Leadership Lessons

What is leadership? What defines a leader? Is it how they think, how they act, how they live? In honour of the launch of the inaugural Leaders50 list, Anne Morriss, (Thinkers50 Ranking), leads a discussion on the future of leadership with three outstanding thinkers.

Anders Inset is a business philosopher, deep tech investor, and author of The Viking Code: The Art and Science of Norwegian Success. One of the leadership competencies Anders strongly believes in is self-trust: first you need to trust yourself, he says, in order to build trust with other human beings. He also advocates for leaders to “create better problems” rather than always seek for finite solutions. A finite solution is a finite game but as human beings, Anders contends, we have an infinite capability to come up with better explanations and better problems. “The most fundamental thing that we human beings have is progress.”

Wendy Smith is a professor of management and co-author with Marianne Lewis of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems. Together they are also the recipients of the Thinkers50 2023 Breakthrough Idea Award. Wendy is recognised globally for her expertise on strategic paradoxes and her work focuses on helping leaders and organisations navigate competing demands and thrive in complexity. For Wendy, a core competency of leadership today and into the future is the ability to lean into the complexity of opposites. “It used to be that we talked about leaders who had that complexity as flip-floppers. We didn’t like that inconsistency. I think that we need to create that capability for leaders to be able to talk about that complexity effectively.”

Author of Dare to Un-Lead: The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World (a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book for 2023), Celine Schillinger spent almost two decades as a leader in the biotech space. Her work focuses on how organisations can empower people to lead together, and she invites us to reject traditional models of top-down leadership. In short, she says, leadership has become a flawed and toxic ideology, and she questions why we are transforming a noble idea and a noble practice into such a harmful ideology with real effects on people, not only in the workplace but in society at large. “Solutions cannot be found in any individual, even the most famous ones. I think we should stop worshipping those famous people and instead look for the solutions in our group with our colleagues, with our peers.”

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Transcript

Anne Morriss:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to you, our guests, and to all of you out there for a conversation we’re having today, in honor of the launch of the new Leaders50 list. I’m Anne Morriss, I’m your host today. I spend my time thinking and writing and talking about leadership. We have a provocative agenda today for this panel, which is to figure out what this leadership thing really is. How are we going to define it now, in the future? This thing that still often lives in this know it when we see it list of human ideas, the esteemed group of thinkers we’ve gathered to answer this question are all leading the intellectual charge that is shaping the future of leadership. Let me introduce them to you. Anders Indset is a philosopher, deep tech investor, author of The Viking Code: The Art and Science of Norwegian Success. Anders, your work focuses on bridging humanity and technology and promoting a practical philosophy that combines ancient wisdom and future ready skills. What else should we know about you and your work in the context of this conversation?

Anders Indset:

Yeah, I have a background as a hardcore capitalist. I spent quite a few years within the organisation looking at these topics. I very early discovered what I distinguish between management in terms of putting into order and using technology, I realised, in particular, the European larger corporations that I work with that a lot of philosophical questions were on the table of the leaders. I was always very fascinated by the philosophical contemplation and I decided to build a bridge between the philosophical way of approaching things. We see that today obviously with the rise of AI, that it’s not about a knowledge society, but a society of understanding. I looked at that in a context in my latest book. I was writing a book about capitalism, but I discovered that the topic of activation and bringing leaders to the front, having friction and trust, how to build cultures of tapping into the unknown is much more relevant today because of the technology.

The commodity of knowledge as we know in philosophy, the structures of thinking in itself and not what to think, but how to think became even more relevant. I play obviously a lot with the ethical challenges of AI because I am invested in AI and quantum tech and I do that in terms of ROL, return on learning, and I like to invest in tech companies. I’m a very passionate tech investor. I really love the aspect of mensch to human being. Leadership and that topic of the human factor is very relevant to me.

Anne Morriss:

Beautiful, beautiful. Yes, we very much want to get into this question of technology today. Let’s bring on another panelist with a strong point of view. Wendy Smith is a professor of management and the co-author of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems. Wendy, you are recognised globally for your expertise on strategic paradoxes. Your work focuses on helping leaders and organisations really navigate, competing demands, and thrive in complexity. Is this a fair summary of your work? Anything you want to add before we dive in?

Wendy Smith:

It’s a great summary, Anne. I’m looking forward to finding the ‘ands’ in our conversation for sure. And I’m really looking forward to thinking about how both/and, how paradox informs the leadership of the future.

