Clarke Murphy, CEO Leadership Advisor at Russell Reynolds

Willy welcomes Clarke Murphy. He is the Board and CEO Leadership Advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates. He leverages 30 years of experience in the executive recruiting industry to advise on critical leadership mandates across sectors. He has provided leadership advisory services to corporations, such as Duke Energy, Deutsche Bank, and Siemens. Before joining Russell Reynolds, he was a banking officer at Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company. He hosts the Redefiners podcast, interviewing daring leaders who have transformed their organizations and created extraordinary impact. Clarke Murphy begins by talking about the smooth and textbook leadership transition in Russell Reynolds, the ideal number of board members, and the biggest benefit to running a public company – a strong focus on the client. The popularity of LinkedIn did not kill off the executive search firm because Clarke believes that posting resumes isn’t recruitment and that the website is more of a career development community. With Russell Reynolds, Clarke chose to focus on advising and recruiting board members, CEOs, and C-suite candidates, concentrating on board effectiveness and leadership development. The company has also worked closely with LinkedIn, testing new products and services and leveraging each other’s communities. Clarke explains how CEO academies should be transparent to their participants that they are investing time and money in them. He was anxious that the pandemic would encourage cost-cutting and layoffs due to not being able to afford to keep their employees. However, he believes that the best companies in the world retain their best people longer than their competitors. Currently, talent wins because of the abundance of cash, resulting in the nature of a leader significantly changing in the past 20 years. “Leadership is no longer about leading. It’s about creating followership,” he says. He thinks young people are thirsty for knowledge and improvement and will stay if you assure them that they’re on a winning team. Clarke enjoys sailing and retells his near-death experience of mistaking a 40-foot steel barnacle-covered container for a whale. However, his cautious and quick-thinking skills saved him and his crew. He explains how successful leaders all had sustainability mindsets with the four competencies: multi-level system thinking, stakeholder inclusion, disruptive innovation, and long-term activation. They also achieved a balance of people, the planet, and profit.

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