This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Leading From The Inside Out with Dana Maor | 278

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

True leadership isn’t about mastering executive skills—it’s about mastering yourself. That’s the message at the heart of today’s episode, where we explore how leaders can grow from the inside out. Because leadership is a journey, not a destination, and the best leaders never stop evolving. Our guest, Dana Maor, is the global co-head of McKinsey’s People & Organizational Performance Practice and serves on McKinsey’s Knowledge Council. As a senior partner and co-dean of multiple leadership programs, she helps leaders transform not only their organizations but also themselves. Dana is also the co-author of The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out, a book that offers a fresh take on leadership development through inner work. In today’s fast-changing world, leading from the inside out isn’t just a strategy—it’s a necessity. When you commit to that inner work, you’re not just leading—you’re reshaping what leadership looks like for everyone around you. Connect with Our Guest: Dana Maor Website:  https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/dana-maor   LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-maor-046455212/  Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734088/the-journey-of-leadership-by-dana-maor-hans-werner-kaas-kurt-strovink-and-ramesh-srinivasan/   Related Podcast Episodes: Lead Bigger with Anne Chow The Sixth Level of Leadership with Dr. Stacy Feiner Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kaleil and you are listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today with you as the decider, which is meant to be both empowering and inspiring, but can also be a little overwhelming and daunting, right? Because being the decider means that you're responsible for your self-awareness, your authenticity, your vision, your growth, your success, your happiness, really all of it.

And in trying to figure out who we are and who we're meant to be, we often look to others for examples, for support, for information, and for leadership, while at the same time having others look to us for the very same things. Again, a little daunting, right? And we've covered the topic of leadership a multitude of times and a multitude of ways on this show,

mostly because I am a firm believer that leading is very much part of doing woman's work, but also because I know you're all doing it, far more than you might even be aware of or giving yourself credit for. With or without a title, we all lead. But leadership is one of those topics that is endlessly studied, written about, and taught,

and even the most skilled and experienced leaders and executives still have more to learn, and they still struggle. I'm not sure I'd believe a leader who thought they had leadership all figured out, and certainly not one who wasn't committed to their own personal development, because leadership is one of those things

that is always a journey and never a destination. So this episode is for leaders, which of course means you, for our continued growth and development. And our guest is going to share with us how adopting an inside out approach to leadership could make all the difference. Dana Mawr is the global co-head for the McKinsey People

and Organizational Performance Practice and is a member of its Knowledge Council. As a senior partner, she works with leaders globally to transform their organizations and themselves and serves as co-dean of multiple McKinsey leadership programs. And she is the co-author of the book, The Journey of Leadership, How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out. Dana, given what you do, you probably spend more time observing and thinking and learning about leadership than most of us. So talk to us about what you mean by this inside out approach to leadership. Well, thank you so much, first of all, for having me here.

It's a pleasure to be here and talk to you, and particularly to this audience of women who are, to your point, leading by nature of who they are in the world. And also, thank you for giving me the credit of observing and watching and learning maybe more than others about leadership. I wish we did more of that. I think it needs to be done consistently.

And I completely subscribe to your opening where you shared that leadership is a never-ending learning journey. So fully subscribe to that. When we talk about leadership inside out, if there's one thing that we've learned is that in the madness of today's world, and I don't need to describe what it is,

fast-evolving geopolitics, inflation for many of us who are not used to be in this environment, because we've never grown in this environment and many of the leaders today have not grown in an inflation at all your environment. Five generations in the workforce for the first time ever, which is a challenge in it of itself as different generations look for different things. And very, very different demands from the inside and the outside of organizations. All that led us to the inevitable conclusion, as we were listening to many, many leaders, and we can talk more about that, of their stories,

that at the end of the day, you cannot lead others. And I think you've mentioned that in your opening as well, unless you understand who you are, who you need to be, and how you can best navigate this never ending set of competing tensions that you face in the world. And so when we speak of leading from the inside out, we mean you first need to know who you are and who you need to be to be the leader that you want to be and how to navigate that so that then you can truly inspire, empower and lead others. And this is what the theme of inside out or human centric leadership comes from for us as a meta theme of this book. Okay, I have a

