February 5, 2025 • 36 mins
How can leaders navigate the complexities of polarization and build trust in an age of outrage? Kevin sits down with Karthik Ramanna to discuss strategies for effective leadership in a world marked by heightened emotion, distrust, and division. Karthik shares his five-part framework for navigating outrage, which includes turning down the temperature, building trust, scoping organizational responses, understanding power, and fostering resilience. He emphasizes that leaders must first work on themselves before attempting to manage others' reactions. He also shares practical insights like the importance of environmental conditions in managing conflict and building trust through shared experience
Listen For
00:00 Introduction
02:13 Meet Karthik Ramanna
02:56 Karthik’s Leadership Journey
05:06 Why Outrage is Rising
06:28 Root Causes of Polarization
08:23 Declining Trust in Leadership
09:51 Five-Part Leadership Framework
12:13 Internal vs External Leadership
14:10 Turning Down the Temperature
16:09 The Neuroscience of Outrage
17:15 Strategies to De-Escalate Conflict
18:37 Active Listening & Understanding
21:50 Trust and Psychological Safety
23:33 Defining Organizational Response
25:57 Disney's Strategy Misstep
27:55 Power and Influence in Leadership
29:22 Building Resilient Organizations
31:03 Managing Expectations as a Leader
36:15 Closing & Next Episode
Karthik's Story: Karthik Ramanna is the author of The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World. He is a professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, where he has served as director of one of the world’s most diverse leadership programs. Previously a professor at Harvard Business School, Professor Ramanna studies how organizations and leaders build trust with stakeholders. His scholarship has won numerous awards including the Harvard Business Review-McKinsey Prize for “groundbreaking management thinking,” and three times the international Case Centre’s prizes for “outstanding case-writing,” dubbed by the Financial Times as “the business school Oscars.”
https://hbr.org/2023/01/managing-in-the-age-of-outrage
https://www.instagram.com/prof.kr.ox/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
The world
is polarized,maybe more than any time in our lifetimes.
The outrage that can erupt for a varietyof the sources
of polarizationmust be understood by leaders.
But more importantly, as a leader,we need strategies to acknowledge
and move past the outrage to creategreat organizational results.
(00:29):
And that is our focus today.
Welcome to another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast,
where we are helping leadersgrow personally and professionally, Lee,
to lead more effectivelyand make a bigger difference
for their teams, organizationsand the world.
If you are listening to this podcast,you could be with us live in the future
or on your favorite social media channel,
(00:49):
which would allow you to sort ofget a jumpstart on all of this, right?
You can find out when those are happeningand how you can interact
with us in that live setting,and see the information sooner
by going to our Facebookor LinkedIn groups, two of the channels
in which we provide these live streamsand just go to remarkable
podcast.com/facebook or remarkable
(01:12):
podcast.com/linkedin for all of that info.
And today's episode is brought to youby my latest book, Flexible Leadership.
Navigate Uncertaintyand Lead with Confidence.
It's timeto realize that styles can get in our way,
and that following our strengthsmight not always be the best approach
in a worldmore complex and uncertain than ever.
(01:35):
Leaders need a new perspectiveand a new set of tools to create the great
results that they, their organizations,and their team members want and need.
And that's what flexible leadership
provides you.
Learn more and get your copynow at remarkable podcast.com/flexible.
And now that we've gotall of that good stuff out of the way, I'm
going to bring my guestto the stage and introduce him.
(01:59):
His name is Karthik Ramana.
He's a professor of businessand public policy at the University
of Oxford's BlavatnikSchool of Government, where he has served
as a director of one of the world'smost diverse leadership programs.
Previously a professor at HarvardBusiness School, Professor Ramana
studies how organizations and leadersbuild trust with stakeholders.
(02:21):
His scholarship has won numerous awards,
including the HarvardBusiness School McKinsey Prize
for Groundbreaking managementthinking, and three times three times
the International Case Studies Prizesfor Outstanding case writing, which
the Financial Times calls the BusinessSchool Oscars, which is pretty cool.
We've never had an Oscar winneron the show.
(02:41):
I suppose now, until now.
He is the author of The Age of Outrage
How to Lead in a Polarized World,which is, I suppose, the biggest reason
why he's here,and I am so glad to invite him to join me.
Karthik, thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me, Kevin.
And you're not in London today,but you're in Washington DC.
(03:02):
Indeed.
So we're in the same time zone,which I wasn't necessarily expecting
before we started. I'm glad you're here.
Thank you.
So let's talk a little.
I mean, I gave the very high levelbackground of,
intro of your background,but I'm curious how you end up
specifically doing the work that you doand then leading into this book.
(03:24):
So tell us a little bit about that contextand background to get us started.
Sure.
So, Kevin, I trained as a fairlyquantitative economist, over at MIT and
my first job out of my PhD program
was, as a professorat Harvard Business School.
But I taught fairly,quantitative subjects like
finance and accounting, and,I enjoyed it very much.
(03:47):
And then the financial crisis hit,and it occurred to me
that the great challenge of the worldwasn't that there weren't enough MIT
trained economists teaching Harvard MBAshow to make more money.
There were other,bigger challenges in the world.
So my dean at the timeactually encouraged me to teach
the required course in leadership at,Harvard Business School.
And it was quite the leapfor someone like me, because, again,
(04:10):
I was a very quantitative personthat like to do math and things like that.
And, and but I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it very much.
And I taught that course for many years.
And then when the University of Oxfordwas building its new school of government,
I, was quite surprised to be recruitedto serve as the first director
of its Master of Public Policy program.
(04:31):
And in that role,
Kevin,I was, suddenly in front of a group of,
you know, prospective andand fairly, senior, public leaders
from around the world over the courseof the eight years that I let it,
we had 1000 public leadersfrom 120 different countries.
And it occurred to me that I need to havesome sort of approach to making sure
(04:52):
that in convening all of these leaders,we leave them stronger for the experience.
Or at the very least,I don't do more harm.
So first, that's first. Do no harm, right?
Indeed. Yeah.
And that's what got into this topic.
Well, I have to say we getwe had all sorts of books,
sent to us, pitched to us, for the show.
(05:13):
And we're blessed that that happens.
And and to to get a book in the mail.
And I think it just showedup, as I recall.
But it doesn't mattereither way, when I see it, I see a book
called The Age of Outrage,and I'm like, okay, the age of outrage.
I need to learn.
I need to see more about what's in here,because the title
certainly took my grabmy attention from the start and
(05:34):
and I know that you and I,Karthick could have a whole conversation.
This whole, this whole episodecould be about what fundamentally is
the first chapter in the book, which iswhat are the causes of the outrage.
And I don't really want to do thatbecause I want us to get to like, okay,
we sort of all know that there ispolarization and there are issues,
and there is emotionsand there is anxiety and there is outrage.
(05:58):
So I don't really want us to spendtime there
because I think that's pretty mucheverybody gets it.
But I have tosay that in reading the book,
that was the part that captivated methe most
because you had like a good economist,had some really interesting data in there.
So I don't want usto spend really much time.
But if you could just give usa couple of thoughts as to why you think
now, this is more of an issuemaybe than it's been.
(06:22):
Certainly,I guess I said earlier in our lifetimes,
just give us a little thereand then I want to dive into now what?
Sure. So look at its core, Kevin.
It's really about a fear of the future,and it's about a sense that we've been
somehow dealt a raw deal by thosewho've been in positions of power.
What I mean by the fear of futureis this sense that, you know,
(06:43):
I mean,
you think about how AI is disruptingour lives and how technology more broadly
is changing the way the world works.
I mean, this the technological disruptionwe're likely to see over the next decade,
from AI is, likely to exceed
the disruption we saw fromthe Industrial revolution 200 years ago.
I layer on to that, you know, issuesaround
(07:04):
climate change and rising sealevels and issues around changing monsoon
winds, shifting demographic patternsand the idea that,
you know, most of our Western societiesare getting older,
these sorts of things got get peoplereally anxious about the future.
Now, if you're simply anxiousabout the future
and you really trust your leaders,maybe you'd be okay.
