Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Real Reason Politics & Society Is Broken (And Fixing It) - Susan MacKenty Brady & Stuart Kliman

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

We're all walking around convinced we're right and everyone else is the problem, and it's tearing apart our politics, our workplaces, our families. Stu Kliman and Susan McKenty Brady join me to break down the four hidden landmines killing our ability to disagree without destroying each other. Susan MacKenty Brady is a global leadership expert, speaker, and CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. She advises organizations worldwide on cultivating high-performing, human-centered cultures and is the coauthor of the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller Arrive and Thrive. Stuart D. Kliman is a founder and Partner Emeritus at Vantage Partners, a midsize consulting and training organization headquartered in Boston. He is an expert in behavioral change management and collaboration, an alumnus of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the Head of Business Development at PrescriberPoint. Get a copy of their brilliant new book, All the Difference: Six Leadership Actions to Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rossum. Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. lot of disrespect in the world right now. And it's not just for others. It's also for ourselves. And so I think a lot of people feel small or not good enough or they can't speak up, that their

voice doesn't matter. And then when they do, it's like everybody around me is an idiot. Those are not helpful pathways to think. And so in the moment, we want people to come back to a place. Hold on a minute. I bring something. And it's up to me to ground myself in exactly what I do bring and also hold that there's so much that I don't know and then I can't see. It's returning to that place so that we can keep conversation open. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining me today is Stuart Clyman and Susan McKenzie Brady. The title of the book is all the different six leadership actions to bridge perspectives, strengthen teams, and create value. First of all, to both of you,

congratulations on the book. Thank you. And a lot of fun to read it. I know Stuart for a long time, full disclosure. He was my roommate in law school. We had three of us living in the same house. Stu was the messy ones, Susan. I just want you to know. Here we do. We had we had one Felix, so we had one Oscar from the odd couple. Wait, so are you, were you neat? No, I was like in the middle. Okay. He was the perfect, perfect moderating force. Just like now. Yes, the mean of normalcy. I was the mean of human normalcy. Okay? All right, but we probably shouldn't go

there because Stu and I have a lot of stories and we both have hand grenades. Susan, you know what I mean by that? If I let off a pin, the hand grenade will blow off his hand grenade will grow up, you know, blow up, etc. Okay. But Susan, I want to- I kind of want to let you guys just do your thing. But let's talk about us. I want a story

you, Susan, if you don't mind, why this book right now, first of all, it's such a relevant topic. Yeah. How did you guys come together to write and tell us about the core themes. And also, I think this book is going to have cultural impact. So tell us about what's going on in the culture right now, which led you to write the book. As every day passes, this book becomes more important.

And I say that with utmost humility. You know, look, I think leading today requires a different way of showing up. And the speed of, you know, access to artificial intelligence is impacting human beings in profound ways. And we have to do a better job of being human. And part of that is understanding where other people are coming from so that we can create value together and work together more effectively. And so I think the world is waiting for, I think we need a new leadership playbook. I also think this book will help people in any circumstance of relationship, you know, untangle a little bit of why that relationship might be difficult if in fact you don't see things

eye to I. You know, most people see differences as a threat, right? I think that's, you know, you have a difference of a threat and then we do something where, especially in politics, we start demonizing each other. Okay. So you disagree with me. So let me demonize you. So what is the message that you're conveying in the book, which I think is a mind shift, frankly, and if we could give more people to go in that direction, it would be societally very beneficial. Well, a gold mine of opportunity. A gold mine of opportunity. So if you have a group of people or even one person who sees the world differently, who might have different relationships with communication, with problem solving, with risk taking, different generations, and we're surrounded by difference. And I think the winners in the future will be those who can figure out how to get everybody on the same page to work together as a team to create the most value from whatever you're trying to do. But Stu, what's your version of this? answer. Yeah, I mean, look, difference is gravity. We can't, we can't wish gravity away. Difference is just here, and it is here and in the workforce. It crosses, as Susan said, you know, every way we can

think about defining difference exists in the workforce. And the reality is, you know, some people talk about, you know, is difference good, is different bad. Difference just is. Now, difference can either get in the way of our ability to execute, right? It can slow us down. It can undermine decisions. It can close off avenues of innovation. Or, to Susan's point, it can be untapped sources of value. And ultimately, it is the leaders in our businesses that determine whether or not it is good

