The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 369: Nancy Koehn & Adi Ignatius - Courageous Leaders Are Forged In Crisis

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Starting point is 00:01:21 That's Ryanhawk. dot me for more details about the Learning Leader Academy. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Brixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, learners to 44222. In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world, receive mindful Monday updates what I'm reading, writing, watching,

Starting point is 00:01:55 thinking about also give you more details about my book. Welcome to Management. Text, learners, to, 4422. Now on to tonight's featured leaders. First, it's Nancy Kane, bestselling author of Forged in Crisis. Also has been a longtime professor at Harvard Business School. And Adi Ignatius, editor-in-chief from Harvard Business Review.

Starting point is 00:02:23 Previously, the deputy managing editor of time. A few of the topics we discussed. Understanding how you can learn to have the emotional discipline of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Fascinating stories. And then how to toggle between the big picture and small details seamlessly and why this is vital for your success as a leader. And then the power of commitment combined with flexibility and how you can develop the skills. Ladies and gentlemen, it is so good with Audie Ignatius and Nancy Kane. All right, here we go. I have Adi Ignatius and Nancy Kane. It's great to have you both here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome.

Starting point is 00:03:21 Yeah, it's great to be here, Ryan. Real pleasure. Good. Nancy, let's start with you. I've mentioned to both you prior to recording that I have a fascination, and I know you do as well, given the work that you've done and what you've written about with leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. And I'm curious, Nancy, from your perspective, what have you found in your research, in your daily life, the way that you lead as well as those that you've studied, to be some commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence? First, just to set the stage, I think great leaders, especially ones that do it on a sustainable basis, that become better and better, are made. they're not born. So it's not an act of, you know, of God's endowments or of genetic code.

Starting point is 00:04:10 It's a little bit about nature, but it's hugely about how people first, great leaders, have a willingness to get better. So they get better with each undulating wave of demands and the important moments, particularly in crisis. Crises are great greenhouses, crucibles for the making of great leaders. So that's the first, if you will, aspect or attribute that I've seen in 25 years of studying crisis leadership. The second attribute is resilience, right? The understanding that you have the ability to make yourself more resilient. Resilience is not, again, an endowment. It's a muscle.

Starting point is 00:04:52 It gets built over time. Great leaders understand how to access it and make it stronger. A third attribute is this unique combination, Ryan. of both the ability to commit to a worthy mission, right, and then say, you know, with God as my witness, as Ernest Shackleton said on the ice in 1915, I will get my men home alive. And then married to that, somewhat ironically, a great flexibility about the means one will employ to make that mission happen, right? So, you know, Lincoln said in the middle of the Civil War, I would do whatever I could to save

Starting point is 00:05:29 the union, right? But he wouldn't give up saving the union. So that combination, I think, is really important. A fourth aspect is the understanding. So this is partly about empathy. It's partly about emotional awareness, two crucial aspects, calculated empathy, emotional awareness to great leaders, is the understanding that how a leader shows up in service to his mission affects everyone around him, including remote followers. So the ability to convey a sense of conviction and competence, even at the same time, the leader has to improvise through a crisis or at a very important moment. And then just so I don't go on and on, which is my tendency, I think a last important attribute is a real sense of how much impact a leader has. So great leaders are both

Starting point is 00:06:24 humble, and yet they own the fact, they own the sense that what they do from how they walk to how they, you know, clear their throat at the microphone, has great influence. And they own that with humility. And then they use that to try and help people, as David Foster-Whor, Wallace once said, they use that to help people overcome the limitations of their own fears and weaknesses and selfishness and laziness and get them to do harder, better things than they can do on their own. So leaders understand that, and they act from that place. Adi, good luck, man, but I'm going to have to ask you the same thing after trying to

Starting point is 00:07:07 follow Nancy. Maybe I should have had her go second, but go ahead. What do you think? Yeah, with all future questions, please have Nancy go second. So what I'll add to what Nancy said, and in some ways restate some of the things she said, I think it's understanding the role. I mean, I think of CEOs even who arrive in the office and go sit down and do email. That's not leadership.

Starting point is 00:07:30 I think you have to acknowledge the role you're in and the potential that you can play in that role, be very, very conscious of it if you want to sort of accomplish great things. you know when nancy talked about resilience i think it's it's also it means thinking long term you're going to have you're going to have low moments you're going to have moments when you're struggling moments when it feels like people are not getting your message or maybe you're starting to doubt your own message and you have to have the ability to shift not just if there's a crisis but if the path you're on suddenly doesn't seem to be the right path there's nothing wrong with changing course. And I think a lot of readers, I mean, a lot of leaders confuse that with bad leadership

Starting point is 00:08:15 if they switch course. The other thing is transparency. And, you know, as a business leader, look, Jack Welch was a controversial guy, but he had some great adages for leadership. And one was about transparency, you know, that your guys who report to you, your direct reports should know exactly where they stand with you. And if it's not good, then they should know that. And if it is good, they should know that. That a certain level of transparency and clarity helps then build the trust that you need to lead a team effectively. And maybe the last thing I'll say is the ability to lean back to not just walk into a meeting and say, well, here's what I think.

