Ramesh Srinivasan: The Power of Purpose-Driven Leadership

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True leadership isn't about controlling outcomes. It's about aligning your inner purpose with your outer actions to inspire your team to do the same. Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. My guest today is Ramesh Srinivasan. Ramesh is a senior partner at McKinsey and Company. And the co-author of The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out. In today's conversation, Ramesh discusses how leaders can transform themselves and their organizations by developing self-awareness, fostering authentic leadership, and evolving through personal growth. At its core, Ramesh says that true leadership success comes not just from strategic and operational excellence,, but from leading from the inside out. This means that the best leaders are those who first understand themselves, their emotions, motivations, and limitations, and then use that deep self-knowledge in how they lead others. With that, here's my conversation with Ramesh Srinivasan.

The world is changing rapidly, and if there's one thing that's happened, the rate of change has gone up dramatically with geopolitics, climate change, technology disruptions. All of this have made a leader's job quite difficult today. And in this era and this level of change, what we've seen is that leaders need to ask themselves what is their purpose, what gives them meaning, what gives them energy. And they need to lead from that sense of purpose and who they are. And use that to inspire their teams, inspire their organizations. We feel this age of the imperial CEO is done, and the new set of leaders who are successful in this ever-changing world, our leaders are able to ask what is their purpose and then use that to listen to their teams, co-create answers to tough problems with their teams, and their broader organization.

What I hear you talking about is hard skills, soft skills. I know that's a conversation that's been had for a number of years, but also this left brain, right brain idea. I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about the left brain, right brain. I've got some definite thoughts on that as well, but I'd love to hear how you think about that. And perhaps have we over-indexed as a leader on the left brain, and now we need to move more to the right brain. So how do you think about that?

There's actually increasing research, Steve, that shows that even this concept of left brain, right brain, for us to be effective as human beings and as leaders, we actually need to bring a level of balance. And people use that label hard and soft skills, or as you said, left and right brain. It's about how do you bring your whole self to solve complex problems and be there for your organization. I'll use an example. Stéphane Bancel of Moderna, when the world was going through the COVID vaccine challenge, on the one hand, Stéphane set a very audacious goal for the organization, for himself, to really manufacture 1 billion vaccines. And at the same time, he brought a level of curiosity and support for for his team, to really help them roll up his sleeves and work with his team to solve some of these tough problems, do that in a way that was challenging his team and yet supporting them in whatever way possible. Like the first conversation he had with his head of manufacturing, which we share and which he shared in the book, is really, how can I support you to make a billion doses of this vaccine at a time when they had not made a single dose. That's the leader that we see in today's world.

You also talk about this idea of polarities in the book, and I think that ties in exactly with what you're talking about here. So in the book, you talk about how as a leader, you have to be humble, but you also have to be decisive. You have to be vulnerable. You also have to be strong. You have to be cautious. You also have to be bold. You have to be forgiving, You also have to be demanding. You have to be certain but willing to change. So those are polarities. Those are opposite each other. So how do we do that as a leader?

It is tough. Being a leader in today's day and age is not easy. I think the way we've seen great leaders do it— I'll use another example, Rita Roy of MasterCard Foundation. She set a vision for the foundation to create 30 million jobs in Africa by 2030. And yet there were many questions for which she didn't have all the answers. And so she's an incredibly vulnerable leader, but she's quite thoughtful about when, how, and where to be vulnerable so that how does she create a safe space in her team where she can pose the questions for which she doesn't have all the answers. So that's the model that we've seen these leaders address these polarities by On the one hand, having the confidence to be able to set a vision or be decisive, set a direction, even when they may not know all the answers, and yet being transparent, vulnerable in the right setting with the right people at the right time, where they can then use a group of people to solve some of these tough problems together and then use that to make progress.

Anybody that has sat in the CEO seat knows that it is lonely at the top. And this idea of isolation, this idea of who do I turn to? Everyone's coming to me because they expect me to have all of the answers. How should a leader think about their role as a CEO knowing that, quote, "the buck stops with them"? How do we overcome this idea of isolation?

