Episode 185: How to Lead with Vulnerability Without Losing Authority

What does it take to really lead in a world where no one has all the answers? Not just to perform, deliver results in the short term, but to truly lead from purpose, humility, clarity, and service to drive superior results in the long term. Our today's guest on the Flourishing Edge podcast is Ramesh Srinivasan, senior partner at McKinsey, co dean of the Bower Forum, McKinsey's CEO leadership program.

And co-author of The Journey of Leadership. Ramesh has spent more than three decades advising some of the world's most senior leaders. But what makes his work so powerful is his focus on the inner life of the leader, the crucible moments that shape us, the values that steady us, the fears we must learn to carry without letting them drive us.

In this conversation, we explored why great leaders need a to be list, not just a to do list. Why humility, vulnerability, truth telling, and fearless learning matter more than ever, and how leaders can truly metabolize stress, stay grounded in purpose, and become a force for good in a world filled with strain and uncertainty.

Ramesh, welcome to the Flourishing Edge Podcast. You know, you have spent over three decades advising some of the world's most senior leaders, helping CEOs navigate transition, uncertainty, growth. You know, I had the pleasure of working very closely with you and just learning from your wisdom and your way of being in the world and the transformation that it creates. So I'm just delighted.

to to have you spend a bit of time with our listeners on the Flourishing Edge podcast.

Thank you for having me, Ashish. It's a real pleasure to reconnect and have this dialogue. I've really been looking forward to it.

Well, my friend, I wanna s before we get into the leadership frameworks, you know, the book, The Journey of Leadership, which I absolutely loved, I just wanna start with your personal story and what has shaped you into the kind of leader, advisor and teacher that you have become.

many crucible moments have have shaped my life, Ashish. Maybe a couple that I'll I'll point out. I think one, you know, my I grew up in India, and unfortunately my father passed away when I was 12 years old, and it was my mother who brought me up. I did have two older siblings who were also very

strong voices in my in my life. But I think that shaped me. One, my my mom was a really inspiring figure in my development, you know, loving lady

Mm.

brought a smile to everybody around her, brought a huge level of service to the world. And and I think not having my father made me much more independent. I did want everybody around me to like me. I was a little lonely as a child, and so that's been both a huge strength, but also something that I've realized over time: that leadership is not a popularity contest, and sometimes.

I need to be comfortable sharing a tough message with somebody. I went to the public schooling system in in India. I got a I was lucky enough to get a fantastic education. And that is what made me realize I have to pay it back. And so my wife and I we got very involved with education in India. I sat on four nonprofit boards and

And so it's really that positive orientation, being a force for good, the service orientation, the commitment to education, all of those are themes that have been shaped by you know events that have happened early in my childhood, Ashish.

Yeah, like you, my mother was a big source of inspiration and way of being. you know, she was a teacher, my father was a banker, right? An engineer. and both of them just had a way of kind of creating connection in the world. Like they were kind of between both families. My father was one of nine.

My mother was one of four, but they were the natural connectors of the whole family, you know, like everything, like supporting each other. And I think my my kind of sense of wanting relationships and building networks really started from that early days, seeing how they showed up, how they helped each other, how they supported others in our family. So it is amazing how these you know, growing up experiences have such a formative event effect on you.

Absolutely.

So look, your whole book, The Journey of Leadership, is built around the idea, right, that great leadership starts from the inside out.

Share a little bit with our listeners on what does that mean and why is this so important right now?

Yeah, one of the roles I play at McKinsey is the dean of our Bower Forum. the Bower Forum is named after Marvin Bower, who you may remember from your time at McKinsey, led McKinsey for a long period of time. And the Bower Forum is our CEO leadership program. And we've had 700 CEOs who have gone through the Bower Forum, and we felt we had a unique data set that we could bring to the world. And so the book.

Mm-hmm.

was an effort to go back and and reinterview people who have been participants, faculty at the Bower Forum, but also you know, some of the wider work that we do with leaders at McKinsey. And coming out of that, we observed that these leaders, successful leaders, spend a lot of time reflecting on their own why.

Why do they do what they do? And use that understanding to inspire teams and inspire change in the world. Our thesis in this book is that successful leaders spend less time telling people what to do. And in a world where the geopolitics and the technology disruptions are so high.

