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 Is Helping You Be You?
Liz Taylor is the Global Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy.
Everyone has a story. Liz’s story, as you’ll hear, has a traumatic beginning.
Our past shapes us. But it need not define us.
Only we do that.
We just have to ask for help.
How Does Your Leadership Make People Feel?
Ajaz Ahmed is the Founder and CEO of AKQA. AKQA employs 6,500 people around the world and receives about 80,000 job applications a year.
Ajaz’s definition is the first time that I’ve heard a description that made me understand what a truly inclusive company culture would feel like. And I think that matters.
Do Your Weaknesses Shape You Or Stop You?
James Townsend is the Global CEO of Stagwell Brand X Performance Network and the Global CEO at Assembly.
Knowing yourself, your strengths and your weaknesses, has never been more critical to your success and to your happiness.
It is rare, I find, for someone to have the kind of clarity about themselves that James describes.
What Do You Need To Know And When Do You Need To Know It?
Sir Martin Sorrell first appeared on the show in 2019, and in that conversation, I was struck by his pride in building companies that provide the livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people.
Sir Martin is a polarizing figure. But he is, of course, much more human than his public persona has shown over the years.
What do you need to know and when do you need to know it?
Those questions sit at the heart of modern leadership.
What Would You Regret?
Jon Cook is the Global Chief Executive Officer of VMLY&R.
Jon died last October. As you’ll hear, the fact he is still here to have this conversation required a set of circumstances so improbable that they would have strained the credibility of your favorite episodic drama.
But the fact he is still here, gives him, and those that meet him, a living and breathing teacher of what will really matter to us, when we reach our end.
How Fast Are You Going?
Andréa Mallard is the Chief Marketing & Communications Officer of Pinterest.
I interviewed Andréa at Cannes, in the lobby of the Majestic Hotel. Her energy struck me, the moment she arrived. Her perspectives about her life and her leadership have stayed with me, long after we said goodbye.
How Do You Feel?
Tim Mapes is the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Delta Airlines.
Early in our conversation, it became obvious that Tim is very willing to look at himself honestly and at his own behavior with self awareness.
I asked him where that came from. And he said, simply, counseling.
What Terrifies You?
Today’s episode was recorded last week at Cannes in front of a group of 37 young creatives from 29 countries who had won places to the Roger Hatchuel Student Academy.
It’s the most intimate expression that Simon or I have ever shared publicly of who we are.
Our hope is that this helps to catalyze a shift across the creative industries of how leadership is evaluated and what it is fair to expect of each other - and ourselves.
Are You Looking Backwards Or Forwards?
Keith Cartwright is the Founder and CCO of CARTWRIGHT, an agency built on the principle of Creative Audacity. He is also Co-Founder of SATURDAY MORNING, an organization built on using creativity to shift negative perceptions in the African American community.
When we understand the journey and the influences that have brought us to this moment, when we know where we want to go, and we are clear and conscious about the obstacles and limitations and beliefs that we place in our own way, then we become a rare and powerful force.
Where are you on that journey?
How Creative Are You?
Morgan Flatley is the Global CMO of McDonald’s.
Creative thinking comes in many forms. And its value is unlocked exponentially when, as leaders, we gain the confidence to see ourselves as we truly are. Powerfully creative in our own right.
This does not make creative leadership a competition. It makes it an equation focused on the people that work for us.
An equation that says recognizing our own talent can make us even better at unlocking theirs.
How Do You Say Goodbye?
Brad Simms is the President and CEO of GALE Partners. They describe themselves as strategic storytellers.
The creative industries are a case study in dynamic organizations. Change is not just inevitable but essential.
In that environment, people will come and others will leave. And that is as it should be, both for personal growth and the growth of the business.
There are two variables in that equation. When they leave and how.
The question of when is for another day.
The question of how is as important. And often significantly more so.
What Are You Responsible For?
Emma Armstrong is the CEO of FCB New York. Most recently, the office was named Agency of the Year at the Clio Awards.
Creativity and innovation are fueled by trust. And trust happens when you believe that the person on the other side of the table, or the screen, cares - genuinely cares - about your well-being.
Brand, agency, employer, employee. Parent, child, friend. When both of us can put the other person’s interests first, well, that’s when the world is changed.
Are You Willing To Be Vulnerable?
This week’s episode is a rebroadcast of a conversation I had in January of 2020 with Marc Pritchard, the CMO of P&G.
In a pre-pandemic world, leaders with jobs as visible and demanding as Marc’s were not talking about the importance of being vulnerable very much.
His willingness to do so then stood out as so unusual - perhaps even unique.
What Are Your Priorities?
Most recently, Suzy Deering was the Global Chief Marketing Officer of Ford. Before that, she was the Global CMO of eBay. She’s held senior positions at Verizon and Home Depot. And she’s been recognized as one of Business Insider’s “Top 50 Most Innovative CMOs.”
The demands of those kinds of jobs can make you lose yourself.
Holding on to who you are and being clear about what really matters, does not happen easily - or by accident.
How Are You Creating Your Company’s Culture?
Melissa Waters is the Chief Marketing Officer at Upwork. They describe themselves as the world’s work marketplace.
Without the physical structure of an office to provide the container in which culture incubates, the responsibility to create those connections falls squarely on the leader.
How do you lead when a company’s culture is no longer built around physical space?
Who Are You?
Nicolle Pangis is the CEO of Ampersand. They describe themselves as a data-driven TV advertising sales and technology company.
Life is short. Your career is shorter. Live them both on your terms and you’ll be able to measure yourself against the most important set of data in the world.
Your own.
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?