Starting point is 00:08:51 What do you think? I mean, if you're the boss, if you've said that, you've effectively ended the conversation. So the ability to lean back, not just for custom's sake, but to really encourage the people around you who hopefully are really smart and really great because you put them in the position to kind of express their views in an open and kind of trusting way before you kind of put your finger on the scale. So those are some things I would add. One of the phrases that you've both talked about and what you've done on one of your newer projects in studying real leaders, one of them is Abraham Lincoln and the phrase that you've used, and I'll have of Audigo first,

Starting point is 00:09:34 is the power of emotional discipline. Can you describe perhaps what does emotional discipline mean? And maybe if you use Lincoln as an example, but then how we get practical for a second. So think of that person right now, Adi, who is currently managing a team within a large business. And they're dealing with all the things that a middle manager deals with, hiring and firing and training and developing and building a culture where people want to come to work,

Starting point is 00:10:02 all of those things, how they could use this thought of emotional discipline. to be a more effective leader? There are a lot of ways to define this. I think we'll find there are a lot of definitions to everything we're talking about today. Good leadership. So, I mean, one definition of that,

Starting point is 00:10:19 it's a simple one, but it's worth thinking about and reminding ourselves about is, you know, don't send that email. You know, when you're angry and you feel like there's clarity and the clarity is telling you to just roast the person who has pissed you off or who you think has it wrong, you know, part of the emotional discipline is, Don't send that email.

Starting point is 00:10:38 Don't make a comment that is tempting at an emotional moment, but maybe not strategically effective. Because really, I mean, you're, you know, you ought to be thinking about long-term impact of what you do and whether it's getting you to some sort of higher place, you know, in the great scheme of things, rather than when you're scoring points. So, you know, don't send that tweet. don't send that email. Don't make that comment. And he correct, I believe this has become a more well-known story, but right, he would write letters

Starting point is 00:11:12 to somebody and then put him in his desk and never send them, correct? Exactly. Exactly. And it's just, he's a perfect example of what Adi is talking about. When we are emotionally hot under the collar, we don't make our best decisions. We have a harder time thinking about the long game, as Adi is saying. You know, sometimes I like to say. the most powerful something that a leader can do, particularly when the stakes are high,

Starting point is 00:11:38 is to do absolutely nothing in the immediacy of the moment. John Kennedy understood that during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We're writing a Harvard Business School case about that and about his emotional intelligence in those 13, you know, extremely important days. So the emotional discipline is oddies talking about is very important. What are some of the, some of the, take us inside as you're now in the middle of the research and writing of that those 13 days were John F. Kennedy, for those who are younger listeners who aren't as familiar with what was going on.

Starting point is 00:12:11 So just as a quick overview, so in October of, mid-October of 1962, the American government, the White House discovered that Russia had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. They were offensive missiles. They were something that Russia had said they would not do. And they threatened Kennedy and lots of other executives and military leaders thought they threatened executive leaders in the government and military leaders thought they threatened American national security. So there was this immediate reaction, particularly on the part of military leaders, literally the day after they were discovered, to invade Cuba and to begin initially a conventional war with the extremely likely possibility that it would become a nuclear war. So Kennedy, from day three on, where day three is three days after discovering the missiles, has this problem. which is we got to get the, he believes we have to get the missiles out, but we have to do it in a way that that doesn't escalate things into a place where they're out of control because they had calculated that the first missile to fire, those missiles became operational pretty quickly in Cuba, would hit Washington and New York within less than five minutes, killing tens of millions of people.

Starting point is 00:13:24 So you want to talk about high stakes and a crisis. And what Kennedy did that's so interesting, and he had, he had, he had, just read a book called Guns of August, which was about the start of World War I. And so he had this lesson of how leaders let things get so out of control so quickly in the back of his head. And what he kept doing is trying to, one, slow the pace of things down, right? Two, back to calculated empathy, keep imagining what Khrushchev was trying to do and to keep giving him enough room, right? Do nothing immediately when you're upset. Keep giving him enough room to see that nuclear war would destroy the planet and it wasn't in anyone's interest and to keep giving him

Starting point is 00:14:05 enough room that before he escalated and to keep holding off his own team, particularly the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military that wanted to move right now. So the idea that, again, doing nothing, emotional discipline, awareness, calculated empathy, and the sense that you want to actually in a crisis create space, even though you have to act, right, this deft, this deft balance were critical components every single day of those 13 days in helping resolve that crisis without nuclear war. It's really good. I also recommend the documentary called The Fog of War,

Starting point is 00:14:47 11 lessons from the life of Robert McNamara, which I watched recently that talks about. And you can actually hear some of the recordings during that time. It's really amazing. Yeah. Just a little personal interjection. Yeah, my father worked for McNamara. My father's still alive.

Starting point is 00:15:06 He's 99. Wow. He was in the Pentagon for eight years and was one of the people who McNamara brought into the Pentagon in the Democrat years in the 60s. And, you know, McNamara is rightly controversial, but I, you know, my father lists him as, you know, one of the two most intelligent people he's ever, he's ever worked with. And, you know, but go ahead, Nancy. I was just going to say, just for your listeners, Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an integral figure and someone who, right, was not quite as important as Kennedy and John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, but one of the critical figures, again, in navigating inch by inch through the crisis without it becoming, you know, an extraordinary tragedy, without becoming the end of the world.

