What Is Your Leadership For?
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is the Junior Senator from the State of New York.
Running for public office places you in a spotlight that is white hot. Being clear why you’ve made the choice to run in the first place is table stakes for creating the life you want to live and the legacy you want to leave behind.
What Do You Think And Why?
Tom O’Keefe and Jeff King are two of the four partners who have just merged their respective businesses, OKRP and Barkley.
When we are clear about why we think what we think, when we are free of insecurity or hubris or ego, then we can assess an alternative path with an open mind.
Mergers provoke the need to lead through this lens.
How Vulnerable Is Too Vulnerable?
Anselmo Ramos is the Co-Founder and Creative Chairman of GUT, a global independent creative agency that’s headquartered in Miami, and with six other offices around the world.
How vulnerable is too vulnerable?
The answer, of course, depends on the culture that you have created. If your culture is based on deep and enduring emotional trust, you give people the ability to show up as complex, multifaceted humans, to show up as whole beings.
Are You Conscious Of Your Choices?
Kara Swisher is the most effective and successful tech journalist of our lifetimes.
In a world of white men with giant bank accounts and even bigger egos, how did this 5 feet 2 inch, self-described, liberal lesbian mother of four, end up as the most influential and insightful reporter of the technology age?
As you’ll hear, Kara puts it down to curiosity, confidence, and understanding the choices available to her.
This week’s guest is Avery Baker. She’s the former President and Chief Brand Officer of Tommy Hilfiger.
Six months after she stepped down from her position at Tommy, we talk about her desire to empower others and why it's an essential skill to demonstrate as a leader.
We also discuss the new leadership paradigm that we have developed together for creative and innovative businesses. We call it 'Partnership Leadership'.
Who Takes Care Of You?
Colleen DeCourcy has been named creative leader of the decade. She led Wieden and Kennedy to three consecutive Agency of the Year wins and her contribution to creativity has just been recognized by Cannes Lions with the Lion of St Mark Lifetime Achievement Award.
Today, three months into her version of retirement, her impact is everywhere.
How Many Ways Are You Looking At The Future?
Lori Bradley is the Vice President for Talent at Chewy.
Lori used the word experiment three times in about ten seconds.
Can you remember the last time that word was used in any leadership team meeting you’ve been part of in the last few months?
The future is waiting to be invented - by those who are brave enough to experiment.
Success Is Built On Hope. And The Determination To Do It On Your Terms.
This week’s episode is a re-run of one of my very earliest episodes. It’s a conversation I had with Nils Leonard in the summer of 2017.
Nils was on the show only a few weeks ago. But I’m airing this episode again now for a simple reason.
It’s a case study.
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.
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.
