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Redefiners
The Leadership Lessons That Shaped Us: Celebrating 100 Episodes of Redefiners
00:35:49
After four years and 100 episodes of extraordinary conversations with world-class leaders, what are the most powerful leadership lessons that have emerged? In this milestone episode, hosts Simon Kingston and Marla Oates dig through the Redefiners a...
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- [00:00]
Marla
Call them change makers, call them rule breakers. We call them redefiners.
- [00:13]
Simon
Hi, everyone, and welcome to a very unusual, very special episode of Redefine Us. Marla, we have hit our century. We're 100 not out. It's an extraordinary achievement.
- [00:27]
Marla
Wow, 100 episodes. That's four years of inspiring conversations with leaders from all over the world who are truly changing the world, being vulnerable with us. I'm so grateful for this journey, the lessons we've learned along the way about staying curious, building grit, being vulnerable. Thank you, listeners, and thank you to our amazing guests. Here's to many more years of redefining boundaries and inspiring changes.
- [00:53]
Simon
Yeah. And what I have really enjoyed about it, and it has really been a highlight of my time at Russell Reynolds, is although they're endlessly particular, these are all unique individuals. All of them have been incredibly honest with us. They've been vulnerable, they've talked about frailties, they've talked about failures, and we'll pick on a few of those, but they've been endlessly open for you. Marla, as somebody who's been a listener, an hour presenter, what are the, what are the highlights?
- [01:23]
Marla
I mean, simply the access to these amazing guests who are shaping our world. There's also been such refreshingly simple advice that's been shared. And, Simon, these aren't just nice anecdotes. They're battle tested lessons from leaders who are building careers and having real impact. It's not easy to lead today, given, as you've described, more demand on executives. But these leaders have taught us how to unlock AI, navigate that uncertainty, dig deep, and become resilient leaders who overcome personal challenges and given all of that.
- [01:57]
Simon
Richness to what they've told us today, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to extract 10 lessons of leadership from those people who've been so generous with their time and walk through them stories that made us look at each other and say, did you just hear that, Simon?
- [02:16]
Marla
You've challenged us to come up with the most memorable moments. I'm so excited to hear yours.
- [02:21]
Simon
And this isn't gonna simply be a trip down memory lane. We've tried to distill some real magic from the lessons that people have taught us. So we've got 10 of them. And we hope that together this will be our listener's guidebook to being an extraordinary leader. I'll kick off then. So our first lesson is leave your door open to new opportunities. We heard this repeatedly, but the person who, for me, really encapsulated it was Ruth Porat and she turned on its head. The traditional narrative, the story of career planning that we sometimes hear. Ruth is one of the most senior executives in tech world. She's been chief investment officer at Alphabet and Google. And what she told us was that for somebody who thought she would never reach the C suite at all, the idea of career planning was something she threw out really early. So instead of a grand plan that mapped out her career five moves ahead, she just kept asking herself one simple question. And it was that revelation that really struck me as I listened to her. And I think it's something that we can all apply.
- [03:45]
Guest Leader
Well, when I entered my career, it didn't occur to me I would be a C suite leader. And I had never thought about it. I think that people who plan to deliberately miss things along the way and that what actually opened the door for me to be here was the fact that I wasn't rigid in my thinking and I didn't have a clear plan. My plan was just to continue growing and learning and having an impact. The most important thing for me is to keep asking, what's your highest and best use? And if you keep addressing that question, what's your highest and best use? And you don't have blinders on, you will find that leaders eventually say, wow, if you did X and Y and A and B, you can probably do something else as well. And that's why doors then kept opening.
- [04:33]
Marla
Kudos, Simon. What a great start and what a phenomenal piece of advice. What's my highest and best use? It's such a different way of thinking about your career and the opposite of what most people tell you. But clearly it works.
- [04:46]
Simon
And it is really interesting that because it comes through in the leadership portrait disciplines that we use with our clients all the time, that it's as much about clarity of values as it is on clarity of prediction for your career trajectory that successful leadership turns. And it's obvious, I guess, for people thinking about leaders in the sector I serve and social impact, but it really shines through in that example from Ruth in a commercial world too. So that was our first one. Mala, you're up next.