Anne Morriss:

Absolutely. That is at the heart of today’s conversation. Our last panelist, Celine Schillinger is the author of Dare to Un-Lead: The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World. Celine, you are also a sought after leadership consultant. You spent almost two decades as a leader in the biotech space. Your work focuses on how organisations can empower people to lead together and you invite us to reject traditional models of top-down leadership. Is that a fair summary of what you are up to?

Celine Schillinger:

I think it is. Thank you very much. I think leadership in short has become a flawed and toxic ideology and I’m very curious. I’m trying to explore how we all contribute to this monster that has become leadership, that is fueling a gigantic industry, books and courses and consultants and so on. My own interest in leadership came from the field. I was never interested particularly in it prior to entering the workforce and seeing from the inside all the negative aspects of it. Although those leaders I was working with, they were all reading the right books. They were all very, very literate in the science of leadership. And I wondered, and that led me to writing this book. Why is it that we’re transforming a noble idea and a noble practice into such a harmful ideology with real effects on people, not only in the workplace but in society at large.

Anne Morriss:

I love that. Flawed, toxic, monster. These are strong words and I can’t wait to get into it. Before we dive into our main agenda, I want to ask each of you how you ended up caring so much about this topic. Anders, why don’t we start with you? Why did you decide to spend so much of your time thinking about leadership?

Anders Indset:

Yeah, I think that’s a really relevant question in the light of technology. I’m writing a book on the new existentialism, in which I talk about a state of being undead. We have a reactive society where we have developed a binary way of thinking. It’s your opinion/my opinion. I very much resonate with Wendy and both/and, and the paradox. Famously Søren Kierkegaard was the one, I think, who said, “A thinker without a paradox is like a lover without passion.” It’s a mediocre mediocrity, right? It is that, the binary way of communicating as seen through social media with a thumbs up/thumbs down society where the economical incentive has become a reaction and not a reflection where we think we can know something. I think that that is what drove me the most, because the consequences of this, if you put an AI or an AGI on steroids and add quantum technology to it, you will have that either undead society like a zombie apocalypse, if you like, where the lights are on but there is no one home to perceive them.

Or you would get into a very – as you could see now, in the political landscape – you’ll have a division of absolutism where we are held hostage in our own self-evident truth. This was to me very relevant to understand that it’s not about solutions and solving problems, but to having an understanding of the complexity of a problem and to improve the state of the problem. David Deutsch writes about this very much. But I’m a very strong believer in creating better problems as in comparisons to finite solutions. Because a finite solution is a finite game. I think we have an infinite capability as human beings to come up with better explanations and better problems. There are circumstances where we are thrown back and we have to start at the new entrance point. But even then, the most fundamental things that we human beings have is progress.

We were capable with two thumbs to create tools and we want to have progress, because the progress is when we experience that. We get to experience what it means to be alive, the essential Lebendigkeit as we would say in German. That to me led me to that aspect of leadership that I relate to. The full effect of being a human being or a mensch, something that we do not know what it is. And as long as we don’t know what it is, we still have a journey. And that journey, discoveries, and experiences is what I relate to when I think and reflect on the topic of leadership.

Anne Morriss:

Wendy, I want to get you in here to react to what Anders just beautifully articulated, what Celine threw down in the beginning here. I’m curious about how Both/And Thinking can help us through some of the tensions that they both described? But I’m also very interested in why you decided to put these tensions at the center of your work. Why don’t we start there and then I’ll give you a chance to issue a rebuttal here.

Wendy Smith:

Anne, they say that research is mesearch, and so I started out studying myself truly.

Anne Morriss:

You’re not alone.

Wendy Smith:

Yeah, I know I’m in good company. I don’t say this that often, but as a high schooler I was in a youth group and ended up being the international president of that youth group and took off my first year of college. And loved the idea that you could make a difference through engaging people. Having a vision. Getting something done. That was my first definition of leadership through that experience. I went on to college and I couldn’t figure out exactly what my vision is or how I wanted to get it done and felt really at bay. When I went back to do a PhD, I was feeling these tug of wars, these tensions in my own career decisions, in my own life decisions. And when I came across this notion of paradox, a word that sometimes can feel really alienating to people, to me it was like this big aha that we have these ancient wisdom traditions that tell us that it’s not just that things can coexist, but that there are ways in which there’s this interdependent, synergistic reinforcing relationship between opposites in a more complex way.

That was a huge aha moment for me and also became a huge aha moment as I was thinking about the research I was doing on leaders. At the time it was IBM senior leaders. They were navigating complex innovation. But certainly today, it’s looking at this complexity, Anders, that you’re talking about. Celine, that you’re talking about of what it means to be a person navigating the complexity that we are facing in the world, having to bring that into their organisations and at the same time try and be a mensch, and at the same time deal with our integrity around the moral decisions that we’re facing. I have such compassion and empathy. And for me this idea of both/and is an opportunity to help leaders navigate that complexity. To lean into and find ways to deal with that complexity.