Starting point is 00:15:56 Yeah. if I could pivot a little bit, so this talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis reminds me of, you know, another sort of great crisis leadership moment. And this is Winston Churchill. And there's that great book, Five Days in London by John Lukacs, which is five days. Yeah, I mean, there might have been two titles, two editions, but yeah, the other one I had was five days in London. But you're absolutely right.

Starting point is 00:16:20 It's May 1940. And it's the moment where Churchill doesn't win the war, but he manages not to lose the war before, you know, the Americans and the Russians both enter the war and put a strain on German military forces, which at this point are basically moving unchecked on the European peninsula. And so it's really, it's the five days where Churchill stood up to, you know, a parliament, to opposition leaders who really thought Britain's best move would essentially be to make, you know, a bad truce with the Germans, even possibly at the expense of Britain having to give up its Navy.

Starting point is 00:17:02 I mean, that's how bad things were. And, you know, Churchill held off and the kind of courage of his conviction and, you know, the difficulty with his ability ultimately to hold the line. That was, those five days included Dunkirk, which is another great example of leadership when all of a sudden everything changes. And the mission goes from preparing to fight. a battle to actually trying to bring as many of your men home alive to fight future battles. And that was a pivot.

Starting point is 00:17:36 And there was some luck involved too. But Churchill, again, managed to not lose the war in those five days in 1940. There's so many just fascinating examples that you've both written about and studied. And I'd love to talk about Shackleton. And maybe I'll have you. Nancy, you could introduce who he is for those who don't know. And then perhaps you can do that first. And what his everything he's all about.

Starting point is 00:18:06 And then I have a few questions about his leadership style. Let me lay the scene, as Shakespeare would say. And then we'll give it right back to you, Ryan. So in 1914, just as the First World War was breaking out, a experienced Antarctic explorer. Born in Ireland, but really had spent most of his life in England, takes a team of 27 men to Antarctica. They have expressed permission from, coincidentally, Winston Churchill, who's then the second lord of the admiralty, and gives them permission to take that ship and continue on a long planned exploration down in Antarctica to walk across the continent. The men sail down. They arrive at their last outpost, which is an island in the South Atlantic called South Jersey.

Starting point is 00:18:55 Georgia, where the whaling semen there, whaling station, tell them that the sea is chocka block with icebergs and they actually might just want to hang out and wait for some of that ice to melt. Shackleton waits for a month and then restless, continues the voyage on now, in a sense, southeast, briefly, and then southwest to the Antarctic coast. And in January of 1915, 80 miles from the coast, they can see the coastline. Well, overnight, as they're about to dock, but the day before they will pull in to make base camp, high winds and cold temperatures freeze floating icebergs around the ship, locking it in a vice. And they can't bust their way out with engine power, and they can't pick their way out with axes. And so the ship is stranded hostage to the floating current.

Starting point is 00:19:48 And Chackleton, whose original mission was to walk across the continent and be the first. team of men to do that, right now has a very different mission, which is what do we do when the whole game has changed? And that's where the story of crisis leadership really begins. It will get more and more difficult. The scene, the Shakespearean scene, will get darker and darker. And Chackleton and his men will be stranded without communication devices. There's no, you know, messages or texts or Facebook posts. It will be stranded without communication, thousands of miles from civilization for almost two years. So that's the beginning of the story. They don't know how long. They just know they're in deep trouble. Why do you think what was it about him, his behaviors,

Starting point is 00:20:38 his characteristics that made him a person that people not only signed up to initially follow, but then stayed committed to throughout amazing adversity. What was it about? What was it about? him that that that that there was no mutiny there was there was that that that did not happen what what do you think it was a combination of of attributes and some learned there's a great deal of improvisation let's not ever neglect the importance of improvisation not adi was saying you learn quickly you make mistakes you pivot shackleton did that over and over again but a combination of things first foremost a great sense of responsibility i i'm responsible for these men and their lives. Secondly, I think, relatedly, you know, perhaps he felt culpable in some sense

Starting point is 00:21:27 because he had taken them south against the warnings of the seaman on South Georgia. But nonetheless, we've seen many leaders in our own time not step up to the plate of, I got to fix this, I made a mess. He did. So first, responsibility. Secondly, he had the trust of his men. They really believed, let's go back to that definition, great leaders for people who will help us overcome the limitations of our fears and weaknesses and get us to do harder, better things. He had the trust of his men. They believed he wanted and cared for their best interest. And so the one place in the expedition when they get close to mutiny is, Shackleton quickly dilutes that, suppresses it, and it never surfaces again. So I think, again, this is the men's trust in him. Thirdly, he had this

Starting point is 00:22:16 great sense of emotional awareness, Ryan. So a huge amount of what he does day to day is about addressing the fear, which can quickly become panic, which can then become, you know, disunity, which can then, in those kind of life or death circumstances, think about panic in our own moment, can become very destructive to navigating or solving the crisis. He kept a close finger on the pulse of his men's morale. And a lot of what he did was to have the empathy to say, hmm, my men are anxious. What can I do today without ever saying anything that they were anxious?

