meaning. Frustrated workers stop taking their bad days out on their spouses and kids. And everyone stops counting the minutes until it’s time to go home.”  In the eight years since his book was published, Chapman has become an activist in the world of CEOs. He realizes too few of them have embraced any of the humane leadership practices that have made his company so successful – and he spends much of his time working to persuade them to change. This podcast exists for the sole purpose of persuading managers around the world that there is nothing but upside for them once they begin to lead from the heart. Bob Chapman is the embodiment of that ideal – and a model leaders can follow if they not only want to drive performance and profits, but positively impact the lives of other people as well. The post Bob Chapman: A CEO The Business World Must Emulate appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

Our most precious resource isn’t money. It’s time. We’re all given the same twenty-four hours a day – &, for most of us, that never feels enough. We flatter ourselves for being “so busy” in our jobs, yet end our days feeling depleted & without enough time to get to the gym, read the books we want to – or spend dedicated time with the people we love. And often, the recognition that we always feel “time poor” makes us resentful and unhappy. Social psychologist and professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Cassie Holmes, has devoted her career to researching the role that time plays in our lives – with a specific interest in how different ways of thinking about & allocating our time might lead to greater life satisfaction & well-being. Tied to all she’s learned, she’s just published, Happier Hour: How To Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time And Focus On What Matters Most, named by Amazon’s editors as one of their “Best Books” of 2022. One of the first eye-opening observations she makes is that we don’t really need much more free time to make us content. A key study shows people are happiest with just 2 to 5 hours of discretionary time per day (ironically, when we’re given more than this, we grow bored & wanting more to challenge us). Another discovery is that, as people get older, they tend to find a higher level of happiness in ordinary events (say, a walk with a friend) in contrast to younger people, who mostly see happiness boosts from extraordinary events (a great vacation or show). “Realizing their time is precious, these people become more prone to savor even the simplest of moments.” Holmes observes that many of our daily experiences can be made to feel more meaningful when we, too, realize we won’t continue to do them every day forever. After admonishing her son to hurry up when he had literally stopped to smell the roses on the way to preschool, she says, “I didn’t realize that on that very morning I was trying to get Leo to hurry up, we had already completed 80 percent of those preschool commutes. Better to enjoy the roses on the last 20 percent.” “How we decide to approach our hours and spend our days determines the happiness we get to enjoy in life,” Holmes says. “And, when it comes to time & creating a good schedule, ‘we are the artist.’ We’re not just an observer, subject to passive viewing. This is our time. The mosaic we create is the magnificent life that we get to live.” This podcast, then, is dedicated to helping you become wiser in how you use life’s most precious resource — time — and in making decisions that will affect the happiness you experience every single day. The post Cassie Holmes: How To Live More Happy Hours appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

According to PepsiCo’s award-winning, and first, Chief Design Officer, Mauro Porcini, “our world is radically changing, and is forcing us to innovate as never before. And, we are entering a new, modern renaissance fueled by the reborn, humanistic necessity of putting people at the center of everything.” And when Porcini says, “put people at the center of everything,” he’s not just referring to the human beings (consumers) for whom companies design products and services, but also explicitly for all of the human beings who lead and participate in the innovation process – (an organization’s employees). Porcini, who also was the first ever Chief Design Officer at 3M – one of the most innovative companies in the world – has just published, “The Human Side Of Innovation: The Power Of People In Love With People,” where he makes the uncommon assertion that: “Innovation is an act of love. It is a gesture of empathy, respect, generosity, of one human being’s devotion to another.”  And, recognizing that humans have all of the ideas that make innovation happen, he’s an advocate for loving employees as a condition for drawing out their greatest creativity. When hiring people to work on his design team, Porcini not only focuses on finding candidates who “are in love with people” – and who have a genuine fire in them to create meaningful solutions for actual human beings – but people who also possess the specific traits of kindness, optimism, curiosity, and humility. Leading any team of human beings, he believes, inherently requires managers possess these exact same qualities. We don’t often think about how a company’s culture will impact its ability to drive change, transform product offerings or reimagine processes; but one of the world’s top design thinkers believes any leader who fails to see the direct connection will fall by the wayside – transcended by people, and organizations, who do. Mauro Porcini isn’t just inspiring in this conversation. His philosophy and leadership thinking will likely transform you. The post Mauro Porcini: If Your Organization Wants To Innovate, Love Your People appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

You might not think a book on philosophy could be a bestseller these days, but the title of MIT professor, Kieran Setiya’s new book, “Life Is Hard” clearly has wide appeal.  We’ve just come out of a two-year global pandemic, have experienced record inflation due in part to a seemingly endless war in Ukraine – and are heading into a recession that could put many workers’ jobs in jeopardy. And these are just the headline issues that make our lives especially difficult today. It’s rather confirming (soothing even) to hear a respected academic say the words, “life is hard” if for any reason that we’ve all been influenced to believe that, when it comes to dealing with life’s challenges, we’re just supposed to suck it up, plow through and keep smiling. Setiya’s book (and the focus of this podcast) is about making the best of a bad lot. It offers guidance for coping with pain, grieving loss, getting older, failing with grace, confronting injustice and searching for personal meaning. Pop psychologists simplistically advise us to “find our bliss” and “live our best lives,” while Setiya acknowledges that, at times, the best can often be out of our reach. As a contrast, he asks how we can better weather life’s adversities, find hope and live well when life is hard? Our first episode of the new season welcomes an educator from one of the world’s top universities. A philosophy expert and a philosopher in his own right, Setiya joins us to share wisdom of the ages we can apply to better manage all of our life’s challenges. And since many of our biggest difficulties and daily stresses too often occur at work, we’ve asked Setiya to share wisdom that can directly help you become a more grounded and confident leader…no matter how hard your life gets. It’s a truly brilliant and inspiring conversation you won’t want to miss. The post Kieran Setiya: How To Live Well When Life Is Hardest appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

