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'.
When Was The Last Time You Admitted You Were Wrong?
This week, we’re going back in to the archives for a conversation I had with Mark Thompson, early in 2019. Mark was the director general of the BBC before becoming CEO of the New York Times in 2012.
To me, his leadership is marked by a self-effacing honesty and personal courage.
Are You Happy?
Nils Leonard is the co-founder of Uncommon London. Nils has been on the podcast before.
I ask him back pretty regularly because every one of our conversations expands my understanding of leadership.
I think he keeps saying yes because each time he learns something about himself.
Are You Selfish?
Kerry Sulkowicz is the President of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Taking care of yourself first is a requirement. A necessity if you are to become a leader capable not only of withstanding the pressure, but using it as a catalyst to drive the business upwards.
Only once you have taken care of yourself can you then, confidently and at scale, take care of everyone else.
What Are You Going To Preserve?
Madeleine Grynsztejn is the Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
While we must fight the status quo, our future is built on the pillars of our past.
Which parts of the past do you need to let go of?
And which parts are you going to preserve?
What Terrifies You?
Marcel Marcondes is the Global Chief Marketing Officer for AB InBev.
Becoming the successful Global CMO of any major brand is a life’s dream for many people.
For the very best of them, being a Global CMO brings out the human being in you.
What Role Does Love Play In Your Leadership?
Devika Bulchandani is the global CEO of Ogilvy. And her view of leadership includes an impassioned belief that seemed so obvious to me once she said it but which I have never heard before.
What’s Your Big Goal?
This week’s guest is Carl Johnson. He’s the Executive Chairman and one of the founding partners at Anomaly.
If you go to the Anomaly website, it says, in block capitals, “A DEVIATION OR DEPARTURE FROM THE NORMAL OR COMMON ORDER, FORM OR RULE.”
In Anomaly’s case, this is not hyperbole. The company pushes boundaries and defies norms all the time.
It’s one of the reasons that yesterday Adweek named Anomaly the US Agency of the Year.
How Do You Find The Right People?
Nick Law is the Global Lead for Design and Creative Tech at Accenture Song. He has led and unlocked creativity across thousands of people. He’s seen what works. And what doesn’t.
In my experience, the very best leaders understand three things. Their business, their people and themselves.
But not in that order.
Has Leadership Changed You? Or The People Around You?
Philippe Krakowsky is the CEO of IPG. He runs a company of 58,000 people across more than 100 businesses.
Too often, leaders over-complicate. Sometimes, the situation. Sometimes, themselves. That’s not surprising. Leadership is complicated at the best of times. And it’s easy to lose perspective.
But, even more challenging is what often happens to those around you when your new role suddenly changes the org chart relationship to them. When you now hold the power.
That’s when your ability to overcome your own uncertainty becomes critical so that you can evaluate their behavior towards you objectively.
Why Do People Follow You?
Life is filled with agency. The ability to write our own story. To decide who we want to be and then to act on that basis.
And once we do decide, then comes the really hard part.
To declare it.
To say out loud to people who we know will judge us, this is what matters to me, These are the expectations I have of myself and the standards to which I want to be held.
Who Do You Want To Be?
I say all the time on this podcast and in my work, we do not have to be defined by the past or the expectations of others. We can all decide who we want to be and act with intention to be that person.
Our future selves are waiting to be written, to be lived and be loved.
Don’t wait too long.
How Much Do You Know About What’s Happening At Your Company?
Mark Read is the CEO of WPP. At last month’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, WPP was named the most creative company of the year.
He took over the role in 2018, in one of the most publicized and dramatic changes in leadership the advertising and marketing industries have ever seen.
Taking the company from those turbulent times to one of relative stability and success has required a realistic, pragmatic approach.
How Have You Been Changed By The Last Two Years?
Simon Cook is the CEO of Cannes Lions.
Cannes is an institution. One built on in-person contact. Like many organizations dependent on human contact, it has struggled in the face of a two year long, global pandemic.
Creativity is fueled by confidence. The willingness to boldly go where no one has gone before.
But is is shaped and guided by humility.
What Questions Are You Asking?
Gareth Kay is the SVP of Brand at Happily Health. Before that, he’s been the Head of Strategy at Goodby Silverstein, and the Founding Partner at Chapter Creative Studios.
Gareth is a relentlessly curious soul.
When all the answers are out of date, or from a different reality, the only choice we have is to start asking more and better questions.
What Kind Of Company Are You Building?
Karl Lieberman and Neal Arthur are respectively the Global Chief Creative Officer and Global Chief Operating Officer of Wieden + Kennedy.
Neal and Karl stepped into their global roles seven months after the beginning of the pandemic. How do you lead a culture opposed to rules through a time when there are no rules?
Creativity is the world’s most powerful force. It’s time to build flexible businesses that unleash it. It’s time for leaders to let creativity loose.
Are You Taking Care Of Yourself?
Antonio Lucio was the first Global Marketing and Communication Officer at Visa. The first Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at HP. He was Facebook’s first Chief Marketing Officer. And left there to become the Founder and Principal of 5S Diversity.
He is known as an incredibly empathetic leader.
As you’ll hear, that may be his greatest accomplishment.
Where Does Your Impact End?
Laurie Howell and Toby Treyer-Evans are Executive Creative Directors at Droga5 New York and have been partners for a very long time. They have also been responsible for important and extremely impactful work, including the New York Times campaign called The Truth Is Worth It.
But as their careers evolve and the world changes, it is their impact on people in the immediate vicinity that has their attention.
How Does Your Company Fit Into Your Story?
Rishad Tobaccowala is a thought leader, author and one of the great provocative thinkers. His insights are drawn from his many years spent as the Global Strategist and Chief Growth Officer of Publicis Groupe and now from his work as an independent advisor to businesses across the world.
The tsunami of change brought about by a global pandemic will slowly recede, and the companies left standing will be those who stayed true to their stories and know the kind of people that can help write the next chapter.
How Do You See Yourself?
Daniella Pierson is the Founder and CEO of The Newsette. And the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Wondermind. And she and her story are extraordinary.
It is a story of hope built on the determination of one remarkable woman to define herself and her life on her terms.