Starting point is 00:22:55 These are, you know, bold, you know, male naval semen and scientists to address that. Fourth, and I'll pause here. Fourth, this extraordinary, extraordinary ability. to toggle seamlessly between, mentally for him, toggle seamlessly between, here's what the weather is doing, here's where the ice may break, here's how we need to do to get ready to sail

Starting point is 00:23:25 if we think the ice is going to melt soon, and the tiniest detail. So you toggle between the big picture of the mission and, oh my goodness, my carpenter, right, Chippy McNeech was his name, is actually sowing the seeds of contagion. He was very, very good about figuring out, who on the team were the negative, right, naysayers, the doubting Thomas's, and I need to actually

Starting point is 00:23:48 quickly figure out a way to bring him right into my tent and co-opt him so he doesn't spread despair and disunity among my men. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. So he could do that seamlessly, a hundred times a day or 40 times a day, and that was critical. Go ahead, Addy. I feel like that part was like the ability to zoom in and out, seamlessly. as we're saying Nancy. And that's what leaders understand the importance of the tiniest details, but also can can speak from a zoomed out high level as a sense I'm getting. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:26 Go ahead. So, Ryan, I'm glad to hear that you count yourself as a shackled and free because there are, you know, there are a lot of us out there. I do. I kind of get one shout out, though, to you, Audie. And he go, my friend Nikki Bosco has helped me with preparation because she is the one who turned me on to becoming. I'm not at her level yet, but I am getting there when it comes to studying the work of Shackleton

Starting point is 00:24:48 and why that's a great example of history, of leadership in history. So good. Sorry. And this is, look, Nancy wrote the case at Harvard Business School for this. It's one of the most beloved and successful cases they do. And partly because this is the worst expedition ever. I mean, guys are telling Shackleton, don't go. He's like, no, I'm going to go. And immediately the ship is.

Starting point is 00:25:12 surrounded by ice. I mean, this is the worst exhibition ever, and yet it becomes the greatest leadership lesson that you can find and that resonates today. And it is because the mission changed, because there was that pivot, we've gone from trying to cross the Antarctica to try to bring all these people home alive. You know, the mundane, so improvisation is absolutely critical, but, you know, paying attention to the mundane, having, going through the kind of, the kind of the daily work schedule and these things that, you know, you think the order of the day would be panic, and it wasn't. It was, it was, let's stick to routine. You know, it's almost like successful families that, you know, you have your dinner hour at a certain point. And you, you know, you have

Starting point is 00:25:59 that kind of regularity, which is very comforting. Obviously, at the same time, you're planning how in the world do we get out of here. But that regularity does a lot to keeping a team together, keeping spirits up and just projecting a sense that we're all in this together. And this, you know, I don't know if you've written about this or spoken about it, but if you had to take from everything both you have learned, I'll start with Adi here, there's a shifting in the marketplace. I like to make these episodes timeless, but I think this could go on be useful at any time. For people who all perhaps used to work in an office and now maybe they're more dispersed or

Starting point is 00:26:39 they're remote. and now this is this is changing the way we work it's changing the way we communicate and I think it may change it forever some are now on a forced experiment and that forced experiment will actually end up being a good thing and they'll maintain this so for people who are having to change the way that they work what's some advice you could take from somebody like shackleton or somebody else that you've studied to say this these are some things you could take from them and actually implement right now Well, the number one thing I think is to remember that even though you're remote from your team, you are still needed as a leader. You know, I'm finding, look, there people have various levels of concern and even panic now. Concern about health, concern about their jobs, concern about the national economy, concern about the global economy. And it is very reassuring to have leaders step up and say the truth.

Starting point is 00:27:45 Not to say everything's fine. That's not actually comforting because it's obvious when that is built on a house of cards. But to say, here's what we're doing. Here's the extent to which we are, to the extent to which this is business as usual, only remote. Here's the extent to which we are pivoting into new areas and innovation because we're going to try to, you know, take advantage, not in a negative way, of the new reality where everyone's working from home and everyone's on WebEx and Zoom and technologies like that. Here's what we know about the state of our business. Here's what we don't know. I mean, it's that kind of

Starting point is 00:28:23 solidness, I guess. Solidness, transparency, you know, tell the truth. You can't maybe, you can't maybe say everything, but what you say has to be legit. And it can't be, you know, false optimism doesn't help now. People want leadership, but they need

Starting point is 00:28:42 the truth. We're all, we're all grownups here. Go ahead, Nancy. A couple of, just a couple of things pinging backing or picking up on what Adi said.

Starting point is 00:28:52 You know, I think honesty is critical. I mean, perhaps at times brutal honesty, but it's always married. And I'll give you a good example

Starting point is 00:29:01 with Shackleton. Lincoln did the same thing. It's always married that, brutal honesty, right, is married to two other things. First, credible hope. So to give you an incredible hope, what are the things, what are the capabilities, the history, the collective strength we have as a people to get through this. So you think about someone like FDR, right? the like seventh paragraph of his first inaugural, March 1933, we have nothing to fear but fear itself,

Starting point is 00:29:32 paralyzing nameless, shapeless fear that, you know, that dilutes or gets in the way of our ability to find solutions. So that credible hope is really important. And here's the example from Shackleton. What we haven't told your listeners yet is that the ship, which was trapped, eventually is crushed by the ice, trapped in January, crushed by the end of the summer of 19, 15 goes down through the ice in November of 1915. By that moment, Shackleton and his men have all been living on the ice in tents for two months. And the day the ship goes down, it goes down, the ice closes over it in less than eight hours. And there's nothing. They can't see anything but white. They can't see anything. Now, that's, if anything was going to cause panic among a group of sailors and seamen and maritime scientists, that was it. What does Shackleton do? The next morning, he calls them all from their tents. He has cups of hot milk and tea for everyone. Great leaders feed and water their people metaphorically and literally. And he says, this is the first words out of his mouth. Men remembered this years later. Well, lads, ship and stores gone now. We'll go home.

