The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:09:00 - 00:00:48:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Boldness. Courage. Confidence. These are desirable traits, especially in leaders. Yet too often, too many of us feel like this is something other people possess. Today, we will help you understand and capture your boldness as we talk about the science of everyday courage. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are here to help you reach your potential, to help you grow as a leader, both personally and professionally, to lead it more effectively and make a bigger, positive difference for your team, organization, and the world you and leaders like you.

00:00:48:12 - 00:01:16:21
Kevin Eikenberry
If you are listening to this podcast, you could join us in the future for live episodes on your favorite social media platform. You can find out when those are happening and how you can get involved by joining our Facebook or LinkedIn groups. Just go to remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linkedin. Do that and you'll be in the know. If you like what you're hearing today and you want to want help in developing the leaders in your organization, let's talk.

00:01:16:21 - 00:01:34:04
Kevin Eikenberry
The best way to get connected with me is to reach out to info at Kevin eikenberry.com. We'll schedule a time to learn more about your needs and see what we might be able to do to help. And with that I'm going to bring in my guest. He's been with me before. He's back again. He was here with me in 2022.

00:01:34:06 - 00:02:05:01
Kevin Eikenberry
And now, if you're with me, live is 2025 and everybody else is 2026 or beyond. Our guest today is Ryan J. Gulati. He is the Paul R Lawrence, MBA, class of 1942, professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, which is officially the longest title on the planet. The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit have listed him among the top business school scholars whose work is most relevant to management practice.

00:02:05:05 - 00:02:26:10
Kevin Eikenberry
He is a thinker's 50 top management scholar. As well as teaching, he speaks and serves on several boards. His work has been codified in two wonderful books, both of which now we can say have been featured on this show first, Deep Purpose and now the brand new How to Be Bold The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage. Raj, welcome.

00:02:26:10 - 00:02:29:00
Kevin Eikenberry
So glad to have you back on the show.

00:02:29:02 - 00:02:31:15
Ranjay Gulati
Thank you Kevin, it's a pleasure to be back.

00:02:31:17 - 00:02:51:00
Kevin Eikenberry
This is a great book. I'm just going to now, I've said I know longtime listeners, viewers have heard me say this before because first of all, why would I have books that aren't good? Second of all, but this is a really excellent book. I love this book. There's so many things around today that you don't even know how our work is interconnecting.

00:02:51:03 - 00:03:04:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So we'll have a great chance to talk about some of that. But before we do that, let's start with, it's a great title, so it might be somewhat self obvious, but like, what is the big idea of the book?

00:03:05:01 - 00:03:31:20
Ranjay Gulati
So the biggest idea in the book is that courage, first of all, is accessible to all. You're not born courageous. You become courageous. And there are ways to resource yourself to build that muscle. And, and and I think that's the big punchline of the book. And I looked at all these people who are courageous. And I try to distill how do they do it?

00:03:31:20 - 00:04:02:02
Ranjay Gulati
Because courage is not the normal response. It's it's the aberration. Humankind is not evolved for courage. Remember, our ancestors were all cowards. The ones who survived are the ones who ran for cover when they saw danger. So let's be very clear. We are hot. And I think we are addicted to safety. And courage is basically learning to take action in uncomfortable situations.

00:04:02:04 - 00:04:19:01
Kevin Eikenberry
That's a that's a big line, everybody. We're addicted to safety. This gets into lots of things. It gets into risk. And we're going to get to some of those things. But the the next question I want to ask you is why you like okay. So we're going to dive into is this really is courage really, truly a skill that we can build.

00:04:19:03 - 00:04:26:23
Kevin Eikenberry
But before we get there, why why are you the guy to have written this particular book?

00:04:27:01 - 00:04:51:17
Ranjay Gulati
You know, it's funny you ask that question, Kevin, because as I was writing this book, I mean, all research is personal, and book writing is a very personal project. I almost for me, I had written a book about purpose before. I almost felt like my purpose was to write this book. I had to write it because courage, as Aristotle said, is the universal virtue that unlocks all other virtues.

