Real World Leadership

Dealing with high pressure situations is a big part of a CEO's job description. Your future may depend on how you perform in crisis. Trusted CEO advisor Justin Menkes shares three powerful principles to mobilize your inner strength and lead others to success.

Philip Friedman is a highly successful photographer, who must take charge of a team, develop trust, and create art, all in a very short time. (As little as 15 minutes in the case of Oprah). In conversation with former journalist Ken Stone, Philip offers practical advice for other leaders on developing rapport and communicating effectively.

Ray Jordan has run corporate affairs for J&J, Amgen, and Moderna, among his portfolio of C-Suite roles. From that experience, Ray comes away convinced that a lot of important leadership tasks can be boxed, delivered, and assembled in the comfort of your office. For example: how to create an annual report. Many leaders start from scratch and learn -anxiously - on the job. But Ray believes that 80% of the work can be delivered through templates, AI and other tools, assembled around a template. During this session, Ray shared his insights about making your leadership less stressful, more fun, and more effective.

AI gets real in 2023, and can yield huge cost savings in advertising and marketing. That's just the beginning, says entrepreneur and data scientist Christian Desrosiers.

Tracy Stone-Manning directs the "other" BLM, the Bureau of Land Management, which controls more than 10% of US territory. Balancing wilderness preservation with mining and drilling leases, requires a deft hand and political acumen. In conversation with Ken Banta, Tracy shares what it takes to succeed with a widely dispersed team of 10,000, and often conflicting interests for 245 million acres of public land.

How do you go about solving problems without obvious solutions? Leaders face this challenge every day. Emily Jiang and Ken Banta discussed this in a Vanguard New Leaders session. Find out how confidence in methodology -- and in your own way of working -- can surmount ambiguity.

Wait, why would organizational psychologist and author of Leading Inclusion proclaim that DEI is BS? Because it must be a subset of leader effectiveness, not a standalone program, according to Gena Cox, PhD. Gena was featured in a recent Vanguard Network Dialogue and delivers a powerful message for senior leaders: you have to be effective with 100% of your talent pool.

Companies routinely survey employees, but do they really listen to them? If not, they are putting their most important asset at risk. This discussion with author Gorick Ng and Vanguard founder Ken Banta is an important reminder that the true intellectual property in any organization resides in the frontline team members.

What can Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau teach use about leadership today? Plenty, according to professor and author Bob Gross, the leading authority on the US Transcendentalist Movement. In this fascinating discussion with journalist Ken Stone, you'll discover parallels between the 19th century and today. Hint: the forces that created the millenials are not so different from what the US was facing nearly 200 years ago.

When you think about the role of the General Counsel -- the chief legal officer in a corporation - what comes to mind as the most important leadership skill? Would building a diverse, dynamic team rise to the top? In this recent Vanguard Session, top GCs offer thought provoking opinions on how to be successful as chief lawyer in a corporation.