Leading with Less Ego

AI is transforming the world. And it starts with the right compute. ARM is the AI compute platform trusted by global leaders. Proudly NASDAQ listed, built for the future. Visit arm.com discover. Welcome to the hbr ideacast from harvard business review. I'm sarah greene carmichael. Before interviewing today's experts on selfless compassionate leadership, I'm going to spend five minutes doing their exercise and becoming more selfless. While normally I would do this silently, today I'm going to think out loud. So I'm setting timer on my phone and while I will spend five minutes doing this, we will edit it to speed it up. And for just a moment, I'm just gonna pay attention to my breath. Now consider the people who made today possible for you. That would be my husband. Let's see the people at work today who came to online meetings and participated. Step 5. Allow Realistic Sense of humility to arise. The world will keep spinning even if I'm not around. Life will go on. Alright, so now I'm just gonna sit for a minute with a sense of gratitude. That's the last step. Grateful for all you awesome listeners out there without whom I could not do any of this. Okay, so feeling good? I feel like I should do that before every interview. This is just one of a few mindfulness practices that our guests today, Rasmus Hugard and Jacqueline Carter, encourage people to do every day. Because in the research and consulting work they've done, they've found that training the mind is key to a leader's effectiveness. They've written a guide to being more mindful, selfless and compassionate. The book is called the Mind of the Leader. And they're here to talk about how developing these characteristics will improve engagement and performance of work, both for you and the people that you lead. Rasmus and Jacqueline, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Sarah. It's great to be here.

So did I do that right?

You definitely did it right. I don't know if you can do it very wrong. The question is, why do you want to do this as a start of a day or start of a meeting or towards the end of the day? And the reason why we recommend this kind of selflessness exercise, reflection, is because it helps to deflate the ego a little bit by developing a stronger sense of gratitude and humility. What do you think, Jacqueline?

Well, I'm more interested, Sarah, in how it made you feel. You said that you should do this before all interviews. What was your experience like?

Yeah, well, I felt so calm and Centered and happy at the end of it. It was really, you know, it was brief, but it was really impactful.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what the science says, that the more that we do that, it actually has a neurological impact on our brain wiring us to be able to do that more naturally. So it's a really, really, really great practice.

You know, there's a kind of working assumption in a lot of places and a lot of us are taught that business is about competing different interests and that this push and pull of different selfish interests is what in the end creates capitalistic activity and energy and forward progress. So what is the kind of hard nosed business case for acting in a different way, in a more selfless way?

Well, I think that if leadership is all about me, I probably shouldn't be a leader. I think that when we look at what does selflessness mean? It doesn't mean about not being competitive, it doesn't mean about not being driven, about not being results oriented, about making the tough decisions. But if it's really ultimately to serve my interests as opposed to the interests of my people and my organization, I'm probably, ultimately I might be successful. If I'm super smart and you know, have, have great skills, I may be successful for a short term. But what the research and our field work really showed us is that in the long term people don't want to follow you. Ultimately you are going to erode trust in terms of people won't believe that you're working with them because you're not. You're out for yourself and ultimately you just simply won't be as success. You won't be able to realize your own potential, let alone help your people realize theirs.

Does being a selfless leader mean that you have to be all things to all people? It sounds like it could be interpreted that way. And that might sound to some people really exhausting.

I would say not at all. So I think that that one thing that's really important to clarify is that selflessness doesn't mean that I'm no longer in the picture, that I don't matter. It's all about you. That's not what we mean at all when we talk about selflessness. One of the things that we at, as Rasmus mentioned is it's really about recognizing that we all have an ego. And if I am focused on things that are going to feed my ego, I'm not necessarily going to be doing the things that'll be most helpful to other people. At the same time. One of the key findings is that we need to pair the sense of selflessness, the sense of being other focused, with a very healthy, strong self confidence so that we make sure that we are taking care of ourselves, we're setting good boundaries. And so combining selflessness with a sense of strong self confidence, that is really what we found to be the sweet spot of leadership.

I would add to that, when you have that combination, you're really enabling other people. You're an enabling leader, which is really important because you're just one piece of the puzzle. And if you think that it's all about you, you're not going to enable others, put them on stage, develop them. So if you have a lot of selflessness without having the confidence, as Jacqueline says, you will be a pusher or you'll be a doormat. If you have low selflessness and low self confidence, you're going to be a narcissist. And if you have low selflessness and strong confidence, you're going to be an egoist. So we don't want to fall in any of those three traps of being a pushover, a narcissist or an egoist, but rather have the combination of self confidence, which gives you the enabling quality of being a people centered leader.