It does get lonely. And in fact, that's what led us to create our Bauer Forum. The Bauer Forum is our learning program for leaders, for CEOs to reflect on their own mandate. What are the challenges that are coming in the way? And to get input from a set of peers that they can use to then come up with insights about themselves and commitment plans that they can then take to their teams and to their institutions. The way it works is we have a set of peer leaders who come together and they have a chance to reflect. We have some ex-CEO faculty, some very seasoned leaders who hold the space and create an environment where people can be completely open and inject a little bit of wisdom into the process as well. It's typically a, a 2.5-day process. And we start with people just opening up and sharing a bit of their own context. And then a bulk of the time is spent with each leader talking about their context, people asking them some questions, and then a process by which they can then get ideas from others. So it's really a peer coaching forum. And in the book, we've actually described a way in which any leader, any person can construct a variant of the Bower Forum, an advisory group or a set of peers with a very simple process that can then help them think about their own leadership journey. And we say it starts with leading self, just who am I, what is motivating me, what is driving me? And from there, using that sense of purpose identity to then inspiring teams and inspiring institutions.

And how long has it been in place?

More than a decade, almost 12 years now.

I'd love for you to go back to the beginning of the Bower Forum and think about what the conversations were like back then, what the CEOs were dealing with, and then flash forward forward to today? Has it changed significantly? And if so, what have some of the, the changes been?

I think over time the complexity in the world has definitely changed, and we see questions around geopolitics, climate change, technology, equality, all of that becoming even more acute. And the level of polarization in the world has also gone up. So as a leader, as a CEO, what you can speak about, what you cannot, how you speak to the, to your team. So the public has become even more tougher. 24/7, always-on world, and the global media has become even more interconnected. So the CEO is almost always on stage. So that intensity I see has even gone up even more over these 10 years. And therefore, as I reflect on the conversations It's still a balance between business and people and leadership issues. So that balance has relatively stayed constant at the 50-50 level. But I think the nature of the conversation, the impact of some of these changes have become even harder on the leadership journey. And that's why we coined this term human-centric leadership. I think leaders have become even more acutely aware on the fact that they need to be clear about their own purpose and use that to inspire teams and inspire institutions. This notion of— I use the term imperial CEO, or the notion that you can figure out the answer and then just go tell people what to do. It's clear now, even 10 years ago, it was very difficult to do that. But in today's day and age, it's almost impossible.

A couple of your colleagues, I think 3 of your colleagues, wrote a book called CEO Excellence, and I happened to interview a couple of them on an earlier podcast here for Barron's, Scott Keller and Vik Maholtra. And one of the things that they talked about were some of these mindsets. One of those mindsets was being bold, thinking big. And I think one of the things that you talk about in your book is this idea of how do we navigate fear and failure? And sometimes this fear of failure prevents us from thinking big, being bold, and moving forward with big ideas. How should we think about that as a leader to overcome fear and failure and think big and bold?

That's actually a critical dimension we cover in the book. And my favorite story is that of Admiral Eric Olson. He was a Navy SEAL himself, went on to play senior roles with the US Navy. And he talks about this notion of fearless learning. How do you create a space where, you know, before you go onto the field, you do all the simulation, you do all the exercises, you get feedback, you really push yourself so that what are the fears you're likely to experience when you're on the field and use the time before you get to the field to really learn and be prepared. And yet when you hit the field, He says that the terrain always beats the map because you're always going to get surprises and situations that you may not have fully prepared for. And you need to be willing to let go of all the training, all the simulation, and deal with whatever presents to you at that time. What we see leaders do is spend that time preparing ahead, being aware of all the scenarios, so that they're ready. And then when they are in the ground, in the dance floor, dealing with situations, all the preparation then helps them do what is right and bring their leadership to the fullest potential at the time.

Let's say that fear was a team member, and that team member fear was sitting at the leadership table. What advice would you give to a CEO on how to manage that team member that we are calling fear?

My advice would be to get to know fear and understand where that fear is coming from. Why is that fearful? What is the worst-case downside? Just play that through. And from that spirit of deep understanding and awareness comes resilience, comes ideas, creative ideas for dealing with that fear, processing the fear. And maybe even overcoming the fear at times.

In your case, what is an example of something that was very fearful to you that you stared down face to face?

As a leader, I realized that leadership is not a popularity contest. There are times when I have to give a tough message. Even as an advisor, sometimes I have to be able to tell a leader, a CEO, what they might be doing wrong or show them a blind spot. And in that process, they may not like me for a period of time. And so I've come to realize that it's okay if everybody doesn't like me and I need to stay true to my own purpose. Who am I? What am I trying to do? My own purpose of helping leaders fulfill their potential. And in that process, if a few people don't like me or don't like me for a period of time, that's completely okay.

