Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Francis Laqua and we have another great,
Speaker 1: great interview in the Pipeline for the Leaders with Me
Speaker 1: Froncin Lacua podcast. Now next week, I'm speaking with Linda Hill,
Speaker 1: Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and faculty
Speaker 1: chair its Leadership Initiative. Hill has advised some of the
Speaker 1: world's biggest companies through her consultancy Paradox Strategies, and she's
Speaker 1: also written some of the defining books on leadership and innovation,
Speaker 1: including Genius at Scale and Becoming a Manager. Throughout the
Speaker 1: season on the podcast, I've been asking industry leaders how
Speaker 1: they've navigated big decisions, managed crises, and built successful organizations.
Speaker 1: So in this conversation I turned that idea on its head.
Speaker 1: I use my time with Hill, someone who has spent
Speaker 1: an entire career studying leadership, asking what actually makes a
Speaker 1: great boss, what characteristics are indicators of success, and how
Speaker 1: she thinks artificial intelligence could shape the next C suite generation.
Speaker 2: What you need is you need CEOs who fundamentally know
Speaker 2: that they're there for the enterprise. It's not about them.
Speaker 2: So I almost always start by saying, think about not
Speaker 2: the rights and privileges that come with being a CEO,
Speaker 2: but the duties and obligations, and people can tell if
Speaker 2: you care, if you actually are concerned about the bigger
Speaker 2: picture or not, because you're going to make many unpopular
Speaker 2: decisions or I shouldn't say unpopular controversial decisions because they're
Speaker 2: tough decisions to be made and you're going to have
Speaker 2: to deal with trade offs, and they want to know
Speaker 2: about your character. And then fundamentally, do you know how
Speaker 2: to make connection? If you can't connect with people, then
Speaker 2: they're not going to want to be as I talk
Speaker 2: about now, not so much as following you, but co
Speaker 2: creating the future with you. And if you can't get
Speaker 2: that connection going, that's when you know there's going to
Speaker 2: be a failure.
Speaker 1: Is it different if you're an Ai something of Dariel
Speaker 1: Muday sam altman elon Musk. They're not traditional chiefly in
Speaker 1: that sense.
Speaker 2: I have not studied them specifically, but they don't appear
Speaker 2: to be so they would strike me in some ways.
Speaker 2: You know, when I was doing the work at Pixar,
Speaker 2: obviously Steve Jobs was someone who was deeply admired. Now
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs and people have a point of view about
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs, so Ed Catmill, who's brilliant, was one of
Speaker 2: the co founders. Everyone tells me there's no one who
Speaker 2: knows Steve Jobs better than him, and two of my
Speaker 2: business partners work with Steve Jobs for many years. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that Steve Jobs understood is that
Speaker 2: most action that happens is collective action. There would be
Speaker 2: times when Steve being in the room was not going
Speaker 2: to be possible because he was going to throw off
Speaker 2: the dynamic too much, not because he couldn't behave well necessarily,
Speaker 2: but because other people would be uncomfortable with him, so
Speaker 2: he would remove himself. Other times, you need him there right,
Speaker 2: so again being aware Ed and him trusting Ed well
Speaker 2: enough to say not this meeting and Ed Ed has
Speaker 2: unbelievable emotional intelligence on every dimension. But he knew how
Speaker 2: to If you think about the stars they had at Pixar,
Speaker 2: he understood people and what they needed and didn't need,
Speaker 2: and what the dynamics would be of a group if
Speaker 2: a certain mix was there, and if they had certain
Speaker 2: decisions to make and he thought it's not the right mix,
Speaker 2: then he had no problem saying to you, Steve, you
Speaker 2: can't come. But as you become more senior people don't
Speaker 2: give you feedback.
Speaker 1: That was a bit of my conversation with Blinda Hill,
Speaker 1: Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and faculty
Speaker 1: chair of its Leadership Initiative. So be sure to listen
Speaker 1: to it when it comes out next week.