for the business or bad for the business. So ultimately, when Susan talks about, you know, a new leadership playbook, we're really trying to get folks to look out at all the difference in their workforce and ask, how do I lean into all that difference so that I can tap into it to create new forms of value? And we believe that ultimately, leaders who do that will win. What do we, Stu, why do we have such a problem doing that? What is it about us and our personalities? And again, I'm saying this very broadly because I think, if I'm being honest, I think I have a problem doing that at times. Perhaps you guys do as well. Is it human nature to have a problem with that? Yeah. It's a great question, Anthony. Look, in the book, so we do not just in the book say,

hey, here's what you should do differently. We actually talk specifically about that question, right? why is it so hard to, in fact, lean into and take advantage of difference? And so, you know, we spent a lot of time talking with the 22 contributors in our book about that. We talked a lot about, you know, Susan and I, along with our co-author, Lieutenant General Leslie Smith, who's a three-star, former retired three-star general from the Army about just that question. And so what we talk about are, what we call the four landmines of managing difference. And essentially, Anthony, those are kind of mental models that all of us walk around with. They are part of, as you said, you know, the human condition. And we want to be aware of these landmines and we want to sort of

figure out how to how to kind of manage these landmines so that we don't step on them as we're dealing with all of this difference. So, you know, we talk about, we can go deep into any either one. We talk about the landmine of certainty. We're very, very confident and strong in our own views based on the data we have in front of us and how the way we've reasoned through those data, through that data. We're typically quite inconsistent. So there's a gap between what we oftentimes say we value learning, curiosity, understanding one another, and how we actually behave under pressure. Third, being reactivity, when an emotional trigger pulls us out of what Susan calls our best self at exactly the wrong moment. And the fourth, which I think of is kind of

the most insidious landmine, we call it justification, which makes the other three invisible by converting, you know, a misstep into, you know, someone else's fault, a way of explaining away why we're behaving the way we're behaving. So it's really those four landmines that exist in all of us that are really, really critical to understand and manage if we as leaders are really going to tap into all the difference in our workforce. So can I woman's blame? Please, women's blame. You see, Anthony? You see? Let me take a crack at. I feel like I've woman. Sue, I feel like I've learned explain, but go ahead. Yeah.

I knew this was going to be fun. So self-righteous indignation is the killer of all value from all the difference, right? I think I'm right. And I stop learning from you. And it has to do with a deep level of lack of respect for other people's differences of thoughts, failings, experiences, opinion. And it's really, it's easy to shut down all things that are good. Learning, innovation, risk-taking, problem-solving.

Why do you want to be around someone who thinks that they're right and you're wrong? I mean, right? Yeah. Well, but I think we've done that politically. I think we do that in business. I think we do that in our relationships. I think that the, I guess what I got out of it, and thank you for the advanced copy of the book. This book for viewers and listeners comes out on July 14th, and it's an essential reading.

It'll be on my future book list for everybody. But I think what I got out of it was slow down. you know, what I got out of it was if you want to have a transformational moment in your personality or appeal, as Lincoln once said to the better angels of our nature, slow down and be less positional, right? This is something from Stewart's work, right, on positional bargaining. You know, we position ourselves a certain way, and then our egos get damaged if it doesn't go our way, a result of which we create unnecessary rifts. But if I'm going to go to your work for a second, You've written four other books.

Is that right? Is this your fifth book, I think? Depends, yes. So I've written two playbooks and then two, my last two books were with McGraw Health. Yeah. So what did you say here that wasn't said in those books? From your life experience, what would you bring to this book? Well, a stew and less.

I mean, so look, the story behind the work that I've done has to do with what kind of conversations, how constructive are the conversations we're having with ourselves in our own minds? And how does that impact our relationships? And so I got to clean up my own thought about returning to curiosity, being kinder and gentler to myself. You know, three out of four of these past books are really for women and how we get in our own way and our own advancement and career opportunities. And it occurred to me, you know, over the last 10 years that every time I worked with a group of women, They wanted to talk about the guys. And that was just so interesting.