One of the things you write in the book that really stuck with me is the idea of approaching people and almost asking yourself, how can I help this person have a better day? How did you come up with that? And why does that, why is that so powerful?

What inspired us was the over 250C suite executives that we met with, but also many, many, many of our clients that we work with all around the globe and the way that they approach their people, their teams. And specifically, one of the things and where that quote came from was actually from one of the leaders that we interviewed, Ted Kesios of Cisco. He actually said, I start every meeting with my team saying, how can I be of benefit to you today? But it wasn't just him. We saw it over and over again as that strong orientation and intention to come and be of service to others as a leader.

But I'm wondering, there is a lot of research on how power affects the mind, but I'm also wondering just about our environments. If we are in an open office environment, getting a million emails a second, sort of being constantly interrupted by people with requests that maybe they could figure out on their own if they tried. How does one stay patient and present and helpful and the kind of person who's like, oh, how can I be of benefit to you? Instead of the kind of Person who's like, would you please just go away and Google this before you come and ask me, like, how do you. How do you be nice in that moment?

That is a great, great, great question. And you're just. I mean, just drawing up the reality that all leaders nowadays are facing an increased level of distraction, increased level of information, increased level of busyness. To deal with that, we need to have a mind that is clear, that is focused, that is calm. But then, having said that, also to answer your question, compassion is not just about pleasing people and giving them what they want. Compassion is very much about doing the right thing, doing what they need. And we don't always see what we need, but others may see that. As an example, if I have done a really poor presentation to a client, and Jacqueline sees that, and I don't see that, it is very compassionate of her to come to me and say, rasmus, this and that in that presentation really did not work. And I won't like to hear that, but I need to hear that. So compassion can be really tough. Actually, compassion mostly is tough. It is not pleasing, but it is doing the right thing to people.

In a way, you're reframing compassion so that it's not just focused on being all things to all people or feeling everybody's pain. It's really about helping them develop and doing what will serve them in the long run.

Absolutely. And I would say that one of the things that I think is really important about compassion is that it shouldn't just be compassion alone. One of the things that we looked at was the importance of combining compassion with wisdom, which means that we need to sometimes make tough decisions. We need to sometimes lay people off, or like Rasma said, give people tough feedback. That's the wise thing to do. That may not feel nice, but that's the right thing to do. And there's two different ways that we can do that. We can do that with a sense of tightness and tension and frustration, or we can do that with a kindness that know that the wise thing to do is this, even though it may not feel good for the people that are impacted by it.

So I know what you're saying, because I have had bosses earlier in my career who were so good at giving critical feedback and who were so good at even firing people or moving people out of the organization that people would leave feeling energized and kind of like, oh, I'm so glad that my next step is now clear to me, because this person was honest with me that there actually was no path for me here and helped me get another job that was better suited to my skills. But I can also see that there would be people listening who have maybe not had a boss like that and who are thinking to themselves that's not possible. You know, that doesn't exist. This is just a way for leaders to feel better about firing people. I'm not on board with that. So do you ever get any kind of like skeptical pushback from people who are like that's too good to be true. I've never had a boss like that that doesn't exist.

Absolutely. And so we work with more than 500 global organizations and these organizations like Accenture and Microsoft and you know, just normal, big, very, very fast paced and hard nosed organizations. Obviously many leaders within this organization find at first dance. Wow. This is a bit of a soft or strange way of thinking leadership. And yes, what we're proposing here is definitely a bit of against the stream in terms of how leadership is taught and thought in many organizations. But it's also as simple as this. All people, whether they're leaders or employees in any organization wants to be happy, wants to feel good in the work. Everybody wants to be connected to others. That's just human drivers for all of us. We all want to have a sense of meaning and purpose. We all want to feel that we are contributing to something positive. So if we as leaders can start to tap into people's need for these primary needs, then we will have better impact. And this is just a fundamental truth that goes for all organizations. So maybe it's against the culture and what people are normally thinking about leadership, but it also just really logical. There's a lot of science behind it. So yes, there is skepticism, but yes, when people start to practice it, they also see the benefits of it and then they start to adopt and change the culture and their behaviors.

One of the things that we found really interesting was we asked all of the leaders that we surveyed to map out at what times of the day do they feel most focused. And what we found, and that's what the research says is most of us do have if we get good night's sleep, which is critical, most of us do have our most focused time, our most expansive mind, first thing in the morning. And so that just makes sense that I would want to do the things that I would need the most expansive mind to do. And like I said, it's not about being perfect, it's about being strategic, about how you use your precious mind. Because we all know that we don't have more hours in the day, but we sure can use them a lot better if we're more focused and intentional about them.

