Barry-Wehmiller’s CEO, Bob Chapman, often says that to be a Truly Human Leader, you need to have the skills and courage to care.
Often, when you are placed into the role of leadership the traditional way to view the people within your span of care is as functions. So, you try to get them to do what you want so you can be successful, not because you care about them. It’s not about who those people are or why they matter. They’re just a function for your success or the success of your organization. Caring is reserved for family and friends outside the doors of the office.
But, Bob says, caring is what we need more of in the workplace. Everyone on the team – especially leaders -- needs to shed their emotional armor. It’s only then that we connect more deeply so that the 40 hours a week we spend away from home are not draining but fulfilling. As leaders, we should create work environments in which our team members feel safe, cared for and comfortable being their true, fully human selves.
This is also one of the main insights in a new book in which Bob and Barry-Wehmiller are featured. It’s called The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out. It was written by four senior partners from McKinsey and Company, one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world. It’s a look-behind-the-curtain at McKinsey’s step-by-step approach to transforming leaders both professionally and personally, which was gleaned through lessons from its legendary CEO leadership program “The Bower Forum,” which has counseled 500+ global CEOs over the past decade, as well as McKinsey’s global CEO counseling practice.
On today’s podcast, we feature a conversation between Bob and Ramesh Srinivasan, one of the McKinsey Senior partners who co-authored The Journey of Leadership. We’ll talk about what it means to lead from the inside out, and how that connects to Bob’s thoughts on caring in the workplace.
Transcript
Ramesh Srinivasan :
So, my name is Ramesh Srinivasan. I'm a senior partner at McKinsey. I was actually born in India. I grew up in India. Unfortunately, my father passed away when I was 12 years old, so I went to a public school in India, and I was very fortunate to get a fantastic education in a school called Kendriya Vidyalaya or Central School. It's a school run by the government of India and at very low cost. I got a great education. My favorite teacher was my librarian. She gave me access to all the knowledge in the world, and more importantly, created a safe space for me as a child who was growing up a bit lonely. It created a safe space where I could explore the world, learn a lot more. That opened my mind, and I could see the power of education, the power of learning, and one of the ideas that I learned very early on is a quote by Mahatma Gandhi, “Live every day like it's your last. Learn every day like you live forever.”
So, that was really a big lesson that stuck with me. I went to all the usual colleges in India called the IIT, the Indian Institute of Technology, and then joined McKinsey 30 years ago. Spent the first 11 years in India and moved to New York about 19 years ago. I worked in the healthcare practice, so that's the sector I know well. I'm a student of leadership through the Bower Forum where, along with Hans-Werner Kass, I’m the co-dean, and I've always been interested in paying it back. And I got involved with education, both my wife and I—we've been married for 30 years. We got involved with education more than 20 years ago, and about five years ago it became not just a hobby, but a professional priority as well. So, I lead social responsibility for McKinsey, and I sit on five nonprofit boards. So, between my work in healthcare, my leadership work through the Bower Forum and my social impact work, I am quite fulfilled, and it's helped me stay 30 years at McKinsey and maybe even spend a few more years, Brent.
Brent Stewart:
Could you tell us a little bit about the Bower Forum and what it is and what you guys were hoping to accomplish with it?
Ramesh:
So, the idea of the Bower Forum came up 12 or 13 years ago, and Claudio Feser, who also knows you all quite well, he was a founder of the Bower Forum. What he and all of us recognized was that the role of a CEO or a senior leader in the organization, it can actually get quite lonely as you get more senior, and it's hard to get objective advice from people around you. And so we felt like there's value in creating a cohort of leaders who can come together and be there for each other, be a peer learning group that both is a source of reflection, but also can hold the mirror to somebody who's going through their own leadership journey. And people can explore their own mandate, who they are, what gives them energy, and also share back some learnings and ideas for them so that the leader can do a bit more self-reflection, get deeper insight into themselves, have a set of people who are going to tell them the truth and walk away with a few concrete ideas that they can then implement as a leader when they go back to their own day job.
Brent, that was the idea behind the Bower Forum. We also have a set of fantastic faculty. Bob was a faculty for the Bower Forum. We have Dan Vasella from Novartis, many others who have been CEOs who've been great leaders, Dan serving as faculty along with a couple of us from McKinsey who then create the container for people to explore and kind of help unleash their own fullest potential, Brent.
