154. Best of: Communicating Better as a Leader
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hi， mathere， our goal at thinkfasttalksmart is to help you own and develop your communication skills where curious if were hitting the mark web talked about feedback and listening many times on the show and now wed like you to share your thoughts about thinkfasttalksmart wewant to make sure were bringing you the topics and guests that are of interest to you knowingmore about you and the reasons you listen will help us a lot weve created a listenersurvey that would like you to complete will take no more than 5 minuteinit will be very useful the survey can be found at fastersmarderdodio slash feedback， while the survey can be taken anonymously if you do choose to provide your email address， we will enter you into a randomdrawing where three people will win assignedbookeanotherthinkfasttalksmartswag we look forward to hearing your ideas in inputsoon thank you and advance for sharing your feedback and helping us and most importantly thank you for listening again go to fastersmarter dodio slash feedback communication is a critical element to successionbusiness and in life in this best of episode we revisitmy conversation with Stanford graduate school of business dean John Leven in our conversation， John provides insight and personal experiences regarding the role and importance of communication John will soon become Stanford universities thirteentpresident we thank him for his strongsupport support over all these years of our podcast can we wish him well as he steps into his new role without fortherado enjoy our conversation a bigchallenge for leaders in managers is to balance the tension between being directive and specific and allowing for space for discussion debate ending difference today on the podcast will discuss this and the everchangingexpectations of leaders in communication， imataborhands and i teachstrategic communication at Stanford graduate school of business welcome thinkfast talksmart the podcast im excited to chat with John Leven， who is the Philip h night professor and Dean of Stanford graduate school of business beforebecoming Dean in 2006， John spent 16 years in the economic department at Stanford in 2021 he was appointed to present Joe Biden， council of advisors on science and technology ohijohnwelcometothepodcast imsuper excited to have you here thanks back right to be here cool lets get started as your career has unfolded youhad more and more opportunities to share your thoughts with largerenlargeraudiences im curious to learn more about thisanhowyourthinkingoncommunicationhasavolledovertime mythinking about communication has evolved over my career。

asserdisa， professor， teaching， and winyourevingresearchtalks its just everythingis about presenting ideas and information clearly and may be even impressing people a little bit and getting them to change the way they they think about a problem in a leadership role， so much more of communication is about connecting with people， establishing， shared humanity， motivating them， inspiring them sometimes challenging them。

so the gothermicareer that is really reenforce to me the the different purposes the communication serves to to inform people to connect with people to motivate and inspire them itohaveseeneovermytimehowitchanged in the expectation is changed and i think a lot of people who listen in have found themselves as their career has developed theyve had to adjust the way they perceived communication much like you have and for many people that can be very challenging its good to hear that you recognize that any particular moments or the thoughts that youve had that really helpyoumake that shiftfrom talking about your own research in your own department to now being on a larger stage i wish there was just a single moment when the lite or when on。

and i magically got better figured out different ways to communicate for me， it didnhappenthat way it was more of a gradual process of learning and improving and like anything communication as a craft and the craft you teach you have to work it at thank you for that candor and thankyouforreenforcing the fact the communication is something you have to work on unpracticevery very true in your six years as ding of the stanforgraduate school of business， youhad to address many significant issues happening on campus and beyond whatyourthoughts on the role of leaders in communication in times of ambiguity on challenge and you have any best practices youve learned that you rely on one of the most important things is to be able to provide clarity entertimely way offintheway i tend to think about that is what people need to know have a delete them to feel when they read a message from a theres a very complex set of issues that has arisen on campuses in an academic leadership that has to do with heading you communication but issues that are going on in the world and the landscape for that particular question has changed hugely over the last save five or ten years wherehistorically acomacleaders were hesitant often did not rarely communicatedabout theevents of the day and so forth and today， theres a much higher expectation and a much greater demand to know you know where the institutions stand whatsthepresentaboutdifferent issues i find that to be one of the most complicated and challenging set of questions in leadership， communication figuringoutwhattotalkaboutanhadotalkabatit， wanningtobeabletomakclearstatementsaboutwhatithinkorbinstutionalvalues to reassure a groups of people who really wanna hear something about that， but at the same time， leavingspace for people to form their own opinions to discuss ideas to debate whats going on because that diversity of ideas of viewpoints of perspectives is just so absolutely central to our mission i think inthatyouclearly defineda attentionthatallbusinesleadersneed to manage？