plethora of questions, but before I jump into those, I wanted to get your perspective on, I don't know, theory that I have, and that is that we're taught far more about what it means to look like a leader than we are how to be and become ones. We hear a lot about executive presence and how to show up and all of those things. I'm not saying that that doesn't have value or it doesn't have its place. But do you feel like that we're often being taught leadership from the outside in? If we look at the history of what we were taught and what we see others being taught, there's a huge emphasis on what you need to do as a leader. So what are those topics that you need

to be master of? What are those stakeholders that you need to be master of? What are those stakeholders that you need to manage and how do you manage them? What are the themes that you need to have in your agenda when you speak to different stakeholders? And it is possible to grow as a leader doing all the right things to an extent. But I think the more senior you become as a leader, the broader your platforms are, the broader the communities that you're leading are, or the more ambitious your goals are, it is getting increasingly difficult to do the right thing just by doing the right things, knowing what to do. It's inevitable, and you've mentioned time before, it is inevitable

that you will not be able to do all the things that you hope to do. It is inevitable that you will need to at any given moment in time run trade-offs and decide what is it that I'm going to lean towards? Is it the short-term goal, the long-term goal, the internal stakeholders, the external stakeholders? Is this the time to listen or is this the time to act? And therefore, at some point, you hit a block, right? You just can't just be that leader by doing the things that you think you need to do or showing up as that charismatic, inspirational leader that you might be expected to be. You have to dig deep inside

and find the way to navigate that situation, which is why I agree with you. We are taught what to do as a leader, but not enough who is it that we need to be to be able to navigate that complexity. Okay, so one of the things you said was sort of this what I interpreted as a self discovery of who we are, but then also who we need to be for the people that we're leading our organization. Let's take that first part, because I mean, even when you were talking about the things

we do as leaders, it can feel really overwhelming and sometimes paradoxical right there is so much we can be and we can learn how does self-awareness fit in with understanding your type or style of leadership? How do we reconcile who we are with being a leader? Is my question making any sense? It is making sense because I think it is one of the most difficult things for a leader to do. And I'll explain why I'm saying that. I think that as people who have grown in this world,

thinking that we can, if we do all the things that we're expected to do, we are probably going to deliver what we need to do to deliver. Quite often we fail to take that time, the time to get to know ourselves, to get to know who we are, to understand, by the way, what throws us under the line, as we call it, into that reactive state rather than the creative state, and to therefore know how to always be on our best performance

as opposed to what we are thrown into. And that understanding that taking the time is not a privilege. I mean, how many moms do you have that would first wake up in the morning, get the kids out to school, do all the things that they need to do, then run to work, then come back because dinner is... And you never take that moment to pause. And because we think this is indulgent and it is not, you have to do that. You have to take that time so that you can recognize what state of mind you're in so that you can be at your best

performance in service of others. And I don't know if that makes sense, but I think that because of that, it is so difficult to find that moment and identify those things within yourselves. And there's a few things that we try to do when we work with leaders. One is for them to recognize their own triggers. One of the people that I worked with said, when I am disrespected, I am immediately moving into reactive mode. It just throws her off completely. Someone said, when things are moving very slowly,

I just lose my patience. And again, rather than being helpful, I am being directive. And I'm not helping the people that actually might need the time to move what they need to move. And if you recognize what are those things that throw you into the reactive or lower performance mode, and you know what gets you out of that situation, you can manage yourself better, you can then notice when others are falling into that trap.