Brent:
When you became a part of McKinsey after getting out of school, what was your initial perception of what leadership or maybe even traditional management was, and how did that evolve into putting these ideas on paper that are much different than what they might've been before?
Ramesh:
Yeah, what brought me into McKinsey was the notion of learning. As I mentioned already, even though I had gone to business school, I had a very limited work experience, and I felt consulting and McKinsey specifically would be a great way to learn. Learn how to communicate and learn how to work in a team, learn how to solve problems, learn how to manage my own work. And I felt it's a great platform. So, that's what brought me into McKinsey. And that pieces really did work out, and I got a lot of feedback, coaching, investment in my own development, and that's what led me to be at McKinsey in the first few years. I think the biggest shift in myself and in McKinsey itself over the last 20, 30 years is the notion of purpose.
I think it's the idea of purpose that we ourselves as McKinsey, we had a very clear mission, and we had a very clear set of values. And I think we realize that we do need to embed purpose much more into what we do. So, over the last 10, 15 years, we've been on a journey to really articulate our own purpose, but more importantly live into that purpose and see how can we make a positive difference to the world around us. And as I reflect on my own journey, that's what got me into education more than 20 years ago and helping nonprofits in India. One of the organizations I work a lot with is Teach for India. We help launch Teach for India 15 years ago, and then I joined the board many years ago. I've been part of the journey with them. Teach for India alumni now touch 50 million kids in India and our alumni are having incredible impact in the world.
And five, six years ago, I moved from just supporting individual organizations where I then took on the responsibility of leading McKinsey's own social responsibility in the U.S. And I realized that, and we as a firm have realized that we have a big obligation to the communities around us, to society around us. And it’s been a big learning for me as I have played a role in the five nonprofits I support, but also overseeing our own social impact journey and supporting my colleagues and challenging my colleagues also to play a positive role in society, community more broadly, Brent.
Brent:
Bob's book, Everybody Matters, came out about 10 years ago. The book Conscious Capitalism came out a few years before that by our good friend Raj Sisodia. All these years, we still see a need for that, these messages. And you guys clearly saw a need for the message of your book, which we really feel aligns with the message of our book. Tell us what led you guys to write the book and the importance of that message right now.
Ramesh:
Yeah, what led us to write the book is we felt like we have a data set with the 500 plus CEOs who had gone through the Bower Forum and all our work that we had done with clients around what can help unleash the power of people and lead to long-term performance. We felt we had some insights from both those sources and we thought it would be very useful to bring those insights to the world. I think the reason we framed the message, like I mentioned before, as we looked at the geopolitics in the world, the rate of change in the world, we felt that the idea that a leader has all the answers and just tells people what to do, just cannot work and cannot lead to sustainable performance, sustainable delivery of purpose or unleashing the full potential of people. So, that's why we felt there's a need for a new paradigm of leadership, and we felt there's an inherent tension that we saw these leaders successfully overcome, where they were, on the one hand, really bold, at the same time being curious and listening and being humble enough to engage their team.
We saw leaders who were being very powerful with a very ambitious vision, and yet, at the same time, being vulnerable and saying they don't know all the answers to questions. And when we saw these leaders and we saw leaders sharing a very bold vision and also being very collaborative, I'll give you an example of Wendy Kopp of Teach for All. She successfully founded Teach for America, but when she launched Teach for All, and now Teach for All is in 60 countries, she realized that she cannot just bring that playbook and replicate that across the world. She needs to understand the context in these different countries, and she needs to inspire other entrepreneurs like the founder of Teach for India, Shaheen Mistri. So, it is that balance that we saw these leaders bringing to the world, and that is what led us to publish the book and share these stories with the world, Brent.
Bob Chapman:
I was not aware of your focus in healthcare, but I've had the privilege of speaking in healthcare: CEOs, hospitals and a number of events, and I find that this issue of leadership is even more significant of a challenge in healthcare than even it is in business. And I say we need to bring care into healthcare because if the doctors and nurses don't feel cared for, how can they care for the patients that we want to serve? So, it'd be interesting to follow up with you on that because I've had the privilege of speaking in that sector, and we desperately need the same thing there. We need leaders of our healthcare organizations with the skills to care for the caregivers and just seeing the burnout ratio of doctors and nurses today from the pressures they face from cost pressure and lack of, call it Truly Human Leadership in healthcare.
