A Call to Lead
Jennifer Morgan
All episodes
Best episodes
Top 10 A Call to Lead Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best A Call to Lead episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to A Call to Lead for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite A Call to Lead episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Bob Nardelli
A Call to Lead
04/29/19 • 30 min
On this week's episode of A Call to Lead, you'll meet Bob Nardelli, who has an extraordinary breadth of expertise from a series of CEO jobs: GE Power Systems, then Home Depot, and then Chrysler. Bob, who spent three decades at GE, has an incredible perspective on business, operations, and leadership in times of disruption. Here, he shares lots of great advice about building teams and finding opportunity amidst near constant global change. Here are five things that my team and I found particularly insightful:
- Diversity is most powerful when it’s practiced with its broadest definition. “When I think about diversity, it's not numbers, it's diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, diversity of ideas. Nobody has a corner on that, male or female.”
- We talked about the need for speed in a business landscape that is constantly shifting. “Change is the only constant. Like my good friend Roger Penske says, "It's like NASCAR. If I slow down, I'll get lapped, and I don't want to get lapped."
- Don’t let someone else push you to deliver an outcome that you could have achieved without any outside intervention. “It's far better to challenge yourself and win, than to be driven to the same point [by someone else].”
- Business leaders know what shareholders and employees expect. “Be your own activist. You know what they're looking for, why give them a free throw?”
- Purpose matters in business - and so does inspiring your team with a mission that matters. “What is prevalent today is having purpose, having mission, having integrity, having compassion and an intellect to improve upon everything you do and your team does. How are you continuing to encourage them to improve every day?”
You can learn more by visiting: www.sap.com/acalltolead. And you can subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. We welcome your feedback on the pod! Tweet me @JenniferBMorgan and use the hashtag #acalltolead or e-mail us at [email protected].
Simon Sinek
A Call to Lead
02/18/19 • 33 min
In this week's A Call to Lead I talk with Simon Sinek. You may know Simon from his TED Talks, which are viral phenoms, or his best-selling books. Start With Why, his first book, is a guide to discovering and honing purpose to help build extraordinary teams. In his upcoming and fifth book, The Infinite Game, Simon explains how to lead in a world where the competition comes and goes, where rules are changeable, and where there is neither a finish line nor definite winners. Simon spoke about playing "the infinite game" as part of a keynote I gave kicking off the year for SAP last month, and in this podcast he talks about that and much more. Here are our team's five takeaways from the episode of A Call to Lead with Simon:
17:39 - To play the infinite game is really hard. Among all the important leadership traits, courage is No. 1. To do the right thing in the face of pressure is hard.
17:39 - Empathy is another critical leadership trait. Our common humanity matters. Whether they're customers or vendors or employees, we're dealing with human beings.
20:55 - Annual evaluations are a thing of the past, and it's not so much what the evaluation says, it's what the trend lines say. If you had a bad evaluation first and second quarter, but third and fourth quarter start to show signs of looking up, that's a good person. You’ll want to give that person a shot to keep improving.
24:10 - It's the responsibility of businesses to provide their people and their customers and their vendors a sense of purpose and a cause that we're all advancing - something that’s bigger than ourselves, and that's why all of life’s blood, sweat, and tears are worth it.
24:48 - Metrics are very important. Metrics help us measure speed and distance. But they don't indicate the end of the game.
Walter Isaacson
A Call to Lead
02/25/19 • 29 min
Today we're bringing you a A Call to Lead Classic—one of my favorite interviews that I've done at Call to Lead at SAP's annual Sapphire Now conference. My guest is Walter Isaacson. Talking with Walter is always head-spinning and enlightening because he is the foremost expert on leaders who also happen to be the world's smartest people. Walter's specialty is geniuses. He's written biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci. He's also a very smart leader himself, having headed CNN, TIME Magazine, and the Aspen Institute. Here are 5 things that Walter said and my team and I found interesting and relatable to all of us as ever-improving leaders:
5:43 - "If you're going to be a disruptor, you have to do like Steve Jobs and occasionally let your reach exceed your grasp."