Almost by definition, me as a leader cannot have answers to all the problems that the institution I'm leading is facing. And so the way they lead is through this deep awareness of their own why, their own sense of purpose, the institution's purpose, the institution's values. Obviously, the leader has to play a critical role in defining these for the for the team and the institution. But once they have done that,

They really inspire their teams and inspire the change that they want to see in the world versus telling people what to do. And we felt in this day and age, with all this uncertainty and anxiety, we felt this message is quite powerful. I've spent a fair bit of time over the last several months sharing this message and it's getting resonance all over the world, Ashish.

You know, look, that is it is very resonant with me, right? your inner values serving as kind of a North Star and your why of the what you want to create in the world, and then the organization kind of, you know, it ripples through the organization. but many people don't know what their inner why is, or like they don't know where to even start with you know, any amount of inner work or self-awareness.

So Ramesh, what did you find were some ways where some approaches that leaders used to actually discover and get back in touch with their true values and and how they and the kind of leader they wanted to be in the world and the change they wanted to see.

A great question, Ashish. what I don't recommend is leaders don't need to go to like, you know, 10 days of a silence retreat, right? Like I I myself have been to Vipassana multiple times and I have my own meditative practice and so on. But you don't need to do that that that inner deep work at that level of depth. I do recommend leaders reflect a little bit on their own crucible moments that have shaped their life. It could be in their

Ha ha ha.

Personal life, it could be in their professional life, being more explicit and deliberate about it. Also, then drawing a thread from those to their behaviors that they show up in their day-to-day work. And then taking their teams on a journey like this as well, where they increase the level of self-awareness within themselves and awareness amongst their teams. That's a great way to start this journey, just to make this very practical.

You know, the book has a chapter on embedding purpose. And the main protagonist in that chapter is Frank D'Souza, who led the IT services company Cognizant for a long period of time, created enormous value for customers and shareholders and employees. But one of the things that Frank did very well in at his time was you know, bringing at at regular frequencies, he would bring his leadership team.

Together for them to share a little bit about their own life journey, you know, the crucible moments that have shaped them, and really leave it to individuals on how open or how vulnerable they wanted to get, meet them where they were. But that was a great starting point for a for a journey to really connect Cognizant's own mission, purpose to their individual why's and and make sure then that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

As leaders were communicating and they were leading an organization that had hundreds of thousands of people, he realized that this level of personal connection was critical to embedding purpose, injecting inspiration, and really mobilizing people and having change at scale, Ashish.

So Ramesh, one of the most common you know, answers you get to the question if you ask somebody, Hey, your job as a CEO, right? What's your why? What are you driving? One of the answers that

I get many quite often is, well, I'm the CEO. I report to the board. My job is to increase shareholder value. That's my why. Everything I do is to increase shareholder value. Why should it not be any other way? What's your perspective on that answer?

So as a CEO, you absolutely have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to increase shareholder value, right? So that is a critical aspect of your role. I think all the McKinsey research on long-term capitalism would say that if you can do, you know, if you can make sure that as you're serving shareholders, you're also thinking about a broader set of in stakeholders. It it is society at large, the customers you're saving.

serving the employees you're working with, the odds of creating long-term shareholder shareholder value go up dramatically when you can think holistically about all stakeholders. I would also say from a just a a sense of inspiring people, you know, we've done a lot of research. We call it the five sources of meaning. Creating shareholder value or building great institutions, absolutely, they will resonate with

you know, one group of people, but to really motivate the full workforce that you have, you do need to tap into the other four sources of meaning as well, which could be around self-development of people, the teams having a great experience, the customers having a great experience, and contributing more broadly to society. So if you can tap into you know holistic set of stakeholders and think about all five sources of meaning,

The chances of being able to deliver long term shareholder value are just much higher, Ashish.

Yeah, you know, I'm reminded of this beautiful quote from Alex Edmonds. He's a London School Economist. We had him on our podcast twice, actually, because I love his work. but one of his books is called Grow the Pie. And in our podcast, he said, he has this line in the book, and he also said it, which is: if you want to reach the land of profit, follow the road of purpose.

Right.

And he his research extensively showed exactly what we found, Ramesh, you know, at the time at the firm, right? Which is those that are purpose-driven, people-centric organizations, they actually do drive higher shareholder returns, almost to the factor of two to three and a half percent alpha. And so, yes, if you want to drive shareholder value, it's not an either-or, as you're also highlighting and inviting people to consider. It's actually an and.