They wanted to know how do we deal with the men at work. And what occurred to me was we all need to learn how to actually work together more effectively because the men didn't know how to show up around conversations around women. You know, all the seeing differences in the workplace, people were stymied and unable to connect. And so I thought, number one, I think there's an opportunity to write almost a prequel to going back to the basics of what do we need to do to work together and get along more effectively so that we can create great outcomes. And second, I got to do it with guys because, you know, the world only has so much tolerance, sadly, to listen to me as a thought leader. And I was looking

for, you know, when I've known Stu for year, they used to work for Stu. So I've been schooled in his disciplines from the Harvard Negotiation Project. And so I was delighted when we started talking about this. And then Les Smith comes at it in a bizarre way, right? You would think he's command control. He is all about caring and connecting in order to get a team working and to build trust. And so we just kind of had all the difference between the three of us. And that felt different. So this is the first book that I've written for when I'm hoping, like, you know, the other half of the world's population might pick it up and read it. Thank you for tuning in an open book. And if you haven't already, please

hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot more coming. And now back to the show. You mentioned General Smith and Stu, he was the Army. I didn't know this until I read the book. He's the Army Inspector General. So they were responsible for a million people, a million lives, right, of people who are both, you know, former and current military. But again, one thing that happens when you're in the Inspector General, you get to see all the bad stuff, right? So you, you, really are peeling back from this gigantic massive institution, some of the things that are going wrong. And so I want you to channel him for a moment. What do you think that that job taught him

in terms about the differences in leadership? And what do sometimes leadership books actually get wrong, which I think you guys have done a really good job of pointing out? Yeah, I mean, I'll take a cut at it. I mean, less is an extraordinary individual, as you said, you know, three-star general, former inspector general of the United States Army, you know, less. So I think when I started, right, when I started talking with less, I thought Susan used the words command and control. I thought that's what he was going to bring to the table, right? The whole theory of kind of command and control and how do you make it happen. Fall in, right?

And certainly less gets, you know, ultimately you need to tell people, to take the hill and they need to be willing to take that hill. He's very, very clear about it. What Les brings and his really, really, very clear point of view, as well as the other military folks who we interviewed for this book, who were just extraordinary, was the process of creating the conditions whereby that hill can actually be taken, right? And I think that's really kind of an interesting way of thinking

about leadership, right? Our leaders ultimately want to align us around a mission and get us to execute. In many ways, I think Les would say the, what is the mission part is the easy part. It's the how do you bring a disparate group of people together to a place where they can actually align and execute? And there, he's going to talk about things like making sure that although though he was a three-star general, he did not fall into the landmine of certainty. He said, you know, all the time, it was easy for him. I'm a three-star general. I'm right.

You're wrong. Being able to listen to all the various people around him to learn from and to understand their points of view and the data that they were bringing to the table, he would say was, you know, one of, if not the most important lesson that he learned. He would also talk quite a bit, which we talk about in the book, about the importance of not being inconsistent in how you show up day to day. The army is all about values and how we ought to behave and how we ought to show up. He regularly saw other leaders around him who would say one thing and show up in a different way. And so Les really brought to the table the notion of trying to,

really what I would say is kind of minimize the gap between what you say and what you do. So really interesting for us. I think, you know, that this book, Anthony, the three of us coming together was our own little experiment, our own little petri dish of tapping in the difference. This is not the book that I would have written by myself. This is not the book that Susan would have written by herself or less. Really, it is an example of everything that we, that we're trying to talk about. Susan, what would you out? Well, I wanted to know what Anthony's percolating on.

As you're listening to us and to him, what's going to, yeah. I'm percolating on two things. And I think, I think the one thing, and this is the, I think this is the most important thing for me. And maybe you can address it, Susan. You know, when I hear bridging perspectives and we're in this very polarized society, I think that might say, okay, but there are some differences. that are genuinely destructive. You know, there could be, I don't know,

someone wants to blow up a city. I don't want to blow up the city. You know, it's pretty polarizing. You see what I'm saying? And so I guess what I want people to know from the book, this is not a schlocky book. It's not a DEI book where, oh, you know, let's put a coat of paint on and be lovy-dovey.

It's not that. Something more transformative happening in the book. which I want you to punch out for me. That's basically what I'm getting at because I, again, everybody reads these books. You get my points to. Yeah, it's a great question. It's a great question.

