Ep 182: Raja Rajamannar - In 15

Edited highlights of our full conversation.

Raja Rajamannar is the Chief Marketing & Communications Officer for Mastercard and is also President of the company’s healthcare business.

His list of accomplishments is long and significant. He was recognized as the Global Marketer of the Year by the World Federation of Advertisers, was named one of the Top 5 “World’s Most Influential CMOs” by Forbes, and one of the Top 10 “World’s Most Innovative CMOs” by Business Insider. He has been inducted into The CMO Club Hall of Fame. He has also been recognized as one of AdWeek’s most tech-savvy CMOs.

So what matters to him today?

How do you live your life well?

That question is at the very heart of the upheaval of the employer - employee relationship. Whether we come to call it ‘The Great Resignation’ or ‘The Great Self-Reflection’ or anything else.

For the first time in the history of our society, the people who do the bulk of the work are discovering they don’t have to do it on someone else’s terms. They can decide what a ‘life well lived’ looks like on their terms.

They’re discovering that they have agency in their own lives.

The pressure this puts on leaders is almost more than we can understand. It changes everything.

And if you thought ‘it’s lonely at the top’ was true before, it’s going to become an even more meaningful cliché as we stumble into 2022.

Leaders are going to have to adapt and evolve to these dramatic societal shifts. Leadership is going to have to change at its very heart and soul.

But as you personally confront these challenges, my hope is that you will place at the center of your thinking that very same question. How do you live your life well?

Empathy, vulnerability, care and compassion are going to have to be building blocks on which your leadership is built. I don’t see a way in which you can succeed from now on without those as the foundations from which you lead.

But you can’t fake these qualities. They’re not sustainable unless they reflect the life that you want to lead.

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. Questions that can feel judgmental or too filled with consequence if we really confront them.

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 the confidence they provide.

And they come with the added benefit that they will make you a world-class leader for as long as you choose to lead.