which is howdoyoustep fordinputforthyourpositionbutalsolivesleavespaceforpeopletodiscussstodebatetodiscover thehard tension and it sounds like part of how you navigate through that is by thinking through what you want people to know and how do you want them to feel about those issues and that is somethingwevetalked about before on this podcast and i think critical in all communication its not just the information you need to put out there its how do people need to feel or do you want people to feel about it so thank you and i wanted to try to maintain that and so i did keep that up through the main part of the the pandemic and i got a lot of positive responses and appreciation partly just for putting that effort into try to maintain community as you think about the future of businessenbusinesseducation im wondering what you think about the role communication is playing now and will play in the future 哎。

there is just no doubt whatsoever that communication is going to play， is going to continue to play such an important role for business leaders thats true whether theyre communicating individually to their leadership team or to different people in their company or to employees or to customers or to share holders， or testifying in congress or to the public it really is just so important for people who are in leadership roles to be able to communicate with clarity are students or really fortunate to have focus like you to help preparethemor that worldsuch an essential skill thank you and i agree with you that the role of communication the pandemic todus how critical communication is and when were were cutoff in some ways from our communication。

it could be very challenging let me ask you about a question that is relevant to someone who is an economist and the deane of a business school capitalism is underfirethese days were facing problems of economic inequality climate change loss of jobstotechnologyprivacyconcerns in many other things how is the GSB teaching studentto thinkabout capitalism and what is the role of the school in leading abroad conversation on the subject i love that question because i think youjust spied on with where the world is today the place i like to start in thinking about that is just to think about the execudanary trim that weve had in this country in in many other places around the world over the last sentry sentry in a half in the idstateserver the last hundred and fifty years。

standards of living almost doubled every generation and in that rise from subsistence to prosperity， theres no president in human history and has been even more dramatic in countries like China for example that adopted many elementsofcapitism and so assistincredibly important to keep in mind that markets the private enterprise coupled with stable political institutions can be these single greatest engine for socialprogress particularly important minded a business school because that is the engine we were trying to build an and support in at the same time， youre absolutely right you you think of change is like climate change in a quality， the misuses of technology these are serious issues that we have to grapple with in the sentry and were living at a time when our political system， which in some sense is， the right place to deal with those types of challenges just seems entirely unable to come to termswiththem address them in any sort of reasonable way and so people you know naturally， then look elsewhere for forsolutions and familiar ship and so theres there they look to business， they look to investors， they look to totheprivatcesector totacklethesmarketfailyearsexternaldisproblems 二 responsevetoversive stakeholders anechus raises all kinds of hardquestions like its hard enough to run a business to maximize longterm valuefor your shareholders and then someone sudobsolveglobalclimachange anyso when i think about what we want in educating students today to be business leaders we want them to dive into those questions to wrestle with them theres all kinds of tensions and trade offs we want them to really think hard and understand those complexities and of course， we also believe in a bridge extenveran episoner of Innovation we want arsens to be the source of the solutions we want them to solve problems like change to bring new technologies ideas to market with great business models that deliver them with you with scale with speed we hope students when they come here are going to be inspired to take on big challenges， and then to doitn wasthewoolrestorepeoplesfaithinbusinessandthewasadcontributedsociety i 碎 lyseeasarestudentslaveherethatenergythatexcitement todojusthatitsoneothersplesuresihaveteachinghereitincrediblinsparin absolute disbrunnews year fifth exactly an exact humanity in peopleeveryday in every year when we get a new generation of students。

i soagree because the challenges are formidable， anyatthestudentsleavereadydetacklefamininitsveryrewarding Stanford gsb is one of the most competitive managemen educationprograms in the world huh what youseeis the opportunities for the gsb to reach an educateeven abroad set of leaders thenthosefortunate enough to come here searquestioneisrevalloods toattention on our core model of education replacelix Tempford？