And if we take it to the team level, one of the exercises that I love the most is actually having that conversation as a team and ask each other, what is it your trigger? What is my trigger? How do I know that I'm triggered? How do you know? And what do you need from me to get out of that state? is my trigger? How do I know that I'm triggered? How do you know? And what do you need from me to get out of that state? So a very long way of saying, if we don't understand what is pushing us to our best performance and what is throwing us off that, and if we don't take the time to understand that, it is very difficult for us to, more often than not, it's never possible to do it always, be in that high performing mode that allows us to deliver as leaders. Is that answering the question? I went on a random walk, so

I'm not sure. No, no, it answers the question and it triggers even more. So first I want to say, I have an exercise that I do with women that I work with that helps them to sort of identify their strengths, unique abilities, superpowers, talents. And when they do this, on average, I found that women come up with six things they know to be true about themselves. And I thought maybe the exercise was too hard

or I wasn't explaining it very well because I couldn't imagine only coming up with six things. So I had women then do that same exercise, but for someone they love, a best friend, a partner, a child. And then the average they came up with for them was 32 things. So I think that that speaks to what you were saying earlier of we're so busy and we've been socialized to be so others focused that we haven't carved out the time and we are not practicing self-awareness

at a very high level, which I agree is integral for all of our relationships, but especially those in which we lead. Now you talked about triggers and I mean, use the word strengths, even though you said it much better than that. When we think about our best and natural leadership style, how much should we be aligning those with our natural strengths?

How much should we be playing to who we are versus trying to be somebody or something else? So I'll give the example. For a very long time, I struggled with my own leadership because I'm not a charismatic leader. And I've witnessed so many charismatic leaders and I thought there was something wrong with me and I was trying so hard to be more charismatic. And ultimately what I realized is that's just not that I can't be charismatic in moments

or if I need to be, but that is not going to be my natural leadership style. And that's not a strength I can play to. So long winded way of asking, when we are thinking about the healthiest version of our leadership, when we're not triggered, how much does that align with our natural strengths and tendencies? Well, I think if one of the traits that we talk about is being authentic, I think this is the answer, right? You cannot act to be someone you're not. And one of the favorite, my favorite stories in the book, and there's many, I think there's 24 stories of CEOs that were

courageous enough to name themselves, so identify themselves by name. One of my favorite stories is of Claire Babineau-Fontenot. She was at Walmart, she's now at Feeding America, and she was one of the most senior finance leaders on the tax topic at Walmart. And at some point she was promoted to be the chief tax officer. Very difficult time, lots of work to do, a gazillion things to do. And the first thing that she did as a very senior leader who had supposedly had 12 months of onboarding and end up with two weeks of onboarding was to say, I'm just going to be that tax officer that my predecessor was. And I mean, she was a minority woman, very different background from the white male that was in that role before. So you can imagine just by the person that she is, she was very, very different.

She tried for a couple of weeks, months, and she felt like she's failing miserably to the point that she walked to the CEO office. This is a story that she tells and said, look, I am the only way that I'm going to do this is being me. So that if I fail, it's while being me, as opposed to being someone else and not being able to explain to myself why I failed or not. She then set an audacious goal for a tax management perspective for Walmart. And what I am told is that actually, she not only achieved it, but that was the most ambitious goal that they've achieved in terms of tax savings and tax planning and all those things. I am not a tax

expert, so I'm not going to do justice to what it is that you achieved. But apparently it was phenomenal. And so to me, that is an amazing story that, that goes to your question, which is, we can only be at our greatness when we are the best versions of ourselves, because then we are authentic, then we have the self-confidence to be humble and listen when we need to. We do not suffer from that imposter syndrome that many leaders are suffering from, and that inevitably handicaps their performance. And we are showing up as authentic to people. And we also show them that by them showing up as their best versions, they have a, you know, are better welcomed and more likely to succeed in the organization. And I think the energy that comes out in an organization when you do that is much, much higher. So maybe a one person's perspective, but I would definitely encourage everyone to build on their strengths. It doesn't mean not stepping or leaning into places where you're uncomfortable.