(07:25):
But we also happen to be livingin a time in history where perhaps
trust in leadership is at the lowest it'sbeen since before World War two,
and the United Statesin particular is by some accounts of,
the way political scientistsmeasure this more polarized than it was
since just before the Civil War.
So we're layering on this,fear of the future with this sense
(07:48):
that the, elites in our societyreally haven't done very well by us
the narratives on globalization,the narratives on immigration,
all of these are coming backto, bite and haunt, us as a society.
And I would just add,and you can comment, of course,
that it isn't just political leaders,
but that what's happening is, you know,
(08:11):
all of us as sort of everydayleaders in organizations.
And even if we're a CEO, like trust in inall of those levels is dropping
not not forever one, but that'sthe climate in which we're starting.
And in fact, I would argue,
are used the wrong word.
I would state thatthe rest of the book is about
how do we deal with that realityand not just twiddle our thumbs
(08:35):
or suck our thumbs, but say, nowwhat do we do given
that's the cardswe've been dealt, to use your phrase. So.
So you've got sort of a five partframework work.
Why don't you just sort of lay that out?
And then I want to dive intosome of the pieces a little bit.
Sure. Yeah.
So at the core of the five partframework is the notion
(08:56):
of turning down the temperature.
The idea there is, look,if you were in an, agitated state of mind
or the people you're working with
are in an agitated state of mind,you're going to do more harm than good.
And I wrote that chapter very muchfrom the perspective of managers
turning down their own temperature rather
than, you know,because there's this tendency
to look at yourself as somehowabove the fray and everybody else's.
(09:17):
So it's not me, it's everybody else.The problem is not me.
Yeah, everyone else is captivatedby the outcome, captured by the outrage,
and you're somehow above it.
But of course, we're all human.
I'm just as likely to be proneto outrage as anybody else.
And so that chapter is really abouthow do you put yourself
in a mind statewhere you're not agitated by, you know,
proximate triggerswhere you're not, somehow reacting,
(09:41):
in a sort of in an impulsive way,
where you're notyou've put yourself in the context where,
you know, youyou just are not able to hear the things
that you need to hearin order to make progress in a situation.
So, so that's really the first step.
Then the, the, the,the framework moves into for, for,
for further steps,the first of which is, really about,
(10:05):
recognizingwho are the constituents around you
that you need to be listening to
and how do you build trust in themto speak truth to you?
Oftentimes, you will be engagingwith them, in a position of power.
And maybe because they don't trust you,maybe because they're scared of you,
they won't speak truth to you.
And so how do you build that trust
so that you hearthe things you really need to hear?
(10:27):
So that's thatnext stage of the framework.
Once you've done that active listening,you need to think about what you do.
What's your strategy?
As we talked about some of the causesof this age of outrage or so varied,
there's so complex,they're so interwoven that you,
as the head of one organization,whether it's a business
or a non-for-profitor even a government agency,
(10:48):
you're not going to be ableto solve the whole problem.
So what are the questions
that you ask of yourself that helpyou understand when you want to lean in
and when you want to say, whoa,this is not something
I can make any kind of progress on.
So it's about that strategy,which is the next step.
The next step takes us tohow do you put that strategy in play?
Right. How do you think about the nature
in particular of your powerin this organization?
(11:10):
How do you drive outcomes in a waythat, is
in fact pro-socialas opposed to depleted of that power?
And then the final step is recognizingthat all of these other four steps
are really hard.
So how do you rebuild your resilience,both you as an individual
but your organization?
Because managing in the age of outrageis not managing outrage.
(11:33):
It requires you in some senseto be constantly on.
You can't just switch into PRmode or spin mode
and then go back to business as usual.
Because as we've said,it's an age of outrage.
So how do you build that ongoingresilience to take on this challenge?
Those are the five steps of the framework.
And I do want to dive into them.
But but nowthat we've got that overarching idea,
(11:54):
I want all of those of youwho are watching or listening to make
note of something.
And that is that inevery one of the steps.
Karthik, you've said, there'sthere's some stuff that you have to do
as the leader,
but there's a bunch of stuffyou have to do on yourself as the leader.
(12:14):
Like there's an internaland an external piece in all of these.
And that's actually, I think, one of thethe great things about the book
that unless you really are reading it,you're not going to get.
So you want to make a comment on thatbefore we go any further.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, this is as much a book about,you know, your own personal development
and professional developmentand your own growth as a human being
(12:35):
as it is about tryingto bring out the best in others.
And in fact, that is the best,the best exam or the best,
instantiation of thatthat I've heard is a metaphor.
We say, just as you don't want a surgeonto go from one operating theater
to the nextwithout having wash their hands,
you don't, as a manager or a leader,want to go from one context to the next
without being in a state
where you have metaphorically,in this case, washed your hands.
(12:57):
So a large part of the framework is aboutthat personal growth and development.
Beforeyou try to bring out the best in others.
You use the word context.
And I'm becoming more and more convinced.
I mean, I mentioned earliermy next book in The Open and
and it in many ways is about
understanding context,
because until we really get context right,
(13:21):
like it's very difficult
for us to be successful,
because our decisionshave to be in context.
And, and so often if we operatejust on like, like you said earlier.
Well,I don't have the issue with the outrage.
This is if you're if you're watching this,listening to this show, or thinking
about getting a book about how I can fixthe team, you're missing the point, right?
(13:44):
Would you say that's really right?That's absolutely right.
Because you are part of the team.
And, often you have to start with yourselfand the nature of power
in this kind of age of outrage,with the deep distrust, is that
if people don't see you as, sort of,you know, living the values,
if they don't see you walking the talk,why would they ever want to follow you?
(14:05):
Why would they ever want to believe you?
This is the age of outrage. So.And you ask.
What's the. Outrage at that point?
Yeah.
So yeah.
So let's take that sort of opening piece.
And talk just a little bit about that.
What are a couple of things. And again,
the other thing I want to highlight hereis that
even though everybodythis is written by a really smart guy
(14:27):
that worked at Harvardand now is at Oxford, it's not written
only this is not only written for CEOs,it's written for any leader at any level.
And it's not just written for writtenfor people in governmental agencies
and leaders there, which is the contextthat we talked about earlier.
This is written for any of us.
So give us a couple of ideasthat can help us
(14:48):
when we know we're walkinginto the context of there's outrage,
there's there's emotion,there's issues, there's
how can we start to turn down thetemperature, whether it's for ourselves
and or for the team? That's right.
So I actually started that chapter
by doing a lot of work in understandingthe the neuroscience of outrage.
Where does outrage come from in the brain?
(15:10):
And in trying to understandthat, I said, okay, what are therefore
some simple tips or tricksthat us as human beings can be able
to pull off that signs in orderto be better versions of ourselves?
So, the first and most important thingto recognize is that ambient conditions,
or just like the situation around you,can either trigger you to outrage or not.
So let's say you're returning backfrom church and your rear ended in a car.
(15:34):
Chancesare you'll be less prone to outrage
than if you were coming back from bar,from a bar, or, say,
from a metallica concertor something like that.
Right?
So the way our brains workis that that that contextual
setting plays a huge rolein, in how we respond.
And so recognizing, for instance,if you are trying to defuze the situation,
(15:54):
but you've got bright lights shining onyou and the temperature in the room is hot
and people are really crowdedand jostling each other,
and they're drinking lots of caffeineand they've been deprived of food, then,
you know,
all of that is going to trigger everyone,including yourself,
into an aversive state.So how do we start?
By just putting ourselvesin a cooler room, maybe getting, you know,
(16:16):
you might have oftenheard this from your parents
when they say, well, first you eat,then we talk.
Right?
Let's just get people to a placewhere, biologically,
they're comfortable before they starttalking about the really difficult things.
So that's a simpletip that we can pull off from the.
Science and, I love I love all that.
And I just was reflectingas I read the book, about,
(16:38):
a situationI was in last week as a facilitator,
consultant, slash facilitatorwith a group.
And there was not outrage, but there was,
there was high
level discussionsgoing on in this leadership team.
And we got to a point,and I kind of have a general belief
that we should take a breakabout once an hour.
(16:58):
But at this point,it hadn't been quite an hour,
but it was just for the kinds of reasonsyou're just describing.
It was the right time.People needed to stretch their legs.
They needed to go get a snack.