Starting point is 00:30:43 So that is what we're talking about, right? We'll go home. So I think this combination of addressing, right, the unspoken fear, not by, you know, kind of wishing it away, not with any kind of euphemistic possibilities, but with, you know, we're going to do this. Of course we're going to do this. My hook or crook, we're going to do this and we can do this. That is critically important. If I may, let me say something about routine for all the people working from home. So I have been studying leaders in crisis for a long, long time.

Starting point is 00:31:20 Some of them have been in situations like Shackleton. Another interesting example is a very, very an astounding leader named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a resistor in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s, were eventually imprisoned by the Gestapo. He, like Shackleton, understood, this is he in a prison cell with all kinds of people on the outside waiting for word from him because he had lots of followers. He and Shackleton understood that routine accomplishes a number of things first, it orders days that are now suddenly unordered or in a very different pattern and cadence than they were before.

Starting point is 00:31:57 Shackleton actually arranged a new duty roster every week for his men. So this week, you're in charge of bringing the flag up. This week, you're in charge of killing penguins. Next week, it'll be a different group of people. Bonhofer, in a prison cell, organized his days. I'll exercise for this hour. I'll read for this hour. I will write letters for this hour.

Starting point is 00:32:19 He was a pastor. I will study the Bible for this hour. I will talk to the guards for this hour. And he shifted it around every week. So routine is stabilizing. Routine clears the mind. Routine fights fear. And it's critically important for lots and lots of people to understand this

Starting point is 00:32:38 and then to take charge of their routines. But the last thing I would offer is that, and we're hearing this now from lots of different people, is that even though, and Chackleton understood this very well, isolation, full stop, feeds fear, feeds our worst case scenarios, feeds our fantasies of all the bad things that can happen. None of those, that feeding is actually helping any of us.

Starting point is 00:33:09 It's not that we, again, we're wishing away anything. We're not being polyanish. But every great leader understands how to look at the worst case scenario, learn from it, put a rough case probability on it, and then turn away from it toward things that are actually more likely, because worst case scenarios are probable in distribution terms on one side of the curve. And so the idea that in isolation we're more susceptible or vulnerable to that is a good one, but that means, and this is something again to take Shackleton, the Shackleton playbook, the way he combated that for these 28 men on the ice was to force them to socialize. So every night,

Starting point is 00:33:51 while the ship was still upright, the men had to come into the, in the dining room or the wardroom and tell stories or have skits or they showed the kind of early prototypes of 35 millimeter slides because they had an early projector. You know, he made up games for them to play. No one was allowed to go away to their bunk and start feeding the fires of despair. So the idea in our time that we will consciously, as part of our routine, reach out to people, particularly people we think might be extra isolated or extra vulnerable. That turns out to be very empowering, very stabilizing, and very useful to people showing up with their stronger side, right, feeding their stronger side. So again, echoing Shackleton, those are important aspects of this moment as well.

Starting point is 00:34:43 I think good leadership right now. I mean, I'm hearing of people who, you know, are not just engaging their teams and trying to keep productivity up as much as possible. But actually having fun, you know, whether it is doing, you know, trivia contest or, you know, I have a few people who in my office, we play instruments, not very well. You know, but we're, we tried to all play together on Zoom and that doesn't work because there's lag. so we figured out the technology that does allow multiple people to sing together or play together. It's like you have to try a little harder, but those connections are huge with staff, with peers, with all of us, with family, all of us who are suddenly remote from anyone else. I'm curious, I know both of you like to talk about the work and the people you study,

Starting point is 00:35:35 but I'm still fascinated by both you as people and maybe your routines. And Nancy, you can go first and then, Adi, I'd be curious, what routines have you set up for yourselves to both be, you both have sustained excellence in your careers. And I think people who are listening could get a lot out of understanding how you've been able to do that. And so I know this may not be the easiest question, but I'm curious, how have you been able to sustain excellence over such a long period of time of sharing your research and doing. it in a compelling way. Let me say a couple of different things. First, in terms of routines, I work at home a lot. So I'm actually kind of, I have a step up on this because I write books and I can't write

Starting point is 00:36:22 books at the office. So I've spent long, long, long, long gap periods of time at my home. So my routine is up and start ordering the house. I spend half an hour ordering the house. Order it for me is a gas tank, or it gets me up. It creates a sense that it's time to get to work. And I think order is very, very useful for people ordering their surroundings is a very good way to start the day. It's also empowering.

Starting point is 00:36:50 So that's the first thing. Second thing, we have to feed and water ourselves. So sleep, eat food, right, because we're not lunching with colleagues, but taking the basic requirements of taking care of ourselves or the people that we're with is really important. because, you know, if leaders fail, then a whole bunch of other things fail. Third, I go to work in a certain place in the house. I don't work at, I don't, and I don't keep the television on. I work at my computer with my books, and I have a place to do that, and that creates, it's kind of like going into the office.

