Lead From the Heart

All of us are seeking greater self-knowledge, & Maria Konnikova found it through poker – literally by challenging herself to become a champion of the game despite never having played it before. And she succeeded. In less than two years, she mastered the fiercely competitive game of Texas Hold’em poker, became an international poker champion & won over $300,000 in tournament earnings. And as a skilled writer for the New Yorker Magazine, she chronicled her experience in her New York Times bestseller, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win.” But this was no fluke. Konnikova is a Harvard graduate & earned a PhD in psychology at Columbia University. From that starting point she approached Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee & winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, & persuaded him to be her mentor. And under Seidel’s tutelage, she learned to better read, not just her opponents but, far more importantly, herself. She discovered how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of her making good decisions, & how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, & what it wasn’t. In lessons we can use ourselves – in life & in leadership – poker taught Konnikova greater emotional & physical regulation, tolerance for risk & uncertainty, more intelligent decision-making, a grasp of the intertwined roles of chance & skill, & sheer confidence. As she explains, “this book isn’t about how to play poker. It’s about how to play the world.” As all of us learned in a very palpable way since 2020, our control over events is mostly an illusion. Really bad situations will come our way, but our triumphs result when we focus on how we play them – not on the outcomes. Mastery over life’s ambiguity & setbacks is a high-level achievement, & Konnikova’s truly uncommon achievement yields many invaluable lessons from which all of us can benefit & grow. No bluff. This is the final episode of our season and our hope is it leaves you wanting more. The post Maria Konnikova: Poker As A Guide To Life, Luck & Decision Making appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

“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 pandemic began – all around the world. According to the World Health Organization, burnout is characterized by feelings of chronic stress at work that go unmanaged. And left unaddressed for very long, burnout can have very serious consequences for an individual’s mental health, & is a risk factor for depression, substance abuse & even suicide. But despite all the harm overly-demanding & overly-stressful workplaces can have on employee well-being, the most common approach companies have employed to defeat burnout so far amounts to providing mindfulness classes & subscriptions to meditation apps. And these, most of us have already discovered, have failed to address the underlying root problem, or solve what’s now become a global epidemic. No company or leader should place their hopes in the idea that the end of the pandemic will somehow miraculously restore employee well-being & thriving. What they need instead is a science-based understanding of both the causes & remedies of burnout – exactly the focus of this podcast episode. Paula Davis, is the author of the new book, “Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience” – one that provides actionable strategies for leaders to use in creating cultures which promote resilience, well-being & inherently reduce employee burnout.  And cohesive teams, it turns out, just happen to be one of the most powerful remedies to burnout there is. After seven years of practicing law, Paula melted down under the pressures of her job & quit. She opened up a bakery & was accepted to a pastry school in New York City. After quickly realizing she’d made a colossal career move, she returned to her old job where, predictably, the stress returned immediately & she ended up in the emergency room, twice. Paula finally quit for good, but this time devoted herself to researching the causes & solutions for burnout. She went on to earn a master’s degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania – and as part of her post-graduate training, she was selected to be part of the UPenn faculty where she taught resilience skills to soldiers as part of the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier & Family Fitness program. The UPenn team has since trained these practices to more than 40,000 soldiers & their family members. Whether you’re interested in learning how to prevent yourself from burning out, whether you’re interested in learning how to prevent your employees from burning out – or both – Paula Davis has acquired the road map & insight you really need. The post Paula Davis: Strong Teams Are The Secret To Beating Employee Burnout appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

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 success, Best Buy’s stock price went from $10 per share to nearly $100 per share during his tenure. In the coming days, Joly will publish his first book, “The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism.” Co-written by Caroline Lambert, it not only details the intentionally humane managerial practices Joly employed at Best Buy, but also describes a managerial journey that transformed his leadership philosophy. Trained by McKinsey to focus on the numbers, not on people, Joly later experienced some personal life setbacks in the midst of an ascendant career that influenced him to take a deeper look at his values & methods.  Partly professional, partly spiritual, Joly’s evolution inevitably convinced him that nurturing & supporting employees – rather than squeezing & exploiting them – represented a far more enlightened path of leadership. The Harvard Business Review named Joly one of the world’s top 100 CEOs, Barron’s named him one of the 30 top CEOs in the world & Glassdoor named him one of the top 10 CEOs in America. He is a knight in the French Legion of Honor and the French National Order or Merit. And he’s now a guest lecturer at the Harvard Business School. When Joly became Best Buy’s CEO, it was unclear if the company would survive. But his leadership practices proved to inspire a massive turnaround, largely because of their impact on his employees – human beings. We’re honored that our podcast is his first stop in promoting his wonderful new book. And you will be delighted to hear him describe the practices of a CEO we should all wish the entire world of business would now emulate. This episode happens to be one of Mark’s all-time favorites. There’s great energy in it, so get ready to be inspired! The post Hubert Joly: The CEO Who Transformed “Best Buy” By Leading From His Heart And Mind appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