You mentioned that leadership is not a popularity contest and that there are clearly times when a leader has to deliver bad news or talk to a team member and give them some feedback that they may not appreciate. What might be a way to deliver unpopular news, to give constructive feedback that a team member may not want to hear, but do it in such a way that they're not going to, quote, shoot the messenger?

It comes back to some of the themes we've talked about, Steve, on having clarity of purpose, being clear on the vision of the company, being clear on values that the institution has, values that the leader holds dear to their heart. And the more clear they are on those dimensions, they can then give tough feedback to people. So within McKinsey, we have a very strong culture of feedback. It comes from a belief. We have a two-part mission, one to help our clients and help them improve their performance and deliver a sustainable improvement in their performance. And a second part, which is to help attract, retain, develop, and inspire exceptional people. In delivering our second part of our mission, we do give feedback to people, but we come at it with an orientation of helping the individual be their best self. And we do it from a spirit of what we call strengths-based feedback, so that we acknowledge what the individual does really well, and then we help them bring that to all their clients, to their colleagues, to the world at large. Satya Nadella talks about it as the growth mindset, and he's done a lot of work at Microsoft to bring that growth mindset to that institution. So if leaders can do this, help individuals and bring that growth mindset to their teams and to the institutions and do that with consistency and purpose, mission, values, it will then help them share tough feedback and help individuals grow and learn.

So here we are talking about right brain. We're talking about the soft skills. We're talking about leading from the inside out. Yet we have one of the most revolutionary technologies in our lifetime that's happening right now, artificial intelligence, which is arguably exactly the opposite of all of that. It's the most left brain. It's the most analytical thing out there, although it can certainly be used for creative purposes. How should we think about leadership and artificial intelligence What is the role of AI to support a leader? I know we talk a lot about it's AI plus human. So how should leaders be thinking about AI to really leverage that to help make them better leaders?

I talked about technology disruption right at the beginning. We do think AI broadly, GenAI specifically, can have massive impact on the world. We often think of them as copilots to leaders in their own journey. At the same time, all our research shows that the role of the human in the loop is not going away. Creativity, judgment, those are critical components that human beings will continue to bring to the world. And so the question for leaders is, how do I understand technology, how technology is disrupting my business, my profession, my own role? And how can I use AI as an advantage to drive productivity, to drive more effective outcomes in whatever profession I am in, and then use my own role less to do more basic tasks, but which technology could do for me and use my own role to inject creativity, inject judgment. That's the role we see of leaders. It does need reskilling. It needs society to be sensitive to what's happening in the world and be thoughtful on when and where and how AI develops. And so that's where we as a community need to continue to give enough thought so that we can use technology for our benefit as we continue to grow and enable sustainable, inclusive growth in the world.

There's a saying that you, you can only take other people as far as you have gone yourself. And I'm relating that specifically to the inner journey that you go through. You're talking about human-centric leadership. How do you counsel leaders to go through that inner journey to really understand what their purpose is? Do you at McKinsey, do you help leaders go through a process like that? Do you just give them ideas and thoughts and insights and then they go off on their own journey? How do you do that?

We absolutely do. I used to lead partner learning and development for McKinsey. I no longer do that as part of our normal rotation. Another colleague leads that now. We actually help our partners think about their own purpose, who they are. We ourselves as an institution have been going through a journey of embedding purpose into everything that we do. So we help leaders think about what gives them meaning, what gives them energy. And how do they tie it back to McKinsey's purpose, mission, values. We do have leaders, especially our senior leaders. It's not a well-set linear process that we take people through. It is a messy journey. The journey of finding my own purpose and tying that back to the institution sometimes can be short, sometimes can take much longer. And the way we do this is we create spaces and environments where people can Be vulnerable, feel safe, get input from others. They take sometimes these questions and go back to their own work, their families, and have much deeper conversations about these topics and then have a chance to experiment and try out new things that then give them further insight and deepen their own sense of purpose. And we provide resources in terms of coaches and other resources they can use. Mentor, sponsors also in this journey.

If we were to fast forward 20 years from now, what do you think would be the major insight from the book that people will still be talking about?