Anne Morriss:

I love it. It’s an inspiring flag to plant. Celine, I’m curious, before we soldier on in this conversation, a little bit about your journey to this provocative position that you’ve staked out here. Was there a pivotal moment for you that led you to question traditional models of leadership?

Celine Schillinger:

Oh yes, very much so. There was a moment in time and it’s very precise, it’s December 2010. At that time I had been working in this large corporation for 10 years after working another 10 years, the first 10 years of my life, in small entrepreneurial companies. And in this big one, the big global established pharma company, I tried to conform very much for the first several years. Progressively I realised that the company was actually not very innovative, not very modern, not able to connect with the diversity of the world that it was supposed to serve.

I wondered why and I questioned myself very much. For some time I realised I was not rising any longer through the ranks. Then I thought the problem was me. Then I realised, I looked back and for the first time I saw the system and I realised that the system itself was behaving in a way, was maintaining a status quo that had served this organisation very well in the past. But I was definitely not bringing it into the future. That was canceling, in a way, the talent of so many people in its organisation. The diversity was completely muted and leadership was almost like a 19th century leadership perpetuating itself.

I thought, “It’s a shame.” Because I really love this company. I really wanted good for it. I thought, “There are probably many here who want to help it step into the 21st century and serve its customers better. I started really without thinking too much about it, but I started a movement by taking a stance, sending out an open letter to the CEO and this letter became viral and that was the beginning of a movement. And I realised through this movement, through activism, in the service of the company… Once again, it was not like a revolt. It was a grassroots movement of employees wanting to lock arms and do something to bring progress and new ideas. And I realised the power of this kind of leadership, the we together. Yes, exactly. I was-

Anne Morriss:

Let’s define it, because I want to get to our central question today and I think this is a beautiful bridge. Let’s assume that this word leadership is carrying a lot of baggage as you’ve described. What is a better way to think and talk about this practice of unleashing human potential, creating environments where other people can thrive? Give us a way to think about it. Give us some new language. Walk us through where you are on this.

Celine Schillinger:

I will use the same… You spoke about unleashing and I really like this word and I called my book ‘unlead,’ Dare to Un-Lead. I feel that leadership has become part of the problem, not part of the solution. And the more we push ideas into the world that people need to be this and that and this and that, we are creating superhero fantasies. They do not exist. We cannot be everything at the same time. We can be better at handling paradoxes for sure. We can be better at applying the secular wisdom of the Nordic countries certainly. But I feel that we need to do that together. Those solutions cannot be found in any individual, even the most famous ones. I think we should stop worshiping those famous people and instead look for the solutions in our group with our colleagues, with our peers.

I suggest three values that I think are helpful. The value of freedom. Taking more freedom, more agency from the system. And it starts with oneself. How can you create more freedom for yourself and for the others in a system, looking at the system and trying to change it from the inside. And the second useful idea I suggest is equality, not egalitarianism. But a system that would be stripped of those dynamics of domination and submission that I think are very, very detrimental to the overall efficiency. And finally, the third idea that I’m putting in the mix is community engagement, building community… It’s not because an organisation is an organisation that it is a community. A community takes effort and a community is bonded by joy, you mentioned that, Anders, in your book, by pleasure and it’s a willful community. It’s a community where people join because they want it and because they find pleasure in it.

Anne Morriss:

Beautiful. Anders, that list that Celine just articulated does seem very resonant with your work and in particular you emphasize mindset in addition to values. From your perspective, let’s just use the word leader just as a practical term right now. What defines a leader? Is it how they think, how they act, how they live? Walk us through it from your perspective.

Anders Indset:

Yeah, first of all, I very much resonate with Celine, but I think, also, there are superstars. We have human beings and they’re not flawless. We are failtastic, I would say, in the sense of doing stupid things but also amazing things. I think there are superstars. But that’s not the general scheme of things. If you look at an organisation and you play with the word culture, that magical word that you could not really put into a box but you could feel it when it’s there. If you could resonate with how it used to be prior to the pandemic … for example, we had a trillion-dollar industry that happened at one particular place in the company. It was the coffee machine. People bumped into each other and they sparked ideas and it tapped into the unknown. And the basis of that was what I think is the essence of progress in any organisation and that is literally friction and trust.