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 as you’ll quickly notice, it’s made him extremely incisive in recognizing how often companies & their leaders take actions that literally make no sense. ***  In the COVID era, we schedule ZOOM calls to last exactly 60 minutes giving people zero time between meetings. ***  In the U.S., TSA allowed passengers to board planes with unlimited amounts of hand sanitizer while maintaining its 3.4-ounce limit on all other liquids. ***  Supermarkets ask customers for permission to have an employee bag up their groceries ignoring that the very same employees stacked those products on the store shelves earlier in the day. ***  Some companies require employees to go to the office twice a week even when it means people will sit alone in a conference room Zooming with colleagues working from home. Anyone reading this has been invited to unnecessary ZOOM calls, been cc’d on irrelevant e-mail chains & asked to complete reports & forms that no longer have meaning or value.  And according to Lindstrom, the more we become victims of old habits & procedures like these ourselves, we suppress our instinctual empathy and overlook all the things we know are wrong & needing a remedy. Lindstrom believes our constant use of technology has weakened our ability to step into another person’s shoes – or even to care about how other people experience the decisions we make. And this inclination is harming both customer happiness & employee happiness. Listen in to the remarkable stories Lindstrom shares about how he learned to see the world in ways most of us don’t. And listen in to hear his compelling guidance on we can restore both empathy and common sense in our organizations. His brilliance as a thought-leader shines through the entire discussion. The post Martin Lindstrom: Empathy Is The Cornerstone Of Common Sense appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

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 ever before. With respect to working from home throughout 2020, none of us really had a choice. The COVID pandemic forced it upon us – even though the experience now seems likely to permanently change how many of us work going forward. As organizations around the world are seeing the emergence of a COVID vaccine accelerate their ability to bring workers back to the office, workplace leaders are needing to decide their next course of action. Will they return to normal and act as if the work-from-home experiment never happen? Will they, as Twitter did, tell employees they can work from anywhere – forever? Or will they embrace what many believe will be a “happy medium,” a hybrid solution where we work in the office some days, and remotely the others? Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley is one of the world’s leading experts on remote working having begun research on the subject two decades ago. And she joins us on the podcast at a remarkably well-timed moment.  Not only are we all wondering what the best outcome will be for ourselves as employees, many of us are also wondering which outcome will prove to be most manageable for us as leaders long-term. Tsedal is the author of the new bestseller, “Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere,” which is the focus of our discussion – and which provides compelling insight into all that’s been learned about remote working and remote leadership. Whatever decisions you or your organization go on to make about how and where people will work in the future, Tsedal’s advice will surely prove invaluable.  She’s both a delightful and brilliantly informed human being – a wonderful combination that will make your listening in hugely worthwhile.     The post Tsedal Neeley: Navigating The Remote Work Revolution appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

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 turn their ship in a different direction or inspire employees to embrace new ways of being. So, knowing how change is successfully implemented has become essential knowledge. According to University of Pennsylvania Sociology & Engineering professor, Damon Centola, most of what we know about how change is effectively spread comes from bestselling authors who tell us “influencers” are king, “sticky” ideas “go viral,” & good behavior is “nudged” forward. The problem is that the world they describe is one where information spreads, but beliefs & behaviors stay the same. Centola is the author of the new bestseller, “Change: How To Make Big Things Happen,” a book Wharton professor Adam Grant says it is the most important on the science of social influence since Robert Cialdini’s “Influence.” “Change” presents groundbreaking & paradigm-shifting new science for understanding what drives change, & how we can change the world around us.” One of Damon’s big ideas is that change doesn’t really occur the way we’ve always believed – like a virus. We’ve long thought that once one person heard a new idea, they’d pass it on to others – who’d then pass it on themselves – until the new process, system or philosophy would become widely spread throughout a group or organization.  What this theory lacks, of course, is adoption. And more often than not, after new ideas are spread, they’re met with fear, resistance & negativity – change derailers! So, how can leaders shape new behavior within their teams, how do we successfully launch a new innovation before it gets squashed & killed – & how can we create cultural change within an organization that really sticks? Listen in – on this podcast, that’s what we asked Centola to explain. The post Damon Centola: How To Make Big Change Happen On Your Team Or In Your Organization appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

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 bring us down – one that, left unchecked, will provide a running negative commentary & spiral us downward into deep pain & distress. If you’re wondering why we even have a voice in our head, Kross says it actually evolved for a purpose, to help keep us safe. It helps us solve problems, reflect on past experiences, plan for the future & maintain a rich inner life. But when we’re facing a stressful task, & looking for an inner supporter to say, “You can do this,” the unsupportive critic often shows up instead & announces that we will miss the putt, blow the speech or lose the sale. In his new national bestseller, “Chatter: The Voice In Our Head, Why It Matters & How To Harness It, Kross explores the silent conversations we have with ourselves, &introduces  groundbreaking tools we can use to tame that inner critic of ours, & never again fold under pressure. These tools – all based on Kross’s remarkable research – are immediately available to us when we need them — in the words we use to think about ourselves, in the photos & trinkets we have on our desk, by imagining what we would say to a friend who has the same problem as us, by introducing mind-clearing rituals or just by spending time in nature. All of the myriad tools that Kross presents in “Chatter” give us the power to change the most important conversations we have every day: the ones we have with ourselves. And this podcast is devoted to explaining how you can mitigate all of the noise you hear in your head, & make your inner voice a friend – & no longer the harsh judge it often is today. The post Ethan Kross: How To Tame Your Inner Critic appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