- [05:22]
Marla
Well, speaking of staying open to opportunities, who could forget our conversation with Adina Friedman at nasdaq, our first ever in studio recording. Clark was sitting there in the heart of nasdaq's headquarters and Adina was telling this mind blowing story of her journey from intern to CEO. It was a record breaking episode for us. What I found was most fascinating about Adena's approach is how she deliberately throughout, threw herself into the deep end over and over again. She'd raise her hands for projects that were completely outside of her wheelhouse. Can you imagine the courage that that takes to do so?
- [05:59]
Guest Leader
Don't think about where you want to be somewhere else. Where would you want to be in this company? And if you see jobs that you find really compelling in five years that you would want to have, then figure out a path to get there. Talk to your manager, talk to your peers. Understand what skills you need to develop to position yourself to be in that role in five years and then 10 years and then 20, like you can really. But if you look forward in five years and you're in a company and you go, I don't want any of those jobs. I don't find any of them compelling. I don't see a. Not that you don't see a path, but you just don't want it, that's when you start to say, well, maybe this isn't where I should be and I should start to look elsewhere.
- [06:38]
Simon
Really, really great. Listening to Adina there and that sense of being ready to put herself out there, ready to take risk. Fortune favors the brave. And so it would seem, just the Fortune 500. We're off to a great start. That's two down. Our next lesson is develop grit. It's one of the key things, and it's there in Adina's example. But that idea of perseverance that every leader needs to bring, and I don't think there was anyone who exemplified that better than Deborah Martin Chase.
- [07:20]
Marla
Yes, she was a fan favorite. Indeed.
- [07:23]
Simon
And she also led a career that was not at all predictable. Somebody who began as a Harvard lawyer and then made this extraordinary career pivot into the world of Hollywood, become one of the most commercially successful producers in Hollywood, and did so based on a kind of gut instinct that this was a world she wanted to be in, however brutal and unrelenting. She's one of the top 10 most bankable black movie producers in the industry today. And the. That's what inspired this third lesson that we've offered our listeners. Let's listen to her in her own words.
- [08:06]
Guest Leader
It's tough business, and I just think part of it is I made up my mind that I was gonna succeed. On the one hand, even in retrospect, that sounds a little naive, but it's true. You have to make up your mind that within your own moral parameters, you. You are willing to do work harder, you know, be better and not give up to succeed. And I made that commitment to myself. I felt a mission, and that helped to motivate and empower me.
- [08:39]
Marla
I made up in my mind that I was going to succeed. The sheer determination in her voice, you can hear it, can't you? That's someone who refused to let the world dictate what she was going to do. She's been such an inspiration to me.
- [08:51]
Simon
I think if you want to know what glass ceilings sound like as they shatter, those were the words that capture it. And it wasn't just one moment. I was really struck by the fact that she needed to continue to show that grit, that determination, the pivot into television, for example, having felt that the world of movies had nothing else to offer her. Another example. Marla, what do you have for us next?
- [09:21]
Marla
Well, a big part of being resilient is remembering that it's okay not to have all of the answers. And that leads me to one of our most memorable guests. Simon. Can you guess who I'm thinking of?
- [09:33]
Simon
I am going to go for a bonus point and say it is Brad Smith from Microsoft.
- [09:38]
Marla
Yes. Brad shared so much with us that we actually had him come in for two episodes, a first in Redefiner's history. Brad is at the forefront of AI development, and what struck me was his willingness to experiment and learn. His point was, you can't figure out AI by reading about it or having endless strategy sessions. You have to start using it, experimenting with it, learning as you go. Let's hear his advice, because it's so relevant to all aspects of leadership, not just AI. And that lesson, lesson number four, stay curious. And always stay in learning mode.
- [10:13]
Guest Leader
First you ask, do people need to learn before they leap? I actually think they need to leap in order to learn. That is the only way to learn. There's a limit to what one can really apply to your own business if you're not experimenting. And I just am a huge believer in being proactive, trying to pioneer new solutions. And then the regrets that you have are good ones, because what you find is that some of the things that you tried didn't work as well as you hoped. But by trying and learning, you create the foundation to go farther, faster, leap higher in the next month or quarter or year ahead. That's how you learn.