For our 100th episode – and our final episode of the 2022 season – we bring you a guest who is the true embodiment of the Lead From The Heart philosophy. Bill George is formerly the CEO of Medtronic – a Fortune 200 medical device company which has 90,000 employees across 120 countries. And, for the past twenty years, he’s been a professor at the Harvard Business School where he’s long insisted that workplace managers at all levels possess a “moral compass” to guide their actions. He believes ‘the four most important qualities of leadership are passion, compassion, empathy and courage.” It may come as a surprise that any top business school professor would so strongly emphasize a leadership philosophy tied to values, character and, heart – but George is also the author of the leadership classic, “Discover Your True North” which he’s recently revised and republished. In his new edition, he makes some stunning assertions – starting with his belief that people running large companies today have lost touch with the needs of younger workers & must step aside. In his words, “current business leaders must move the next generation of leaders to their rightful place.” George also believes business – and society as a whole – would be wise to repudiate CEOs who intentionally harm people by their actions. In no uncertain terms, he calls out Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg for being as a leader who lacks both ethics & any spiritual center. And, most remarkably, he says business has long valued intelligent, intellectual workplace managers when what leadership truly needs today is a shift to the heart. He believes this approach to managing human beings is truly reflective of the future style of leadership. And he explains why in the compelling conversation. The post Bill George: Harvard’s Senior Fellow Urges Managers To Lead From The Heart appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

In this engaging discussion, Geoffrey Cohen, a Stanford professor and author of 'Belonging,' dives into the critical role of social belonging in combating workplace isolation. He explores how leaders can foster emotional connections in hybrid settings to boost engagement and performance. The conversation highlights the importance of politeness in building relationships and understanding the impacts of leadership styles on group dynamics. Cohen emphasizes empathy as essential for navigating communication and bridging divides, underscoring our shared humanity.

Are you someone who would love to make a positive change in the world? Could you be an influential change maker? University of California, Berkeley Haas Business School professor, Alex Budak believes all of us have the potential. And he created a wildly popular class called “Becoming a Changemaker,” which has quickly grown into one of the most highly-rated courses anywhere on the CAL campus. The popularity of Budak’s class very strongly hints at the underlying desire all of us have – as Steve Jobs once said – “to leave a dent in the universe.”  And how helpful would it be to have a guide on how to implement our ideas of transforming the world (or our team) in some truly meaningful way? In his new book, “Becoming A Changemaker: An Actionable Guide To Leading Positive Change At Any Level,” Budak effectively provides a playbook for leading positive change. It’s a research-backed guide to developing the mindsets and leadership skills needed to navigate, shape, and lead change and to thrive amidst uncertainty. Alex Budak joins us to discuss his book – and does so in the most interesting and relatable way possible.  As a hint to his marvelous concluding comments, Alex says, “The world needs you to be a change maker. We need you to lead in a way that’s true to who you are and to where you are.” A truly inspiring conversation! The post Alex Budak: How To Lead The Change You Want To See In The World? appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

Leadership is full of paradoxes: Should we build close relationships with our employees or keep a suitable distance? Should we trust our staff, or keep an eye on what’s happening? Are we best to display self-confidence – or is humility a greater power? For many of us, these competing & interwoven demands are a source of conflict. Since our brains love to make either-or choices, we choose one option over the other. We deal with uncertainty by asserting certainty. The problem is that once we declare certainty – & rule out one option over the other – we effectively undermine our potential success by needlessly believing there’s no way of achieving both.  In other words, we get it all wrong when we think that as managers we can’t be humble and decisive, or believe it’s impossible to build close relationships with employees and retain an appropriate distance. In their new bestseller, Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Marianne Lewis (left) & Wendy Smith (right) tap into 25 years of their own pioneering research to prove there’s a far more informed & enlightened way of approaching paradoxes in our lives.  And in what’s suddenly become common language, their solution is “both/and” thinking. The driving question that motivated Smith & Lewis in their extensive research was “What underlies our toughest problems, & how can we deal with it? At the heart of this question was their realization that if we all had better approaches to our problems, we could consistently develop more effective, creative & sustainable solutions. For years, we’ve seen “either-or” thinking play out in business. We’ve seen how values & ethics get tossed aside in the interest of making profits. We’ve seen CEOs defer exclusively to the demands of shareholders even when doing so harmed all other stakeholders including their employees. These are just two clear examples of how “either-or” bias continues to bias our decision making. Dr. Wendy Smith is a professor of management at the University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business & Economics, & the academic director of her school’s Women’s Leadership Initiative. Dr. Marianne Lewis is the dean of the University of Cincinnati’s Lindner School of Business. Together, they share some truly brilliant insights that bring great clarity to a new & empowered way of thinking.  And the information they share won’t only help make you a more effective leader –more than likely, it will change your entire life! The post Wendy Smith & Marianne Lewis: The Profound Limitations Of “Either-Or” Thinking appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.