Starting point is 00:37:24 I go to this part of the house to get real work done. That's important. Fourth, I always make sure that I have a few, like, people, that I plan on checking in with during the day so that friends, these are friends or colleagues so that I'm not, I'm not alone in the vacuum of my own, you know, work and my house. I live alone, I should add. I have dogs, but I live alone. So that's important, right? I only get too isolated. Last, and I'll stop, is I get with books, and I've had cancer twice with no risk factors and a whole bunch of other really terrible things that happen in a short period of time.

Starting point is 00:38:05 We talk about this a little bit on real leaders. And so that's how I got into Lincoln. Lincoln was so meaningful for me because he was someone that had endured so many crises. I thought he could show me the way out. So what I've learned is that in moments when I get really frightened or I get really doubting or I start, you know, the mind monkey starts whirling within me and taking me to very scary or, again, incapacitating places. It's very important to have a couple of rituals that you test and try that you know bring you back into your stronger place.

Starting point is 00:38:39 So I know what those are and I don't hesitate to use them and I don't hesitate to use them. So the point for our listeners is it's not that you're supposed to feel super solid and super knowledgeable and super confident every second of every day. No leader ever does. but having tools, right, to back you away from the cliff of despair or on we or giving up or, you know, kind of announcing to your team that you're frightened as hell, which isn't a good thing to do, that that's really important. What are some of those things that you do that bring you back? I actually, this is going to sound yoga-like, but deep breaths are really helpful.

Starting point is 00:39:21 No, I think this is great. This is what people love to hear. It's extremely important. I have a few pieces of classical music, to Audie's point about music, that if I just put those, turn off my devices with all the news feeds, that's not helping me in those moments, put on the music and just walk. Third, walking. I have two dogs here, and we walk.

Starting point is 00:39:43 And let me tell you, I leave my phone and I walk, I walk through the little trails of concrete, and I come back stronger and more grounded every single day. Love it. Love it. Thank you. A huge proponent of walking, especially now. But anytime. Adi, how about you? What are some of your routines and rituals you've put in place? You know how impactful these are. What have you done for your own being? Sure. I meditate every day. Do you use a guided app or what do you do? I actually have somebody who has been my guru in Denmark who was, we were Skyping with each other and he was leading me through it and he actually took off to Nepal for a while so he gave me a recording. So it's his voice. It's the equivalent maybe of headspace or apps that people use.

Starting point is 00:40:39 Okay. Ten minutes and just breathing. You know, nothing more than that. And, you know, in a worst scenario, it's maybe the most pleasant 10 minutes I'll spend. all day. In the best scenario, maybe it's making me a more compassionate person and helping me be a leader. I hope so. You know, certain things that are so easy and cost nothing, and yet we don't do enough, I have to give myself yellow stickies to remind me. So, you know, when we get back to the office, I'll see these, but I have little stickers that say, connect, which is, again,

Starting point is 00:41:11 to avoid that urge to just get to the office, lock into your computer, and interact with people that way, that you can gain so much more by circulating and talking to people and finding out about their work and about their life. Secondly, to thank them. Again, it costs nothing. The value is obvious, and yet it's so easy to do. We know the value of it, and yet we don't do it. So I'm embarrassed to say, I need a yellow sticky to remind me, but it just sort of reminds me. The other thing I do is I shift places depending on the type of work I'm doing. So when I'm, you know, when I'm locked into writing, editing, emailing, you know, that's a, that's a one specific location at the computer. But when I want to do something creative, I need to, I need to get up, I need to go to a new

Starting point is 00:42:04 place. I need to sort of lean back. And it's both physically useful to do that, but also a marker reminds me that, okay, I'm in a different space now. I'm doing it. something different now. I'm shutting that other stuff out and I'm doing this. All that all that stuff seems to help. Real quick, Audie, from a career perspective, you know, there are people listening who want to continuously get promoted and get big responsibility jobs. And you know, you were the deputy managing editor at time and now your editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review have had quite a career. If you were giving someone career advice and they said, Addy, man, I don't know if I want to do exactly what you've done. But I love your, when I look at it, I love what you've been able to do.

Starting point is 00:42:50 What type of career advice or put another way, why do you think you've continuously been chosen for these massive roles at a variety of places, which when looking at that your career, that's still, you know, in motion is quite remarkable. What do you think is the key to that? I mean, journalism is a funny career in some ways because the people who tend to be best at it are iconoclastic. You know, they distrust people in a healthy way. You know, they're questioning authority, they're questioning leadership. But the Peter Principle says at some point we get promoted to a management position. That's often not a good place for a lot of these iconoclastic people to end up.

Starting point is 00:43:36 You know, I think in my case, I had that, I had a background, you know, a, a good, solid, you know, editorial, um, questioning authority, all that kind of stuff background. But I, I think my personality is actually well suited to sort of being part of a team. You know, I like, I like this management. So I'm, I'm proud of the fact that, you know, we're a successful business and we, we make money and we're growing. And, you know, there's some journalists who don't care. I'm just doing my thing and I don't care about the, so I, you know, I think I, I gravitated more easily to that.