- [10:56]
Simon
What I love about that, Marla, is how counterintuitive it all is. Leap in order to learn. It's the reverse of what we might expect. And it's also exactly what our work on the learning quotient and why that's important for really successful Leaders teaches us it's also something in a world that is as full of both technology and geopolitically driven uncertainty as our one is vital alongside the other qualities we've talked about and the opposite. The opposite of what so many leaders are told.
- [11:31]
Marla
That's right. Time and time again, we give advice to candidates. Stay open, stay curious, never stop learning, and be open to taking on new challenges.
- [11:40]
Simon
So we're on to lesson five. I like, as you know, to quote, obscure and sometimes not so obscure Irish authors. And one of my favorite misunderstood quotes, in a way is from Samuel Beckett, who says, ever tried, ever failed? No matter, try again, fail again, fail better. And seeing failure as a superpower is lesson number five from the people to whom we've spoken. And I think the leader we talked to who exemplified that best and then offered the input and the testimony of other leaders in evidence was David Rubenstein, somebody as many of our leaders will know who'd been in the Carter White House and at the end of that administration, found himself unemployed and never having been in a commercial leadership role before or with any business experience. Set up Carlyle aged just 37. And I don't think we need to tell our listeners how that one went. But as I say, what was remarkable about him was he didn't rely on his own experience, impressive though that was. He relied on a whole host of people that he had spoken to in the course of. Of a really interesting exercise he undertook.
- [12:59]
Marla
What a turnaround. I mean, truly an astonishing story, starting at failure and building Carlyle into one of the largest asset managers in the world.
- [13:08]
Simon
And all of this was not just based on his own experience. It came as a result of an extraordinary set of interviews that he conducted with a set of other remarkable leaders. Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett. Let's hear what he learned from them.
- [13:29]
Guest Leader
I think on interviewing all those people, I basically tried to distill the key elements they had in their careers, and it was one they typically had failures early on. They typically were people that picked themselves up and got back into the arena. They were people that were very persistent, reasonably intelligent, not always geniuses, but some were very smart. They were people that were willing to share the credit and to take the blame. They were people that, because of the mistakes they made, had certain amount of humility.
- [14:01]
Marla
Resilient leaders pick themselves up again day after day. They stick with it when the going gets tough. At Russell Reynolds, we're consistently seeking resilient leaders, leaders who know how to overcome setbacks or keep pushing forward we have an approach called the Leadership Portrait for assessing leaders, finding that the most successful leaders score high on drive and resilience. They choose to fight when faced with complex or unprecedented situations, knowing that they will bounce back from setbacks with tenacity.
- [14:33]
Simon
And vigor and easy though that is to say, in some respects, it's an extraordinarily difficult trait to, to actually embody when it comes to leadership. But so many of the people we've talked to have done. Marlo, we're about halfway through five amazing lessons. Can we keep it up?
- [14:56]
Marla
Yes, I have plenty up my sleeve. Simon. For me, there's no greater story than that of de Khari. I mean, wow, talk about a masterclass in human resilience, self actualization and courage. This was one of our most beloved episodes for our listeners. As our listeners may well remember, Dee was the first woman to sail solo around the world in both directions. Now, I can't speak from personal experience, but I'm sure when you're on the ocean with 50 knot wins and people's lives depending on your decisions, you'll learn some hard truths about leadership. And so our sixth lesson is have the courage to make unpopular decisions. And indeed, Dee brings us great insight about leadership that applies in so many situations well beyond the ocean, whether you're a record breaking yachtswoman or not.
- [15:49]
Guest Leader
So I was taking on my first round the world, responsible for the boat and more importantly, responsible for the 17 people that had paid for the experience to be there. So it's a massive responsibility and you're out in the middle of the ocean, so you can't, it's not easy to get advice. You don't really have that support network there. Everyone's looking at you. Through naivety. I think back then I was unaware of the skills required to lead a team and it was probably my biggest learning curve there. I naively thought at the beginning that I needed to be everyone's friend and I learned one. It's pretty lonely at the top and that's why you paid the bucks to make the big decisions. And not everyone's going to agree with and you have to make those difficult decisions that not everybody agrees with and take responsibility and own them.
