Lead From the Heart

As life today seems to be becoming more complex & unpredictable by the minute, it sure would be nice if we had a crystal ball to see into the future. And, while seeing into the future with any degree of certainty is, of course, a fantasy, there are trends occurring in the world that some informed observers can determine with reasonable certainty are poised to impact our future lives. And this...

The post-pandemic world we’re all living in sure seems to be more volatile, more toxic, more stressful and more subject to radical change due automation, downsizing, and globalization than ever. And that just means it’s become much harder for any of us human beings to truly flourish in our lives. As if the past three years of COVID related challenges didn’t already make us feel weary! Martin Selig...

When hybrid cars first became mass produced over a decade ago, Honda and Toyota had two different strategies. Honda chose to produce a hybrid version of its wildly popular “Civic,” believing brand familiarity would help customers feel more comfortable with its brand-new technology. Toyota not only decided to produce an entirely new model car, they intentionally designed it so it would stand out. W...

When you think about our world today, “turbulent” might be the first word you use to describe it. After a three-year long COVID pandemic fatigued us all, we’re now bewildered by a surprising number of employee layoffs occurring in all industries, & equally uncertain about how disruptive the AI-GPT technology will be to our work & careers. A crisis in Urkraine continues wi...

When Bob Chapman was thirty years old, his father died of a sudden heart attack – instantly making Bob CEO of a small, unprofitable manufacturing company his dad had only recently purchased. For the next two decades, leveraging an MBA from the University of Michigan, and a few years’ experience as a senior level accountant to prepare him, he led his company as most CEOs of his era did. He squeezed...

Our most precious resource isn’t money. It’s time. We’re all given the same twenty-four hours a day – &, for most of us, that never feels enough. We flatter ourselves for being “so busy” in our jobs, yet end our days feeling depleted & without enough time to get to the gym, read the books we want to – or spend dedicated time with the people we love. And often, the recognition that we alway...

According to PepsiCo’s award-winning, and first, Chief Design Officer, Mauro Porcini , “our world is radically changing, and is forcing us to innovate as never before. And, we are entering a new, modern renaissance fueled by the reborn, humanistic necessity of putting people at the center of everything.” And when Porcini says, “put people at the center of everything,” he’s not just referring to th...

You might not think a book on philosophy could be a bestseller these days, but the title of MIT professor, Kieran Setiya’s new book, “Life Is Hard” clearly has wide appeal.  We’ve just come out of a two-year global pandemic, have experienced record inflation due in part to a seemingly endless war in Ukraine – and are heading into a recession that could put many workers’ jobs in jeopardy. And...

For our 100 th episode – and our final episode of the 2022 season – we bring you a guest who is the true embodiment of the Lead From The Heart philosophy. Bill George is formerly the CEO of Medtronic – a Fortune 200 medical device company which has 90,000 employees across 120 countries. And, for the past twenty years, he’s been a professor at the Harvard Business School where he’s long insisted th...

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~ Mother Teresa. Social belonging is a fundamental human need, hardwired into our DNA. And yet, 40% of people say that they feel isolated at work, and the result has been lower organizational commitment and engagement. I suppose we should throw “quiet quitting” in there too — a sign workers today feel...

Are you someone who would love to make a positive change in the world? Could you be an influential change maker? University of California, Berkeley Haas Business School professor, Alex Budak believes all of us have the potential. And he created a wildly popular class called “Becoming a Changemaker,” which has quickly grown into one of the most highly-rated courses anywhere on the CAL campus. The p...

Leadership is full of paradoxes: Should we build close relationships with our employees or keep a suitable distance? Should we trust our staff, or keep an eye on what’s happening? Are we best to display self-confidence – or is humility a greater power? For many of us, these competing & interwoven demands are a source of conflict. Since our brains love to make either-or choices, we choose one o...

Being a CEO at any of the world’s largest companies is among the most challenging roles in business. Billions, and even trillions, are at stake – and the fates of tens of thousands of employees often hang in the balance. Yet, even when “can’t miss” high-achievers win the top job, very few prove to excel. According to the New York Times & Wall Street Journal bestseller, “CEO Excellence,” “Thirt...

Tiffani Bova is the global growth evangelist at Salesforce and the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book “ GROWTH IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business. ” She’s been named to the latest Thinkers50’s list of the world’s top management thinkers.  Along with Columbia University and Stanford University, Bova recently authored a study which averaged data f...

Uncertainty in life is, ironically, certain. Amid a pandemic, the past two years have been no exception. None of us needs to think very hard to recall the unprecedented and sudden need we had to move employees en masse to their homes to work, the lingering fears we all had around an unknown virus, and the challenging decisions we later faced about the future of the office in light of the Great Res...

Alan Murray is the CEO of  Fortune (Magazine) Media. He’s the former president of the Pew Research Center & the Deputy Managing Editor – & Washington Bureau Chief – of the Wall Street Journal . And, for decades, he’s had tremendous access to the world’s top CEOs. In his new book, “ Tomorrow’s Capitalist: My Search For The Soul Of Business,” Murray makes the clear & direct assertion tha...

When Bo Seo was 8 years old, he and his family migrated from Korea to Australia. At the time, he didn’t speak English and struggled at school. But, in the fifth grade, something happened to change his life: he discovered competitive debate. It turns out the seemingly shy and introverted kid had a knack for persuasion – and he went on to become a two-time world champion debater and the coach for th...

He’s a New York Times bestselling author, a former White House advisor to four American Presidents – both Republican and Democrat – a long time senior political commentator on CNN television, and the founder of the John F. Kennedy Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University, where’s he been Director or co-Director for almost two decades. Gergen is also the author of the new bestseller, “Hea...

We’ve all been told that thinking rationally is the key to success. But at the cutting edge of science, researchers are discovering that feeling is every bit as important as thinking. All of us make hundreds of decisions every day — including what to eat for breakfast & how we should invest our money — & not one of those decisions would be possible without emotion. It has long been said th...

Most books about time management are written as guides to creating the perfect schedule or productivity method for cranking through as many items on our to-do list as we possibly can. Even when those methods work, they somehow still leave us feeling stressed & overwhelmed, paddling frantically against a current whose strength we can never match. The fundamental problem is that none of the typi...

Named by Forbes Magazine as one of “10 Must-Read Career & Leadership Books For 2022,” Roger Martin’s A New Way To Think: Your Guide To Superior Management informs us that our collective leadership thinking must stop centering around the organization & begin centering around human value. Martin is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management wher...

The country where people live the longest is Japan where they’ve long had a rich tradition of respecting and honoring older people. In America, & throughout the West, we have especially negative views on aging, & almost treat getting older as being shameful. In her new book, “Breaking The Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long And Well you Live,” Yale social psychologist...

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is routinely ranked as one of the top executive coaches in the world – & the Thinkers50 organization named him the #1 leadership thinker in the world – twice. A former Professor of Management Practice at the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, he’s the author or editor of 41 books, which have sold 2.5 million copies. His books, “Triggers”  & “ What Got You Here Won’t...

Few business topics arouse more skepticism than the notion of corporate purpose – & for good reason. Too many companies have deployed purpose as a promotional vehicle to make themselves feel virtuous & look good to the outside world. The insincerity behind efforts like these are, of course, easily spotted by both outsiders & insiders (employees most importantly) leading them to feeling...

For over twenty-five years,  Marcus Buckingham  has been one of the world’s leading researchers on human performance, especially in our workplaces. He is the  New York Times  bestselling author or co-author of ten books, including the business classic, “ First, Break All the Rules” in addition to , “Now, Discover Your Strengths ” &  “ Nine Lies About Work .” You probably know that Marcus...