Do you lead from the head or from the heart? Bill George believes the workforce today is looking for a sense of belonging; they want you to help them fulfill their goals. He sits down with Kevin to discuss True North and shifting your mindset to serve the people who work for you. To lead from the heart, you need: to learn it all, not know it all, empathy, passion for business, and courage.

Key Points

Meet Bill

• Name: Bill George 
• His Story: Bill George is the author of Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Fieldbook, Authentic Leadership, True North, Finding Your True North, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis, and True North Groups. His newest book is True North – Emerging Leader Edition. He is an executive fellow at Harvard Business School (HBS), where he has taught leadership since 2004.
• Worth Mentioning: Bill is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic. Under his leadership, Medtronic’s market capitalization grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion, averaging 35 percent a year. He received the 2014 Bower Award for Business Leadership and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2012. He has been named one of the Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years by PBS, Executive of the Year by Academy of Management, and Director of the Year by National Association of Corporate Directors
• https://www.billgeorge.org/

This is a special episode of the Remarkable Leadership podcast entitled My Remarkable Journey. Kevin sits down with Matt Blumberg to learn about his journey toward becoming the leader he is today. Matt is the CEO of Bolster, an on-demand executive talent marketplace. He believes humans like to keep learning and thinks about a career as a jungle gym, not a ladder. Your next step could be any bar you can reach. Further, he understands the importance of culture. You will have a culture regardless, so be intentional in shaping that culture and give everyone ownership.

Meet Matt

• Name: Matt Blumberg 
• His Story: Matt Blumberg is a technology entrepreneur, business builder, and CEO of Bolster. Before Bolster, Matt was founder & CEO of Return Path, the market leader in email optimization, until its sale in 2019. Under Matt’s leadership, Return Path won numerous employer of choice awards including #2 on Fortune Magazine’s “Best Companies to Work for” list. Matt is a co-author of the second edition of Startup Boards, released in June 2022.
• https://startupceo.com/
• https://linkedin.com/in/BlumbergMatt
• https://twitter.com/MattBlumberg
• https://facebook.com/BolsterTalent

Do you work with any difficult people? Research indicates when we deal with difficult people, our creativity, productivity, and engagement suffer. Conflict and stress compromise our ability to think clearly and make sound decisions. Amy Gallo joins Kevin to share practical advice about how to deal with challenging relationships. She tells us that although we have more positive and/or neutral interactions in a day, we tend to focus on the negative. We should be more empathetic and come up with different reasons why/what motivates another’s behavior. We should also take a step back to see if we are the difficult person. This episode was recorded during Virtual LeaderCon 2022.

Key Points

Meet Amy

• Name: Amy Gallo 
• Her Story: Amy Gallo is the author of two books: Getting Along: How to Work With Anyone (Even Difficult People) and the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict. She has written hundreds of articles for Harvard Business Review, where she is a contributing editor. Her writing has been collected in numerous books including ones on feedback, emotional intelligence, and managing others. She works with individuals and teams to help them better collaborate, communicate, and transform their culture to support dissent and debate.
• Worth Mentioning: For the past three years, Amy has co-hosted HBR’s popular Women at Work podcast, which examines the struggles and successes of women in the workplace. Amy has delivered keynotes and workshops at hundreds of companies and conferences. She has taught at Brown University and Penn and is a graduate of both Brown and Yale University.

Connect with Amy Gallo

• https://www.amyegallo.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-gallo-31b9932/
• https://twitter.com/amyegallo

Do you give yourself permission to lead? Jacqueline Baker believes when we open that door, good things will happen. She thinks that there are four levels of leadership, and it starts with the leadership of self. We need to recognize our strengths as well as our challenges AND continue to get better. Further, we all have a default leadership style. For the greatest success, we need to be willing to take on new styles as the situation changes.

Key Points

How often do you feel stifled by all the red tape? Do you ever think you could get more done if your organization wasn’t so bureaucratic? Nick Sinai tells Kevin that bureaucracy is just organizations with rules and procedures. It does not have a positive or negative connotation. However, when we take the time to understand them, we can continue to improve them. Further, you don’t need to be an executive to get things done. When people take change on themselves, they build the momentum for change. Nick shares some bureaucratic hacks to get unstuck.

Key Points

Meet Nick

• Name: Nick Sinai 
• His Story: Nick Sinai is the co-author of Hack Your Bureaucracy: Get Things Done No Matter What Your Role on Any Team with Marina Nitze. He is a venture capitalist, adjunct Harvard faculty, and a former senior White House official in the Obama Administration. As a Senior Advisor at Insight Partners, Nick serves on the board of Rebellion Defense, Hawkeye360, LeoLabs, and Shift5.
• Worth Mentioning: Nick writes and teaches about technology in government and serves as a commissioner on the Atlantic Council's Commission on Remaking the US Defense Innovation System. He is a regular contributor to the TV Show Government Matters and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. Recently, Nick co-founded the U.S. Digital Corps, a new two-year federal fellowship for early-career technologists, launched in the summer of 2021.