What about something like priorities and goal setting? How do you kind of set out what your plan for the day is in a way that will make sure you're focused on what you care about and not getting pulled in a million directions?

I think the starting point is if you're already only doing that at the beginning of the day, you're probably like most of us, already scheduled and booked in for things that may or may not be your top priority. So I think it's really important to make sure that you have a longer term view, looking out over the next month, looking out over the next weeks. And then when you get to the day is when you need to then sit. And what we recommend is something we call two, two, two, which when you get into the office or when you start your work in the morning, you start with two minutes of mindfulness practice to be able to cultivate more focus, more calm, more clarity of mind. And then two minutes of prioritization, which is really about reflecting on what are the most important things that I really need to get. And hopefully again, you're referring back to those strategic goals and objectives that you've set out when you've looked at the longer term focus. But then the next two minutes is really about planning. And in this planning exercise, and this is really what we see with successful leaders versus leaders that maybe aren't so successful is they're ruthless about their calendar. For example, if there's a meeting that they don't have an agenda for, they cancel it or they just let the people know I'm not showing up because it's not going to be focused. Or if they have a day where it's back to back meetings and they know that they're not going to be mentally effective going back to back, they block in time for them to be able to have five minutes even between meetings, to be able to have more reflection. Or they cancel some meetings even though they're important because they simply know that they're not going to be at their best. So it's really about, I think in terms of prioritization, really being mindful about what you need to do and also realistic about what you can do and then setting out those goals and intentions to be able to make sure that you're managing to manage yourself the best that you possibly can. Moment to moment.

Specifically, how much time do you think we would all save in our lives, in our organizations if we were more mindful and focused with things like email and meetings, can you estimate it?

You can estimate it. Carlsberg did some estimates on this and looked at what happened when they implemented mindful guidelines for meetings. And they found that they actually made meetings that were on average 30% shorter. So just imagine with all the meetings you have through the day, if you cut 30% of those, and that's just on meetings with emails, it's probably the same. If you're more mindful, there may be a lot of messages that you simply just decide to ignore because you're only in CC or you don't need to respond. So there's a lot of time to save here. And I think one of the reasons why many organizations, most organizations nowadays are really embracing mindfulness is because they see the productivity impacts coming of people being more focused, more calm, and more clear minded.

If a leader succeeds in becoming more mindful, more self aware, doing all these things, what is some of the impact that they'll start to see in their organization?

So the short answer is you will start to see more people centric organizations, more people centric cultures where people are put before many other priorities. So the people's well being, the people's sense of connectedness and meaning take center stage. One of the great examples here, I think is Marriott. So we worked with many, many organizations and in our research we really looked at which organizations are focusing on people. And Marriott certainly came up as one of the absolute most people centric organizations that we have ever encountered. And it makes sense when you look at their business philosophy, which is really simple. So in our interview with the CEO Arne Sorensen, he said our business philosophy is this. If we take care of our people, they take care of guests and business take care of itself. And I think that goes for any industry. If you take care of your people, they will take care of whatever you are doing and then business take care of itself. And this is the kind of organizations that, that you will see coming out of developing leaders that are more mindful, that are more selfless and that are more compassionate in their approach to their people.

So I want all of our listeners to leave today feeling like super good and calm and kind and compassionate and grateful. So they're about to finish the idea cast and go on to doing something else with their time. Maybe they're commuting or working out or cleaning the house. What should they do as soon as this podcast ends to start putting your advice into practice?

That's a very good question. Just follow a few minutes now of a guided practice that I'll take you through. So just if you're sitting, just stay seated. Close your eyes for a moment and just tune into your breath. Just sit and feel the experience of your breath now. Now let go of any thoughts of what you have just listened to.

And.

Just sit and come to peace. And now ask yourself, who is the next person that you'll be meeting when you get up off your chair.

And.

Remember who this person is and specifically is this person has any challenges or anything where you can support this person and whatever that is. Make a commitment for yourself that you will try to give this person something that will make him or her stay better, that he or she will be slightly more happy by means of your interaction with him or her. So go out into the world with a stronger sense of compassion. This is about other people and their happiness. And that's it.

Wow, Rasmus, that was really nice. Thank you both. Thank you, Jacqueline and Rasmus, for joining me today. This was really fun.

Thank you so much.

It means so much to us. This is obviously stuff that we're ridiculously passionate about, so thank you.

That's Rasmus Hugar and Jacqueline Carter. He's the founding and managing director of Potential Project and she's an international partner and North American director. They're the authors of the Mind of the how to Lead Yourself, your people, and your Organization for Extraordinary Results. Thanks for listening to the hbr ideacast. I'm sarah greene carmichael.