They needed to do something else.
And we could come backand they'd be better prepared.
So it's it's it's the big things,but it's the little things.
And being the other thing that I take fromthat section is
(17:20):
and the wordsthat I wrote down in my notes
here, being self-aware,just being more self-aware of it
ourselves, is an awfully goodstarting point.
Take a deep breath. Right? That's right.
That's so the second, the second piece
or the next pieceis about making sense of the moment.
I love that phrase.
First of all, and I,I want you to comment on it,
(17:42):
but I want to read something from the bookfirst.
I'm not going to say, hey, tell me thestory on page 68. I'm going to read it.
And I want to read thisbecause I think it's really interesting.
And it comes from an examplein your class.
Sometimes my students
do not realize why we are not divingright into the big problems.
They ask why we are playing withmake believe rowboats, and not talking
about the real stuff racism, policeoppression, urban poverty and the like.
(18:04):
The answer is that if we work togetherfirst on trivial tasks like a mock
rowing Olympics, to experiencewhat it's like to agree on differences
in strategy and implementation,we are better set up to collaborate
on the big wicked problemswhen they come to us.
So talk about that, I love that,
I mean, I love thatthe trainer in me love that, but the
(18:26):
but the leader in me loves that as wellbecause we so often want to go tackle it,
even if we're scared of it.
We want to dive rightin, and it's not always the best place.
So say more about that and then say moreabout making sense of the moment.
Yeah, so making sense of the momentreally does require active listening.
It requires understandingwhy really smart people,
(18:46):
can look at the
same set of facts that you do and cometo a different set of conclusions.
Right?
And that's part of the beauty
of the kind of community of leaderswe put together at Oxford.
These are incredibly brightpeople of each year of 120 people, one
third of them, about 40, tend to be RhodesScholars right at the top of their game.
And some of the senior
people will be running workforcesand close to a half a million people.
(19:09):
So these are some very,very serious people.
And then they disagreeabout matters of policy.
Looking at the same set of facts,you say, okay, well, why is that the case?
That'swhat you're really trying to get at here.
Now, in order to get to that,you need to get people to a place
where they will trust you to be ableto have those conversations with you,
where they will not be performativein their, relationship with you,
(19:33):
but they will be substantivein their relationship with you,
that they will be incremental
yet authenticin the way they engage on these subjects.
And that's where these kinds of exercisesmatter.
You know, you take something like,
you know,
our thecomposition of our current Congress
or you take something like,you know, how, say, maybe, business,
(19:53):
or the C-suite of a particularlarge fortune 500 company
is trying to deal with its activiststakeholders.
Almost every instantiation of those,
conversationstend to be adversarial in nature.
They, we've gotten to a place where,
those teamsthat we really need to work together
have never really experienceda collective sense of success together.
(20:17):
You know, it used to be that members ofCongress would live in DC during
the times when Congress was in session,and so they'd have their kids there.
And then, you know, on the weekends,
the kids would all go play,baseball or softball on the same team.
And so members of Congresswould have other contexts
in which they would interactwith each other. They might have been,
(20:37):
on opposing partiesor on opposing sides of a legislation.
But then, you know, on the weekend,their kids would be in the same team.
We've lost that.
So we lost the abilityto experience each other in the context
where it may be a trivial setting,but where we win together.
And that's really importantto make these things work.
So when I bring togetherthe Or in my prior role,
(20:58):
when I used to bring togetherthese leaders,
to the public leadership programat Oxford, the first thing we do is
put them in these,
mock rowing boats, you know, on the whichare in these modified swimming pools.
And we'd say we want you to runa little rowing race,
you know, so you randomly assign eight,eight people to a rowing boat
because that'show long the rowing boat is.
(21:19):
And you say,
we want you to run a race against,another randomly selected group of eight.
And, you know,they would ask, but came here to talk
about all the grand issues, like,you know, Israel and Palestine and
and you know, what to do about abortionand what to do about taxing the rich.
And I said, well,there'll be time for all that.
Let's just play this little game for now.
(21:40):
Why wait? You want eight?
You want them to sweat together.
Because when people sweat together,
they learnhow to be vulnerable with each other.
And when they learn
how to be vulnerable with each other,they can start trusting each other and be.
And rowing is a really good metaphorfor this, because if you're in a boat
with eight people, it doesn't matterwhere you're from, the U.S.
or Chinaor Israel of Palestine or Russia, Ukraine,
(22:01):
you can't be the fastest personin that boat.
The boat will go around in circles.
You need to pace yourself with all sevenother people in the boat.
So you're sending them a message about,
well, we're not going to make any progressunless we learn how to work together.
And that's where it starts.
That's what we meanby making sense of the moment.
I love it because the two things that youand you talked a lot about trust here,
(22:22):
which I think is keyand, and a lot of folks,
and we've certainly had guests on the showand we've talked about the idea
of psychological safety,
and you just talked about itwithout using those two words together,
which I think is, is usefulin and of itself, that it doesn't
just get labeled that.
But that's exactlywhat you were talking about.
You're talking about creatingthe situations such that that can happen.
(22:45):
And because we can't getto the perspective, half
of this of peoplesharing their perspective.
So we have the chance
to see a different one until we have builtthat is a really critical thing.
And that, of course, appliesnot just in matters of outrage,
but in matters of familyand 100 other things.
The second or the next pieces,maybe we might
(23:06):
call it a strategy piece of this,that scoping organizational response.
What what do we mean here?
That's the part about determining what,
about this,
outrage you're going to ownas an organization and what you're not.
Right.
So let's take the example.
I use this in the book of Disney, right.
So Disney got into a lot of trouble.
(23:27):
And the way they responded to,the don't say gay
legislation that was making its waythrough the Florida House of Congress.
Disney,of course, operates deeply within Florida.
It's a large part of the Florida economy,particularly in Orlando.
And, you know, Disney,as part of its strategy,
has taken a very,sort of engaged view on LGBT issues.
(23:49):
So it hosted gay days at Disneyat its theme parks.
It has, create a creator communitythat's very
that leans in very stronglyon LGBT issues, etc.
so it has implicitly createdan expectation
that it would stand upfor LGBT communities in that context.
Now, when, you know, governor DeSantis
(24:11):
was running for the Republican nominationfor president, he was effecting this,
so-called don'tsay gay bill through the Florida House.
And Disney's response was,oh, we don't do politics.
Now that comes across as hypocrisy.
That comes across as really difficultfor people to deal with.
Because the wait a minute, when it cametime to selling us access to the
(24:34):
theme park or selling us, you know, moviesabout Disney princes and princesses,
then, you know,you were totally fine with us.
Sorry. You know,with leaning into the LGBT issues.
But now when we're dealing with thissort of don't say gay bill, you're saying
we don't do politics,but the very nature of Disney's product.
You know what Disneyprinces and princesses do in their movies
(24:55):
is political.
You know, what happens in culture todayshapes politics tomorrow.
So it's just impossible for Disneyto suddenly say, oh,
we don't do politics, right?
So part of this is for an organizationto understand
how its strategyis tied into a given issue.
The same answer would be different.
Say, if you were Chevronor Exxon or an oil company,
(25:18):
because an oil company does not,
by the very nature of its business,take a view on LGBT issues.
So this doesn't mean every companyneeds to take a view on this.
It means that if you're Disney, you can'tafford to lean out of certain things.
Just like if you're Chevron or Exxon,
you can't afford to lean outon environmental issues, right?
So it's understood.
Again, regardless of what your responsewill be exactly, you have to have one.
(25:40):
Exactly.
It doesn't matterwhether you're pro or anti etc.
that's going to depend on your values.That's going to depend on your.
But the point is you have to understandwhat is your business strategy
and how does that business strategyconnect to what's happening in the world
around you, which is causing this outrageand then having a coherent response?
So this is not a bookso much about what to do.
(26:00):
It's not a book about saying, well,these should be your values.
And this is I'm not I'm certainlynot in a position to preach or pontificate
about what is right or wrong,but it's a it's a book about strategy.
It's a book about tactics.
It's saying if you have a businessstrategy, here's how to do it.
It's the how to have.
It's the how. A how about me? Yeah.