00:04:51:19 - 00:05:21:10
Ranjay Gulati
And yet the research and writing about it have been so fragmented. It's like here they're everywhere. And I found that it was. The world needs more courage. And I felt that given my own research and training and experiences, I teach a class on an MBA course on turnarounds and transformations. I've written an article in HBR about how some companies are able to come out of invest for growth and in recessions.

00:05:21:12 - 00:05:40:14
Ranjay Gulati
So I had this kind of and then I had my own personal life experiences, and I had seen all these leaders and individuals whom I was fascinated by, and I wasn't sure why and how that came to be. So this was this project was very personal for me.

00:05:40:16 - 00:06:05:11
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, one of the things people ask me why I do what I do and why, particularly leadership. And there's a bunch of reasons, but one of the reasons is that, and I think that if people watch this show, listen to the show over time, you will see that there's this merging of the personal and the professional. Range I wrote a long time ago on one of my books that, to be a better leader is to become a better human.

00:06:05:13 - 00:06:37:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, and vice versa. And I believe that. And I think that that's woven through this show, and I believe it's woven through this book. The book is written by a business professor, and it's really not necessarily, at least not in the beginning, written for leaders. And yet it's it's message is absolutely for us as leaders. And so the question is what about this is especially important to us as leaders.

00:06:37:16 - 00:07:15:03
Ranjay Gulati
Well, let me start from the point of origin. First of all, what's happening in the world around us today. The latest HBR cover story is about courage, and the editor in her opening says the world is facing an uncertainty crisis. Today, we are facing political uncertainty, geopolitical uncertainty, regulatory uncertainty, economic uncertainty. You know, technological uncertainty, uncertainty. In fact, in a recent study, CEOs have used the word uncertainty three times more than they did last year in their earnings calls.

00:07:15:05 - 00:07:39:20
Ranjay Gulati
So the word is everywhere. Now what do we need to know about uncertainty is uncertainty is not the same as risk. Risk is where you can map the distribution of outcomes, put some probabilities on it, hedge it, quantify it. The entire field of finance is based on risk uncertainties unknown. So that's what it is. Frank Knight, famous economist, wrote a brilliant essay distinguishing risk from uncertainty.

00:07:39:22 - 00:08:07:03
Ranjay Gulati
So we know that two. Now for uncertainty. How does the human brain process uncertainty? There's a great body of research on that which shows that uncertainty activates in the human brain a feeling of loss of control. And when we experience loss of control, it activates the primal survival human emotion of fear. We're hard wired to feel fear in the face of uncertainty.

00:08:07:05 - 00:08:17:07
Ranjay Gulati
What we also know is how does the human being respond to fear? It's not fight or flight. It's usually freeze, flight and occasionally fight, right?

00:08:17:12 - 00:08:20:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Flight. Fight is the least.

00:08:20:00 - 00:08:20:06
Ranjay Gulati
Least.

00:08:20:10 - 00:08:26:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Of the trio, right? And often we've talked about it is this fight or flight. But freeze and you talk about freeze a lot in the book.

00:08:27:04 - 00:08:27:12
Ranjay Gulati
Yeah.

00:08:27:13 - 00:08:30:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Freeze! Flight fight.

00:08:30:13 - 00:08:55:01
Ranjay Gulati
So where are we today? In a world of uncertainty is people are either frozen, right? Or they're ducking and they don't know what to do. And yet, that's precisely the moment where. And what is courage, then? Courage is taking action in the face of fear. It's not the absence of fear. So that's where courage comes into the picture.

00:08:55:03 - 00:09:19:08
Ranjay Gulati
Here we are. Uncertainty activating in us fear which is leading to freeze or flight response. And what do we need to do? Don't succumb to your fear. Most of us will succumb to our fears. And I think the answer really is this is the this is our. This is the moment for courage. This is the moment for courage.

00:09:19:10 - 00:09:39:21
Kevin Eikenberry
We're going to dive into that a little bit more. I just want to make the connective tissue. I made a comment earlier that how this is connected to, my latest book, I think I said that you actually before we went live, my latest book is Flexible Leadership Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with confidence. And so the connections between these books are significant.