I think the other thing that we encourage people is always being in fearless learning mode. And you said it at the beginning, right? This is a never ending journey. And we need to lean to that areas of being stretched, being uncomfortable, learning new things, but not of the expense of pretending being someone else. Well said. And I want to dive into that more self-development personal growth part. I think there is a initial step of self-awareness, self-appreciation, self-discovery in your

stories. Like, what do I bring to the table? What is authentically me that I can rely on, fall back on, that I have a history of success behind me? I think that that is, at least personally, that's been important for me. Then adding on the how do I get better, you said the best version of yourself, which of course means a relentless commitment to personal growth. What are some examples of personal growth? When you see a leader who's committed to personal growth, what are they doing differently? Well, I think that the first thing that we're seeing is listening, not believing that they

have all the answers, but admitting that there's always something to learn from other people. Another example in the book is Bruno Pfister at Swiss Life. He was the CFO of the company. He was promoted to become CEO of the company. So you think, oh, he probably knows exactly how to get things right. But that happened exactly at the Lehman Brothers crisis in 2008. And the environment that he found himself in was very, very different from the environment that he came from, despite very, very different from the environment that he

came from, despite being a very successful leader in the company. And the first thing that he did was actually turn to a mentor, a trusted mentor, and ask for his advice. And admitting that you actually would like someone else's perspective, I would say is the first step to relentless learning. He was very surprised by the answer, by the way, because his mentor told him, think about your legacy, the legacy that you want to live in the organization. And he thought, here I am, biggest crisis in the last decade, if not more than that, I should be heads down, fixing performance, doing something, you tell me to think about legacy, that makes no sense. But then when he stepped back, he realized that actually that is the way to think about it because this is the only way to help him see through the clutter and be able to design a path that would get them to greatness. And there were many other steps in the story. And of course,

it has a good end. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been in our book as a personal growth story. But this is one example. So I would say first is listening. And we encourage when we work with leaders to tell them, find your advisory board. And it could be people in your organization that know exactly where you are. And it could be people outside your organization, et cetera. The other thing is learning how to always learn, which means be comfortable at a beginner's mindset. I do yoga. I love it. I do it for years. I'm still not doing a headstand, a headstand I now do. I still don't do a handstand in the middle of the room, but I'll continue to try, right? It teaches you how to learn. It teaches you how to laugh when you fall and learn from it. It teaches you, it could be a new topic, it could be a

new industry, whatever that might be, to keep that beginner's mindset and that brain flexibility around that. And I would say also, admit when things are not going the way that you've expected and think with others and think yourself how to learn from those failures, which, maybe we don't want to declare as failures, but learn from those situations. These are some of the examples. But the bottom line is curiosity for me is one of the best qualities, knowing that it's not always going to get us a lot of, you know, glamour in some situations, but it is going to definitely help us consistently ask the right questions and grow. I appreciate every one of those examples, but having a commitment to a beginner's mindset, it just really spoke to me because I think, especially as women, we tend to want to avoid that.

We want to get to expert level as quickly as possible. We wanna establish credibility as fast as we can. And I understand the inclination and I think it's doing us a disservice because we avoid wanting to feel this beginner's mindset a lot. Any thoughts on or reactions to that? You're just triggering for me a perfect example of the tensions that we always live in and

how do we navigate those tensions. Because on the one hand, we want to come across as professional, as credible, as experts, as somebody that is a go-to person for advice, guidance, inspiration on how to lead an organization, how to solve a problem. And on the other hand, we're asking ourselves, I'm asking everybody to take a beginner's mindset. And of course, if we always come with a beginner's mindset

and we never have an opinion and we always listen to others, that's not how we want to show up. On the other hand, if we're never open to others, that's also not allowing us to access the best of what's around us. The trick is really, and this is a perfect example of those polarities, how do you as a leader know when to do what and how much of that? How do you notice when you're falling too much into one side or the other?

And with that, push yourself to try the other thing. And again, it could be feedback from others. It could be when you feel that you're triggered, like the tension goes, or I get red. You sense a, whatever that might be, everybody has their little signals that something is off to take a breath and understand, am I being too directive, too professional to know it and understand, am I being too directive,

too professional to know it all, or am I being too, I mean, maybe it's time for me to help someone come up with an answer rather than to continue to try to learn together and find the path forward. So I don't have a straight answer other than a perfect tension to notice and learn how to play with both ends of the spectrum. I love that answer because that's what leadership feels like for me. It feels paradoxical a lot. It feels like what is the right answer in one situation is not the right answer in another

and there is an element of learning to trust yourself and your instinct, and also to be upfront when you don't know. And as you said earlier, whether it's your advisory board or the people on your team, being open to learning from other people when you're unsure. I had a guest on a previous episode that basically said that one of the things that we don't do very well when it comes to learning about leadership is learning from women about leadership.