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 in person. During their meeting, Mark gratefully told the CEO that he fully believed it was the caring nature of his nurses & doctors that saved him. How his caregivers made him feel, he was certain, is what saved his life. Now, if you believe in science, a far more logical conclusion to this story is that medical know-how is what truly led to Mark’s full recovery. Even the CEO seemed to suggest as much. But now comes the stunning confirmation that what Mark experienced was indeed accurate. And while medical science will never be diminished in its impact on patient outcomes, caring & compassionate behavior prove to be a wonder-drug – knowledge that has profound implications not just for health care, but for workplace leadership as well. Noticing patient experience scores were declining, & many of his doctors were also suffering from burnout, the Chief Medical Officer at Cooper University Health Care, Dr. Anthony Mazzarelli, asked his institution’s top physician to see he could find any scientific data that might link greater human “connection” with better patient outcomes. The question he was really asking was, “Does treating patients with more compassion really matter?” That top physician was Stephen Trzeciak, who, as a highly trained scientist, was admittedly cynical about the premise that “caring” behaviors made any difference whatsoever. But after reviewing over 1,000 scientific abstracts & 250 research papers, he & Dr. Mazzarelli discovered that as brief as a 40-second display of compassion accelerated patient healing, lowered hospital costs, significantly reduced doctor burnout & influenced patients to have greater trust in their caregivers. Dr.’s Trzeciak & Mazzarelli are now the authors of the rather astonishing book, Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence that Caring Makes a Difference.*  And their top conclusion is that compassion matters far more than even they could have imagined…& in not only meaningful but also measurable ways. Dr. Trzeciak joins us on this podcast to share greater details on his research, his findings – & how his discoveries fully reinforce the “Lead From The Heart” leadership philosophy.   Former podcast guest and leadership guru, Tom Peters says this is a book every leader in the world should read.  We heartily agree & are very excited about this episode. The post Dr. Stephen Trzeciak: Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes A Difference appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

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 down hundreds of extraordinary SEAL candidates into small groups of the most elite performers. And he was repeatedly surprised by which candidates washed out & which ones succeeded. Some had all the right skills & still failed, while others he initially dismissed often proved to be the top performers. Ultimately, Diviney realized that beneath the obvious abilities that all successful SEALs displayed, what truly differentiated them were hidden drivers of performance – special attributes like courage, open-mindedness, discipline, resilience & adaptability.  And when it came to high-performing SEAL leaders, they shared additional attributes including empathy, selflessness, authenticity, decisiveness & accountability. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that things can go sideways at any moment; & Diviney’s new book, “The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance introduces us to the idea that cultivating specific attributes will ensure we perform optimally when things in life get very hard. And it’s invaluable insight because it can be applied to succeeding in all aspects of modern life – business, relationships, parenting, sports &, of course, leadership. In this podcast, we discuss both the personal and professional attributes that help people master any environment they face. And one essential take-away from this conversation is that mastering skills alone will no longer deliver success in the times we need it most. Understanding how to cultivate your personal attributes will be the key. The post Rich Diviney: The Attributes Of People Who Excel When Life Gets Hard appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

“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 that her book fully transcends a “business” specific categorization. If 2020 – a year where a sudden COVID pandemic profoundly reshaped how we all work & live – taught us anything, it’s that life is highly uncertain. But while we may all intellectually accept this truth, Heffernan says most of us remain addicted to prediction, & routinely seek out a sense of certainty about how our futures will unfold. Heffernan’s book begins with the assertion that any belief that we can accurately predict the future – whether it be by relying on complex algorithms, so-called “expert” opinions or a belief that history often repeats itself – is a complete & utter illusion. She explains that no amount of data can ever make up for the complexity of life, & the predictions we all accept as gospel too often miss all the hidden forces at work that inevitably prove to influence outcomes. Heffernan’s cold-sober conclusion is that – like it or not – we’re all really swimming in “uncharted” waters. And,  in this podcast, she shares several highly innovative ways for us to successfully & creatively navigate them. If you’re not already familiar with Margaret Heffernan, she’s a rather brilliant person & thought leader. Her three previous books, “Beyond Measure,” “Willful Blindness” and “A Bigger Prize,” have all been critically acclaimed. She’s also given four speeches on the TED stage that have accumulated over 12 million views so far. While all of us may wish we could have a crystal ball to reliably tell us what tomorrow will bring, Margaret Heffernan gives us second best – truly informed guidance on how to face down a sometimes frightening future with courage & grace. The post Margaret Heffernan: How To Face The Future With Confidence & Courage appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.