00:09:39:23 - 00:10:04:19
Kevin Eikenberry
We're going to dive into one of those things a little later. But I want to go back to your very first point, which was, courage is not natural, but is something we can build. So that means it's a skill, right? So is it really, like, say a little bit more about that? Is courage really range a skill?

00:10:04:21 - 00:10:09:05
Ranjay Gulati
I wouldn't call it a skill. I would call it a mindset.

00:10:09:07 - 00:10:21:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So say more because those two things are all related. We don't have the right mindset. We can't develop the skill set. So talk a little bit more. So no, I love that. So talk a little bit more about that from a mindset perspective.

00:10:22:01 - 00:10:42:02
Ranjay Gulati
So when I talk about is how these people so how did I do this? I looked at amazing stories of people who acted with courage. Sometimes in the moment, in the face of a crisis, and sometimes deliberately, thoughtfully over a period of time. And then I try to understand why they did this, because that all is not normal.

00:10:42:02 - 00:11:10:03
Ranjay Gulati
It's an aberration. They were all kind of scared doing it too, but they did it. And then I had to understand. How did they resolve themselves to do that? And, and I think that is the piece I had to understand. I'll give you some examples. The starting point into courage is your personal narrative. Your story. How do you see yourself?

00:11:10:05 - 00:11:38:20
Ranjay Gulati
And that narrative shapes how you look at the world and how you look at yourself in the world. When Captain Sully had to land that plane in the Hudson River. You know what he said? I realized my entire life up to that moment had been a preparation for that moment. Yeah, right. When I interviewed, Doctor Suma Jain, who's a, er, physician in New Orleans in the early days of Covid, she and her teammates were trying to figure out what to do because people were dying around them and they were worried they were going to take Covid back home.

00:11:38:20 - 00:12:08:00
Ranjay Gulati
And she's a mother of two young kids. And the conversation was, this is our Olympic moment. If we're going to bail out now, what are we going to do? Right. You know, Brandon saying, you know, this young guy at a cashier register in a dance hall in California who has never gotten into a fight all his life? A gunman walks in and Brandon, to his own surprise and sort of hiding under the table, which was his first thought.

00:12:08:02 - 00:12:25:20
Ranjay Gulati
Finding the opening, the door, coming out and getting into a fist fight with the gunman and managed to pull the gun away from the guy because he's saying, my grandmother started this dance hall. My mother abandoned her whole life till she passed. I'm the custodian of it, and I'm going to hide under the table if they're up there looking at me.

00:12:25:21 - 00:12:55:04
Ranjay Gulati
What are they going to be saying? So what's your story? I told you my story. And for me, writing this book was very uncomfortable. It was, you know, as you said, you're a business professor writing for mass audiences on a topic like this. You know, this it was it was scary. It was scary for me. And I bought this project many a time saying, I don't think I can do this or do I really want to do it?

00:12:55:04 - 00:13:27:11
Ranjay Gulati
You know, so how do we change? Our story changes us. Another one is support. So there are so many other ways in which people resource themselves. They don't do it alone. They build a support structure around themselves. So you understand how do you do that? How do you build confidence? How do you resources have to have confidence? So I went one step at a time to understand is there a pathway by which all of us can cultivate courage?

00:13:27:13 - 00:13:29:06
Ranjay Gulati
That was kind of the project.

00:13:29:08 - 00:13:47:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And, and and you did create that pathway through the nine C's. And we're not going to have time to unpack all of them. But I would like you to share the nine. And they sort of fall into two categories. I'll let you do that. And then I'm going to I'm going to push us down a path into a few of them for a few minutes, if you would.

00:13:47:01 - 00:13:55:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So real quickly just give and I'm going to hold the book up again or I can, I can, I can lay them out here for you. I've got them right here. So I.

00:13:56:01 - 00:14:01:00
Ranjay Gulati
I don't know, a nice one here. I.

00:14:01:02 - 00:14:02:18
Ranjay Gulati
I didn't expect a sports quiz.