- [16:37]
Simon
Being alone on the dark ocean, in Dee's case, not a metaphor, that was an incredibly powerful story and she told it so compellingly. I think the image of being on your own, faced with the inescapable decisions that she had to make in the middle of a storm is, it's extraordinary. It's almost a cliche except that she's actually lived it literally and not metaphorically in her case. So next up is lesson seven, which for reasons that will become clear, Marla is never accept impossible. This was the very, very vividly expressed lesson from Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Aweela. She has to be one of the most remarkable of the leaders that we've met in redefiners amongst a very remarkable group. She was a senior leader at the World Bank. She returned to her home country of Nigeria as a reforming minister of finance. She was an extraordinarily successful chair of one of our clients, Gavi, the Vaccine alliance. And now she's Director General of the World Trade Organization. So no stranger to complexity, no stranger to personal and professional adversity, and someone who's been prepared to lock fellow ministers in a room until they agree that a way forward must be found. Her own words are pretty compelling.
- [18:08]
Guest Leader
Let's say that not accepting no for an answer and just being determined that some of the things that were being worked on are so consequential, so important and it's not good enough that we should spend 20 years negotiating an agreement that would see to the sustainability of our oceans and f fisheries. We just had to get it done. Or the TRIPS waiver which is designed to allow developing countries to produce vaccines that would save lives. So it's how important these things are, trying to focus people that these things really matter and we've got to find a way to break through. There were days of agony, there were times of trying to find configurations to bring like minded members together with non like minded and getting them to talk to each other. But I would say that with a lot of effort, members began to see a common purpose in trying to get some of these agreements done. And there's a lot of nitty gritty work behind it, but we did it.
- [19:13]
Marla
What an incredible leader. I remember hearing this episode and just being shocked. As a mother, I can't even imagine what when she told us the worst moment of her life with her mother being kidnapped and that people would only release her when she resigned. What inner strength to be able to navigate that and frankly negotiate your way out. Just such a powerful lesson. Okay, so for lesson eight, let's revisit our conversation with Tony Capilano from Marriott. Tony became CEO under incredibly difficult circumstances, taking the helm during the pandemic after his predecessor Arne Sorensen had passed away.
- [19:55]
Simon
Pretty difficult to imagine a tougher context in which to take over a leadership role with an entire organization of that scale in mourning.
- [20:04]
Marla
That's right. I mean, what struck me about Tony's story is how he carefully navigated his transition and how aware he was of preserving the legacy of his predecessor while setting the stage for what was to come. He had to balance his own personal grief with his responsibility as a leader because so many people were looking to him for direction. So lesson eight. In times of crisis, your people come first. Let's hear what Tony shared.
- [20:32]
Guest Leader
I was announced as the next CEO on a Monday morning. That Sunday evening, Mr. Marriott called to tell me the board had appointed me as CEO. And as is always the case, he gave me incredibly powerful wisdom that evening. And he said to me, no one wishes more than me that I could ask the world to stop spinning for a few weeks so that we could appropriately grieve the loss of our friend. He said, and you are going to have to figure out a way somehow not to ignore those emotions. They are natural and appropriate emotions, but to compartmentalize them a bit. And the reason you have to do that is tomorrow morning, 800,000 people are going to wake up and put on a Marriott name badge, and they're going to look to you to lead them out of this. This existential crisis that the pandemic has represented. And the gift he gave me that evening was a way to sharpen my focus on the task ahead.
- [21:42]
Simon
It's remarkable listening to his humility, but also his success in bringing that organization together in a period of that kind of turmoil, both operational and emotional, for a team. And while Tony's is an extreme example, I think it's fair to say the significance of any leadership transition is hard to exaggerate, but has in the past, I think, often been overlooked. I had the privilege a couple of times in the last 12 months of working with our colleague Ty Wiggins, who's our leader in thinking about CEO transitions in all contexts. And he's a great book, the New CEO, which is a sort of guidebook, but born of interviews with a whole range of CEOs, so a practitioner's guidelines to getting that kind of transition right. Not always under the stress that Tony Capuano faced, but in all sorts of ways that are extensible to leaders in other contexts, too.