which is we take a very small and highly selected set of students and we pairs them up with an eventsmaller and highly selected set of faq they thats a magical immersive educational environment very intense campus experience and we hope that the outcome of that is that students goongraduates goonto have an outsized impact in the world the same time we need a new muchlarger stronger， cohort of global businessleaders to help continued of moved toward prosperity into have growth and solve the big challenges the world and particularly with the interest people have and continuing to learn throughp their lifetime in the keepabilities， the weave developers are developed with technology i have a very strong feeling that places like stempford have a tremendous opportunity and some is a responsibility to try to reach an engagewith an educate of a broader set of people around the world is dothatin ways that are transformativeandsmeaningfulanimpactfulwedothattoday through short on campus programs around for executives or further leaders in our online programs are weed program nearly doubled during the pandemic in prolifier run globally like stemforedseedwhichwe run for entfiners in Africa and south Asia anyway， continue the lookfor new opportunities to do that is one of the things that i finemostexciting aboutthefuture iofcertainly seen yourcommitmen in your leadership teams。

commitment to expanding how this place the business school but also Stanford reaches people and i truly appreciate the support you have of what we do here because were trying to reach people as well。

i think a paddcast like this is such a great example of the ways that a postcstanford can share ideas with the world audience and give people a sense of whatgoing on what are people thinking you know what happens here sobeforeandidlike to ask you the same threequestionsiask everybodywhojoinsbeareupforthatletsdoitalright question number 1IFYOUWERTOCAPTURETHEBESTCOMMUNICATIONADVICE， youveverreceived as a five to 7 wordpresentationslidetitle what would it be devstoryaboutthiswhichismaybe 二十 ago brotherani were asked to speak at an event that was in honor of my father， and we were supposed to be the dinner speakers and so we wrote to the people organizing this event we said you know well， what we say whatgoing in， what would you think and server then they wrote back this， incredibly long email with well， maybe you could touch on this， and that， and this， and that， and you could do it this way and you know by the way， maybe tell joke and so say anyway your mom and all this stuff and i look at this email i was like wow this is going to be the toubassignment and my brotherimmediately just hitsreplyallanysaysgotitstandardtalkfunnytouchinginshort， iloveitfunnytouchinginshort ithinkedsgradeviceformanyofourcommunicationsituations icurious howdidthetalkgo your shirt ileave editthat im curious John whois a communicator that you admire and why so one versus is bracobama you matter your political filiation you have to admire president Obama as a communicator he came and spoke on campus he gave a incredibly detailed pretty technocratic talk about social media and misinformation it was easily an hour may be finanhour and a half and it was mesmarizing hes a wonderfulspeaker let me ask my thirdnfinal question what are the first three ingredientsthegointoascessfulcommunicationrecipe queryconnectioninspiration very very important！

all threeandyoudo， all threeof those verywell and servicegoodrowmodelfor all of us and i think all businessleaders and peopledevelopingthecareers can think about how they can leverage those three together to helpthemsuccessfully navigate the communicationchallenges that they have johnthankyousomuchforbeinghere i appreciate your time， your insights， yourcander truly appreciate what you do for us and for all of our studentsthank you matt thank you so much for having me on and were so fortunate to have you teaching at the gsb and doing this pidcast thank you for joining us for another best of episode of thinkfasttalksmartthepodcast to learn more boutleadership， please listen to episode one 21 with Jacob market this episode was produced by Jenny Luna， Ryan Camppos and me matabrahams harmusic is from Floyd wonder with special thanks to podium podcast company， please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts be sure to subscribe and rate us also follow us on LinkedIn in Instagram checkoutfastersmarderdodio for deep dive， videosenglishlanguage learning content and our newsletter， hi， mathere quick question for you when was the last time， you took a step back from your daily life and took the time to invest in yourself and your education for a lot of us its been a long while but heres the truth great leaders never stop learning if this sounds like you， i encourage you to explore Stanford executive education programs these programs are Jam packed with insights from Stanford GSB professors and bring together top leaders like you from all around the Globe explore Stanford executive education programs now add grow dot Stanford dot edu slash learn。