00:14:02:19 - 00:14:19:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Or I didn't want to. I'm not even giving you a spike Lee. So let me just let me just read them out. And then you can just comment briefly on each one. How about we do it that way? Yeah. Because any, you know, nine right. After all. And yet all of them I think are uniquely important and they're a part of the overall process that you're describing.

00:14:19:07 - 00:14:31:11
Kevin Eikenberry
For us to build our courage muscles. So, how about I just put each one on the screen? If your people are watching and you can just comment a couple of sentences on each one. Then I want to dive into some of them a little bit more. How about that.

00:14:31:13 - 00:14:32:04
Ranjay Gulati
Perfect. Go for.

00:14:32:04 - 00:14:37:20
Kevin Eikenberry
It. All right. So coping is the first one. Talk to us briefly about coping.

00:14:37:22 - 00:14:57:11
Ranjay Gulati
So coping is about building that reassuring narrative about the world that makes the scale seem more manageable. It's really about having a reassuring narrative. So what's our story? You know, and that allows us to be able to tackle, let's say this is my Olympic moment. I was meant to do this. That is coping.

00:14:57:13 - 00:15:06:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Confidence. I already mentioned confidence briefly. It certainly is a piece of this was all worry. How does confidence relate directly to building?

00:15:06:02 - 00:15:24:08
Ranjay Gulati
I'm happy with the word confidence, to be honest with you. I was stuck with the C word, so I was stuck with it. But actually it's bigger than it's confidence. It's self-efficacy. Can do that can do mindset. And some people are better. Many entrepreneurs have it, but so do many others. No matter what comes my way, I can do it.

00:15:24:13 - 00:15:32:09
Ranjay Gulati
I got it. And so entrepreneurs who had multiple near failures of their business say, no, we're going to find a way.

00:15:32:11 - 00:15:43:13
Kevin Eikenberry
And the next was commitment, which goes back to the story about the dancehall. You just said like I can't not right kind of do this. Talks a little bit more about the idea of commitment as it relates to courage.

00:15:43:15 - 00:16:00:13
Ranjay Gulati
Commitment ties back to my previous book, On Purpose that, you know, you have to have moral conviction. We stand for something. We're committed to something, something we believe in deeply. And when we believe in something deeply, we will do anything for it. Alexei Navalny went back to Russia knowing they were probably going to kill him, which they did.

00:16:00:15 - 00:16:18:04
Ranjay Gulati
But he had this belief he was committed to a cause. So if we define our lives around things we really hold near and dear, our family, for instance, will do anything for our family because we have this deep commitment. So what are the causes you believe in?

00:16:18:06 - 00:16:21:22
Kevin Eikenberry
And the next key is connection.

00:16:22:00 - 00:16:39:20
Ranjay Gulati
This goes back to the support structure you have. All the heroic characters I looked at had a support squad. It's rare. It's not a solo pursuit is a collective sport, team sport, not an individual sport. Very rare to see the solo individual doing it on their own.

00:16:39:22 - 00:16:45:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Even if and I want to just add to that, even if the story ends up being about a person.

00:16:46:01 - 00:17:05:17
Ranjay Gulati
I. Yeah, but you know, we have modern day mythmaking in Hollywood. We see Rambo. We see James Bond, we see Jason Bourne. These are portrayed as heroic, solitary, hyper individual. There are some out there, but most of the world isn't that way.

00:17:05:19 - 00:17:11:03
Kevin Eikenberry
The next one is. And this is what I'm going to do, I want us to come back to in a couple of minutes. Is comprehension.

00:17:11:05 - 00:17:31:18
Ranjay Gulati
Comprehension is actually one of the most interesting ones of all, because it is really around the idea that, you know, in the unseen uncertainty of the unknown, you don't have to leap into the unknown. You take steps into the unknown. In fact, Aristotle, who wrote an essay about courage, had cowardice on one end and reckless on the other hand.

00:17:31:20 - 00:17:54:13
Ranjay Gulati
Courage was in the middle. Comprehension is about doing it kind of in a methodical, step by step way, the way ancient mariners did point to point navigation. They didn't just sail into the Atlantic or the Pacific, right? They went to landmarks, to landmarks, to landmarks, even on the edges. Even if it was a much longer route, they'd go to landmarks, to landmarks, not kind of open sailing.