Starting point is 00:44:09 So I had sort of those twin skills. I mean, somebody once told me that, I mean, I try to delegate a lot, and you need to do that. You can't do everything. You need to delegate. One of my direct reports once said I exercised something called invisible leadership. I wasn't sure if that was an insult or compliment, but I decided to take it as a compliment that just, you know, you trust your people, you let them go as far as they can. There are moments when you need to step in. there are areas where you will always need to step in,

Starting point is 00:44:40 but the degree to which you cannot step in is a good thing for your people and a good thing for your organization. Interesting. Nancy, same question to you, a different career, but certainly have made a name for yourself by what you've been able to put down on the page as well as taught others and all of the knowledge that you've acquired. What advice do you give to those who are looking to build a career

Starting point is 00:45:05 where they want to make a positive? contribution in the world, something you've obviously have done and are currently doing. What advice do you give? In my case, and I think it's, I don't think it's, I think it's true for a lot of people, so let me try and legitimate it for people or justify it, applaud them for it. Lincoln said at the end of the war, I had no grand plan for winning the war. I frankly confess I navigated point to point. And my career, I have navigated point to point.

Starting point is 00:45:36 I knew I loved history. I knew I wanted to have external impact that was bigger than traditional academic, a traditional academic might have, right, if I was working in a traditional history department. But I didn't know much more than that. And when an offer came, very contingent, temporary offer came to go teach at the Harvard Business School, I navigated to that point. And then I've been there for more than 25 years and have grown and changed in lots of ways. but never relinquished my passion for and my deep dedication to,

Starting point is 00:46:11 because great careers are built both on passion and on dedication and the commitment to do the work, to build the knowledge, to do your homework that is in service to that dedication. So I think the first thing was I navigated point to point, never giving up either on the passion I felt or the dedication I felt. The second thing was I just kept learning. Like I'm just like a sponge. Maybe that's why I'm an academic.

Starting point is 00:46:37 I love learning. And so a lot of what has taken me point to point from the business school, right, to, you know, a historian of leadership, to a historian of crisis leadership, to someone who loves working with the media on getting a large message across for courageous leaders. A lot of that has been in service to, right, to this sense that I'm going to keep learning. And I'll get better as I keep learning. and it's never, ever over, right? So I want to make myself better. Maybe that's the reason I study people who make themselves better.

Starting point is 00:47:11 Third thing, there are gathering years in every career. What do I mean by gathering years? There are years when you're not necessarily checking a whole bunch of achievements off your career bucket list. That's good. That's part of the process, right?

Starting point is 00:47:26 That's part of your kind of living your way into your best self in terms of your career. And fourth, you know, life is long. You don't burn bridges. We live in an age when everyone is reacting so quickly, right? We're so undisciplined about putting our emotions, keeping our emotions in check and sending that toxic email. We're doing that way too frequently.

Starting point is 00:47:52 I never did that for the most part. I made a few mistakes, but I had a lot of mentors that just said, you never know. Today's seeming enemy is tomorrow's friend. So I never, I made, I assessed people internally, but I didn't make enemies along the way. I chose there were certain people I didn't think their ethics or their way of being were good fits with mine. That's not the same thing as making an enemy. I don't think we have the luxury of doing that if you really want to build a multifaceted, you know, career full of possibilities, particularly possibilities to help other people.

Starting point is 00:48:26 So I would say those are some of the rules of the road that I mostly felt my way toward. or stumbled into, I had no grand plan at all. I'd like to, one of the points about what both of you do and perhaps Nancy Moore in a formal setting. But I found that whether it's from writing a book or getting up on stage 40 to 50 times a year, one of the best, perhaps the best method of learning is formulating your thoughts based upon your research and everything that you've learned and then trying to share it in the effort to help other people

Starting point is 00:49:07 that that process, the distillation, the understanding something at its essence and then sharing it and then getting some of the feedback afterwards is the best learning tool in the world. And so for you both as teachers, can you share,

Starting point is 00:49:24 and perhaps Audi you go first and then Nancy can wrap it up for us, but can you share how teaching and writing with the thought of and speaking on a podcast, that has made you better learners and wiser as you do it? You know, everything we publish in Harvard Business Review, pretty much everything is meant to have practical value.

Starting point is 00:49:52 You know, if we, this, and I think traditional academics have a problem with this. Traditionally academics have often wanted to write something and say, okay, this is how you do marketing, period. you know, come see me in 20 years, maybe things will change. And I don't really view it that way. And I think this era now where we do have the tools, we realize that the masses are really smart and have really interesting things to say

Starting point is 00:50:15 and examples that flesh out some of the ideas that we're publishing, that the extent to which you can acknowledge that what you publish is the beginning of a conversation or the continuation of a conversation and that there are many more twists and turns and insights to go, that is what makes a successful and a credible sort of publication and a community that feels enriched and entrusted to be part of it. Nancy, how about you?