19:07 - "Making a great product innovation is hard, but what's really hard and important is making the right team who can continue to do innovation." (Steve Jobs, when he was dying, said this to Walter Isaacson.)
25:03 - "The most important talent you need is the ability to see patterns."
25:03 - "If I were talking to somebody coming into a company now, I'd say what are your passions? And I'd hope there'd be three or four or five diverse passions. And then I would say, 'What is the pattern that you've seen by being interested in so many different things?'"
26:49 "Whatever business you're in, you've got to say I'm not in the business of moving lettuce or moving packages or flying metal, [but rather] I'm in the business of applying technology to customer needs."
Malcolm Gladwell
A Call to Lead
05/13/19 • 42 min
On this week's episode of A Call to Lead, I talk with Malcolm Gladwell, renowned journalist and best-selling author who is one of the world's foremost observers of how we live and work and lead. Malcolm has plenty to say, and it's all incredibly thoughtful, different, and relevant. He expounds on how people and businesses function amidst tech revolutions and demographic booms. He riffs on how perhaps arbitrary rules change outcomes of chess championships, LSAT scores, and potential careers. And he explains why we may need "a major re-evaluation, in every profession, of where we find talent." Malcolm and I cover that and much more. It was such a great conversation that we’ll release it in two parts with the second episode dropping in the coming days. Here are five nuggets that my team and I find particularly intriguing from part 1.
- Despite the speed of technological change we are living through, Malcolm wondered whether we underestimate the degree to which we sometimes actually struggle to explain or rationalize a technological advancement until long after it appears in the marketplace or in our lives. “I’m really struck by how long it takes us, all of us, to figure out what change means...we come to these conclusions about what something means, but way too quickly. We are sort of fooled by the pace of technological change into thinking that just because technology is moving really quickly, our explanations should have to keep pace. But in fact, what’s really striking about technology is how often the technical side outruns the explanatory side.”
- Malcolm talked about how leadership styles are shaped and molded by the culture of the organization in which they lead. "The definition of a leader changes from culture to culture. There are probably a hundred different kinds of leaders. [You] need to define carefully what [you want] in terms of our own institution.”
- We discussed the gap that can exist between the type and caliber of talent an institution wants to hire and who they actually hire. “You may know what you want, but unless, in a very systematic focused way, you make a connection between what you want and what you actually go out and find, you won't do a good job. You'll fall back on old habits, and just hire.
- Malcolm reaffirmed what I’ve heard from almost every leader that I’ve talked to – on the podcast or not – that one of the single most important leadership traits today is humility. "What I'm drawn to, overwhelmingly more and more now, is humility. As the environments that we're working in get more complicated, we need to have leaders who respect that complication—who understand that they cannot know everything."
- I asked Malcolm about the root cause behind some of the change we are seeing in the world today, and he wondered whether the demographics and age of our society might have something to do with some of the movements that we see shaping the world. "I wonder whether we are at this moment in our history, getting very fearful in ways that would be consistent with an aging society."
You can learn more by visiting: www.sap.com/acalltolead. And you can subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. We welcome your feedback on the pod! Tweet me @JenniferBMorgan and use the hashtag #acalltolead or e-mail us at [email protected].
Where to Listen: Subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher.
---
Jennifer Morgan is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of SAP’s Cloud Business Group.
Sylvia Acevedo
A Call to Lead
07/08/19 • 35 min
Whether you're a Girl Scout or not (I am—once a Scout, always a Scout), my conversation with Sylvia Acevedo, the CEO of the Girl Scouts, is worth a listen. Sylvia has a remarkable path to success: As a young woman, she was discouraged from pursuing her interest in engineering. So what did she do? She went to school for engineering and became a rocket scientist at NASA. After stops at IBM and Apple and Dell, Sylvia is leading millions of Girl Scouts to places they've never gone before—teaching them to code and about cybersecurity and other need-to-know things in the workplaces of tomorrow. In an episode full of leadership wisdom, here are five points that my team and I found particularly valuable:
- Having learned, as a Girl Scout, how to create opportunity and how to sell, Sylvia still to this day follows the advice that her troop leader gave her: "Never walk away from a sale until you've heard 'No' three times."