- [22:48]
Marla
And there's a fundamental responsibility shift that happens when you become a leader. And Ty talks a lot about this. So, you know, in Tony's story, your personal pain, no matter how legitimate and deep, really becomes secondary to the needs of those that are depending on you. That's the weight of leadership responsibility in.
- [23:07]
Simon
A crisis, and something of that Selflessness. And that responsibility word crops up again in lesson nine, and it's one that we were taught by Bill Rode. I really enjoyed the conversation with Bill. He's a remarkable leader, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, somebody who then took some of the disciplines and some of the self sacrifice from that career into an extraordinarily successful career in the music industry. He led MTV International during the period of its astonishing expansion. President Gorbachev described him as Missile man because he said it was MTV and the freedom, the liberty that it represented that did more to bring down the Berlin Wall than a lot of the military activity to which he might have alluded. And his great insight was that in building a team, you need to take responsibility but give away credit. Let's hear him talk a little bit about that.
- [24:18]
Guest Leader
I know it sounds a little bit far fetched, but it actually worked for me to have the organizational skills I learned in the military and apply them to the private sector and of course, leadership. Couple things. First on the battlefield, last to leave, was ingrained into me because I don't know, when you have a global business, you have a crisis somewhere in the world all the time. So my commanders, if you will, who were running the channels around the world, would invariably encounter a crisis. And first thing I wanted to do was be by their side, the first on the battlefield, and stay there until we resolve the crisis or at least made progress and then be the last to leave. The other principle that I adhered to, I tried to adhere to was slow to take credit, quick to take blame, which again is a military accountability motto that we always go by and not always held by business leaders. But I tried very hard to be slow on credit. I wasn't always that way. But very, very, most importantly, very quick to take blame.
- [25:24]
Marla
That first military principle, first on the battlefield, last to leave. Imagine applying that to every crisis in your organization. Your people will know you'll be right there when things get tough. That's how you build the kind of loyalty that moves mountains. Really powerful conversation.
- [25:41]
Simon
So, Marla, we're at lesson 10.
- [25:45]
Marla
Yes, lesson 10. Last, but by no means the least important. And I think this follows really nicely on from the last one. Of course, one way to get through hardships is to lead authentically. Do you remember Sarah Mensah, president of Jordan Brand? Here's someone operating in the ultra demanding world of professional sports. We're talking relentless pressure, high stakes, male dominated industry. Then she becomes a new mother and she's literally racing home between meetings to feed her son, then sprinting back for client entertainment and games. I mean, as a mother, I could so relate to this episode and the pressure of trying to find your place in the workplace and keep your baby alive. It led to this really profound moment for Sarah that allowed her to lean into her authenticity as a leader. Listen to what she told us.
- [26:36]
Guest Leader
The personal moment happened shortly after I had given birth to my son, Davis. And anyone who works in professional sports know that it's very unglamorous. I love to tell people, you know, 45 home games, if you're making the playoffs, that's 55 nights out of the year, that you're usually starting your day at around 7am and ending your day around 11.30pm and so it's very unglamorous. And so on this particular day, I was doing my normal pattern, which was to leave the office madly, make my way home so that I could nurse my son and then come back to the office so that I could entertain clients and attend the game. And I was rushing out of a meeting so that I could do that. And one of my colleagues said to me, hey, when are you ever going to figure out which of your jobs is most important and do that one full time?
- [27:38]
Simon
Hope you had a basketball nearby.
- [27:42]
Guest Leader
He said it in that joking kind of teasing kind of way. Kinda. As I was going home, kind of humiliated, you know, kind of a spirit rose up in, inside of me and I decided right then and there that I was going to entitle myself, and I used that word very specifically. I was going to entitle myself as the only person in this experience the right to work as hard as I was working and to hustle as hard as I was working. And to be unabashedly a mom that was going home to nurse her child so that she could come back to the game and work until 11. And so I just owned it. I just decided that I was going to own it and I would do things on purpose at that time, like put a sign on my door that said, you know, pumping and process, Enter at your own risk. And so I, I decided that I would just be unabashedly, you know, what was going on. And, and, you know, and I found that in, in taking that stance and really kind of standing up for myself and, and doing it in a fun, playful way with my male colleagues. Everyone ended up getting the message and it actually worked. And I, I was happy to see that other women in the office took a cue and I think were kind of enabled as a result of my having kind of made that declaration that it was just gonna be okay.
