Episodes

“Burnout” may be one of the most talked about workplace topics these days, & for good reason. According to a recent survey of people in over 40 countries published in the Harvard Business Review, 90% of respondents said their work lives were getting worse during the pandemic – & more than 60% felt they were experiencing burnout often or very often. And while it’s easy to blame COVID for all the distress, the truth is a high incidence of employee burnout had already emerged long before the pandem...

Hubert Joly is the former CEO of Best Buy – a large American electronics retailer – who orchestrated his company’s spectacular turnaround by changing the rules of executive management. His uncommon philosophy was to pursue a noble purpose, put people at the center of his business, create an environment where every employee could blossom, & treat profit as an outcome, not the goal. And for anyone reading this who fears bringing the heart into leadership is a guaranteed way to undermine financial...

Time Magazine named Martin Lindstrom one of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People – and “Thinkers50” named him one of world’s top 20 business thinkers. He’s the author of 7 New York Times best-selling books including his newest, “The Ministry Of Common Sense.” Lindstrom runs one of the world’s leading brand & culture transformation companies – serving a “Who’s Who” list of organizations – & has from a rather young age, learned to see the world from the inside out, rather than the inverse. And...

Anyone who’s worked from home this past year knows the experience brought many joys & also many sorrows. The upsides included nonexistent commute times, the freedom to dress as we liked, the constant companionship of our pets – and more time spent with our family members (just as long as they lived in our same dwelling). But the downsides have been compelling too. Many of us felt lost, isolated, out of synch and missing our colleagues. We also had too many ZOOM calls and worked more hours than ...

Years ago, research by Harvard Business School professor, John Kotter found that when major companies sought to initiate any kind of major organizational change, most ended up failing. Kotter & his team of graduate students watched many leaders simply abandon their change initiatives after concluding there was no viable road to success – despite a lot of time spent trying. Anymore, it’s hard to imagine that a company – including its leaders – could last very long if they were routinely unable to...

Do you have a voice in your head that operates like an inner critic & saboteur – one that undermines your success by calling you a loser or a failure, one that insists you’ll never be any good at something (e.g. math, relationships, golf, et al), or one that asserts that you’re somehow unworthy as a human? According to award-winning psychologist & professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross Business School, Ethan Kross, you’re not alone. We all have an inner voice that, at times, strives to b...

While making coffee one morning, a man passed out in his kitchen and fell onto a travertine floor. After being taken to the hospital, doctors discovered broken ribs, a punctured lung – & a blood clot so close to the man’s heart that 16 different attending physicians wrote in their notebooks, “patient not expected to live. That patient was the host of the “Lead From The Heart” podcast, Mark C. Crowley – & once fully recovered, he scheduled an appointment with the hospital’s CEO just to thank him ...

Do you have what it takes to excel in times of high stress & ambiguity – even during a crisis? Are you able to succeed no matter what conditions you face? While we might imagine that people who perform optimally under duress share a unique set of talents & skills, former U.S. Navy Seal team Commander, Rich Diviney discovered that what truly differentiates them are unique attributes. During his twenty years as a Navy officer, Diviney was intimately involved in a selection process that whittled d...

“In her excellent & very timely new book, “Uncharted,” Margaret Heffernan stresses that while the forecasting business has made its ‘experts’ very rich, it is also based on a fallacy: the idea that the future can be extrapolated from the past.” This is how the Financial Times announced it had chosen “Uncharted: How To Navigate The Future” as one of its 2020 best business books of the year. And in this podcast, Heffernan openly expresses gratitude for the award while very accurately asserting tha...

While none of us could have predicted that the arrival of a global pandemic would fundamentally reshape our lives in 2020, stunning research by Wharton Business School professor, Mauro Guillén, shows that a series of once-in-a-lifetime events is about to profoundly reshape our culture, economy and the world by the end of this decade. And at least this time, we’re being given some advance notice and have a little time to prepare. The Financial Times recently named his new book, 2030: How Today’s...

Dr. Jim Loehr is the co-founder of Johnson & Johnson’s Human Performance institute & the author of 16 books. He’s a performance coach to some of the world’s greatest athletes including professional tennis players Jim Courier & Monica Seles, pro golfers, Mark O’Meara & Justin Rose, Olympic gold medal speed skater, Dan Jansen, National Hockey league greats, Eric Lindros & Mike Richter, and pro boxer Ray Mancini. And as you’ll hear discussed, he’s also coached the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels. His new ...

It’s part of the human condition to wonder if we can truly make a difference in the world, & whether our personal talents & experiences are unique or special in any meaningful way. In her book, The Power of Onlyness, Nilofer Merchant says yes, emphatically, & we couldn’t need that kind of encouragement any more. When Nilofer was 18 years old, her Indian mother arranged for her to be married off to a much older man with three children to raise. Bereft by the prospect of losing the opportunity to...