And it's one road that leads to the other.

Absolutely. And I think especially the key theme is in the short term, you can, you know, you could probably drive profit at the you know at the expense of other stakeholders or at the expense of being purpose oriented. But the moment you take a long-term mindset and all the research when you look at value creation over a five, 10, 15 year period, then absolutely I think you know it's critical to think about all stakeholders.

Yes.

And it's critical to be purpose driven ashish.

So look, to start with your why requires a lot of self-awareness. Self-awareness of who you are, what drives you, what your teams drive you. Fundamentally, that requires stillness and space and a shift from doing all the time, busy calendars, to creating more of a space for being, where we can actually listen into these questions, inquire into these questions.

What did you find, Ramesh from your research around ways where leaders, especially high performing, excellent, inspiring CEOs, how did they actually create space for stillness and being? What were some things that you found to be quite common?

Ashish the AC is making noise. So I'm gonna pause for just one second and switch it off. Okay, sorry about this interruption.

Okay. Yep.

Sorry about that. I'm now fully with you with no noise.

No worries. So let me ask you the qu I'll ask you a question again. I'll ask you a a different question and we can just go from there.

Please. Okay.

To be purposeful requires us to be more self-aware. And to be self-aware requires a shift from constantly being on the go doing to creating a space of stillness and being where we can really listen and inquire into these deeper questions and experiences that shape us into who we are and what we are inspired to create.

What are some of these being qualities that separated truly exceptional leaders from merely the high-performing ones?

you're absolutely right. I think to be purposeful, you need that reflective space. And you know, you need to move from just doing to being, knowing, and doing, Ashish. And I often say as leaders, we add value based on all three dimensions, not just what we do, but also what we know and who we are, or you know, how we are being.

In fact, in the book, we have 150 micro practices. And one of those micro practices is we we observe leaders really in the morning really thinking about what is their to-be list and not just their to-do lists. So that depending on what they were going to do that day, how were they going to show up in the world? And and in order to be thoughtful about that.

leaders do need to create reflective times. It could be reflective times during the day, during the week, during the month, you know, in in your lifetime. So that recovery and reflective space is actually quite critical. We've been learning actually from the sports people on this, Ashish. So when you you know you look at a Novak Djokovic, for example, and he's been very public and vocal.

About this. He says he takes about 15 seconds from the time he plays a point that he was very upset with to the time that he's back and he's being fully present and playing this point as though it's the only point that matters. Be it like a point where he's he may win the championship or being a point where he may lose the match. Really being fully present and playing that point as though it's the only thing that that matters.

He takes about 15 seconds to reframe. We as business leaders, we don't need to be in like that level of agility, but we do need to reframe and like take the time, especially back to this world of so much disruption, so much where it's an interconnected world. The practices to really shift and come back to the present.

Are very, very critical. And it could be as simple a micro practice as just like a you know reflection time in the calendar a few times a day where I think about my own to be list for the day. It could be working with a a leadership coach or a personal advisory board. That's another mechanism that we observe these leaders do, or it could be more conscious time where you know, once a week or once a month, taking the time with a team.

To really step back and think about you know, how am I showing up in the world and how do I want to evolve that? Whatever be the mechanism, you know, we observe these leaders creating a little bit of that safe space with some set of people that they trust that allows them to really marry the the to-do list with the to-be list Ashish

Yeah. I think that concept of a to be list is so powerful and and I love it, right? I think even when people think about meetings, there's always, you know, we say good quality meetings should have an agenda, should have like clear things that, you know, things that need to be in place. Do we have the right people? But I don't remember.

A single one of the articles or any of the advice that actually talks about as a leader, how do you want to be? And how do you want others to be? And how do you actually create that emotional space where even if it's a hard conversation, a hard decision, we can actually do it in a way that taps into our intelligence, our purpose versus our fears of what is going to go wrong.

Absolutely. And even if those the the the fears that we have have a very valuable role to play, even just acknowledging that and putting that on the table and setting up some mechanisms where we're going to process that fear in a thoughtful way and and work through things that are consistent with our purpose, the institution's purpose, values, becomes quite critical, Ashish.