I'm looking at our time and I would lovefor us to spend time on the understanding.
(26:24):
The next piece is understandingthe leader's power.
And there's a we could have donea whole show on this one.
Again, power, influence and all that.
And that's actually where I wantto spend time the last.
Well, actually, I want to go to the lastone, which is building organizational
and personal resilience.
And lots has been said,
here on the show and other placesabout personal resilience.
(26:47):
I actually would like us to sort ofwrap our time before we get it
kind of really wrap about what you meanby organizational resilience,
because I don't think that's somethingthat people think about very much.
That's as much has been written about.
So why don't you spend a few minutesthere on organizational resilience?
What do you mean by that?
Yeah, that means that you cannot buildan organization to cope
(27:11):
with this age of outrage, not just cope,but to thrive in this age of outrage
with doubt having,
cultivated in everyone that works for youor cultivated in the teams
that contributeto the organization's performance,
the kind of skills or the capabilitieswe're talking about.
Just like you won't build an organizationwhere you say, you know,
we don't know how to read balance sheetsor we don't know how to do marketing
(27:32):
or we don't know,you can't build an organization
that isn't active, activelyleaning into this problem.
That's so that's what I mean by that.
Now, firstly, and most importantly,it means creating an organization
where you've delegated
to the right level of the organizationthe capacity to respond.
Often what happens with crisis
management is you get pushed up to the topand said, look, this is the crisis. Mr.
(27:54):
CEO or madam CEO,can you take care of this?
But because of the scope of this,this is like every day
there's going to be an outrage issue.
You've got to be able to drill it downto the organization.
So people are at the coalface of it,are able to respond.
But often companies make mistakeswhere they delegate
things down to organizations,to people in the organization
without training them how to exercisegood judgment.
(28:17):
So delegation is just part one.
The second part is training peopleto have great judgment to respond in this.
That means that they need to understandand own your values.
They need to understandand own your strategy,
and they need to be schooled in the kindof processes we've been talking about.
And the third and most importantstep of this is,
look, the very nature of these problemsis such that
(28:38):
people are going to make mistakesfrom time to time.
That's why it's it's judgment.
I mean, if it was this sort of thingthat that was the right
answer, you'd write a computer programto execute on it.
So that's not what this is.
This is about judgment.
And the nature of judgment is sometimes
you get it right,sometimes you get it wrong.
Now when you get it wrong,you as a manager need to have the capacity
to basically allow your team to fail.
(29:01):
Because if you don'tallow your team to fail,
if you punish them for having,
you know, made the wrong judgmentcall in a particular situation,
you never get the kindof delegation that you ever
you sought out again. So.
So it's all three thingsdelegating this information, building
great judgment in people.
And then, of course, importantly,allowing people to fail,
(29:21):
and, and grow from those failures.
That's necessaryfor organizational resilience.
And the book,you call them honest mistakes, right? Yes.
Dealing with honest mistakes.Not not right.
Yeah. Not flippant or whatever.
So, yeah.
I negligence or. Yes, exactly, exactly.
So, avoidance or whatever. So,
(29:41):
I really appreciate all this
as you were just describing the stuffaround organizational resilience.
I was reflecting on the factthat this morning
I wrote an articlethat will be on our blog.
So if you're watching,listening to this on the,
on the podcast, it'll be a long timefrom now, but, it will be there.
But I was writing about how we supportleadership wisdom,
(30:01):
and to me, what you just described,all three of those things
are inside of that ideaof creating leadership wisdom,
and not just from the sea in this case,not just at the CEO level, but throughout
the organization.
Is there anything
that I didn't ask that you wishI would have
or something that you want to make surewe talk about, that we haven't.
(30:23):
So I leave, our listenerswith to final thoughts.
One is, you know, no matter what you doas a manager or a leader in this context,
you're not going to be able to solvethe whole problem in front of you.
So have a sense of perspective,you know, about
this is a complex age we're living inis we're living in a very polarized world.
(30:44):
So, you know, have a sense of perspectiveabout what you can genuinely address.
And starting from that, you say,okay, well, let me deliver some authentic
success, that authentic successbecomes the basis of trust
on which you canthen buy more of the problem.
And, and therefore.
So change will be incrementalrather than, you know, over
promise and under deliver.
(31:04):
The second thing I leave you withis the notion that no matter what
you do, you will, as a manager or leader,be seen as part of the problem.
So, you know, don't try.
Treat this as a popularity contest.Don't try.
Treat this as I'm going to be ableto somehow, you know, unite
everyone together and everyone will see meas the great leader that I am.
No, because the nature of mistrustand the nature of polarization,
(31:28):
you're going to make some judgment callsthat you know are going to leave
some people disappointed.
Again, have a sense of perspective on that
and and be confident and comfortablein the kind of decisions you're making.
I love that.
So thank you.
And thank you for that summary
of those two important things for usto remember in an age of outrage or not,
but especially in this,in this age that we live.
(31:50):
I have a couple of other questions,I guess three more. Really.
Before we go,and I'm shifting gears for you.
The next one is what do you do for fun?
So, you know, I'm very fortunate that I'mthe sort of person
who's been able to find that work,which for me, play,
so, you know, a lot of what I do,
(32:11):
in, in my professional lifeof being a professor
and being able to work with organizations,whether in government or business
or the not for profit sector, to make themmore effective, is the sort of thing
that personally is very fulfilling to me.
So, you know, yeah,
that that is in some sensethe source of, greatest joy for me.
(32:32):
But I'd also sort of suggest that,you know, one of the most powerful quotes
I, I have ever comeacross is something that is apocryphal,
attributed to Marilyn Monroe.
And she says, don'tunderestimate the value of being able
to come home at the end of the day,knocking on your door,
knowing that the person on the other sideawaits your return.
And and that's really important,having a wonderful, family life,
(32:56):
having a wonderful, sort of, personal lifewhere you are able to sort of,
celebrate it with, whoever is closeto you, you know, for different people,
it might be a spouse, a partner,kids, parents, dogs, cats, whatever it is.
But that's really important to resilience.
I love that,
the wisdom of Marilyn Monroe right hereon the Remarkable Leadership podcast.
(33:16):
And so
the only thing you knew,I was going to ask you, which is this.
What are you reading?
Something or somethingyou've read recently?
Yes. Well,
as an academic, much of the reading I do,unfortunately, is very technical reading.
I don't know if it's unfortunate.
I actually enjoy it, but,so I tend to read lots of primarily,
scientific articles and, you know,primary data on scientific studies, etc.,
(33:39):
which is what keeps me motivatedand keeps me engaged.
And quite recently,what I've been reading is,
sort of, you know, the articlesthat won the Nobel Prize in physics,
because I, you know, it's justI want to understand
what is the cutting edge of the frontierin that space.
And and how might be ableto learn from those.
And there you go, everybody.
(34:00):
That's the first time we've ever gottenthat item from one of our guests.
460 some episodes in, So,so Karthick, now,
the question that you've been wanting meto ask, which is how can people learn more
about the book and where where they canget connected with you and or the book?
I'll hold the book upfor the video version of this,
tell people where they can find you,get the book, etc..
(34:21):
Sure.
So the book is called The Age of Outrage,and if you just Google
the age of Outrage, with Oxford, itshould be the first thing that comes up.
And that will take you to my websitewith all of the resources,
not just the book, how to buy it,but also all of the other stuff
I'm writing and working on.
The Age ofOutrage How to Lead in a Polarized World.
Now, I have a question for all of youwho are listening or watching.
(34:43):
If you've been with me before,you know I'm going to ask this question
now. What
what what action will you takeas a result of this conversation?
Chances are,I mean, some of you are listening
because you're subscribed,which I hope all of you will become.
And so this is next instancewhich you listen to.
But some of you have been drawn to this,whether it was from the live stream
(35:04):
or the recording, a live stream,or you were scanning through this
set of episodes and said, hey,I this is what I, I was drawn to this.
And so regardlessof whether you just heard it next
or you were drawn to it,what action will you take as a result?
What could you do to perhapsbuild some new perspective?
What can you do to helpcreate greater safety and trust?
To allow people to share?
What what could you do,to turn down the temperature on your team?
(35:28):
Like there were very actionable,practical things that we talked about.