If you cannot tap into that strive towards understanding the will to truth, if you like. If you’re not open to another opinion, then it’s hard to get somewhere. To try to answer your question on these leadership skills from that perspective, I think friction and trust is fundamental. And if you look at many leaders today that I would title as managers of organizations that are still hierarchical, you could say that power play and controlling things is a sense of power. I argue that that is overplayed insecurity. One of the leadership competencies that I strongly believe in is self-trust. First to trust yourself in order to build trust with other human beings. That would be like… If you look at Brené Brown, who talks a lot about vulnerability and tapping into that awkward feeling in your stomach when you don’t know nothing and you go home and you read about it and you come together tomorrow and talk about it on eye level. Where the strive towards a mutual new state of being, a progress, or the unknown is the essence of the organisation.

I think that’s very, very valuable. I think another skill that is very relevant today is to anticipate the future. I write a lot about anticipating the future as a comparison to reacting. And that particularly holds true for technology. Whereas in the past we had results out of studies of the past and we tried to project that into the future, it has become so rapid that you should understand that exponential technologies over the past 80 years is a thing because it’s on an exponential curve put on a line. It’s a linear path. Wars, pandemics, doesn’t matter, it progresses. And to argue that we will have a halt or known theater breakthroughs in technology or science, I think that would be a radical thesis and people tend to see that I’m a futurist in the radical thoughts. I think it’s very conservative and very, very dull because I think it will continue.

Anne Morriss:

Right.

Anders Indset:

Why are we not capable of anticipating? Take an example, battery costs have dropped 90% within the last 10 years and it’s going to drop another 30% next year. And to think about energy as a topic of climate or sustainability, it’s probably not going to hold true because we’re going to have an almost infinite access to almost free energy. At least a marginal cost of the next kilowatt that will come into the mix because of the investment, because of exponential progress. What does that mean for business models and so on and so forth? To anticipate future scenarios such as ending the war in Ukraine, Africa growing from 1.5 to 4 billion people. This is a skill that is highly lacking today under leaders. They are busy reacting and functioning. I would also add to that collectivism, there is a word in Norwegian called dugnad.

It’s like the Danish hygge. And dugnad is a model that I strongly believe in terms of just putting in the effort for others. I write a lot about these athletes that are at the top of the pinnacle of individual sports and they became so by serving the collective. I argue that in your organisation if everyone is doing better, you have a better playing field. You have a practice pitch where everyone around you is doing better. If we have the same access to technology, we have an infinite access to knowledge. The aspect of culture and a culture of progress becomes fundamental, the only USP that you have. And therefore, if you invest in other people to rise and you have an aspiration as an individual to grow, you have a higher environment of competitiveness or skill set. Therefore, where people are afraid to hire people that are better than themselves, I think that’s totally wrong. That collective essence, and if you look into a-

Anne Morriss:

Anders, I’m going to cut you off because I want to get Wendy in on this.

Anders Indset:

Yeah, sure.

Anne Morriss:

I love the list you’re building. I love the list that you and Celine have collectively built here. There’s so many exciting words. Trust, self-trust, freedom, equality, collectivism. I’m not going to try to capture the Danish magic in this vocabulary. But Wendy, what would you add to this beautiful list, the most critical ideas or qualities that define leadership today?

Wendy Smith:

Anne, shockingly, I’m going to try and both/and this list.

Anne Morriss:

Wait, what?

Wendy Smith:

It’s a little bit of a professional hazard, I will say. When I teach leadership… By both/and I want to pull apart two big ideas and then see how they come together. That’s what we mean by both/and. When I teach leadership, I emphasize the idea that leadership as a practice, as I was saying before, is having a vision, something you want to do and implementing that vision. And the reason that is really valuable to me when I teach leadership is because anyone, in any role, in any part of the hierarchy can assert leadership. Then I differentiate that there is what I call little l leadership, people who can get stuff done, know what they want to do using influence. But at the same time there’s also big L leadership, the person in the formal role.

Now importantly, we need both. We need both. If I were thinking about lead and un-lead. If I were thinking about building… I love this building, capable of freedom and equality and building community to enable people to be their best. I lean into that. Little l leadership can do that. We can create cultures that bring out the best in everyone so that they all contribute. We also need the big L leaders to create the boundaries in the playing fields that make that happen most. Just recently, the leader is a favourite leader of mine who I’ve been connected with, Steve Albertson, I want to call him out, leader of a Danish consulting firm implement that is just killing it in the market in terms of employee satisfaction, in terms of reducing turnover in a professional services realm because he is a leader that has said, “What do we do to create the conditions where everybody can show up best?”