Yeah, you know, I had we had another conversation quite recently with Sophie, who teaches at Oxford, and she talked about how the inner state of the leader, how you show up, actually had such a big effect, right? So this notion of we can either put the whole room in below the line reactive behaviors because we are feeling nervous and we are feeling anxious, and that's kind of rippling through.

Yes.

Or we can actually, regardless of where people are, actually shift ourselves. We can make fear the object and choose to operate more of a creative state of looking at the fear, what is trying to teach it, but not letting it handicap us and rob us of our creativity, our innovation, our connection, and kind of the long-term bigger w game that we are trying to play in the world.

Exactly.

So I think it's I think I love this idea of a to be list and I think it's definitely one of the things that I'm gonna have my clients literally look through what are the three biggest meetings and decide how you wanna show up as much as what do you wanna accomplish and see what it unlocks for them.

Yes.

So I want to shift a little bit. and I wanna talk a little bit about, you know, this period where we're living in. You alluded to it, Ramesh, earlier, right? It is truly a period of extraordinary strain. The AI disruption, the geopolitical uncertainty, burnout, disengagement, dis distrust, all of this is in the water, right? It's in the water organizationally, it's at the water individually, it doesn't matter what layer in the organization you are.

It is.

What does this moment demand from leaders more than ever that any other previous era demanded?

Yeah, it goes back to what we've described in the book. this notion of like what is my why? Why do I do what I do? And using that to inspire teams and inspire the change that I want to see in the world. We have turned that into a set of behaviors, 12 behaviors and a set of 150 micro practices.

We won't have time to explore every one of those dimensions, but maybe I'll touch on one or two. You know, chapter one of our book is all about humility. You're not the smartest person in the room. So it requires leaders to really set that ground rule that allows people to really open up, challenge them, and make sure that creative answers can emerge to to questions that they're posing in the world.

Please.

The other one that I'll highlight is vulnerability. You know, a critical dimension is for leaders to be able to say when they don't know the answer to a question, how do they honestly say that they don't know the answer? You know, one of the leaders we have in the book who embodies both these qualities is Michael Fisher. Michael was the CEO of Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

Mm.

He he has been a participant in the Bower Forum. He's come back as faculty in the in the Bower Forum. And Michael Red led the hospital during COVID when you know hospital CEOs and leaders and leadership teams had to make tough choices, and things were very dynamic. And Michael was obviously he had to be very clear on.

The purpose, the values, the importance of quality and you know, all of that. And Michael is a very, very strong leader in that respect. And yet, when there was a question for which there was no clear scientific answer, he would be very comfortable saying, Hey, we don't know the answer to this question. And let's all brainstorm what's the best approach we should take at this point until we get future data and then we'll pivot and we'll be comfortable with that. So really the humility and

Vulnerability or two qualities on the inner leadership that I wanted to highlight. And maybe two qualities on leading from the outside that I highlight. One is this notion of truth-telling. How do you get people to speak up the truth? I think as you get more and more senior, you know, people often almost hide the truth from the leader.

Yeah.

Or the leadership team. So how do you set up a system where you expect people to come and share the truth with you? We have a story of a media company CEO in that chapter. And then linked to that is this notion of fearless learning. You know, how do we learn from every conversation? So Ashish you may remember from your time at McKinsey, the whole asking, giving, receiving feedback, how do you do that from a spirit of learning, a spirit of love?

So that like you're you're really helping people grow each time. So just a warning for you, we'll finish this podcast, and I'd love feedback from you on you know what did I do well and you know how can I improve. That's just like a micro practice that really helps leaders grow, but also institutions learn so that like even after a successful project, there is a retro that people can do to see how they can improve, you know, in the book.

We have the story of Admiral Eric Olson, who spent 40 years with the with the US Navy. He was a Navy SEAL himself. And they would always do a retro, even if an operation went well, they would then step back and say, What did we learn from that? How could we do better? And do better not just from a technical standpoint, but also from a culture capability standpoint, so that the institution can get better.

over time. So really those two qualities around truth telling and fearless learning, I wanted to highlight. And you can see some of the micro practices already in what I'm describing, Ashish.