00:17:54:15 - 00:17:57:08
Ranjay Gulati
That was reckless.

00:17:57:10 - 00:18:17:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Which leads us to the next sea, which is calm. Calm. I think a lot of times when people think about people who have courage, when they think of the examples, when all of you who are watching and listening, think about the examples in your head of this. I'm guessing that calm was one of the words that comes to your mind.

00:18:18:01 - 00:18:39:15
Ranjay Gulati
Yeah, and I, I toyed with putting calm first, actually, because you really need calm to kind of get yourself going. By the way, the entire field of sports psychology is based is built on this idea how to stay calm in the eye of the storm. You know, you're in the middle of a really intense game. How do you keep calm?

00:18:39:17 - 00:19:00:23
Ranjay Gulati
So calm is the body of research I every every sea is tied to a body of social science research. It's not just a story. So for every Si, I have a compelling story. One or 2 or 3. And I have a social science research that tells us that this is a robust science based. That's why the book is about the science of everyday courage.

00:19:01:01 - 00:19:33:09
Ranjay Gulati
So calm is about emotional self-regulation is a body of work on how do we stay calm in the eye of the storm. And, you know, people rely on rituals, they rely on routines. They normalize it. They look for ways to regulate their emotion in the eye of the storm. Because there's a great story, by the way. Scottie Scheffler, who is world number one golfer, was asked a few months ago like, Scottie, you broke away in 2022.

00:19:33:11 - 00:19:51:04
Ranjay Gulati
Until then, you were in the top pack. No one was at the top. They were all kind of just trading spots. No one after Tiger Woods, it hasn't been this kind of dominant figure. And suddenly now Scottie breaks away in 2022. So that's exactly what happened to you. And finally this is well let me tell you what happened is I was paired up at the Masters with Tiger Woods.

00:19:51:06 - 00:20:09:12
Ranjay Gulati
And on the 12th hole, which is a par three tiger, I hit the ball into the water hazard. He hit the second ball into the water hazard. Tiger hit a 12 on a par three. Even I can do better than that, right? He was in instantly. Tiger was knocked out of the tournament, meaning he was no longer going to be in front of me.

00:20:09:12 - 00:20:28:18
Ranjay Gulati
He's out of running 12 on a par three, he says. I watched Tiger, didn't say anything. He said the next five holes, Tiger birdied the next five holes. It was like nothing had happened, he said. I've never seen that kind of intense focus and calm on the moment. Now what does he do internally? I don't know, Katie Ledecky.

00:20:28:19 - 00:20:48:04
Ranjay Gulati
Famously, she recites her grandmother's name. Right? Adele. Terrified of public speaking, she looks at a picture of Celine Dion. So people have their own ways to manage their emotion because fear is a primal emotion. Remember? So we got to find a way to kind of.

00:20:48:06 - 00:21:09:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Bring it down. Even the final three CS are about are really more about the leadership component of this. Right. You talk about we talked about connection earlier that we're not doing it alone, and that these last three are really more about leadership. And so let's talk about those three really briefly as well. The first of those is clan.

00:21:09:13 - 00:21:33:15
Ranjay Gulati
You know, this came to me from the idea, actually, I was, writing a case on Pete Carroll, the coach at that time of the Seahawks. And the question was, when players play in the NFL, it's very transactional business, and you're basically mercenary, almost. So you're playing for yourself, because if you play well, your market value goes up and then you can go off to play for another team.

00:21:33:17 - 00:22:00:08
Ranjay Gulati
So you're playing essentially for yourself. And Pete was like, you know, he had come from college football. Well this is college football. In the old days before name, likeness and image came into the hall. And then it's gone blown up. Now where he believed that people played even harder when they were not playing just for themselves, but they were paying for something that they believed in, a collective that they were bonded with.

00:22:00:10 - 00:22:17:13
Ranjay Gulati
And so how do you build that connection with the collective that elevates your game? Think Ted Lasso, you know, when you are like connected to a collective, you want to do more for the collective than even you would do for yourself.