Brent:
So, let's talk about that a little bit. Think about the book. When you think about the journey of leadership and you think about the healthcare industry, over the years that you've worked in it, what have you seen in terms of how it relates to what you guys write about in the book and what is actually practiced in the healthcare industry?
Ramesh:
In my work, in the Bower Forum, I work with leaders not just in the healthcare industry, but even beyond. In my client work, I do more work in healthcare. So, my perspectives of leadership in that sense, Brent, are go beyond just healthcare. So, maybe I'll start with a broader frame and then I'll dive into healthcare. I think what we observed was the geopolitics in the world have become much more complex today than ever before. Climate change is real, and it's having a huge impact on the world. Your technology with AI, GenAI being a big disruption in the world. So, all these changes and the pace of change is only accelerated in the world. So, it's actually forcing leaders to think on the one hand about who are they, what is their purpose and how do they want to bring that purpose into the world.
Bob is a fantastic example of purpose, and how he's using, and his own purpose is so clear in the world. We found leaders in the Bower Forum, our participants, our faculty, successful leaders having a very clear sense of purpose in this world that is changing and changing fast and using that to inspire teams and inspire organizations. And I think Hans-Werner talked about this in the podcast with all of you. This notion of an imperial CEO who knows everything we think is no longer relevant. Leaders actually need to be humble enough, need to learn from the people around them, need to show empathy, which is one of the key themes that Bob talks about in the book as well. And use that empathy, use that connection to learn from people around them and use that to inspire teams and inspire institutions. So, that's the idea that we are brought out in the book, and we call it inside out leadership. It's very complementary to the concept of human-centric leadership that you all are talking about.
I agree with Bob. I think in healthcare, this concept is absolutely critical from a perspective of patients and caring for patients and helping patients go through what's happening in the world. And also, from a perspective of doctors and nurses or on the life sciences side, people in the R&D and manufacturing side of healthcare, helping leaders think about their own purpose, who they are, how they want to live into that, how do they want to care for patients and also use it for their own wellbeing. I completely with Bob, I think the mental health challenges is really acute in the world overall, but also the risk and threat of burnout is indeed very, very high in the healthcare industry. And so, helping people take care of themselves, lean into their own purpose and then use that to create value for their customers, their patients, we think is the sustainable way to live in the world, Brent.
Bob:
And Barry-Wehmiller, the way we describe it is people, purpose and performance. And it starts with people because the way we lead impacts the way people live. Because I was never taught, never heard, I had no idea that the way I would run Barry-Wehmiller would impact people's marriage and the relationship with their children. Okay, because we live in a society today where 88% of all people feel they work for an organization that does not care about them, which affects the way they go home and treat their spouse, behave in our communities. And as Tom Friedman says, creates kind of a poverty of dignity. It's not about pay, it's not about benefits, it's about the way we're treated, sending people home, knowing that they matter. So again, we start with people around a purpose that inspires them to share their gifts, and then we talk about performance. If we don't create value in alignment with our investors' expectation, we lose their confidence and our ability to shape people's lives. So, it's all free. It's not any one. So, I'm curious, as you think about the work you've done with all the organizations, how does that idea of people, purpose and performance relate to you? Because again, our overall guideline is we measure success by the way we touch the lives of people.
Ramesh:
That concept resonates a lot, Bob. I think the notion of people, purpose and performance is very consistent with what we have seen, not just in the Bower Forum, but also in our broader research around organizations. And what unleashes long-term sustainable performance of organizations is the ability to care for people, unleash the full potential of people, invest in people, and do that with consistent purpose, a sense of mission in the organization, a core set of values. That is what then drives long-term performance. So, very much consistent with our research and very much aligned with what we have seen in other successful leaders as well, Bob.