Yeah. Yeah, it's very powerful, right? In fact, you know, I would even say, I love that you call it fearless learning, but I don't think I've ever learned unless I felt fearless. Right? Most organizations want to be learning organizations. they want to do safe to fail experiments, but nobody it but failure is not tolerated.

Right, right, yeah.

Right, right.

And so, you know, I love it that you explicitly call fearless to call out the fact that yes, you want people to learn, but you're not creating those conditions where they can be fearless. And so I want to go there next, Ramesh, and say, you know, so let's say you say, okay, I get it. How do I go about it? How do I create an environment where people can learn fearlessly?

Yeah, it's a great question. And I think, you know, we the book explores some of this, but there's a lot of broader research as well. You know, Amy Edmondson's work

On psychological safety in teams, you know, is is is one critical dimension. I think the leaders themselves role modeling this notion of asking for feedback. when you ask for feedback and then you're given feedback, it tends to be 10 times more effective. And to make this culture of asking for feedback.

When the leader asks for feedback and role models that behavior, then there's a high chance that everybody around them also then asks for feedback. So that's like a critical micro practice that we've seen. And then beyond that, you know, all the incentive systems, how do you then make it okay to to fail, celebrating failures if done with the right spirit? you know, I've heard the story of of a leading bank in Asia.

I love that.

Where there was a huge issue in their technology rollout. But the CEO, everybody told the CEO to fire the chief digital officer. And he said, no, he has done everything in the right way. The process, the approach that they did was all like spot on. And so he decided that, you know, this was a genuine mistake that resulted in a big issue for them. And therefore, it's a great learning experience. And that was the signal that he was giving to the system. So

I think some of these qualities around role modeling the right behavior, incentivizing, you know, setting up the right incentives so that it's okay to make mistakes, but setting an expectation that you have to learn from those mistakes, and then teaching people the right skills as well, so that often, you know, I've found that people don't have a culture of fearless learning because they don't know how.

So, teaching people how to ask for feedback, receive feedback, give feedback, all of those become important dimensions. And then overall, like a narrative or a story around it, you know, you may remember the influence model that we often talk about. So it's really those are the dimensions I see, Ashish, to to help a system evolve in this direction.

Yes.

Yeah. You know, one of my clients instituted what are called Failure Fridays, where they actually actively invite people to share failures and learnings as a way to say, hey, it's okay to fail. Right. And and it was started actually by the leader who himself talked about a failure and what they learned from it. And look, I mean I l I love that, you know, you mentioned Amy Edmondson's work, right? It was and I still remember

Right.

Yeah.

The kind of starting point of our own journey into psychological safety, which was this NICU, where the highest performing NICU actually had both the highest number of reported failures and successes because they learned from it. Whereas many others had low failures and low success. And the answer isn't that they had lower failures, it just they didn't report it.

Yeah.

Right, right.

So I I love I love this notion of like how do you celebrate failures? How do you tell? You mentioned vulnerability. Now that's a space that many leaders feel like I'm a leader. How am I being a leader if I'm I can't people expect me to know the answers? I cannot be vulnerable. So talk to me a little bit, Ramesh, about what most leaders get wrong about vulnerability. As afraid as they are to be vulnerable.

You when you

You know, when we talk about vulnerability, what we're not recommending is, you know, if a if an institution is in crisis, if a leader goes in and says, you know, we're in a crisis, I have no clue what we should be doing, you know, I would say, you know, you should probably fire that leader, right? Like, you know, they they they they they they're not ready for that role and responsibility. So

the i idea of vulnerability i is it's really about being clear about when, how and where am I being vulnerable, with whom am I be v being vulnerable. So

There's a lot of thoughtfulness and judgment on the vulnerability topic. And like I said earlier, a leader absolutely has to set the right mission, you know, values, expectations, goals, all of that. So that, you know, you you you cannot you know you you you cannot delegate that to a point where

There's lack of strategic clarity, you know, that absolutely leads to poor performance. So I think those dimensions you need to have. But having said that, when you don't have a clear answer or when you're going to go into a when you're you when you have to experiment, then you need to be comfortable being vulnerable. I gave the example of Michael Fisher. Maybe I'll share another example of Rita Roy, who led the MasterCard Foundation for a long period of time.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Rita, you know, all you know, they they they their their endowment you know is is is is you know 40 billion dollars plus in endowment. They do like fantastic work around economic development, job creation in Africa. And Rita always led with very clear set of values, mission, goals, etc.