00:22:17:14 - 00:22:19:11
Kevin Eikenberry
And that takes us back to courage, right?

00:22:19:14 - 00:22:33:15
Ranjay Gulati
Yes, even the Marine Corps. So one of the example I use the Marine Corps in the Marine Corps, Semper fidelis. You know, you are so fearful of letting your teammates down, you'd rather die. It's called relative fear.

00:22:33:17 - 00:22:57:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Know there are two more, both of which have been talked about a lot, in the business press. And it's talked about a lot. Any I'm with a group of leaders, and, and I'm going to go to the last one next, actually, and then, and then go backward. So the last one on your list is culture. And maybe of all of the key words, it's the one that we talk about the most in business today.

00:22:57:23 - 00:23:14:18
Kevin Eikenberry
It's so incredibly important. And yet now becoming almost over discussed, although I still think misunderstood. How does culture relate to the creation of courage? Not just for us, but for our teams?

00:23:14:20 - 00:23:19:00
Ranjay Gulati
I really didn't want to use that word. You know.

00:23:19:02 - 00:23:20:16
Kevin Eikenberry
It's a C word, though.

00:23:20:18 - 00:23:44:05
Ranjay Gulati
I know that's why I got stuck with it. Culture is a catchall for anything and everything in organizations, you know? Is that kind of this? When in doubt, blame the culture. But it's interesting. I just had our librarian do a quick study for me to see how many companies in the fortune 100 talk about courage as a kind of a part of their culture beliefs.

00:23:44:07 - 00:24:13:22
Ranjay Gulati
78 of 100 have culture out there. This is like the the new new thing. You know, that everyone wants to be like it used to be. Resilience, ambidextrous. It was something all the other authentic, you know, talk about the the the flavor, the joy or, you know, courage has become part of the repertoire and we want to put it into our culture because culture is what and is normative behavior.

00:24:13:22 - 00:24:24:11
Ranjay Gulati
And the question I put it in there, that's these companies who really understand courage because remember, organizations left to their own devices are risk averse systems.

00:24:24:13 - 00:24:31:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. And so how do we so this relates to things like innovation and growth and change and all of these other everything.

00:24:31:04 - 00:24:37:00
Ranjay Gulati
Absolutely is the last a virtue that unlocks everything else.

00:24:37:02 - 00:25:04:01
Kevin Eikenberry
I did a webinar yesterday and I was making the actual point that, organizations talk about one of their biggest challenges resistance to change. I'm like, it's not about the change. It's about the leaders. It's about the leaders understanding how to connect. It for people and to help them see that it isn't as much about risk as it is about opportunity as it is about all, really, all these other key words that we've just been talking about.

00:25:04:03 - 00:25:24:10
Kevin Eikenberry
And unfortunately, I didn't mention your book in the webinar. Sorry about that range. But the last see, is, I mean, part of that connection to me just came as you we were having this conversation, and the last see is charisma. And this is one that in my observation of, leaders often, this is the wistful one.

00:25:24:15 - 00:25:40:14
Kevin Eikenberry
This is the one. And I wish I just wish I had some of this. And I believe this is a skill that we can build as well. So why does charisma make this list, and how is it connected to this idea of courage or boldness?

00:25:40:16 - 00:26:08:19
Ranjay Gulati
I came to realize when it came to, first of all, the, you know, the second section, was originally going to be the entire book. It was called Collective Courage. And the role of the leader is key to understanding collective courage. So what is the role of a leader in this process? And I chose the word charisma to be provocative here because charisma is one of the things we absolutely believe is congenital.

00:26:08:21 - 00:26:33:05
Ranjay Gulati
You either have it or you don't have it in me. Correlated to extroversion, to looks, even to height, you know, to gender, you know, we have this kind of normalized, idealized version of the charismatic individual. Yet if you look at some of the people who were the most charismatic, they were not extroverts, tall in your face.

00:26:33:07 - 00:27:07:08
Ranjay Gulati
Mahatma Gandhi was a very slightly built, modest man who was terrified of public speaking. Right. So how do they get imbued with this? So charisma is in the eyes of the beholder. Yeah. And there is something about those individuals. So, in my experience, I have encountered many leaders who, you know, self-effacing, humble, modest, and yet more experienced, less charismatic.

