Laszlo Bock on the Key Skills to Become a Successful Leader of Tomorrow

With the world of work constantly evolving and the introduction of new technologies like AI, how can leaders prepare themselves to successfully lead their companies into the new frontier?

On the season finale of The Culture Kit, Haas School of Business professors and organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava are joined by a special guest. Laszlo Bock, one of the leading industry voices on people management, was the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google, served as the CEO of Humu, and then co-founded Gretel AI. He's also the author of The New York Times’ bestseller, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead. 

Jenny, Sameer, and Laszlo answer a question from Melissa Wernick, the Global Chief People Officer for Kraft Heinz, on what key skills leaders will need to be successful in the evolving workplace. They also announce the Berkeley Transformative CHRO Leadership Program that they just launched through Berkeley Executive Education.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

You can learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

Jenny & Sameer’s 3 Main Takeaways:

1. The best leaders are diagnostic and deliberate. They look at things on a situation-by-situation basis and ask themselves: How can I add value here? And they plan for that.
2. Cultivate a broad and flexible set of leadership styles. Situations are varied and vast, so have a broad and flexible leadership portfolio that you can draw from depending on what the circumstances are.
3. The best leaders recognize that they're never actually done learning. Leadership development is a lifelong pursuit, so keep working on it and be a student always (as we say at Haas).

Show Links:

• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock
• Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality [Harvard Business School]
• Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev
• Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy Edmondson
• Creativity from Constraint? How the Political Correctness Norm Influences Creativity in Mixed-sex Work Groups [Administrative Science Quarterly]
• Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner
• CEO Fires 90 Percent of Support Staff, Saying AI Outperforms Them [Futurism]
• How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management [Harvard Business Review]
• Chatman, Jennifer A., Sameer Srivastava, and David Rochlin, “How Lyft’s Strategy Informed their Return to Work Approach.” University of California, Berkeley Haas Case Series, 2024. forthcoming.
• Maersk: Driving Culture Change at a Century-Old Company to Achieve Measurable Results [Berkeley Haas Case Series]
• Kaiser Permanente: The Electronic Health Record Journey [Kaiser Permanente International]
• The Next Normal: Let’s Rewrite the Rules Together [Mars]
• Vodafone: Managing Advanced Technologies and Artificial Intelligence [Harvard Business Publishing]
• The Berkeley Transformative CHRO Leadership Program co-led by Laszlo Bock [Berkeley Exec Ed]
• Full Episode Transcript

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*