But he, as a leader, in that role understands that there’s some work that he has to do in that leadership role to create the conditions for others. I’ll just pause… And by the way, that there is the positive reinforcing loop as opposed to the negative downward… The leader takes over and diminishes everybody else. I want to just pause there and maybe put a pin in, noting that my experience in talking with leaders today is that those kinds of leaders, the people at the top of the organisation, are under assault and creating the conditions. What can we do? What can we offer to those leaders to create the conditions where they can be at their best is a huge question that I’ve been grappling with and maybe one that we can play around with a little bit.

Anne Morriss:

I love that. Let’s come back to it. I want to just try something for our audience. I’m a big believer in the number three, the magic number three. If I were going to give each of you one word to define what is most important about successful leadership today, and again, Celine, indulge me in the continued use of this word. Just give me one, let’s build a list of three. Celine, give me one word from your perspective

Celine Schillinger:

Together.

Anne Morriss:

Together. Anders?

Anders Indset:

I would’ve taken both/and because I’m a strong believer in paradox, but because that’s something that I’ve been working for many years. I strongly will leave it to big L and a small l letters. That’s why I said, we need superstars. But let’s go with activation.

Anne Morriss:

I love it. Wendy?

Wendy Smith:

Anne, I have one concept. I like to say that at least that one concept incorporates two, so there’s more complexity to it. Anders, I will lean into both/and or paradox. I do believe and am on a bit of a mission that this competency to lean into the complexity of opposites is going to be a core competency of leadership… Is the core competency of leadership today and into the future? I’m on a bit of a mission to think of it as the way we used to think about EQ 20 years ago. This intriguing idea that now you cannot have a leadership course or you cannot talk about effective leaders without saying they have emotional intelligence. In the complexity of the world we live in, I think we’re not going to be able to talk about effective leaders in the next 20 years without this potential to lean into competing demands both/and.

Anne Morriss:

I love it. We’re going to go with activation together, which requires quite a bit of EQ. I want to go with you, Wendy, in looking to the future now. How do you see the practice of leadership evolving or needing to evolve going forward?

Wendy Smith:

Anne, I was thinking about this just recently. When I was at Harvard Business School, we used to do classes for leaders and we used to show this clip from Jack Welch in which Jack Welch would get up and talk about… Jack Welch GE classic leadership, “Leaders have to be consistent and boring.” And his point was that in order to get people to understand what you have to say, you have to say it again and again and again. That notion of consistent and boring, I think is quaint and antiquated.

Anne Morriss:

Yeah.

Wendy Smith:

That leaders need to be complex and embracing and encompassing. And that’s really hard because that means that what people experience when you say, “I’m going to embrace competing ideas.” Is that they hear, “Oh, you’re not really going with what I believe.” How do we create the conditions? How do we help leaders to live into the integrity that there is legitimacy in that complexity? It used to be that we talked about leaders who had that complexity as flip-floppers. We didn’t like that inconsistency. I think that we need to create that capability for leaders to be able to talk about that complexity effectively.

Anne Morriss:

I love it. And I love invoking Jack Welsh who… Superstar or monster. I think that could also be a subtitle for this panel. Anders, you spend a lot of time thinking about the future. We’ve already talked about it a little bit, but in a world where rapid innovation, constant innovation, infinite innovation becomes normalized for the species, how does this challenge of leadership evolve do you think? How should it evolve?

Anders Indset:

I like the essence of … particularly with Wendy in terms of the… I call it high tolerance of ambiguity. In German you can put it together, Ambiguitätstoleranz, ambiguity tolerance. I add a plus to it in my latest book, The Infected Thinking, ambiguity tolerance plus, which means the capability of tackling ambiguities and also embracing the unknown. And I think that in a world where technology advances, and we will see that in 2025 when AI agents take over the domain of specialised knowledge, lightweighted AI models that will have absolute knowledge. It will replace any absolutism. Therefore, I think this is very, very important in the future and letting go of that essence of being an expert. I picked that up, I can’t remember… I would make a shout-out, but I know who brought it. But I like the term professional amateur.

We work hard and we are in a state of shoshin, as you would say from Zen Buddhism, a beginner’s mind. That essence of learning, and I think that holds true for education within the organisation, whereas leadership education and management education has been about teaching people what to do and how to think. It is more now about learning how to learn and building that toolbox. I think we’re entering an era of generalists that you said, and I think I totally resonate with that, to embrace the complexity of things, and the understanding of the problem is much more important than the quick answer or solution. We are in a world where we seek perfect answers to the wrong question.