And her take on it was oftentimes when women teach about leadership, people respond with, oh, my gosh, I'm going to give your book to my sister, mother, daughter, or, you know, this is a really great presentation. I'd love you to speak to the women in my organization and what she was trying to say is we all are not doing a very good job of learning about leadership from women. We tend to put it in the container of this will help women as opposed to you know when we read a book written by a man we can all learn from it. So I'm curious your thoughts and perspectives on that. Does that jive with what you're seeing

as you study and observe leadership? I think, you know, if I reflect back to the Bauer Forum, the Bauer Forum is that forum where we convene four or five CEOs for a number of days to reflect on their agenda. And if I reflect on the work that I have done, inevitably just because of percentages in the, you know, it's in senior ranks in organizations, we see more men than women.

What was interesting for me in synthesizing all that into the framework that we shared is that we have seen just as many examples of those same struggles with men and with women. Imposter syndrome was that they both experienced it. Going one up or going one down was something that we've seen both with men and both with women. Wondering if I belong. Feeling that you always have to come across

as professional and smart and have the answers. Both of them have it. In fact, in more cases, as you've mentioned, women feel that they need to come up as super professional because otherwise they might be blamed as weak or not confident enough. And so to me, it was very reassuring to see that those uncertainties, those questions, those insights that actually unleashed power in leadership were quite consistent across men and women. Beautiful examples are when Mark Field at Mazda

before he was at Ford was sent to Japan. And that was a beautiful example of a leader that is trying to pretend that he knows exactly how decisions are being made in a culture that he didn't know. And typically you would say that's a, maybe a woman thing in certain environment, but actually that was a man thing. And at the same time, we would have had examples

like the one that I shared with Claire Babineau-Fontenot earlier where she started by pretending being someone else and then found her own way of doing it. Mark Fisher at a Cincinnati hospital was not a doctor and he was asked to be a CEO of a hospital. Was very worried about his own credibility and ability to lead other doctors and then found his way of doing that. So I find that in our stories we found the same patterns with men and women, which means to your point and to your question, everybody can learn from one another. And the last thing that I would say about this, if you know Joanna Barsh and Centered Leadership, she's written a book at McKinsey about this

a long while back now. She started her research from women actually, thinking that women learn from women and we need to crack the code on what is holding us back. And after she's developed her whole theory and training programs and everything, She came to the conclusion that the same traits actually are what the world needs in terms of leaders in general, and then expanded her reference space to also interview men and then extended her philosophy and her approach to men as well. So very short, long answer to say,

yes, we should learn from each other regardless of what we identify ourselves as or what the world identifies us as. And just a good reminder that we have so much more in common than we have differences. And I think sometimes we look to people in high level leadership positions and think they have it, and I put in air quotes, all together, right? They have it all figured out. I don't want anybody to have feelings of imposter syndrome, but it does help me feel better to know I'm not the only one, right? Exactly.

Okay. So personal growth is important. I think when we think about it, we often think about how it impacts the person doing the personal growth. How can leaders apply that to their organization? How does their own personal growth impact broader organization or community? Well, typically what we see is first and foremost, there's role modeling. And I'm sure other people that you had on the podcast spoke to the same thing. When people in an organization see that a senior leader is very open to learning and they see the

impact that it has on that individuals and how they show up and on them as the receivers of that, that is already a very inspiring path to begin to convince others. They look at this, something good is happening there. What is that? I want that as well. So I would say role modeling is probably the first and most important thing. I think when we think about how to shift people's mindsets, we say to the, tell me, show me, teach me, support me.