But if there was a problem, you know, for example, how to create digital jobs and digital jobs for women in Kenya, as just an example, almost by definition, you have to experiment. And when she would meet with

A nonprofit partners or the government or her own team, she would be very clear to say, hey, we need to experiment and we're gonna try out a couple of different ways, and then we'll see what works. Some might work, some might fail, and then we'll learn and we'll scale what works. So as a leader, you need to be able to come into those moments and be very clear on the values and the mission and expectations, et cetera.

one of the micro practices is Rita would off always make sure that a meeting has a clear outcome, et cetera, but then really wait for everybody else to speak and then share her ideas with the group. And then you know that would allow everybody to have the psychological safety, share their ideas.

Because often, as a leader, if I give my direction or my hypothesis, there's a very high likelihood, especially if you're a respected leader, that everybody starts following that direction. So part of this is like how do you create that environment where everybody is excited to speak up, shares their ideas, and then there is like a clear path forward. You obviously you share your own ideas as well. And then if there is no clear direction or if there is like a

you know, a tie that needs to be broken. You as a leader, you cannot delegate that. But beyond that, really allowing the team to come up with ideas, being open about where are we going to do some experiments? I think that is what we talk about when when we frame the concept of vulnerability. Some people like the word authenticity as a kind of close cousin to vulnerability. I can see that as well.

So I think part of this is also if when a leader is thinking about going on the vulnerability journey, I tell them: don't take the biggest crazy vulnerable move you can make, but pick something that you're slightly uncomfortable with, be a little more vulnerable than what you would have otherwise been. So that you're being

Authentic to yourself, and then if that works, double down. If that doesn't work, then get some feedback, do a retro, and then you can pivot and set your own tone for for openness to ideas, experimentation, so that the institution can become stronger than any individual leader, Ashish.

Yeah, I love that. And this notion of how do you create that safe space, right? And the fact that it's not done in one swoop, but I think we can grow through it. I still remember from our very early my first training at the firm, we talked about the concept of the Johari window and how over time, right, we can start from very little known knowns between us and the others.

Right, yes.

But the more we let ourselves be known to others, and the more others can reveal things about our own self through feedback that we might not be aware of. As leaders, if we start to go do that, we also create space for others to start. And all of a sudden, you know, over a period of time,

Do you actually create a space where we all trust each other, we feel we can be vulnerable, we can more f easily say, I don't know. So others, if they might have some thoughts, we can create together.

Yeah, absolutely.

Right. So vulnerability is something that people are afraid of and turn that into a superpower for an organization. Now, Ramesh, you've talked a lot also about this concept of in a period of high strain, it's critical for organizations to be able to metabolize strain. Right? We don't have a choice not to feel stressed.

But we absolutely have an obligation to learn to make that an ally. So that's where I want to go next. which is what are some ways in which you see leaders truly make stress an ally and and learn to thrive in it versus burnout yeah, from it.

Yeah, burnout is a very real phenomenon today. and and I see leaders at all levels. you know, whether it's leaders in the C suite or leaders in the frontline coming new into an organization, all of them face a risk of of burnout. And I think I like this notion of stress as an ally. Yeah, you know, we don't explicitly talk about it in the book, but very much that's an underlying theme.

And I think part of it is any stress that I feel or any anxiety that I hold, I typically see as an entry point into a self-reflection process journey. It's it's a test for my own operating system to see am I working my best or not. And then back to my point about you know what I call corporate athletes.

Learning from the sports people to then use these opportunities to reframe and come back to presence and my own purpose. So the the key here is to inject enough recovery time so that I can process and as you said, metabolize the stress, use that as a learning practice to say what new micro practice am I going to test today or this week, this month.

That is going to help me become stronger, my team gets stronger, my institution gets stronger. So that it's not like I'm ignoring the stress or the anxiety or the fear. I'm staying with it, but then I'm I'm metabolizing that. I learned from a teacher that you know when when when when I have a a stress or an inner fear, I I like to have that that inner fear be in the backseat of.