As co-executive Chairman of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s most successful private equity firms – & host of his eponymous podcast on Bloomberg – David Rubenstein has had unparalleled access to many of the world’s most influential leaders. Over the past 5 years, he’s sat down with corporate heads including Eric Schmidt, Phil Knight, Jamie Dimon and Tim Cook – and also with uncommonly accomplished leaders from all walks of life including Warren Buffett, Christine Lagarde, Yo-Yo Ma, Lorne Mi...

A recent Fortune Magazine survey shows that nearly two-thirds of American CEOs have committed to taking meaningful action to advance racial equity within their organizations . Just this week, JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, committed $30 billion dollars in support. But, it’s not just money that organizations must spend in order to attain greater diversity and fairness, of course. Facebook, for example, has devoted millions of dollars to diversity efforts; but its latest report card shows the p...

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh An underlying objective of all leaders is to help maximize the full human potential of every person they manage – to effectively coach them and elevate their overall effectiveness. But in an era where many people are working remotely & managing remotely, the process of teaching, developing & stretching employees proves t...

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our work lives. It’s forced many of us to work from home, away from our bosses, and has us worrying about the long-term security of the jobs we hold. And all these sudden changes have us asking ourselves, “How do I make sure I’m seen as indispensable at work?” For decades, Bruce Tulgan has been studying “go-to” people, those workers who are most consistently valued highly by their colleagues and bosses. And he’s just published his twenty-first book, “The Art of ...

The Wall Street Journal calls London Business School professor, Gary Hamel, the world’s most influential business thinker – and his landmark books have been translated into twenty-five languages. His brand-new book, Humanocracy: Creating Organizations As Amazing As The People Inside Them, just launched as an Amazon “Number One Release” & is the focus for this special podcast episode. In a nutshell, “Humanocracy” thoughtfully outlines why the time has finally come for organizations to abandon th...

Wharton Business School management professor, Sigal Barsade believes too many leaders focus on how employees think and behave at work & largely ignore how they feel. This is because few managers realize that human feelings matter just as much – if not more – to their employees’ commitment, engagement & productivity. And by lacking a deeper understanding of what truly motivates people in their work lives – feelings & emotions – leaders unwittingly handicap their own performance, not to mention th...

In 2017, ride-sharing innovator, UBER was in serious trouble. The company was facing a lawsuit from drivers that alleged the first had cheated them of pay. Various media reports described UBER as having a “asshole culture: where women were sexually harassed and the firm’s CEO, Travis Kalanick was caught on video berating an UBER driver. Seeking someone to help restore UBER’s imperiled reputation – not to mention help create a sustainable workplace culture going forward – the company selected Ha...

Who isn’t impressed by a highly confident person? Confident applicants are more likely to be hired, & self-assured politicians are more likely to be elected. Because we believe it produces a winning edge, we all strive to be self-confident. In fact, a surge of confidence can feel fantastic. It offers us a rush of energy – & feelings of invincibility – that help propel us in those moments of adversity when we’re called upon to be courageous & decisive. But surprising, extensive & eye-opening re...

What percentage of people would say they’ve ever had a really great boss? In an ideal world, most of us could recall a long list of past and present managers who fit the bill. But we know highly caring & supportive managers remain rare in most workplaces. As evidenced by consistently low employee engagement scores around the globe – & record high turnover leading up to the COVID pandemic – the signs are everywhere that too few managers possess an ability to inspire people while concurrently dri...

Author Erik Larson has written six New York Times bestselling books including “The Devil In The White City,” a National Book Award finalist. On the day we recorded this podcast, his new book, “The Splendid And The Vile” ranked as the number-one work of nonfiction on both the New York Times & Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. The Splendid And The Vile focuses on Sir Winston Churchill’s first year as England’s Prime Minister (exactly eighty-years ago) – “the year in which Churchill became Ch...

Now Is The Time To Make Employees As Important As Shareholders: For decades, businesses have deferred to the interests of shareholders above and beyond the interests of all other stakeholders – most especially employees. And according to London Business School finance professor, Alex Edmans, shareholders have long been conditioned to believe that the value any company produces is a fixed pie – and so the only way for them to retain the largest slice of the pie is to ensure the size of the pie al...

A Special Podcast! In the new era of remote working – forced upon at least a third of the world’s working population in just the past few weeks – all of our lives have been disrupted. The Coronavirus pandemic has us indefinitely confined to our homes, working away from our colleagues and offices – and attempting to home-school our children – all at the same time. Most of our routines have been upended making grief, fear and anxiety the dominant emotions of the day. And for a lot of us, we’re n...