- [29:19]
Simon
I remember that story, Marla. And the sense of both mental and physical exhaustion that comes through is extraordinary. Hard for men to imagine it, but one of the lessons that comes through from the women that we have met in Redefiners is that we need to imagine it and then to act on it. Thank you for bringing us that one, because I think it was a really, really powerful, personal story that you can see in the lives and careers of many other people. So we tell them there would be 10, but we have decided Mahler to go one better than Moses and give them an 11th, if not commandment, then certainly lesson. And it is probably the most delicious of the stories that we've heard. Which one do you think it might be, Simon?
- [30:12]
Marla
You're talking about Will Gadara, aren't you?
- [30:15]
Simon
I am indeed. The man who led eleven Madison park, an extraordinarily successful restaurant business, but who told us this story of transformation that turned on a $2 hot dog. Having served these amazing meals to a host of the brightest and best of New York and her visitors. He overheard some guests saying they'd really enjoyed their stay in New York, but they'd never had a hot dog. So he went and got them one and served it right there in his three Michelin starred restaurant. So remarkable was it that they contemplated offering a fourth star for the service of a hot dog. I mean, I'd served foie gras and caviar and lobster and wagyu beef, and I'd never seen anyone react to anything I'd served them like they did to that hot dog. See, it was a profound moment of revelation for me because that was when I started to approach the business from a very different perspective.
- [31:18]
Marla
Can you imagine, I would have loved to have been a guest at the restaurant that day.
- [31:22]
Simon
What I thought was really astonishing about that story is it wasn't just a sort of one off, cutesy story. It was something that he then took and internalized as he thought about the experience, these unforgettable experiences that he wanted to build into the encounter that his customers had with him. And 11th Madison Park. I met with the team and told them about that experience and gave them permission and the resources to start doing the same kind of thing for their guests. I backed that up with a budget and I hired someone onto the team whose only responsibility was to help them bring those ideas to life. This is where a lot of leaders fall short.
- [32:09]
Guest Leader
They come up with a great idea, they give their team the idea, but.
- [32:12]
Simon
Then they don't back it up with the resources to make it a plausible part of the culture.
- [32:18]
Marla
I think the lesson from will, you know, continue to innovate, continue to think outside of the box, and really be a beacon of culture for the organization. It's not just about these grand gestures, of course, but deep and meaningful culture change and empower the teams around you. I think we've seen from a lot of these leaders, you can't do it all on your own.
- [32:42]
Simon
So true. And it's interesting, as we come to the end of that set of highlights, how consistent some of the lessons are and how connected they are. What I think is extraordinary about this, and we said this at the beginning, but it's worth reiterating, is while there's an endlessly particular and specific quality to each of the leaders to whom we've spoken, they're remarkable people. They're unusual people. But there's an openness, there's a curiosity, there's an honesty, there's a fallibility and a recognition of fallibility that comes through with all of them. And a kind of selflessness. We've used that word a couple of times. That's both remarkable and, in a way, intimidating, but also inspiring.
- [33:37]
Marla
Look, these guests are truly amazing, remarkable, but they're humans, and these are not superhuman capabilities. I mean, what was refreshing for me is that these are skills that each and every one of us can learn and develop. The willingness to take risks, to learn from failure, to put others first. These are all choices that we can.
- [33:58]
Simon
Make, and they're founded on qualities of character and on values rather than a formula for leadership success. So we were offering our listeners some reassurance about the possibility of continuing leadership success in an uncertain world. I think it's that that foundation of values as the things that both translate to other people and that allow you to respond to the unpredictability of leadership challenges these days.
- [34:31]
Marla
And finally, we can't leave without saying thank you. Thank you to our amazing guests who've come on our 100 episodes. Thank you for showing up, sharing your stories, your vulnerability. We are so.