I think a few insights. This concept of inside out, the journey starts from within, a sense of my own purpose, and then how do I bring that to inspire teams, inspire organizations. That concept has been around. We hope this will add another reinforcement to that concept. The notion of polarities, we touched on it earlier in the podcast. We hope that will stay. This idea of micro-practices, in the book, we have an appendix with almost 100 micro-practices. We feel that's a great way to start this inside-out journey, to reflect on something that is a big radical idea to live into my purpose. And yet start that with a very incremental tactical step to live into my purpose. I'll give you one example is every day in the morning after I wake up, I listen to Indian classical music. I think about my to-be list for the day. How do I want to show up? That then goes with my to-do list. I knew I was going to be in this podcast. I have a couple of events today. How do I want to show up? With curiosity to connect with people and use that to then live into my day. So this is another concept we hope will stay with the world. And we definitely think the journey of leadership never ends. And that's why we called it the Journey of Leadership. Within McKinsey, we use this concept of renewal. We feel every leader has to keep renewing themselves and ask them What is the next chapter and what do they want to either modify or add to what they're doing? A CEO that talks about it in the book is John Plant, who is a very successful industrial CEO in auto and other industries. He talks about this concept of versatile CEOs where CEOs need to learn depending on the context that they are in, the kind of skills they may have, the foundational elements, be ready to add new skills so that they can be successful in the role that they're playing. So those are some of the themes that we hope will remain with the world many years from now.

And I love your thought there about the micro practices. You gave one example. I'd love to hear maybe 2 or 3 other examples of micro practices from the book.

We'll go back to some of the themes that we have touched on, right? So back to this humility along with boldness. One of the practices we've seen CEOs follow is not to be the first person who comes into a room and gives their answer, but start with questions and allow everybody else to speak up before they speak in a room. I'll use Rita Roy of MasterCard Foundation. She does that extremely well. When there is any topic in the room, there's a pre-read that's sent. Everybody reads that. She expects people to come with ideas or questions. And in most cases, she will wait for everybody to come with their views, their answers, before she then chimes in with her opinion. Of course, again, this is not a formulaic approach. If there's a values question or something that she feels needs to be said, she will never hold back. But as a typical pattern, that's her typical approach. I mentioned Admiral Eric Olson and fearless learning in the Navy SEALs. Really spending a lot of time on scenarios. What is the worst case that is likely to happen in a situation, be it in a business context, in a personal context, and then using that to shape what a leader does. A gratitude practice. I've seen many leaders at the end of the day just reflect on what are they thankful for, what are the one or two things that they've learned, what are they thankful for so that they end the day in a spirit where they can actually sleep well and come back next day being fully present to start the day in the best way possible. Those are just 5, 6 examples that come to my mind.

So let's take this journey never ends idea a little bit further, and let's say that you are going to design a CEO road trip. So the CEO is going to get in the car they're going to drive in the United States and they have to make 3 stops at 3 different locations anywhere in the United States. And at each of these 3 stops, they have to learn a lesson about leading from the inside out. What would be these 3 stops, these 3 geographic locations, and what would be the lesson that you would want them to learn at each of those 3 stops? And you'll get extra credit if you can tie in the geographic location to the lesson itself?

Wow. What a beautiful question. First stop is Lead Salve. And that stop could be, you know, a place in nature. It could be on the beach. It could be in the mountains, or it could be in the forest. My wife and I were actually hikers, so we love hiking. So I could see Yosemite being a great place to start the process of just leading self of who am I, what gives me energy, what gives me meaning. And there's something about being in nature that allows a leader to ask that in an expansive way, which aspect of nature obviously depends on that individual. For me, it might be Yosemite. For somebody else, it might be a beach or a lake or a river or a mountain. But that would be my top one, Steve. And the US has some incredible places to explore in that way. So that's where I would start. I think place 2 would be the place where they can bring the closest set of people together to work in a team, to set an aspiration for themselves. For me, it would be my home. We've actually recently renovated our home, and my wife and I, from time to time, or at least once a month, we get a group of close friends to think about What is our purpose? What are we trying to do collectively? How do we help each other, support each other? For some others, it could be a place at work. It could be as boring as a conference room in their office, or it could be a nice conference center somewhere in the world. I've conducted a partner learning session in San Diego at a beautiful conference center. So it could be a place where they can get a team together to reflect on the team's goals. What are they trying to do? How are they collectively coming together and supporting each other? And like I said, it could be a personal or a professional setting. That would be stop number 2 in their journey. And then stop number 3 would be a monument that they can see having value, something that has been created. It could be an institution. It could be a building that they're inspired about. It could be the US Capitol Hill. And I can think of Abraham Lincoln's statue and what he did. So it could be something that denotes an institution, something that they've created, something that they'd like to create as a way to then unleash their fullest self, their fullest potential to the world. That would be the third stop that I would recommend.