And ultimately,if all you do is take this in
and then move on, it will maybehave been entertaining, but not much more.
It's my hope that you start to connectwhat you learned here
or heard here, and turn it into somethingactionable for you and your team.
If you do that, then this was of great,much greater value.
(35:50):
So Karthik, thanks so much for being here.
It's a pleasure to have you.
Thank youfor having me, Kevin and everybody.
I hope that you enjoyed this enough
to come back next weekbecause we'll be back next week.
So that means if you're not subscribedwherever you're listening,
make sure you subscribed.
That also means
that share this with someone elsebecause that makes everybody happy.
It makes Karthik happy.It makes Kevin happy.
(36:11):
It makes you seen by that other personas kind and open and sharing.
And so maybe this whole issue is somethingthat's, been weighing
on your organization and maybe it's usefulfor the whole organization.
Feel free to share is my point.
And then make sure you come back next week
for another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
(36:31):
We'll see you all then.
The world
is polarized,maybe more than any time in our lifetimes.
The outrage that can erupt for a varietyof the sources
of polarizationmust be understood by leaders.
But more importantly, as a leader,we need strategies to acknowledge
and move past the outrage to creategreat organizational results.
(00:29):
And that is our focus today.
Welcome to another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast,
where we are helping leadersgrow personally and professionally, Lee,
to lead more effectivelyand make a bigger difference
for their teams, organizationsand the world.
If you are listening to this podcast,you could be with us live in the future
or on your favorite social media channel,
(00:49):
which would allow you to sort ofget a jumpstart on all of this, right?
You can find out when those are happeningand how you can interact
with us in that live setting,and see the information sooner
by going to our Facebookor LinkedIn groups, two of the channels
in which we provide these live streamsand just go to remarkable
podcast.com/facebook or remarkable
(01:12):
podcast.com/linkedin for all of that info.
And today's episode is brought to youby my latest book, Flexible Leadership.
Navigate Uncertaintyand Lead with Confidence.
It's timeto realize that styles can get in our way,
and that following our strengthsmight not always be the best approach
in a worldmore complex and uncertain than ever.
(01:35):
Leaders need a new perspectiveand a new set of tools to create the great
results that they, their organizations,and their team members want and need.
And that's what flexible leadership
provides you.
Learn more and get your copynow at remarkable podcast.com/flexible.
And now that we've gotall of that good stuff out of the way, I'm
going to bring my guestto the stage and introduce him.
(01:59):
His name is Karthik Ramana.
He's a professor of businessand public policy at the University
of Oxford's BlavatnikSchool of Government, where he has served
as a director of one of the world'smost diverse leadership programs.
Previously a professor at HarvardBusiness School, Professor Ramana
studies how organizations and leadersbuild trust with stakeholders.
(02:21):
His scholarship has won numerous awards,
including the HarvardBusiness School McKinsey Prize
for Groundbreaking managementthinking, and three times three times
the International Case Studies Prizesfor Outstanding case writing, which
the Financial Times calls the BusinessSchool Oscars, which is pretty cool.
We've never had an Oscar winneron the show.
(02:41):
I suppose now, until now.
He is the author of The Age of Outrage
How to Lead in a Polarized World,which is, I suppose, the biggest reason
why he's here,and I am so glad to invite him to join me.
Karthik, thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me, Kevin.
And you're not in London today,but you're in Washington DC.
(03:02):
Indeed.
So we're in the same time zone,which I wasn't necessarily expecting
before we started. I'm glad you're here.
Thank you.
So let's talk a little.
I mean, I gave the very high levelbackground of,
intro of your background,but I'm curious how you end up
specifically doing the work that you doand then leading into this book.
(03:24):
So tell us a little bit about that contextand background to get us started.
Sure.
So, Kevin, I trained as a fairlyquantitative economist, over at MIT and
my first job out of my PhD program
was, as a professorat Harvard Business School.
But I taught fairly,quantitative subjects like
finance and accounting, and,I enjoyed it very much.
(03:47):
And then the financial crisis hit,and it occurred to me
that the great challenge of the worldwasn't that there weren't enough MIT
trained economists teaching Harvard MBAshow to make more money.
There were other,bigger challenges in the world.
So my dean at the timeactually encouraged me to teach
the required course in leadership at,Harvard Business School.
And it was quite the leapfor someone like me, because, again,
(04:10):
I was a very quantitative personthat like to do math and things like that.
And, and but I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it very much.
And I taught that course for many years.
And then when the University of Oxfordwas building its new school of government,
I, was quite surprised to be recruitedto serve as the first director
of its Master of Public Policy program.
(04:31):
And in that role,
Kevin,I was, suddenly in front of a group of,
you know, prospective andand fairly, senior, public leaders
from around the world over the courseof the eight years that I let it,
we had 1000 public leadersfrom 120 different countries.
And it occurred to me that I need to havesome sort of approach to making sure
(04:52):
that in convening all of these leaders,we leave them stronger for the experience.
Or at the very least,I don't do more harm.
So first, that's first. Do no harm, right?
Indeed. Yeah.
And that's what got into this topic.
Well, I have to say we getwe had all sorts of books,
sent to us, pitched to us, for the show.
(05:13):
And we're blessed that that happens.
And and to to get a book in the mail.
And I think it just showedup, as I recall.
But it doesn't mattereither way, when I see it, I see a book
called The Age of Outrage,and I'm like, okay, the age of outrage.
I need to learn.
I need to see more about what's in here,because the title
certainly took my grabmy attention from the start and
(05:34):
and I know that you and I,Karthick could have a whole conversation.
This whole, this whole episodecould be about what fundamentally is
the first chapter in the book, which iswhat are the causes of the outrage.
And I don't really want to do thatbecause I want us to get to like, okay,
we sort of all know that there ispolarization and there are issues,
and there is emotionsand there is anxiety and there is outrage.
(05:58):
So I don't really want us to spendtime there
because I think that's pretty mucheverybody gets it.
But I have tosay that in reading the book,
that was the part that captivated methe most
because you had like a good economist,had some really interesting data in there.
So I don't want usto spend really much time.
But if you could just give usa couple of thoughts as to why you think
now, this is more of an issuemaybe than it's been.
(06:22):
Certainly,I guess I said earlier in our lifetimes,
just give us a little thereand then I want to dive into now what?
Sure. So look at its core, Kevin.
It's really about a fear of the future,and it's about a sense that we've been
somehow dealt a raw deal by thosewho've been in positions of power.
What I mean by the fear of futureis this sense that, you know,
(06:43):
I mean,
you think about how AI is disruptingour lives and how technology more broadly
is changing the way the world works.
I mean, this the technological disruptionwe're likely to see over the next decade,
from AI is, likely to exceed
the disruption we saw fromthe Industrial revolution 200 years ago.
I layer on to that, you know, issuesaround
(07:04):
climate change and rising sealevels and issues around changing monsoon
winds, shifting demographic patternsand the idea that,
you know, most of our Western societiesare getting older,
these sorts of things got get peoplereally anxious about the future.
Now, if you're simply anxiousabout the future
and you really trust your leaders,maybe you'd be okay.
(07:25):
But we also happen to be livingin a time in history where perhaps
trust in leadership is at the lowest it'sbeen since before World War two,
and the United Statesin particular is by some accounts of,
the way political scientistsmeasure this more polarized than it was
since just before the Civil War.
So we're layering on this,fear of the future with this sense
(07:48):
that the, elites in our societyreally haven't done very well by us
the narratives on globalization,the narratives on immigration,
all of these are coming backto, bite and haunt, us as a society.
And I would just add,and you can comment, of course,
that it isn't just political leaders,
but that what's happening is, you know,
(08:11):
all of us as sort of everydayleaders in organizations.
And even if we're a CEO, like trust in inall of those levels is dropping
not not forever one, but that'sthe climate in which we're starting.
And in fact, I would argue,
are used the wrong word.
I would state thatthe rest of the book is about
how do we deal with that realityand not just twiddle our thumbs
(08:35):
or suck our thumbs, but say, nowwhat do we do given
that's the cardswe've been dealt, to use your phrase. So.
So you've got sort of a five partframework work.