It's right down the fairway. Absolutely. I want you to hit this for me because the book is speaking differently than these other books. Yes. So first of all, there's sort of the macro job that we, we recommend. of, to your point about slowing down, of just spending more time intentionally reflecting. So if you're fired up about something, if, you know, if you disagree about something, if you think the path is this way, but other people are saying it's that way, we're asking for a pause, big picture

before a leader would take decisive action to ensure that the people that are left behind that they're aware that there's going to be people left behind when you make a decision sometimes. But I'm really interested, and that's that we have reflection questions in each chapter because we want people to start to think about their thinking, to met a process. Like, why do I think that? What is that value for me? Why couldn't I get curious anymore? Why did I get, you know, sort of, why did I check out of that conversation?

Like, start paying attention to that. And then the second is a moment-to-moment practice, which is, is sort of the body of work that I've been working on is literally in the moment. When you're in the conversation and you're starting to feel whatever it is, that probably will create a lack of productivity in that conversation. Being able to slow it down in the moment to say, whoa, what's going on for me? Because I want to stay productive. I want us to get to a good outcome. I want us to see reason. And so I have to lead the way. I have to lead the way by saying, I'm really struggling here. I model this thing called vulnerability all the time, and it's not fun, but I trip up over all the

landmines that Stu talked about because I'm human. We're all human. So I think that's the premise, actually, is if we all have a few of the same tools we're working on and we talk about them, like really trying not to be certain here, but I'm struggling, you know, what it does is it frees us up to have more honest conversations without going to. to a place of disrespect. And I see, I think that's the fulcrum of the work, in my opinion. I think Stewart would have a different answer, but I think there's a lot of disrespect in the world right now. And it's not just for others. It's also for ourselves. And so I think a lot of people feel small or not good enough or like they can't speak up, that their voice doesn't matter or, you know,

and then when they do, it's like everybody around me is an idiot. You know, those are not helpful pathways to think. And so in the moment, we want people to come back to a place of, hold on a minute, I bring something to the table. I mean, I wrote a book with a genius from Harvard Law School and a three-star general. I mean, are you kidding me? How many opportunities did I have to think like, what do I bring? And it's up to me to ground myself in exactly what I do bring and also hold that there's so much that I don't know and then I can't see. So I don't know. I guess it's humility, but it's returning to that place so that we can keep conversation open. Yeah. What we have not set out to do and what we've not done is we have not written a book

for solving, you know, geopolitical crises. That's not what this book is about. I believe that there are many things in this book that could be applied very, very usefully in all of those situations, but that's not what this book is about. And your example is a good thing. one. You know, there are places where, you know, one could argue, perspectives ought not to be bridged, you know, there's lots of ways, right, that need to be dealt with. We are, we set out to create a book for leaders in workplaces. Susan's right. There's lots of other applications who want to win, who want to create value from their condition, which is, to have a workforce full of difference.

And the question is, you know, that the amount of difference in the workforce is only going to grow. It is going to keep on growing. More generations, more, you know, more different ways people are connecting with technology, more access to different bits of information, more different relationship networks. That muck is either a problem or it is an opportunity. And we believe that the leaders who are able to treat that situation, that gravity, if you will, not going away in the workforce as an opportunity and to have a playbook and who can build the capability and competency in themselves and their organizations to tap into that difference will be better situated to win in the marketplace than those who cannot. So that's what the book is about. Again, lots of applications, but that's really what we're trying to do.

And across the 22 leaders who we interviewed in the book, that's what we talked about. Tell me a spot in your life. And the same question for Susan, where maybe he handled something badly or you could have handled it differently where you were the problem. Because I think that's really where the action starts, right? Where somebody could look in the mirror and say, whoa, wait, wait a minute. it's me. Yeah. Hard for people to do, right, Stu?

Tell me the time and that happened to you. Yeah, I mean, by the way, I have a phone book of those times personally. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And again, you could probably bring back, look, you know, I had a 25-year career having started a consulting and training organization

called Vantage Partners. And I, with a couple of colleagues, ran that business for years. And so every day, We had questions about strategy, questions about management, questions about how we were going to interact with our customers, questions about how we're going to manage our people. And in every one of those circumstances, I did things wrong. So I would say, you know, I was too certain. I was not curious enough. I was inconsistent. I was acting in ways inconsistent with, you know, my own personal values.

I was overly reactive to people who were, you know, who were different to me. And I was finding it easy to justify and explain away my own behavior. So I would say every day of my life, right, goes back to your original thing. I am dealing with those landmines. And I can tell you that upon reflection later, I left value on the table because of it. I came up with a less innovative solution. I had poor alignment with my teammates and colleagues and partners. I created less motivation for my team than I might have otherwise, right?