I think that's a beautiful answer. So it sounds like the first stop is the inner journey and to learn more about yourself. The second is about relationships and family and friends and communal exploration. And then the third is about inspiration. What's gonna inspire you to create and, and think even bigger? Appreciate you sharing some of those thoughts there. Let's go back to 1967. A movie came out called The Graduate, and Dustin Hoffman was one of the stars in that movie, and he was given a piece of advice, and that advice was one word, and that word was plastics. So in a similar way, in light of everything that we've talked about here today, if you could give advice that was just one word to leaders, to CEOs, what would you want that word to be?

Inside out.

That's two words.

I had a hyphen in between. Okay.

All right. I'll let that one slide.

It goes back to the ideas we've been talking about. The notion of leadership starts from within, of leaders thinking about crucible moments that have shaped them, that then show up in their everyday life and being more deeply self-aware of who they are and what they bring to the world, and using that then for their outer journey of inspiring teams and inspiring institutions in the world.

If you could think of 3 CEOs that you've worked with, each of whom have a particular superpower, who are those 3 CEOs and what are those 3 superpowers that you would like to see another CEO be able to incorporate all 3 of those?

I'll take 3 examples that are top of mind for me that are inspirational leaders. And I mentioned all three of them in this conversation. I'll start with Stéphane Bancel of Moderna. And his superpower that I've observed is this balance between setting a bold vision and bringing an incredible level of curiosity and support for his teams in executing that bold vision. And I feel that's truly a superpower I've seen him exhibit. Rita Roy of Mastercard Foundation. Being able to set a vision even when all the different pieces are not that clear, and yet having the vulnerability in the right setting, within the right way, to then put some of her deep questions, you know, in front of her team and co-create solutions to really then deliver against that vision. And then Wendy Kopp of Teach for All, who in my book represents a leader who on the one hand has a strong vision of education equity and the role of a teacher in a classroom, and yet has been able to tailor the model to the context in 62 different countries and inspire founders of this Teach For concept in each of these countries and be there and support modeling what she calls collaborative leadership. With all these leaders to really spread the movement around the world. Those would be 3 examples that are top of mind for me.

You mentioned earlier micro-practices, and one of them is a micro-practice to really think about who you want to be. So let me ask you, who are you aspiring to be?

I aspire to bring hope and possibility a smile to the world. If in a world that is full of demoralization, lots of uncertainty, anxiety, I stand for possibility, hope, optimism. My mom passed away a couple of years ago, and when I asked her a few months before she passed away, what is she proud about me, she had said two things. One is the smile that I bring, and the second is the impact through all the social impact organizations I support. I sit on 4 nonprofit boards around education in India, and that gives me a lot of energy. So I really want to bring this smile, hope, optimism to the world.

And as we wrap up here, is there any final thought, comment, or observation you'd like to share?

I really enjoyed our conversation. I think it's fantastic to see the lenses and angles with which you're coming at this topic. I do want to reinforce that we see even the concept of separating the head and the heart, we find tricky. I think the research more and more points to this concept of integration and balancing and bringing what might seem apparently different skills or mindsets to bear to our daily worlds to inspire teams. So really wanted to leave with that thought as we close.

Yeah. And I 100% agree with you there in terms of this left brain, right brain. And I know I talk about they're separated, but the reality is they're joined.

Yeah.

At the back of the brain. So you can't really separate the two. They have perspectives in how they view the world, but at the end of the day, we need both to be fully functioning human beings. And there's a, a psychiatrist and philosopher named Iain McGilchrist who maybe you've heard of him. He's written a number of books on this topic of the brain. And really, I think he's really advanced the idea of the superficial left brain, right brain conversation that's been out there in pop psychology for many years. But he has done a lot of great work in that area. So if you're listening to this and you want to explore that a little bit further, I think it'll really add some additional context and nuance to the great book that you and your co-authors have put together here. So the book is called The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out. It's a great read. I highly recommend it. And Ramesh, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Thank you, Steve.

All right. That's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.