Of the car that I'm driving versus be the driver of the car. So that you know, I lead from purpose, I lead from my own values. but those fears are very valuable assets for me. And so looking at them in the rear view mirror, just knowing that they're feeling safe, comfortable, well-held.

allows me to be even more bolder and lean forward and be in tune with my purpose. So that's a little bit of the mental model that that we've seen leaders adopt, Ashish

Yeah, so don't avoid it. Don't push it down to say it doesn't matter, but instead truly have it as a co-passenger where they have a voice, but you know, we are actually leading from purpose, and there might be a couple of other allies, right? That are also there. around. I know you and I are.

both kind of you know we both love Amy Amy Fox and Erica I love this concept of her you know the four she talks about these four personas right that we all that we all carry and and really being able to create a true symphony rather than one person who's just kind of completely taking over. I I love that I love that construct. Any other key components beyond what we have talked about

Right, right.

Right, right.

Ramesh, for leaders to build their inner operating system in these trying times, but also times that offer unbelievable possibilities than ever before.

Yeah, I I talk about a personal operating system and a family operating system. My personal operating system has you know my own priorities, the roles I play in different things I do, the things that give me energy and being very deliberate about that, and then how I'm spending my time with people and topics that really give my energy. And then when I think about managing my own, I often say manage energy before time.

Mm.

And you know, part of that is the diet, the exercise, the sleep that allows me to be at peak performance as much as possible, Ashish. So that's like the personal operating model. And then there is a family operating model where my wife and I, you know, we've been married 31 years. And as we've thought about our own individual purpose and then our collective purpose, as you know, education and especially education in India is a critical.

Yeah.

Dimension, you know, my wife Charuta, she runs her own nonprofit called Problem Solvers Lab. And I sit on four education nonprofit boards, just making sure that this is synergistic. We're learning together, and we are helping under-resourced communities, schools, students in India is a big driver for our collective purpose. And we use that to then manage you our own time and spending time.

On things that give us energy. We go on hikes together. We're learning Indian classical music together now. So those are all like things we have done in our family operating model so that you know we're being thoughtful about who we are, what we are doing, what gives us energy, how we are spending time. So that's at least what I've observed these leaders do, Ashish.

wow.

This has been such a power pack as always conversation dramesh with you. So many unbelievable practices that I think leaders and our listeners can take away and and implement in their lives, right? Ideally almost with teams rather than by themselves. We always are better at forming habits when we when we practice together. I wanna end with this question around as you're

Thinking about leaders today and what the the kind of leaders the world needs now, what gives you hope?

you know, I'm intrinsically a positive person. So a big part of my hopes comes from my own inner journey, my own resilience. and because of what I've gone through, I hear you know incredible stories, stories that have trauma attached to it, and stories that have very, very tough situations.

But through all of these, I've seen human beings, the human spirit, I've seen leaders come through, tackle these problems with grace, with humility, with strength, with a strong sense of purpose. And I see so many such examples around me today that that is what gives me hope.

It's not going to be easy because you know you just open the newspaper and you can see so many stories of despair. So, again, back to the discussion we had, I'm I'm I I you know I'm very grounded in that reality, and and there's such unbelievable sources of inspiration and hope. We just talked about a few of those leaders, you know, Frank D'Souza, Michael Fisher.

Amy Edmondson, Rita Roy, like these are all leaders and what they are continuing to do, all of this gives me hope about the future and what's possible in the world, Ashish.

Yeah. Well, that's beautiful. Me as well. I always remember, you know, at in every moment, as you said, the newspaper is filled with so many things that, you know, are calling for us and can can be activating. But I think if we can remember that for every moment like that, whether it was the Venezuela earthquake, whether it's what's happening.

in Gaza or in Iran or anywhere, anywhere in Africa, in every place where humans are suffering, there is another human trying to do their best to help them. They might be few in number, but there are there. And the fact that despite so much suffering, the humans who are there by themselves are not just putting their hands and saying it is over. They're fighting through it.

Yes.

Those stories never get told, but those stories are there. And if we just look closely enough that we would find that right where darkness sits, light is there as well.

Ramesh, thank you for this amazing conversation. I am grateful to have had a chance to work and know you for 17 years at the firm and then continued following your work over the last four years since I've left. I appreciate the positive force for good and change you are in the world and how you're using your platform to help so many, whether it is

Helping underprivileged kids get education, helping leaders become more positive leaders and change their operating systems to thrive and and create better things for the world. Thank you.

Thank you for having me, Ashish.