Bob:
So, I was very touched, Ramesh, because when I learned of your interest of including our message in your book, OK, I was extremely touched because as you've said, you've met hundreds of CEOs, you've had many, many, many Bower forms, and this was maybe eight or nine, 10 years ago that as in New York with you for the Bower Forum, what stuck with you that elevated our message to be one that you wanted to include in your book? I mean, I'm incredibly touched, but I'm curious what really resonates with you that you wanted to get across in the book? And I love the title (of the chapter, “For People to Care, Show Them You Care,”) the caring.
Ramesh:
I think what stuck with me and what stuck with us is one of the core behaviors that we see. Our model of leadership is around what we call “lead self, lead others, lead institutions.” And in that journey, we actually think the notion of empathy is very, very critical. The notion of caring is quite foundational to what we are describing in our leadership model. And we felt, Bob, you and what you all do at Barry-Wehmiller actually represents the concept of care and empathy, which we saw being very critical for leaders to absorb. And that is what led us to come to you and share your story in the chapter on bringing empathy to the world. And we saw a few other leaders, if you recall, that chapter actually has a story of Frank D’Souza, another leader who led an organization called Cognizant for many, many years.
He was on the board of GE, a very successful leader who on the one hand created enormous value for shareholders, but at the same time also brought the notion of purpose and people, along with performance to what he did. If any employee, he had hundreds of thousands of employees at Cognizant when he was a CEO, but he knew that it was a services business. And to lead a successful services business, you actually need to empower employees. So, if anybody, any software programmer in the frontline would email Frank, he would always get back to them, even if it meant redirecting them to somebody else. But the connection he had, his ability to inspire hundreds of thousands of people is what led us to include him in that same book. And then the same thing, the sense of purpose he had as he was building Cognizant to unleash, to bring technology to the world, but also Cognizant in its first 20, 30 years has really one of, along with other IT services companies been an engine of growth for the country itself. And Frank was very clear that that was the institution that he was building. So, leaders like you and Frank, we felt are critical for the world to learn from, Bob.
Bob:
Caring is not something that you can do starting Monday. You can't legislate, you can't dictate caring. You need to teach people how to care. And so, I'm curious as from your perspective, because our educational system teaches us academic skills to get a job, and quite often we're elevated to positions of leadership, without the human skills to combine with our academic skills to become leaders. And I see this in every part of our society. So, I'm curious from your perspective, these really fine gentlemen leading some of America's major corporations, they are driven to achieve results, they're promoted. So, how do we go from, what happened to me, the lens through which I saw people, I originally in my business education saw people as functions for my success. I was nice, we had a nice company, but the way I saw them was accountants, engineers, hourly workers, union, et cetera.
And that day at the wedding when my lens was reversed, and I saw the 13,000 people in our global organization from Japan to India to Serbia to Italy, not as functions, but I saw them as somebody's precious child. And the way you see people affects the way you treat people. So, I'm just curious from your standpoint, how do we take a country that is focused on economic factors, OK, share price, profitability, organic growth, and how do we bring the human side into this when they're not taught human skills, they're taught to achieve results. From your perspective, how do we move to a society where leaders see people in their span of care as somebody's precious child, not functions for the organizational goals?
Ramesh:
Yeah, you are right, Bob. Even when I look at myself, I was very focused on, like you said, academic accomplishments, learning and an achievement orientation that was instilled by society around me. And I think it’s over time that I learned the importance of caring, deep listening to people, connecting with people. And I think in the Bower Forum, we see the same thing. We come in with a view of what is the leader's mandate. And you may remember that from being faculty as well, where we ask the question, especially as leaders get more and more tenured, nobody is going to tell them what to do, but they actually have both an opportunity and an obligation to really dig into what is their mandate. And the way we encourage leaders to do that is by thinking about all their different stakeholders, thinking about their customers and what their customers want, thinking more deeply about their employees and what will unleash the full potential of the people in the organization, thinking about their investors and what will deliver returns to investors, but thinking about society and what does the community and society around them need?
So, digging deep into each of these different stakeholders and thinking about where is there alignment, where is there a disconnect, allows leaders to then define their mandate. And in the Bower Forum, we also then spend time on the inside part of leadership, which I touched on, which is to then think about what is their purpose? Who are they? What are crucible moments that have shaped their life? How do they want to live into their purpose? And then marry the needs of the stakeholders with their own sense of purpose to then create a mandate to create an aspiration for themselves, for their teams, for the institutions, and use that to then make choices along the way. And through that process, engage with their teams, more deeply, listen to their teams and bring, one of the ideas we talk about is the balance of courage and curiosity.