00:27:07:10 - 00:27:35:12
Ranjay Gulati
And I also encountered many leaders who are in-your-face are. But were anything but experienced as charismatic? Yeah. So how do these leaders create followership? This is a very hard chapter for me to write. Actually, it was a really, really hard one. They were all hard. This one was particularly hard because there's so much blah blah around it. And so the whole chapter is about like, how can we cultivate charisma and true charisma?

00:27:35:15 - 00:28:02:03
Ranjay Gulati
Because when you have charisma, people are willing to follow you through fire. Yeah. And that's where courage. So you want to be a charismatic, courageous leader who instills courage in others, build some charisma around you. You know, something that literally, you know, people experience the most charismatic. He's not your typical charismatic guy. If you looked at him and saw him not knowing he's a Microsoft, you say, oh, okay, fine, just another guy.

00:28:02:05 - 00:28:08:03
Ranjay Gulati
But when you look at what he does and how he does it, you know, people experience a most charismatic.

00:28:08:05 - 00:28:26:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. There is so much more that I would like to talk to you about and so much more that I'm confident those who are watching would like watching and listening would like to hear about. I'm going to encourage all of you and I'll say a little bit more about this before we're done about you need to get a copy of this book, How to Be Bold.

00:28:26:20 - 00:28:53:18
Kevin Eikenberry
The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage. If you found this useful, here's what I want to say about the book. And that is that for each of these research based keywords, there's also these inspiring stories. So when you think about courage, you think about great stories. And they're all through this book. Several of them were hinted at here. So what you're going to find here is a book that is not only incredibly valuable to us as leaders, as we reflect on what we can do to be more effective as leaders.

00:28:53:18 - 00:29:17:05
Kevin Eikenberry
But also you're going to find it inspiring and and a read that's on one level easy and fast to read, and on another that will leave you quite contemplative. If that could be our 10th C-word, range. So, I have a couple final questions for you before we go to kind of shifting gears, there are things that, there are things that I would love to have gotten to.

00:29:17:05 - 00:29:34:12
Kevin Eikenberry
And maybe when we finish, you and I can have a conversation about how we might be able to do that. But a couple things before we go, what sir, do you do for fun? You talked about how you needed to write this book. This book was hard. We all need to have fun in our life. What do you do for fun?

00:29:34:14 - 00:29:58:00
Ranjay Gulati
Look, for me, the most fun thing is to spend time with my family. That, of course, I should tell you, goes without saying. For me. I have two kids. I love being around both of them. I have a wonderful wife. I love being around her. But you know, I actually love to read. I, I love to, I love to go for long walks.

00:29:58:02 - 00:30:03:01
Ranjay Gulati
I love to be on a boat. So I love to go boating. I love to be on the water.

00:30:03:03 - 00:30:06:10
Kevin Eikenberry
So do you own a boat or do you just have friends with boats?

00:30:06:12 - 00:30:08:20
Ranjay Gulati
I own a boat.

00:30:08:22 - 00:30:12:20
Kevin Eikenberry
I only like, I don't want to own one. I just have a friend with one.

00:30:12:22 - 00:30:30:00
Ranjay Gulati
Kevin, I did, I was smart, I have a very small 15ft whaler, that I can get around, with. But I belong to a boating club where it's like a timeshare. You can show up and they give you a boat, and you go out and they come back and give you the key back there.

00:30:30:01 - 00:30:46:06
Kevin Eikenberry
You see? There you go. That's a good way to go. You mentioned reading, and this is something I always ask guests. And we didn't have a lot of time before, so I, I apologize if I'm dropping this on you, but what's something you're reading right now or or you've read recently?

00:30:46:08 - 00:30:55:23
Ranjay Gulati
Admiral James Stavridis, to risk it all.

00:30:56:01 - 00:31:01:17
Ranjay Gulati
The power of habit.