Anne Morriss:

I love that. Beautiful. Celine, I really like your phrase, relational leadership. It’s a fundamentally relational practice. You can’t do it by yourself, right? How do you see those challenges evolving going forward? I’m thinking in this moment, we just had a big election in the US. Issues of social justice, global inequality, even climate issues, these things will be part of our challenges as a species going forward and continue to impact our relationships with each other, I think, at a scale that it will feel different going forward than it does now, frankly. How does your model show us a way forward here?

Celine Schillinger:

That’s a beautiful question. I would say I could lecture or give lessons to leaders about behaviours endlessly. I could do that for hours, no problem. But that would only reinforce what is being done today. It wouldn’t change anything. In fact, I actually don’t care about what leaders do individually, what their behaviours are, as long as they maintain a system where companies extract maximum short-term profit from the planet, from people, from resources, et cetera, and put… How can I say? Externalise all the societal negative impact and put it down on individuals and even asking people to manage paradoxes on their own while the system, companies, capitalism is actually saving benefits for just a few of them and putting all the stress on. That’s what comes out throughout the elections everywhere in the world, not just in the US. We’re seeing that people are just revolting.

They’re fed up against this system. And my question to all of us is what are we doing to maintain this or to even make this system crash even faster? Are we taking a big leap forward into the precipice or are we doing things to change that? To connect with other people. To connect technology and people instead of replacing people by technology. It’s not a black or white, and this is where I’m completely connected with Wendy’s ideas. It’s not a black or white at all. That’s why I also don’t want to blame a few people or blame certain technologies. It’s all of us. It’s our own attitudes. What do we purchase? How do we vote? How do we connect with our neighbours, with our local communities? What are the choices we’re making every day? And those choices matter. We cannot just rest comfortably and blame the rest of the world. No, the world is us. Leaders are us and the future is us.

Anne Morriss:

Yeah, beautiful framing. Wendy, I want to go back to your question that you posed to the group. Say it again just so everyone can keep up. You had a great question for your colleagues here.

Wendy Smith:

Well, I think the question that we’re asking is how we deal with the complexity of the world. And I think that question as Anders is saying, what does that mean for…? Again, if I go to the big L, the person at the top of the organisation, how does that person maintain and become a mensch while navigating this complexity? To Celine’s point, how do we think about the collectives of people that are working together? How do we bring those collectives together to deal with all the complexity that we’re dealing with? And you put it right out there, there is increased intensity that we as a society have to deal with, whether it is geopolitical conflicts, whether it is political polarisation, whether it is AI and the impact.

I want to just name that underlying a future that has opportunity is deep uncertainty and underlying uncertainty is fear. And the reaction to fear is that we all get more narrow and, to Celine’s point, turn away from each other. What do our big L leaders need to do to help people turn toward each other? What do our little l leaders need to do to reinforce that kind of connection that allows us to move forward and progress in positive ways?

Anne Morriss:

Anders, what do you think? It’s a big question.

Anders Indset:

Yeah, let me play with it in terms of… I think that putting it into categories, idealism on climate resources. I think that this is something that we have seen from Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future. It’s emotionalising. It’s a positive engagement, but if we talk about the wonderful word of impact that has been much misused, the impact is not very strong. I tend to believe that a capitalistic model is what can drive substantial change for humanity. When I say so, I speak as a Westerner that has more time than ever in human history, more wealth, more health, will live longer and we have had progress for the past 50 years. I think that there is a justified way for other regions of the world to strive for that. But if we understand that owning things becomes exhausting and is not tied to your happiness or your sense of being and we get out of that extrinsic validation of success.

I was a professional athlete. I built my companies. I never felt success. Today I consider myself highly successful, for me, because I get to get up every morning and learn. I have to experience the wonders of normality of life and progress. I think the healthiest state of good entrepreneurs and leaders is that they don’t define themselves out of Ferraris and yachts and consumption, but basically on the experiences that they have. Then all of the things that we have outsourced coming to that aspect of impact and social business. I think that an ecological social market economy will only work if the underlying operating system, namely the economy functions, if there’s something to divide. If we can get people out of poverty, that’s a good thing. Also, I think that in terms of climate, if ecology and economy become united. I think in the US you will see that in the next couple of years where you have a new minister of efficiency and you have a new president and the president wants to bravely drill until it makes economically no sense.

As long as it’s not a competitive advantage, then you will change. And you see that already today in China that it will surpass all the Western countries on solar, on renewable energies, because it makes economic sense. That’s why the challenge of the future is to fuel technologies that serve the benefit of humanity. And that’s why capitalism can be a strong driver. As long as we put it into ideologies, it becomes politically correct, it feels correct. But that’s, first of all, not how we act and live as human beings.