- Sylvia has spent her life ignoring naysayers and being her own best champion."The first sale that you make is to yourself. If you believe you can do it, then you can do it. But you have to sell yourself first."
- Why the Girl Scouts teaches coding and other skills that next-gen workers will need: "If you're prepared, you can be fearless. We want to have that generation of fearless girls."
- When Sylvia went on a book tour to promote Path to the Stars, her memoir for middle school readers, she found that boys raised their hands much more readily to ask questions. "I had to make sure that I'm only going to take questions if I'm alternating between a boy and a girl. Then girls would feel like they could raise their hands."
- Increasing the Girl Scout population would have a dramatic impact on the female talent pipeline, Sylvia says. "We're less than 8% of the girl population, but half of all female elected officials in America were Girl Scouts. In the recent class in Congress, 60% were Girl Scouts; 75% of the U.S. Senators are Girl Scouts. All three former Secretaries of State were Girl Scouts. Almost every female astronaut in space was a Girl Scout. And 80% of female tech leaders born in the U.S. were Girl Scouts. So, imagine if we could be not just at 8%, but at 10%. Imagine what that would mean to our talent pipeline."
You can learn more by visiting: www.sap.com/acalltolead. And you can subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. We welcome your feedback on the pod! Tweet me @JenniferBMorgan and use the hashtag #acalltolead or e-mail us at [email protected].
Where to Listen: Subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher.
---
Jennifer Morgan is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of SAP’s Cloud Business Group.
Frances Frei
A Call to Lead
02/11/19 • 43 min
This week on A Call To Lead, I talk with one of my favorite leadership philosophers, Frances Frei. Frances is a TED Talk phenomenon, a professor at Harvard Business School, and a former executive at Uber. She's a fount of wisdom on developing great teams, maximizing your own performance, and building trust in a world that’s devoid of it. Here are just a few choice insights that Frances shared with me:
15:52 - Learn more than you have to so you can describe topics simply, especially if you’re the one tasked with ensuring people understand something difficult. Simplicity is a gift.
17:41 - Want to understand why so many bad things are happening in our world right now? We need to find a way to trust each other again. Most of our challenges stem from a lack of trust.
23:15 - If companies want to compete against the world's best, they need to look at hiring from a much wider pool of talent. It's the diversity that will unleash our excellence. Until recently, everyone has been fishing in a very narrow pond.
35:00 - Don’t deny your ego. Find out what it needs, be upfront and explicit about those needs, and work with your team to make sure you get what you need. Everyone has an ego that needs to be nourished.
38:07 - Millennials have an incredible threshold for what they will endure. They’re similar to one another, but very different from past generations...and they’re exactly what we need right now. And their time for leadership is not in the distant future, it’s here now.
We are a new podcast, and that means reviews and ratings mean everything to us. The more ratings, the more likely someone else will tune in. So thank you in advance for leaving one!
Don’t forget to check out Frances’ TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVeq-0dIqpk
Mercedes Abramo
A Call to Lead
07/15/19 • 35 min
This latest episode features one of the smartest women in retail. Mercedes Abramo is the President and CEO of Cartier North America, and I had the opportunity to sit down with her at Cartier’s Hudson Yards boutique in New York City this past April. Growing up in a retail household (her dad was a senior executive at Lord & Taylor), Mercedes had her sights set on becoming a lawyer. She majored in political science, worked at a law firm, couldn’t stand it, got a job in a hotel—and found her calling. After graduating from business school in Paris, where she focused on luxury brand management, it was a natural leap to high-end retail. In this podcast, Mercedes shares plenty of career advice (“you really have to be flexible”) and business-building insights. Here are five of our favorite takeaways:
- I asked Mercedes what she learned as she rose through the hotel and luxury goods industries. Her answer is terrific and very wise: “Learning how to listen, learning how to hear what is being said, and picking up on both the verbal and the nonverbal cues is important. Because the first thing you're really doing is building a relationship with that person in front of you. It's not about what can I sell them right now; it's about how do I build a connection.”