And so rather than give you just a specific situation, you know, I see that as that's the journey of leadership, Anthony. And ultimately, you know, that's really what we're trying to talk about here. We're trying to help people with the journey of leadership. We're trying to give them some prescription, but also a recognition to give themselves a break. And that that journey is ultimately, which I know, God knows you are all about, is all about personal reflection and learning and getting better over time. Susan, what would you add to that?

The truth is, I have been the I have my own storm. And it's the gift of feedback that some people, you know, weren't comfortable working with me, that I realized it wasn't a relationship I had to repair with one person. because I said something that annoyed one person. It was how I was showing up. I was in a rush. I wanted to get things done. I had limited time. I felt responsible to our stakeholders. And I made quite the wake for others. And that's just not a hospitable environment to want to work in. And so, you know, I have to check in with my own energy when I get fired up about something and not be the eye of my own storm because people don't really like to work with people who are the eye of their own storm, it turns out. So self-management 101. is how I got to this clarity, you know, and I keep, I have to check in with myself a lot still and model this. Because there's no, there's no mountaintop, Anthony. There's no arrival. Like, oh my gosh, I'm finally going to get so good at, you know, leading through all the difference because we're going to get triggered. We're going to get fired up about something. We're going to see,

we're going to feel right. We're going to feel right. So it's that moment. We have to be like, whoa. Okay, hold on. What might they be thinking? I know I don't agree and see the world the but what might I be missing as a result of shutting that down? Right. Well, look, as I said, I've known Stu for 40 years. Every time I talk to him, I learned something. But there was something about this book that really got to me and maybe it's my old age. I feel like if we slow down and we recognize that what we're thinking in terms of our

righteous positioning is the same thing the other person's thinking, right? I mean, there's a, there's a German word called San Francisco. S-O-N-D-E-R. And it basically means, you know, the other person has got a life and I've got a life. And my drama is my drama, but they've got their drama. We have a tendency to depersonalize theirs and to really just reinforce our own. And I think the book really rang my bell on that messaging and to think about people the way we need to think about ourselves. So, okay, so if you listen to these podcasts before, my producer and I, as we get to the half-hour mark, we have five,

words that we pulled from your book. And so I'm going to ask you each to give me a sentence or two on the following five words. Okay. So when I say the word trust, Susan, you think of what? Connection. Okay. Stu Kleiman. What do you think of consistency? Yes, it's interesting. So I think vulnerability. I think if I've made myself vulnerable to you, I trust you. You know, it's interesting. It's real. We're all coming at it from a different angle. Okay. If I say the word, if I say the word team, in using a one. We. Interesting.

We, we, we, not I. Okay. Yep. Difference. Uh-huh. So Stu and I are on the same thing. Because that's exactly that. You know what I would have said, Stu?

Accepted differences. Accepted differences. You told me one word. So there you go. So, you know, thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No difference, right? Yeah.

Right. No, but we is for sure, definitely the number one thing. We have to accept our differences, right? Okay. So, Susan, I say value. You say what? Infinite opportunity. What do you say, Stam?

Tough to create. Tough to create value. Sorry, now I'm, now I'm, now I'm violating your rule. But, you know, it's hard. It's hard to bring things together. It is hard to create value out of difference without trust, right? So if I'm bringing together your, you know, your words here. I'm in the Potter steward category here.

Value for me is I know it when I see it, right, Stu? Yeah, I know it when I see it. Okay, Stu, I'll start with you. I say difference. You say what? Gravity, because it's just here. It's just here. You can't fight it.

You have to learn to live with it. And there are, there's a lot of great things about it. Sometimes it holds us down, but sometimes it can, you know, create the conditions where we can, you know, create a rocket and explode. My last word, I'll give you both the last word. Leadership. I was going to say learning. So same place as Susan. I think service when I hear leadership. Service, yeah. All right, well, listen, the title of work, all the difference, six leadership actions

to bridge perspective, strengthen teams, and create value. Susan McKenzie Brady, Stu Kleiman. Thank you guys so much for joining me today on Open Book. I love you, man. Thanks so much. You're the best. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad-free? Don't worry, we get it.

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