Why don't you just sort of lay that out?
And then I want to dive intosome of the pieces a little bit.
Sure. Yeah.
So at the core of the five partframework is the notion
(08:56):
of turning down the temperature.
The idea there is, look,if you were in an, agitated state of mind
or the people you're working with
are in an agitated state of mind,you're going to do more harm than good.
And I wrote that chapter very muchfrom the perspective of managers
turning down their own temperature rather
than, you know,because there's this tendency
to look at yourself as somehowabove the fray and everybody else's.
(09:17):
So it's not me, it's everybody else.The problem is not me.
Yeah, everyone else is captivatedby the outcome, captured by the outrage,
and you're somehow above it.
But of course, we're all human.
I'm just as likely to be proneto outrage as anybody else.
And so that chapter is really abouthow do you put yourself
in a mind statewhere you're not agitated by, you know,
proximate triggerswhere you're not, somehow reacting,
(09:41):
in a sort of in an impulsive way,
where you're notyou've put yourself in the context where,
you know, youyou just are not able to hear the things
that you need to hearin order to make progress in a situation.
So, so that's really the first step.
Then the, the, the,the framework moves into for, for,
for further steps,the first of which is, really about,
(10:05):
recognizingwho are the constituents around you
that you need to be listening to
and how do you build trust in themto speak truth to you?
Oftentimes, you will be engagingwith them, in a position of power.
And maybe because they don't trust you,maybe because they're scared of you,
they won't speak truth to you.
And so how do you build that trust
so that you hearthe things you really need to hear?
(10:27):
So that's thatnext stage of the framework.
Once you've done that active listening,you need to think about what you do.
What's your strategy?
As we talked about some of the causesof this age of outrage or so varied,
there's so complex,they're so interwoven that you,
as the head of one organization,whether it's a business
or a non-for-profitor even a government agency,
(10:48):
you're not going to be ableto solve the whole problem.
So what are the questions
that you ask of yourself that helpyou understand when you want to lean in
and when you want to say, whoa,this is not something
I can make any kind of progress on.
So it's about that strategy,which is the next step.
The next step takes us tohow do you put that strategy in play?
Right. How do you think about the nature
in particular of your powerin this organization?
(11:10):
How do you drive outcomes in a waythat, is
in fact pro-socialas opposed to depleted of that power?
And then the final step is recognizingthat all of these other four steps
are really hard.
So how do you rebuild your resilience,both you as an individual
but your organization?
Because managing in the age of outrageis not managing outrage.
(11:33):
It requires you in some senseto be constantly on.
You can't just switch into PRmode or spin mode
and then go back to business as usual.
Because as we've said,it's an age of outrage.
So how do you build that ongoingresilience to take on this challenge?
Those are the five steps of the framework.
And I do want to dive into them.
But but nowthat we've got that overarching idea,
(11:54):
I want all of those of youwho are watching or listening to make
note of something.
And that is that inevery one of the steps.
Karthik, you've said, there'sthere's some stuff that you have to do
as the leader,
but there's a bunch of stuffyou have to do on yourself as the leader.
(12:14):
Like there's an internaland an external piece in all of these.
And that's actually, I think, one of thethe great things about the book
that unless you really are reading it,you're not going to get.
So you want to make a comment on thatbefore we go any further.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, this is as much a book about,you know, your own personal development
and professional developmentand your own growth as a human being
(12:35):
as it is about tryingto bring out the best in others.
And in fact, that is the best,the best exam or the best,
instantiation of thatthat I've heard is a metaphor.
We say, just as you don't want a surgeonto go from one operating theater
to the nextwithout having wash their hands,
you don't, as a manager or a leader,want to go from one context to the next
without being in a state
where you have metaphorically,in this case, washed your hands.
(12:57):
So a large part of the framework is aboutthat personal growth and development.
Beforeyou try to bring out the best in others.
You use the word context.
And I'm becoming more and more convinced.
I mean, I mentioned earliermy next book in The Open and
and it in many ways is about
understanding context,
because until we really get context right,
(13:21):
like it's very difficult
for us to be successful,
because our decisionshave to be in context.
And, and so often if we operatejust on like, like you said earlier.
Well,I don't have the issue with the outrage.
This is if you're if you're watching this,listening to this show, or thinking
about getting a book about how I can fixthe team, you're missing the point, right?
(13:44):
Would you say that's really right?That's absolutely right.
Because you are part of the team.
And, often you have to start with yourselfand the nature of power
in this kind of age of outrage,with the deep distrust, is that
if people don't see you as, sort of,you know, living the values,
if they don't see you walking the talk,why would they ever want to follow you?
(14:05):
Why would they ever want to believe you?
This is the age of outrage. So.And you ask.
What's the. Outrage at that point?
Yeah.
So yeah.
So let's take that sort of opening piece.
And talk just a little bit about that.
What are a couple of things. And again,
the other thing I want to highlight hereis that
even though everybodythis is written by a really smart guy
(14:27):
that worked at Harvardand now is at Oxford, it's not written
only this is not only written for CEOs,it's written for any leader at any level.
And it's not just written for writtenfor people in governmental agencies
and leaders there, which is the contextthat we talked about earlier.
This is written for any of us.
So give us a couple of ideasthat can help us
(14:48):
when we know we're walkinginto the context of there's outrage,
there's there's emotion,there's issues, there's
how can we start to turn down thetemperature, whether it's for ourselves
and or for the team? That's right.
So I actually started that chapter
by doing a lot of work in understandingthe the neuroscience of outrage.
Where does outrage come from in the brain?
(15:10):
And in trying to understandthat, I said, okay, what are therefore
some simple tips or tricksthat us as human beings can be able
to pull off that signs in orderto be better versions of ourselves?
So, the first and most important thingto recognize is that ambient conditions,
or just like the situation around you,can either trigger you to outrage or not.
So let's say you're returning backfrom church and your rear ended in a car.
(15:34):
Chancesare you'll be less prone to outrage
than if you were coming back from bar,from a bar, or, say,
from a metallica concertor something like that.
Right?
So the way our brains workis that that that contextual
setting plays a huge rolein, in how we respond.
And so recognizing, for instance,if you are trying to defuze the situation,
(15:54):
but you've got bright lights shining onyou and the temperature in the room is hot
and people are really crowdedand jostling each other,
and they're drinking lots of caffeineand they've been deprived of food, then,
you know,
all of that is going to trigger everyone,including yourself,
into an aversive state.So how do we start?
By just putting ourselvesin a cooler room, maybe getting, you know,
(16:16):
you might have oftenheard this from your parents
when they say, well, first you eat,then we talk.
Right?
Let's just get people to a placewhere, biologically,
they're comfortable before they starttalking about the really difficult things.
So that's a simpletip that we can pull off from the.
Science and, I love I love all that.
And I just was reflectingas I read the book, about,
(16:38):
a situationI was in last week as a facilitator,
consultant, slash facilitatorwith a group.
And there was not outrage, but there was,
there was high
level discussionsgoing on in this leadership team.
And we got to a point,and I kind of have a general belief
that we should take a breakabout once an hour.
(16:58):
But at this point,it hadn't been quite an hour,
but it was just for the kinds of reasonsyou're just describing.
It was the right time.People needed to stretch their legs.
They needed to go get a snack.
They needed to do something else.
And we could come backand they'd be better prepared.
So it's it's it's the big things,but it's the little things.
And being the other thing that I take fromthat section is
(17:20):
and the wordsthat I wrote down in my notes
here, being self-aware,just being more self-aware of it
ourselves, is an awfully goodstarting point.
Take a deep breath. Right? That's right.
That's so the second, the second piece
or the next pieceis about making sense of the moment.
I love that phrase.
First of all, and I,I want you to comment on it,
(17:42):
but I want to read something from the bookfirst.
I'm not going to say, hey, tell me thestory on page 68. I'm going to read it.
And I want to read thisbecause I think it's really interesting.
And it comes from an examplein your class.
Sometimes my students
do not realize why we are not divingright into the big problems.
They ask why we are playing withmake believe rowboats, and not talking
about the real stuff racism, policeoppression, urban poverty and the like.