So show me we spoke about the role modeling, tell me. So having those stories, explaining why it's important, creating the examples and the motivation and understanding as to why it matters to be a different kind of leader is also super helpful. But then the other two components are super important. That is, how do I help build the capabilities of others? So how do I create that system, whether it is in the way that we do work, in the way that we make decisions. We speak a lot about contributory dissent and how we create environments for truth telling. So I'm actually inviting people to challenge me. One, because I listen. Two, because I

actually sometimes change my mind because of what I hear. And three, sometimes I will not because I am a confident leader. So I may not change my mind, but there is a conversation and I encourage you to tell me. And then the last thing is creating the incentives. So creating those incentives that encourage people to try things, to fail, to learn, to grow, to sometimes lean into those areas that they're less comfortable with really, really helps.

And so we do speak in the book when we talk about leading others about not only inspiring a sense of purpose, but also taking those bold visions, asking different questions. I think it was Bruno, Stefan Bancel at Moderna, where they had to manufacture a gazillion vaccines in no time, did not ask his management team, is it possible? Because of course everybody would have explained why it's not. He asked them, what do you need to make that happen? Such a different question, maybe small difference, but a very different meaning that drove the organization

to do something massive. So I think all of that together, role modeling, what learning does for you, creating the environment that helps others do the same thing, both in building their capabilities and in creating the right incentives, I think creates a very dynamic, different dynamic in the organization. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to try to squeeze in one last quick question. This inside-out approach to leadership,, obviously can be very rewarding, but also I'm assuming stressful and exhausting, right?

Cause leadership can feel like that at times. Are there any steps that you could encourage leaders to make to make that journey more disciplined, but also more enjoyable? Yes. Look, I think first of all, I hope that if not this conversation, but the book or something else convinces leaders that they should take the time to reflect and how they take the time and where they take the time. I mean, it's a personal decision, but I do believe that it makes a huge difference. So taking the time to reflect, number one, because already that is going to create so much space for creativity and I'm sure that leaders will find insights that otherwise they wouldn't have gotten to. I think that leaning on others and creating that advisory board is going to make a huge difference,

particularly about it depends. Some people are introverts, they want to reflect on their own. Some people are extroverts and doing it with others will be that source of energy and pleasure. And then the third thing that I would say is connect with that source of energy, right? What is that gives that gives you energy and how do you through that do the learning? Is it, I mean, doing sports, so take on something completely different with people that you want to learn with or achieve something with, do that with them. Is that music? Is that actually cracking a super difficult problem? Whatever that might be.

So think about what are your sources of energy and how do you design those fearless learning moments, leaning into discomfort, all those things that we would rather avoid. Micro experiments in those spaces that are more fun, I think, would help develop the habit and the natural inclinations to do these things. So these are some of the tips. There's a whole appendix of tips and tricks in the book if natural inclinations to do these things. So these are some of the tips. There's a whole appendix of tips and tricks in the book.

If anybody has the energy to look at them, I don't think that anybody can apply all of them. I know I can't, but when you go through this, you get some ideas of what might be most helpful and most exciting depending on where people are and what they're facing at that moment in time. Friend, I don't know about you, but I am going into my Amazon cart right after this and getting the book. It's called The Journey of Leadership.

You should get one too. Dana Mayor on LinkedIn, if you want to find and follow Dana and learn more about her work. Thank you, Dana, so much for being a guest on the show and for this amazing conversation about something that I think is so important for all of us, and that is leadership. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be with you. Okay, friend, as we navigate rapid technology changes, global uncertainties, and the constant challenges

of leading in today's world, it's clear that the path to success isn't just about mastering executive skills or executive presence. It's about mastering ourselves. And let's be real, the journey can feel stressful and exhausting for sure, but it can also be deeply rewarding and impactful. So as you continue to lead in your own life and in your work, remember for both leadership and confidence, the inside work is just as important, if not more so, than anything else. And when you commit to that inner work, you're not just leading, you're redefining what leadership looks like

for the rest of us. And that, my friends, is woman's work.