Are You Leading A Team Or A Group Of Individuals?

Joanna Coles is the CEO of Northern Star Acquisition Company, the former Chief Content Officer for Hearst Magazines, and former Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan.

Creative businesses win or lose based on how successfully they take disparate, talented individuals and combine them together to produce extraordinary outcomes. Whether that’s ads or code or clothes or cars or content or ideas.

As Joanna says, we’re moving into an era of heightened individualism.

Are You Imagining The Future Or Re-Building The Past?

Justin Spooner is the co-founder of Unthinkable - they describe themselves as a digital strategy and digital transformation company.

Transformation is a word that gets used a lot. It also gets practiced little. Mostly because it’s hard and expensive and, honestly, in some respects it’s frightening.

How Do You Define Impossible?

Faith Popcorn is the founder of the BrainReserve.

The cost of entry to becoming a leader is imagination. The weekly fee for membership in the club of great leaders is the capacity and willingness to keep seeking out the seemingly impossible and then finding a way to make it part of the expected.

How Do People See You?

Ellen Mirojnick is an award winning costume designer. During her career she’s worked with directing greats, from Steven Soderbergh, to Ridley and Tony Scott to Oliver Stone.

Ellen turns costumes into characters. How she does that is worth thinking about for every leader.

Who Do You Want On The Ride With You?

Nils Leonard is one of the co-founders of Uncommon London.

They say that life is a journey. And so is building a business.

Who gets to go on that ride is perhaps the most important decision that a leader makes.

Whether You Think You Can, Or You Think You Can't – You're Right.

Vincent Bragg and Joe Nickson are two of the co-founders of ConCreates. They started the company in federal prison where, as you’ll hear, you can learn a lot about business and even more about life.

Seeking The Truth.

Kerry Sulkowicz is the leadership confidant and psychiatrist. Kerry works with leaders across the world and is also president-elect of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

In most organizations, leaders sit or are placed on a pedestal. There is a structural hierarchy that directly affects the flow of information.

When we allow ourselves to believe that the structure itself provides us with all the information that we need, we run the risk of never knowing what we don't know.

What’s Changed And Where Do Leaders Go From Here?

A Story of Hope.

Michael Wolff is perhaps best known for Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which topped the New York Times best seller list for several weeks in early 2018.

If we have learned anything from 2020 and 2021, it is that we cannot know what 2022 will bring.

The story we tell future generations about how we met this moment will depend on how we approach what comes next.

With frustration and old rules.

Or with grace, originality and some humor.

Why Great Leaders Are Honest About Their Weaknesses And Their Strengths.

Judy Jackson is the Global Head of Culture at WPP which makes her responsible for providing the vision and strategy for building a culture that embraces 100,000 people.

There’s no one size fits all approach that satisfies that brief. It’s a role that requires a three dimensional view of human beings.

How Do You Want To Spend Your Time On The Planet?

Raja Rajamannar is the Chief Marketing & Communications Officer for Mastercard and is also President of the company’s healthcare business.

What do you want to do with your life? What do you want to spend your time on while you are alive?

These are questions that scare us.

But when we are willing to confront them, the answers unleash such reservoirs of possibility, that soon we cannot imagine why we lived for so long without the clarity and confidence they provide.

Why The Leadership Journey Starts With Honesty.

Chris Hirst is the Global CEO of Havas Creative.

Honesty about the challenges you're trying to overcome is where leadership begins.

So, trust yourself and start with truth.

How She Faced Her Monster In The Attic. And Won.

Jill Kelly is the Global CMO of GroupM, the world’s largest media investment company.

The journey that brought her to this powerful position has been complicated and has forced her to confront threats both real and imagined.

How She Balances The Position And The Person.

Deidre Findlay is the Global CMO of Condé Nast.

Today, as a leader, it’s not just the job you’re selling, it’s the journey.

The journey you’re taking the business on.

And the journey you’re offering everyone who works for you.

How A Pandemic Tried To Destroy Her And Why It Failed.

Umber Ahmad is the founder of the rapidly growing bakery, Mah Ze Dahr.

Leadership is most visible when we are confronted by the twists and turns that life brings us.

When faced with these moments we quickly discover whether we are a leader in name only, or whether we are willing to confront the challenges of whatever lies ahead.

Why What Worked In The Past Isn’t Going To Work Anymore.

This week, I’m going to talk about one of the driving forces affecting modern creative leadership. Vulnerability. And the journey that some of the world’s most creative and innovative leaders are taking to bring all of themselves to their roles.

On Courage, Optimism And Listening As A Creative Act.

Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico are the founders of Johannes Leonardo.

Now, leaders are really going to have to lead.

Which makes Leo’s recognition of listening as a creative act, an invaluable building block in the road to the future.

What Makes A Leadership Team Work.

Emma Armstrong, Gabriel Schmitt, Michael Aimette and Todd Sussman are the leadership team of FCB New York.

Are you, as Emma describes, curious about the power of creativity and where the world is going next? And are you taking people on that journey of discovery and possibility?

Aligning Her Leadership With Her Life.

Gail Gallie is the Co-Founder of Project Everyone.

Their mission is to accelerate progress towards a fairer world by 2030, where extreme poverty has been eradicated, climate change is properly addressed, and injustice and inequality are unacceptable.

Gail’s own energy is infectious. Even across a Zoom from three thousand miles away, she lifted my sense of possibility.

Why She’s Optimistic And Skeptical About The Impact Of DE&I.

Keesha Jean-Baptiste is the Senior Vice President, Chief Talent Officer at Hearst Magazines.

Keesha is brilliant. She is brave. And she is black. And all three of those attributes make her an extraordinarily insightful and powerful advocate for the work that companies need to undertake if their workforces are truly going to reflect society.