(18:04):
The answer is that if we work togetherfirst on trivial tasks like a mock
rowing Olympics, to experiencewhat it's like to agree on differences
in strategy and implementation,we are better set up to collaborate
on the big wicked problemswhen they come to us.
So talk about that, I love that,
I mean, I love thatthe trainer in me love that, but the
(18:26):
but the leader in me loves that as wellbecause we so often want to go tackle it,
even if we're scared of it.
We want to dive rightin, and it's not always the best place.
So say more about that and then say moreabout making sense of the moment.
Yeah, so making sense of the momentreally does require active listening.
It requires understandingwhy really smart people,
(18:46):
can look at the
same set of facts that you do and cometo a different set of conclusions.
Right?
And that's part of the beauty
of the kind of community of leaderswe put together at Oxford.
These are incredibly brightpeople of each year of 120 people, one
third of them, about 40, tend to be RhodesScholars right at the top of their game.
And some of the senior
people will be running workforcesand close to a half a million people.
(19:09):
So these are some very,very serious people.
And then they disagreeabout matters of policy.
Looking at the same set of facts,you say, okay, well, why is that the case?
That'swhat you're really trying to get at here.
Now, in order to get to that,you need to get people to a place
where they will trust you to be ableto have those conversations with you,
where they will not be performativein their, relationship with you,
(19:33):
but they will be substantivein their relationship with you,
that they will be incremental
yet authenticin the way they engage on these subjects.
And that's where these kinds of exercisesmatter.
You know, you take something like,
you know,
our thecomposition of our current Congress
or you take something like,you know, how, say, maybe, business,
(19:53):
or the C-suite of a particularlarge fortune 500 company
is trying to deal with its activiststakeholders.
Almost every instantiation of those,
conversationstend to be adversarial in nature.
They, we've gotten to a place where,
those teamsthat we really need to work together
have never really experienceda collective sense of success together.
(20:17):
You know, it used to be that members ofCongress would live in DC during
the times when Congress was in session,and so they'd have their kids there.
And then, you know, on the weekends,
the kids would all go play,baseball or softball on the same team.
And so members of Congresswould have other contexts
in which they would interactwith each other. They might have been,
(20:37):
on opposing partiesor on opposing sides of a legislation.
But then, you know, on the weekend,their kids would be in the same team.
We've lost that.
So we lost the abilityto experience each other in the context
where it may be a trivial setting,but where we win together.
And that's really importantto make these things work.
So when I bring togetherthe Or in my prior role,
(20:58):
when I used to bring togetherthese leaders,
to the public leadership programat Oxford, the first thing we do is
put them in these,
mock rowing boats, you know, on the whichare in these modified swimming pools.
And we'd say we want you to runa little rowing race,
you know, so you randomly assign eight,eight people to a rowing boat
because that'show long the rowing boat is.
(21:19):
And you say,
we want you to run a race against,another randomly selected group of eight.
And, you know,they would ask, but came here to talk
about all the grand issues, like,you know, Israel and Palestine and
and you know, what to do about abortionand what to do about taxing the rich.
And I said, well,there'll be time for all that.
Let's just play this little game for now.
(21:40):
Why wait? You want eight?
You want them to sweat together.
Because when people sweat together,
they learnhow to be vulnerable with each other.
And when they learn
how to be vulnerable with each other,they can start trusting each other and be.
And rowing is a really good metaphorfor this, because if you're in a boat
with eight people, it doesn't matterwhere you're from, the U.S.
or Chinaor Israel of Palestine or Russia, Ukraine,
(22:01):
you can't be the fastest personin that boat.
The boat will go around in circles.
You need to pace yourself with all sevenother people in the boat.
So you're sending them a message about,
well, we're not going to make any progressunless we learn how to work together.
And that's where it starts.
That's what we meanby making sense of the moment.
I love it because the two things that youand you talked a lot about trust here,
(22:22):
which I think is keyand, and a lot of folks,
and we've certainly had guests on the showand we've talked about the idea
of psychological safety,
and you just talked about itwithout using those two words together,
which I think is, is usefulin and of itself, that it doesn't
just get labeled that.
But that's exactlywhat you were talking about.
You're talking about creatingthe situations such that that can happen.
(22:45):
And because we can't getto the perspective, half
of this of peoplesharing their perspective.
So we have the chance
to see a different one until we have builtthat is a really critical thing.
And that, of course, appliesnot just in matters of outrage,
but in matters of familyand 100 other things.
The second or the next pieces,maybe we might
(23:06):
call it a strategy piece of this,that scoping organizational response.
What what do we mean here?
That's the part about determining what,
about this,
outrage you're going to ownas an organization and what you're not.
Right.
So let's take the example.
I use this in the book of Disney, right.
So Disney got into a lot of trouble.
(23:27):
And the way they responded to,the don't say gay
legislation that was making its waythrough the Florida House of Congress.
Disney,of course, operates deeply within Florida.
It's a large part of the Florida economy,particularly in Orlando.
And, you know, Disney,as part of its strategy,
has taken a very,sort of engaged view on LGBT issues.
(23:49):
So it hosted gay days at Disneyat its theme parks.
It has, create a creator communitythat's very
that leans in very stronglyon LGBT issues, etc.
so it has implicitly createdan expectation
that it would stand upfor LGBT communities in that context.
Now, when, you know, governor DeSantis
(24:11):
was running for the Republican nominationfor president, he was effecting this,
so-called don'tsay gay bill through the Florida House.
And Disney's response was,oh, we don't do politics.
Now that comes across as hypocrisy.
That comes across as really difficultfor people to deal with.
Because the wait a minute, when it cametime to selling us access to the
(24:34):
theme park or selling us, you know, moviesabout Disney princes and princesses,
then, you know,you were totally fine with us.
Sorry. You know,with leaning into the LGBT issues.
But now when we're dealing with thissort of don't say gay bill, you're saying
we don't do politics,but the very nature of Disney's product.
You know what Disneyprinces and princesses do in their movies
(24:55):
is political.
You know, what happens in culture todayshapes politics tomorrow.
So it's just impossible for Disneyto suddenly say, oh,
we don't do politics, right?
So part of this is for an organizationto understand
how its strategyis tied into a given issue.
The same answer would be different.
Say, if you were Chevronor Exxon or an oil company,
(25:18):
because an oil company does not,
by the very nature of its business,take a view on LGBT issues.
So this doesn't mean every companyneeds to take a view on this.
It means that if you're Disney, you can'tafford to lean out of certain things.
Just like if you're Chevron or Exxon,
you can't afford to lean outon environmental issues, right?
So it's understood.
Again, regardless of what your responsewill be exactly, you have to have one.
(25:40):
Exactly.
It doesn't matterwhether you're pro or anti etc.
that's going to depend on your values.That's going to depend on your.
But the point is you have to understandwhat is your business strategy
and how does that business strategyconnect to what's happening in the world
around you, which is causing this outrageand then having a coherent response?
So this is not a bookso much about what to do.
(26:00):
It's not a book about saying, well,these should be your values.
And this is I'm not I'm certainlynot in a position to preach or pontificate
about what is right or wrong,but it's a it's a book about strategy.
It's a book about tactics.
It's saying if you have a businessstrategy, here's how to do it.
It's the how to have.
It's the how. A how about me? Yeah.
I'm looking at our time and I would lovefor us to spend time on the understanding.
(26:24):
The next piece is understandingthe leader's power.
And there's a we could have donea whole show on this one.
Again, power, influence and all that.
And that's actually where I wantto spend time the last.
Well, actually, I want to go to the lastone, which is building organizational
and personal resilience.
And lots has been said,
here on the show and other placesabout personal resilience.
(26:47):
I actually would like us to sort ofwrap our time before we get it
kind of really wrap about what you meanby organizational resilience,
because I don't think that's somethingthat people think about very much.
That's as much has been written about.
So why don't you spend a few minutesthere on organizational resilience?
What do you mean by that?
Yeah, that means that you cannot buildan organization to cope
(27:11):
with this age of outrage, not just cope,but to thrive in this age of outrage
with doubt having,
cultivated in everyone that works for youor cultivated in the teams
that contributeto the organization's performance,
the kind of skills or the capabilitieswe're talking about.