Starting point is 00:50:44 Learning through the tool of teaching. Oh, teaching keeps you honest. I mean, it keeps you honest because your students have great questions. They know where the weak spots are and what you're offering them. push you to fill those weak spots to reinforce them to strengthen them. And because we teach with case method at HBS, I've never given, I haven't given a lecture in my life. You have to think like a chess player, what are the likely questions? If I ask this question, what are the likely questions? So you're always thinking about what's unknown and then how do you push the group toward

Starting point is 00:51:22 trying to know that or explore that place so we know more that's relevant for impact than we did when we started the conversation. And I think just stoking, you're the fires of curiosity. Like, that's what Adi's talking about. That's this, that's kind of the footnotes or the subtitles of what he's saying. Like, you know, do you want to know more? Do you want to expand the house of your personality by learning more about yourself in the world?

Starting point is 00:51:51 Are you willing to ask the questions to do that? That's a great, like, endeavor for your life. And you get, you get control over what the answer to that question is. You're not born curious or not curious. So feed the fires of curiosity. They're important. Real quick, so you've never given a lecture. Can you explain?

Starting point is 00:52:12 Well, because we work in case method learning. Right, I don't think, I mean, I'm not fully aware how I've never been. Let me just explain that. So everything we teach at Harvard Business School, including things like accounting and finance and the history of leadership and marketing and technology and operations. and technology and operations. We teach by having our students read a real-life example. In my case, they read examples from the past most of the time.

Starting point is 00:52:38 And then you go in and the classroom starts, say, 90 people. That's the average size of our classroom. They sit in an amphithea so they can see each other. They all have name cards. And the professor says, so, then we give an example from Shackleton. So, Sandra, how do you evaluate Shackleton as a manager? How do you evaluate him as a leader? And the class begins with a teacher asking a question.

Starting point is 00:53:00 And it continues, right, with this interactive nature. Sometimes students ask other students that are speaking questions. Sometimes students object. Sometimes a professor asks 20 follow-up questions. But at the end of the 90 minutes, because we mostly teach in 90-minute intervals, we know a whole lot about the ambiguities, the complexities, the critical issues, the takeaways. and we believe that this method of teaching helps people learn, leaders learn what we've been talking about throughout this podcast, how to ask the right questions, find the right resources

Starting point is 00:53:36 when the stakes are high. I would love to sit in on one of those classes someday. They're not boring, Ryan. They're not boring. I'll publicly request if I can find my way in your neck of the woods once we're back meeting in person. I'd love to just sit in on one of those and see what it's like. That sounds fascinating to me.

Starting point is 00:53:56 And also make sure you've got to do the pre-work. If you want to learn, you better do the pre-work. And I think that's a good lesson in life, meaning when you have meetings, do the pre-work. Be ready to go. I mean, Jeff Bezo certainly runs his ship that way at Amazon, but be ready to go for the meetings. We're at our time. I really appreciate both. It flew by both Adi and Nancy.

Starting point is 00:54:19 I really appreciate it. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about the work you're doing on? online? Well, you know, for me, I'd say, you know, check out HPR.org. We're doing a ton on, you know, trying to see clearly what is and isn't happening with coronavirus, but also how do you work effectively. You know, we're doing a lot of that. It's all in front of the paywall. This is obviously, you know, a special moment and people are needy. And we're starting to pivot to what does it mean for the economy? How do we lead during a crisis? How do we pull out of a moment like this? because we will pull out of it.

Starting point is 00:54:54 So, you know, HPR.org and look for a lot of the recent stuff that we've put up there. Love it. Nancy? Well, my book Forged in Crisis, The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times, available in Kindle form as well as audio form and book form, it's not just the story of crisis leaders. It's about what they learned and why those lessons are useful. I have a Twitter feed at Nancy Kane, K-O-E-H-N, where I am every day tweeting out

Starting point is 00:55:23 lessons and insights. It's called leading yourself in crisis and then every day is a set of new insights and relevant articles. I'm also on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook doing the same thing. I'm doing my own crisis leadership classroom online. Love it. Well, thank you both once again for investing your time with me today on The Learning Leaders Show. I really enjoyed it and would love to do it again in the future with both of you. It sounds great, Ryan. Thank you. It's really nice talking to you. You too. Pleasure. Thank you, Ron. Thank you. I appreciate it. Bye.

Starting point is 00:55:54 Bye. Wow. I loved that conversation with Adi and Nancy. I found them to be fascinating storytellers and did a fantastic job of relating those stories and the research behind it into how we could implement for the adversity facing us right now. A few of the key points that stuck out to me. Crisis or a useful greenhouse. to make great leaders. When times are tough,

Starting point is 00:56:27 this is when you as a leader needs to step up. People will remember how you responded when adversity struck. And that's right where we find ourselves now. So ask yourself that question, how am I going to choose to respond? And then empathy and emotional awareness, as well as conveying conviction and confidence in service of the mission. How are you doing this right now?

Starting point is 00:57:00 And then leaders in crisis, routine orders days that are not ordered. Really helpful, especially now if your routine has been impacted, take control of that. Build some rituals and routines into your day so that you have control over something that is so important and that certainly applies to your mental health. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. If so, I would love it if you would tell a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to the Learning Leader Show

Starting point is 00:57:35 why this one with Adi Ignatius and Nancy Kane is so useful. Thank you so much for continuing to do that. Because you do, it gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. and for that I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you soon. Can't wait.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 369: Nancy Koehn & Adi Ignatius - Courageous Leaders Are Forged In Crisis

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