And secondly, I don’t think it’s radical enough. I think capitalism, driving technology, and investing in these models and changing the foundation of capitalism, that there is no other category, right? That the essence is based on a value system that we teach in education starting in kindergarten to get along, to work together, that the essence of being a mensch is not your likes on social media or Ferraris and yachts, but an inner relation to your definition of success. Then I think we can work on those components and then I think we can have substantial change in the values that Celine relates to. I think that’s something I’m a strong believer in, a change in education and also to upgrade capitalism to a humane capitalism.

Anne Morriss:

Beautiful. Celine, I want to get you in here and we’re bumping up against our time together. I could talk to each and all of you for hours. I’m so grateful for your time and insight today. Celine, I want to give you a chance to react, but as we come in for a landing here, I’m curious, what is one lesson that you hope future leaders take away from your work?

Celine Schillinger:

I hope they think about their own practice. They look at their own practice, honestly. It’s great to write books, to be on a stage, to lead big teams, to have great commercial successes, et cetera. Carlos Ghosn did that and then he escaped Japan in a suitcase, remember? And now he’s searched after by justice. These kinds of people, we idolise them. They serve role models for millions of people, and then we realise that they’re full of flaws like everybody else. It may be more flaws because they have more money. Let’s stop looking at what other people do and let’s look at ourselves honestly, authentically, in order to create better conditions for the collective to flourish. The collective is here and now. It’s not at Davos or on whatever stage. It’s here and now in the organisation you work for. And as long as you invest half of your benefits to buy back shares or to drill more, or to… Whatever. Avoid taxes. As long as you do that, I will not believe in your virtuous signaling as a leader. I’m looking at facts and I hope we all do.

Wendy Smith:

Hey, Anne, before we land, can I give you my quick top three answers here?

Anne Morriss:

Yeah, please.

Celine Schillinger:

You said three, so I want to give you our quick top three answers of what we think we need for leaders of the future.

Anne Morriss:

Yeah.

Wendy Smith:

Because if leaders are going to deal with this complexity, here’s my three. One, leaders at the top need to set the big vision that encompasses everyone and the guardrails that prevent us from going too far. Set the boundaries. That we know from research will help create the creativity inside. Two, I think that leaders at the top need to create the conditions to what Celine was saying of creating small intimate relationships in community. We’ve seen this. We’ve studied Gore and associates. They are the power of small teams. How do you create large organisations in which you have small intimate relationships in small teams so people can feel the autonomy, the commitment, the connection to one another and to the work. And number three, create the conditions for the difficult conversations to surface the hard stuff and be in relationship with one another, especially when we disagree. That’s my top three.

Anne Morriss:

I love it. Wendy, let me ask you the same question I asked Celine. Celine, I have a follow up, and then Anders, we’re going to close this out with you. Wendy, if there are people listening and there will be, what is one lesson that you hope people take away from the work that you’re doing?

Wendy Smith:

Yeah, I hope people take away that we live in a complex era and that we feel that, that when I say complexity, we feel it in these emotional tug of wars, this tension between lots of competing priorities that that’s normal and that there are strategies to be able to navigate that going forward. And we need to be learning those strategies and teaching them to others and creating the culture to enable that.

Anne Morriss:

Excellent. All right, Anders, what’s one thing you want us all to take away from your work?

Anders Indset:

From my work is not relevant when tapping into the topic that I think relates. I encourage people to be micro-ambitious. Everything is life-

Anne Morriss:

Define micro-ambitious.

Anders Indset:

Yeah. Everything in life is compound interest. It compounds into the greater good. Most of us will not win a Nobel Prize or the Olympic gold medal, but we can do a lot. And I think that relates back to Celine and also to Wendy, to say that if you experience progress over time… There are always people who ask me, “What’s your goal? What’s your vision?” I say, “I did that.” I had all this finite goal. Today I want to have a high quality of input. Those sort of answers your question. If the quality of the input in the moment is good, and I continue that over time, it’s like running a marathon. You don’t start with the end, you start with the next step and you continue with a high quality of next steps. Life is like that. Wealth, health, everything is compound interest.

If you have a micro-ambition, you can get into the day of your task. You have a higher purpose because you are experienced. What you do, you experience progress. And if you do that over time, then it compounds into something bigger. I think all change that we can do as humanity, as a species on an individual level is to spark those micro-ambitious moments that takes back, to me, what is … essential words in German language that you cannot translate to English, Lebendigkeit.

