When Do You Stop And Take A Breath?

If you've listened to Luther Vandross or Tina Turner, or Sting, or Chaka Khan, or Teddy Pendergrass, or Roberta Flack, then you've heard Lisa Fischer sing. If you went to a Rolling Stones concert between 1989 and 2015, you saw Lisa as the band's lead female singer join Mick Jagger on stage.

Leadership at its heart is the ability to unlock the potential of others, to make them feel more connected. The very best leaders do that by helping us to understand ourselves better, by helping us feel what we had never felt before.

Lisa is proof that you don't have to stand center stage to do that. You just have to be honest with yourself about where you get your energy from, and then let that energy flow.

Do You Welcome The Sounds Of Silence?

Shu Hung is the Global Chief Creative Officer of AKQA.

In a complicated world, Shu has learned that knowing who you are is the foundation on which leadership success is built.

Please come as you are. Words to live by.

What Should We Expect From You?

Nicole Parlapiano is the Chief Marketing Officer at Tubi. When she arrived two and a half years ago, Tubi was an eight year old business that had no brand recognition. Today, with the help of their ad agency, Mischief, the streaming service has 97 million active monthly users, up from 20 million in 2019.

Leading a challenger brand works best when you're willing to move fast and break things. And if you want the people that work for you to act with the same confidence, then they have to know who you are.

What Else Do You Want To Know About Yourself?

Sir Andrew Strauss is the former Captain of the England cricket team which he led to become the number one team in the world for the first time in England's history. He then became England's Director of Cricket and he's recognized as the architect of the country's first ever one day World Cup victory.

In 2019, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to charity, sport, and cricket.

Being captain of a cricket team requires the same skills needed to run a business. Amplified.

Who Do You Trust?

Jim Stengel is the former CMO of P&G, and he's now a hugely successful author, speaker, coach, consultant, and advisor. He's also the host of the brilliant CMO Podcast.

In our conversation, Jim and I started to lay the framework for how we think that leadership is going to have to evolve as the confidence in most institutions, including government, continues to deteriorate.

How Will The Best Leaders Lead In 2025?

This episode is designed as a provocation, an inspiration, and a roadmap for the leaders of businesses, for whom unlocking creative thinking is critical.

What Does Your Company Reject?

Karl Lieberman is the Global Chief Creative Officer of Wieden + Kennedy.

To unlock creativity and unleash its power to maximum effect, you have to be willing to break the norms, to encourage the irrational and sometimes even the absurd.

You have to reject predictability for possibility.

And when you're yelled at, because no one has ever done it like that before, you have to be willing to shrug.

What Are You Willing To Compromise?

Lina Polimeni is the Chief Corporate Brand Officer at Eli Lilly and Company. This is a business whose work is often the difference between life and death, where they are trying to cure cancer, and where the outcome is very personal.

No one can lead effectively without compromise. 

But what we choose to compromise has a huge part to play in whether we’re successful.

Are You Centered?

Kerry Sulkowicz is the Past-President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the Founder and Managing Principal of Boswell Group. They provide leadership advice to boards and CEOs.

Leadership is sometimes about taking action and it is sometimes not.

But it is always about being centered.

What Is Your Pain For?

Taban Shoresh is the Founder of The Lotus Flower, a UK-based charity that supports women and girls that have been displaced by conflict, and helps them to build sustainable futures. Since 2016, the charity's projects have impacted more than 60,000 women, girls, and community members. 

She has experienced staggering trauma, she has known realities that I'm sure I would not have survived, and she has taken all of that pain and turned it into creative leadership of the most consequential kind. As you'll hear, for reasons both global and personal, she's in a hurry. 

Is That Good?

Heather Freeland is the Chief Brand Officer at Adobe, a business that, as Heather describes, is undergoing significant change to prepare itself for the future to come, and the one that is already here.

If human beings are to create a dividing line that AI can not cross, the question, “Is that good?” may be the beating heart on which that barrier depends.

Why Are You Doing What You’re Doing?

Gabriel Schmitt has just celebrated his one year anniversary as the Global CCO of Grey.

He has learned over his career one of the most important leadership lessons that I think often gets overlooked.

The importance of context.

How Well Do You Know Yourself?

Lisa Smith is the Global Executive Creative Director at JKR.

When you meet Lisa, her energy is infectious. As you’ll hear in our conversation, she wants to make a difference.

She also knows herself well enough to have learned that her energy sometimes needs an adapter.

What Direction Are You Going?

Nils Leonard, one of the co-founders of Uncommon - the award winning global creative studio - has been a regular guest on this show since I started Fearless seven years ago.

In all of that time, I’ve wondered about his partnership with his two co-founders, Natalie Graeme and Lucy Jameson.

Why did they decide to go into business together? How does it work and what might get in the way?

What Lessons Have You Learned?

This episode features the return visit of Jon Cook, the Global CEO of VML. I interviewed Jon for the first time a year ago, eight months after he had died while going for a run in his neighborhood.

Today, he is the CEO of the world's largest advertising agency. We covered a lot of topics during our latest conversation, from the qualities that he brings as a leader, to navigating mergers, to the impact of AI. We also talked about a simple but powerful truth that I think a lot of leaders have a hard time remembering when they're facing stressful situations - that we are already better than we think.

What Will Be The Impact Of AI On The Creative Industries, And How Can We Meet This Moment?

This is the final episode of my series of interviews over the last few weeks leading up to and through the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

It offers a map for the future based on those conversations, and observations of the speed of change.

Where Does Ideation End And Production Begin?

David Rolfe is the Global Head of Production at WPP. Dave is the most provocative and disruptive thinker about production that I know.

As the week at Cannes unfolded, it became clear that this series wouldn't be complete without a conversation about production.

Does Your AI Do What You Need It To Do?

Adam Tucker is the Global Account Lead at WPP for Mondelez, and he reached out to me after listening to the first few episodes in this series. He pointed out that while we were focusing on how AI will impact the process of how the creative industries work, we hadn't talked about how it is already changing the work itself.

Are You Willing to Dare?

Sir John Hegarty is the Co-Founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty and one of the most original thinkers of the last 40 plus years. At a time when the future is waiting to be invented, like never before, Sir John's description of the atmosphere that leaders need to create is time tested. Only time will tell whether it is timeless.

What Is It?

Tiffany Rolfe is a mother, as well as the Global Chair and Global Chief Creative Officer at R/GA. I asked Tiffany to come back on the show because she is, as you'll hear, a self described tech optimist. She's also one of the most original thinkers that I know.