00:31:01:19 - 00:31:25:16
Ranjay Gulati
And I'm rereading something that, a friend of mine recently told me that he read every year in most of his life. He reread that book, and that was the old Dale Carnegie book. How to reread that book again after like 25 years. So top of my pile.

00:31:25:18 - 00:31:42:22
Kevin Eikenberry
I will we will have all three of those books as well as Ron James books, both in the show notes. If you're watching or listening from the podcast, all that will be available there. And you know what? Someone recently said that to me as well, how to Win Friends and Influence People. That's shown up on the the 2 or 3 of my recent conversations.

00:31:42:22 - 00:31:55:00
Kevin Eikenberry
We'll have all those links, in the show notes. Where do you want to point people? If people want to know more about what you're doing, know more about the book. So where do you want to point them? I hold the book up for you.

00:31:55:02 - 00:32:15:22
Ranjay Gulati
Yeah. I mean, I think the easiest place to go look at it is, actually my website run gallery.com. And what I also have is on LinkedIn is I started to write a little newsletter where every week I put out two pages. Not from the book does not accept these are new essays because the book was written like almost two years ago.

00:32:16:00 - 00:32:44:15
Ranjay Gulati
And my thinking has evolved and there are new stories. So I've been putting out a newsletter, on LinkedIn, as well as on get.com. It'll be on Substack very shortly. About courage, and what it means, to anybody. And I think that and I try to take everyday examples that I'm picking up. So I see the news, I see what's going on in the world, and I incorporate that into and ever try to sharpen our thinking about courage.

00:32:44:15 - 00:32:47:16
Ranjay Gulati
So you're welcome to look at that if you like.

00:32:47:18 - 00:33:05:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Regi gallery.com. I was told by a wise person once I arrange that. Okay. And you're doing what this person suggested to me. So you and I had this conversation. You just mentioned that you write a book, and then there's all this time before it comes out. And the question is, what did you learn since you wrote it, that you wish was in it?

00:33:05:07 - 00:33:13:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And what you're doing is every week you're telling us that, but through the newsletter. So, connect with that, connect with him. LinkedIn is a great place. Of course.

00:33:13:17 - 00:33:27:21
Ranjay Gulati
Now, let me ask Todd. I want to leave everybody with one last thought, please. And I just heard this morning, most of us are living our fears, not our dreams.

00:33:27:23 - 00:33:45:19
Ranjay Gulati
And so I feel courage is like an unlock into our life, to living a more complete life. It's not just about being a great leader. It's not just about being, you know, daredevil in something. It's really about living a more complete life. So on that note.

00:33:45:21 - 00:34:16:09
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, I, I often told leaders, in fact, I'm doing a session for students, college students this afternoon. And I'm I'm going to make this comment to them that leadership is, opportunity. And it's an opportunity in lots of ways. And one of them is exactly that. If we can help others become more of themselves, and leaders have that opportunity, but we can't unlock it for them until we unlock it for ourselves again.

00:34:16:10 - 00:34:16:22
Kevin Eikenberry
I asked.

00:34:16:22 - 00:34:21:01
Ranjay Gulati
Her, yeah, absolutely.

00:34:21:03 - 00:34:41:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Everybody, I hope that you've enjoyed this conversation. There's a question I have for all of you, though, before we go. It's a question I always ask you, and this is a simple question with a challenging and important answer. And that is now what? What will you do now as a result of this conversation? There's something that you heard that is begging for you to act on.

00:34:41:02 - 00:35:00:02
Kevin Eikenberry
And if all you do is move on from this or say, oh, that was really interesting, then you won't have gotten from this what you could have. And the only way to translate mindset and skill set into something useful is to create new habits set. And that's what I encourage you to do by thinking about this important question.

00:35:00:02 - 00:35:17:08
Kevin Eikenberry
What are you going to do as a result of being here? That's my challenge to you as we close. And if you found this useful, you're with me and I hope that you will come back and join us next week. We're here every week. If you've just found us, you can go backward into the catalog of over 500 of these conversations.

00:35:17:11 - 00:35:26:12
Kevin Eikenberry
But if that's overwhelming, just come back next week. Invite someone else to join you for another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. Thanks, everybody.