Consciousness, the experience of your own experience. What it means to be alive. And I think micro-ambitions help us get out of that reaction mode that sucks us into that downward spiral and get back into that reinforcement learning model that Wendy talked about. Being micro-ambitious is like an antidote to… I’m a big believer in strong visions and goals. Micro-ambitious is a nice way to play with Lebendigkeit, the consciousness of daily struggles and the ability of the normality and ordinary things. That is a wonderful journey to know where and filling that with Lebendigkeit.

Anne Morriss:

I love it. I want to ask one more question before we wrap up if you all will indulge me with a few more minutes of your time. You’re all such powerful thinkers. I want to speak to people out there listening to this conversation who are moved to evolution, to doing something differently after hearing from all of you. Celine, I’m going to start with you. You gave a powerful case for introspection. Let’s say I’m moved by this, I don’t have to simulate it. I am indeed moved by that case. Give us a place to start. Give us an action step to take to bridge what you described into our daily lives as leaders and builders and big L, small l managers. We all have these hats. Give me an action I can take to get closer to the world you’ve described.

Celine Schillinger:

Actually, as you said, “You’re a powerful thinker.” My inner me said, “No, no, no, I’m not a powerful thinker. I’m a powerful doer.” That makes a big difference. I don’t want to be necessarily in the world of ideas. I love to play with ideas, but it means nothing. I really hope that paradox, complexity, system thinking, ambiguity, all those words that we love in our world, I hope they are not the fig leaf that hides the lack of willingness to change a corporate system that has become toxic for too many people. I would say stop thinking, start doing.

Anne Morriss:

Just get in there.

Celine Schillinger:

Yes.

Anne Morriss:

I love it. Wendy, give us an action we can take.

Wendy Smith:

If we’re going to lean into both/and, the first step we talk about is changing the question. Changing the questions we ask. The problem is not the problem. Also, it said, “The problem is the way we think about the problem.” Here I’ll cite the research of a great colleague and co-author, Ella Miron-Spektor and her co-authors where they brought people into the lab and told them that these things are in tension with one another. They’re opposite. The way we tend to frame opposites is to an ‘or’ question, which one should I lean into? She did that with a group of people and then with a different group of people. Said, “These things are in tension. They’re opposite. How can we accommodate both of them simultaneously? That led to so much more creativity and possibility and motivation and inspiration. If we could just start by noticing how often we live and frame our lives as or and invite ourselves and the people around us to frame it as an and. We are starting down the path of changing our thinking, our framing, and therefore our approach.

Anne Morriss:

Love it. Ask better questions. Change the frame. Excellent. Anders, close us out, sir.

Anders Indset:

Sir. I love the round and I was thinking about this. I think I want to go back. It must be 2011, and it’s the last trip that Stephen R. Covey makes to Europe. He brings with him his talking stick, the Indian talking stick. I met him as a young… I was very much leaning into those leadership theories and reading a lot and I’m… There’s Stephen R. Covey-

Anne Morriss:

Eager, Hungry?

Anders Indset:

Hungry. He holds my hand literally for a minute and a half and it felt like ages. To me it was awkward. But he looked many the eyes and when he talked about his reflections on leadership and his seven habits. But the one that’s always stuck with me, and I think it’s very much an essence of our conversation and also for leaders in today’s society, I think it’s habit five. Seek first to understand then to be understood. I think never in human history is the understanding of people trying to tell you the essence of understanding that before you start to preach your knowledge or picked-up headline from the latest media, never has that been more relevant in today’s society of the rapidness that we have.

That moment has stuck with me, and it just came back in our conversation today listening to the wonderful words of Celine and Wendy and your moderation here, that this is, I think, something that to pay tribute to a legend, I think seek first to understand, then to be understood, which ties back to philosophy. We don’t need a society of knowledge. We all have infinite access to almost free knowledge today and it only will get better. We need a society of understanding, and that is the root of philosophy. It tackles the essence of Celine’s thinking, and the thinking of Wendy. That would round up this session in my words.

Anne Morriss:

Oh, thank you so much, all of you. Anders, that is the book, his first book, 7 Habits… May not be his first, but that is the book that also got me interested in this conversation and the power it can have broadly when people really engage in what does it mean to take some accountability, not only for our own success, but for the success and contribution and health and well-being of the people around us? You’ve all inspired me on this front. You’ve made us all smarter. Thank you so much for sharing your time and wisdom with us. On behalf of Leaders50, we’re all deeply, deeply grateful. Thank you.

Anders Indset:

Thank you so much.

Wendy Smith:

Thanks Anne.

Anne Morriss:

Thanks everyone.

Celine Schillinger:

Thank you.

Anne Morriss:

You all are awesome. Yeah.