And Stéphane Bancel of Moderna is a great example. When Covid happened, he set a very bold aspiration of wanting to bring a vaccine to the market. But at the same time, he realized that he didn’t have answers to many, many challenges. They never developed a vaccine, they never manufactured a single dose, and he set a goal of how can you manufacture a billion doses to his head of manufacturing. But what he said was, how can I support you in making a billion doses? So, yes, he was setting an ambitious goal, but at the same time, he was showing that he cared, he was showing that he was there to support, he was showing that he was curious enough and he was willing to roll up his sleeves to then problem solve with his team to figure out how to overcome these challenges. And that's the leadership model that we saw in these successful leaders, Bob.
Brent:
Tell me a little bit more about the concept of leading from the inside out. How did you come up with that language or way of thinking about things?
Ramesh:
I think the concept of inside out came from this notion of leaders need to have a clear sense of their purpose, who they are, what are they trying to accomplish and have something that goes well beyond their own life and leaving a world that is better than what they inherited while then using that purpose to inspire their teams, inspire their institutions, engage people, get input from people around them so that they could solve the ever-changing problems that they're facing in their context and bring that leadership to the outside world. So, that's what led us to this concept of inside out leadership, Brent.
Bob:
Most of those CEOs that you're working with in Bower Forum report to and are selected by directors, in many case, good, really good human beings that have been successful in the various fields. What is the message you want board of directors to get from your book relative to their stewardship of the people who they have the privilege of serving, not only the clients, but the team members of their organization? Because I find it's very difficult to get boards to address culture and they can do surveys, but what words of wisdom would you have from your book work and your Bower Forum work to board of directors?
Ramesh:
Maybe two messages, Bob. We would say one, the concept of people, purpose and performance, we see being critical for long-term value. And therefore boards need to think about how are they investing in people? How are they investing in culture so that they can unleash, and they can support, they can enable, I should say, long-term sustainable performance at the institutions that they're overseeing? And I mentioned this earlier, all our research points to how important it is to invest in culture, in people to drive sustainable performance. And then the second message I would have is, I already said this, the role, the notion of an imperial CEO is over. Leaders need to think about who are they, what is their purpose? What do they want to do in the world, and how are they living into that each day? And what are they doing to inspire their teams and inspire institutions? This idea that a leader knows all the answers can come and tell teams and their organizations what needs to be done, we think is not the way to go and not the way to create sustainable performance, especially in a world which is constantly changing and evolving. So, leaders need to practice humility. Leaders need to bring curiosity. Leaders need to bring a notion of collective leadership to unleash long-term performance is the second message we would have for boards, Bob.
Bob:
I think, I say we live in a world where people strive and we recognize success. People who achieve money, power and position. And then once they achieve that, they write checks to charity and everybody says they're a wonderful person. My words of wisdom to leaders is the greatest act of charity is not the checks you write. The greatest act of charity is the way you treat the people you have the privilege of leading because we need the nonprofits to heal the brokenness that's being created by management. And to me, words matter. I've grown to learn that the word ‘management,’ in my view, means the manipulation of others for my success, as opposed to leadership, which is the stewardship of the lives that you have the privilege of leading.
And so, until we get that, we do so much destruction about human value thinking, or so focused on economic value, but what we have found when people feel cared for, they not only will have lower healthcare expenses, but the people will go home and treat their family better, which means a lot to a leader. And so, what we have found is when you teach people how to care, you get this collective value of people coming to work to not only do their role well but to serve the organization and their fellow team members. That's our goal is until we've got to change business education to give people these human skills, to send them out into the world ready to be good stewards of the lives that they touch. Does that resonate with your kind of background and education?