Just like you won't build an organizationwhere you say, you know,
we don't know how to read balance sheetsor we don't know how to do marketing
(27:32):
or we don't know,you can't build an organization
that isn't active, activelyleaning into this problem.
That's so that's what I mean by that.
Now, firstly, and most importantly,it means creating an organization
where you've delegated
to the right level of the organizationthe capacity to respond.
Often what happens with crisis
management is you get pushed up to the topand said, look, this is the crisis. Mr.
(27:54):
CEO or madam CEO,can you take care of this?
But because of the scope of this,this is like every day
there's going to be an outrage issue.
You've got to be able to drill it downto the organization.
So people are at the coalface of it,are able to respond.
But often companies make mistakeswhere they delegate
things down to organizations,to people in the organization
without training them how to exercisegood judgment.
(28:17):
So delegation is just part one.
The second part is training peopleto have great judgment to respond in this.
That means that they need to understandand own your values.
They need to understandand own your strategy,
and they need to be schooled in the kindof processes we've been talking about.
And the third and most importantstep of this is,
look, the very nature of these problemsis such that
(28:38):
people are going to make mistakesfrom time to time.
That's why it's it's judgment.
I mean, if it was this sort of thingthat that was the right
answer, you'd write a computer programto execute on it.
So that's not what this is.
This is about judgment.
And the nature of judgment is sometimes
you get it right,sometimes you get it wrong.
Now when you get it wrong,you as a manager need to have the capacity
to basically allow your team to fail.
(29:01):
Because if you don'tallow your team to fail,
if you punish them for having,
you know, made the wrong judgmentcall in a particular situation,
you never get the kindof delegation that you ever
you sought out again. So.
So it's all three thingsdelegating this information, building
great judgment in people.
And then, of course, importantly,allowing people to fail,
(29:21):
and, and grow from those failures.
That's necessaryfor organizational resilience.
And the book,you call them honest mistakes, right? Yes.
Dealing with honest mistakes.Not not right.
Yeah. Not flippant or whatever.
So, yeah.
I negligence or. Yes, exactly, exactly.
So, avoidance or whatever. So,
(29:41):
I really appreciate all this
as you were just describing the stuffaround organizational resilience.
I was reflecting on the factthat this morning
I wrote an articlethat will be on our blog.
So if you're watching,listening to this on the,
on the podcast, it'll be a long timefrom now, but, it will be there.
But I was writing about how we supportleadership wisdom,
(30:01):
and to me, what you just described,all three of those things
are inside of that ideaof creating leadership wisdom,
and not just from the sea in this case,not just at the CEO level, but throughout
the organization.
Is there anything
that I didn't ask that you wishI would have
or something that you want to make surewe talk about, that we haven't.
(30:23):
So I leave, our listenerswith to final thoughts.
One is, you know, no matter what you doas a manager or a leader in this context,
you're not going to be able to solvethe whole problem in front of you.
So have a sense of perspective,you know, about
this is a complex age we're living inis we're living in a very polarized world.
(30:44):
So, you know, have a sense of perspectiveabout what you can genuinely address.
And starting from that, you say,okay, well, let me deliver some authentic
success, that authentic successbecomes the basis of trust
on which you canthen buy more of the problem.
And, and therefore.
So change will be incrementalrather than, you know, over
promise and under deliver.
(31:04):
The second thing I leave you withis the notion that no matter what
you do, you will, as a manager or leader,be seen as part of the problem.
So, you know, don't try.
Treat this as a popularity contest.Don't try.
Treat this as I'm going to be ableto somehow, you know, unite
everyone together and everyone will see meas the great leader that I am.
No, because the nature of mistrustand the nature of polarization,
(31:28):
you're going to make some judgment callsthat you know are going to leave
some people disappointed.
Again, have a sense of perspective on that
and and be confident and comfortablein the kind of decisions you're making.
I love that.
So thank you.
And thank you for that summary
of those two important things for usto remember in an age of outrage or not,
but especially in this,in this age that we live.
(31:50):
I have a couple of other questions,I guess three more. Really.
Before we go,and I'm shifting gears for you.
The next one is what do you do for fun?
So, you know, I'm very fortunate that I'mthe sort of person
who's been able to find that work,which for me, play,
so, you know, a lot of what I do,
(32:11):
in, in my professional lifeof being a professor
and being able to work with organizations,whether in government or business
or the not for profit sector, to make themmore effective, is the sort of thing
that personally is very fulfilling to me.
So, you know, yeah,
that that is in some sensethe source of, greatest joy for me.
(32:32):
But I'd also sort of suggest that,you know, one of the most powerful quotes
I, I have ever comeacross is something that is apocryphal,
attributed to Marilyn Monroe.
And she says, don'tunderestimate the value of being able
to come home at the end of the day,knocking on your door,
knowing that the person on the other sideawaits your return.
And and that's really important,having a wonderful, family life,
(32:56):
having a wonderful, sort of, personal lifewhere you are able to sort of,
celebrate it with, whoever is closeto you, you know, for different people,
it might be a spouse, a partner,kids, parents, dogs, cats, whatever it is.
But that's really important to resilience.
I love that,
the wisdom of Marilyn Monroe right hereon the Remarkable Leadership podcast.
(33:16):
And so
the only thing you knew,I was going to ask you, which is this.
What are you reading?
Something or somethingyou've read recently?
Yes. Well,
as an academic, much of the reading I do,unfortunately, is very technical reading.
I don't know if it's unfortunate.
I actually enjoy it, but,so I tend to read lots of primarily,
scientific articles and, you know,primary data on scientific studies, etc.,
(33:39):
which is what keeps me motivatedand keeps me engaged.
And quite recently,what I've been reading is,
sort of, you know, the articlesthat won the Nobel Prize in physics,
because I, you know, it's justI want to understand
what is the cutting edge of the frontierin that space.
And and how might be ableto learn from those.
And there you go, everybody.
(34:00):
That's the first time we've ever gottenthat item from one of our guests.
460 some episodes in, So,so Karthick, now,
the question that you've been wanting meto ask, which is how can people learn more
about the book and where where they canget connected with you and or the book?
I'll hold the book upfor the video version of this,
tell people where they can find you,get the book, etc..
(34:21):
Sure.
So the book is called The Age of Outrage,and if you just Google
the age of Outrage, with Oxford, itshould be the first thing that comes up.
And that will take you to my websitewith all of the resources,
not just the book, how to buy it,but also all of the other stuff
I'm writing and working on.
The Age ofOutrage How to Lead in a Polarized World.
Now, I have a question for all of youwho are listening or watching.
(34:43):
If you've been with me before,you know I'm going to ask this question
now. What
what what action will you takeas a result of this conversation?
Chances are,I mean, some of you are listening
because you're subscribed,which I hope all of you will become.
And so this is next instancewhich you listen to.
But some of you have been drawn to this,whether it was from the live stream
(35:04):
or the recording, a live stream,or you were scanning through this
set of episodes and said, hey,I this is what I, I was drawn to this.
And so regardlessof whether you just heard it next
or you were drawn to it,what action will you take as a result?
What could you do to perhapsbuild some new perspective?
What can you do to helpcreate greater safety and trust?
To allow people to share?
What what could you do,to turn down the temperature on your team?
(35:28):
Like there were very actionable,practical things that we talked about.
And ultimately,if all you do is take this in
and then move on, it will maybehave been entertaining, but not much more.
It's my hope that you start to connectwhat you learned here
or heard here, and turn it into somethingactionable for you and your team.
If you do that, then this was of great,much greater value.
(35:50):
So Karthik, thanks so much for being here.
It's a pleasure to have you.
Thank youfor having me, Kevin and everybody.
I hope that you enjoyed this enough
to come back next weekbecause we'll be back next week.
So that means if you're not subscribedwherever you're listening,
make sure you subscribed.
That also means
that share this with someone elsebecause that makes everybody happy.
It makes Karthik happy.It makes Kevin happy.
(36:11):
It makes you seen by that other personas kind and open and sharing.
And so maybe this whole issue is somethingthat's, been weighing
on your organization and maybe it's usefulfor the whole organization.
Feel free to share is my point.
And then make sure you come back next week
for another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
(36:31):
We'll see you all then.
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