Ramesh:
No, I love the separation of management versus leadership. And I think, Brent, you asked that question. I didn't get into that explicitly at that time, and I very much see leaders as stewards of the resources that they're put in charge of. It could be the human resources, it could be the financial resources, it could be resources of the earth that they're overseeing, and how do they act as trustees and stewards in that process to do the best they can and leave the world a better place for the next generation. So that notion absolutely resonates with me. I think in all our work, we see a role for business, as we discussed earlier, business as a force for good in the world. We see a role for nonprofits, we see a role for government. The question is, how do these entities then play a meaningful role working with each other, understanding each other more deeply, complementing each other with their respective mandates to then make the world a better place? Bring to my framing earlier of sustainable inclusive growth in the world. That's at least the mindset we bring.
And one of the ideas, we don't touch on it explicitly in the book, but it's very much there implicitly in our work, is successful leaders we see as what one of our, my colleagues called a tri-sector athlete, leaders who are able to understand private sector, public sector, social sector and bring that in whatever they're doing in the world. So, at least within the McKinsey context, we very much encourage and also to some extent expect leaders to be able to operate in these different horizons, Bob.
Bob:
You mentioned sustainability several times today in terms of something that is important that we respect the earth and make sure that we are treating the earth as a renewable resource. The only thing I would add to that is the sustainability of the human race. I think we thought that if we created this industrial society where people had good paying jobs, good healthcare and benefits, that we would create a society where people lived in prosperity and be happy. And unfortunately now we have the most prosperous economy in our history. But again, the highest level of depression, anxiety and suicide because we forgot one thing. We forgot as we come together in organizations, we need leaders with human skills to be good stewards, just like we need parents to be good parents, we need leaders to be good stewards in the 40 hours a week we have people in our care. We need to have an equal focus on sustainability of the human race as we do the earth upon which we live.
Ramesh:
No, I agree with you, Bob. I a hundred percent agree that sustainable earth and sustainability of the human spirit both are equally critical. In fact, one of the other investments that we have made as McKinsey is into the McKinsey Health Institute of really thinking about how can we contribute to wellbeing and long life of people in the world, and our number one focus there is around brain health and mental health of people, whether it's adults, adolescents, younger people. I think that's one of the huge challenges of our age. And we've been doing a lot of research on what is it going to take to tackle some of the mental health challenges and the brain economy, which can both lead, to your point, sustainability, growth and unleashing the potential of people and also critical to powering the economy and continued sustainable economic development. So, I'm with you, Bob, on both sustainable earth and sustainability of the human race.
Bob:
We have this theory that if we give people an education, they will have a better life because they will make more income and be happier and we have, in general, we have a very educated society, but we still have this feeling that wealth creates happiness and good jobs with McKinsey or Moderna or so forth, create happiness. And it doesn't because people don't feel valued. So, we are working very hard in primary education now to give people the skills of empathetic listening, not listening to debate or judge, but listening to validate the worth of others, how to see the goodness in others and again, and how to have a culture of service, seizing the opportunity to serve others. So, by the time they graduate, they're ready to go out into this world with a goal in mind of living the life of meaning and purpose and service of others. Going from kind of a me-centric world to a we-centric world. So, we're very much aligned with you. We are very involved in the education community around the country right now, trying to bring these social skills, these human skills to these academic skills and have people see their life as a journey, not a series of events that they live through.
Ramesh:
One of the education nonprofits I work with is called Akanksha. They are a charter school network in India. And Ankanksha’s own student vision is anchored not just in academic excellence, but also in agency and citizenship. And one of the ideas is to help all the students think about their role in the community, their role, this concept of service and what are they doing to make the world a better place. We actually think needs to start very, very early in somebody's tenure. Even for me, I felt like the education I got in a public school in India is what led me to realize the value and the importance of paying it back or paying it forward. So, very much resonate with that notion, Bob.
Brent:
Tell us what your hope is for the book now that it's out in the world. What's your hope of what people will get from it and what its impact will be?
Ramesh:
Our hope is twofold. One is I hope the readers of the book have a way of reflecting into their own purpose and into how they're leading in the world. Take away some of the practical questions and tips that we have in the book, and therefore continue on their own leadership journey and accelerate their own leadership journey. That's one hope. And then the second hope is to add to the field. You talked about conscious capitalism, you talked about everyday leadership, the work that you all have been doing around human-centric leadership. Our hope is to add to that body of work and inspire leaders and thought leaders to continue their own research and their contribution to this field, Brent. Those are our two hopes from this book.