- Leading a luxury brand company is about giving customers experiences as well as products. In her previous life as a hotel executive, Mercedes learned how to create extraordinary experiences: “There is so much similarity to retail. With a hotel or a spa or a vacation, you don't leave with a product—you don't leave with anything physical. You only leave with the memories that you created when you were there.”
- Mercedes gives great advice on changing a career path: “People struggle with wanting to find the perfect decision. There is no perfect decision. It’s about taking that leap and deciding what's a challenge that you want to embrace right now.”
- Get comfortable being uncomfortable, Mercedes says. “Embracing the unknown is where you grow and where you learn. There are going to be things around the corner every day that are going to challenge you, and the more that you exercise that muscle and you push through it, the more prepared you're going to be the next time.”
- How to become an authentic leader: “You can't copy yourself after somebody else, so I think you really need to learn the good parts of each person that you want to emulate and then figure out how to evolve your own style.
You can learn more by visiting: www.sap.com/acalltolead. And you can subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. We welcome your feedback on the pod! Tweet me @JenniferBMorgan and use the hashtag #acalltolead or e-mail us at [email protected].
Where to Listen: Subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher.
---
Jennifer Morgan is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of SAP’s Cloud Business Group.
Season 1 Highlights
A Call to Lead
07/30/19 • 28 min
That’s a wrap! Season 1 of A Call to Lead is in the books.
We pulled together a recap episode for you this week, featuring short clips from some of the great moments in the podcast’s first season. We were fortunate to have incredible leaders from across industries, disciplines, and fields share their stories and perspectives on leadership this season – and we wanted to share them with you as we wrap up Season 1 and look ahead to the second season.
Share your feedback with us at [email protected]. We’re hard at work planning Season 2 and would benefit from your feedback and perspective.
Here are some of the guests and clips featured in this wrap-up episode:
- Arianna Huffington (founder & CEO of Thrive Global) on how allowing for “brilliant jerks” on your team can create a toxic culture.” (2:10)
- Gary Vaynerchuk, on how positivity is a strategy – not a delusion. (4:00)
- Simon Sinek on the responsibility that businesses have to provide their customers and employees with a sense of purpose. (5:50)
- Walter Isaacson (best-selling author) on one of Steve Jobs’ final insights – and why finding the right team is harder than the actual creation of an innovative product. (7:20)
- Bianna Golodryga (award-winning TV journalist) on the importance of leaders setting examples within their organization and the impact it has on the rest of the company. (9:45)
- Bobbi Brown (founder & cosmetics beauty icon) on going for it at any cost. (11:25)
- Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (CEO of Stubhub) on her hiring strategy – and an operating principle that she calls “operating range.” (11:48)
- Sir Richard Branson on why effective leaders have to be good listeners. (12:30)
- Malcolm Gladwell (author, journalist & speaker) on the different kinds of leaders that exist and why it’s important to carefully define your leadership style based on the organization’s culture. (13:30)
- Dr. Jill Biden (professor and former First Lady of the United States) on why teachers are the best example of lifelong learners – because they’re always open to new ideas and ways of learning. (16:10)
- Jen Rubio (Co-Founder & Chief Brand Officer of Away) on remembering core values and how they should guide everything a company does. (17:10)
- Laura Dern (actress) on why we need to be willing to be vulnerable – and how it’s time for us to say we’re ready to lead. (19:20)
- Adam Grant (Wharton Professor, Award-Winning Author, & Psychologist) on how leaders should always be comfortable with feedback – and why power and status shouldn’t change that. (20:25)
- Karlie Kloss (supermodel & philanthropist) on what drew her to coding and how she’s using Kode with Klossy to inspire young girls in STEAM. (22:45)
- The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair (former UK Prime Minister) on why people love change in general – but hate it in particular. (24:45)
- Sylvia Acevedo (CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA) on why your first sale always has to be to yourself. (26:20)
- Julie Sweet (CEO of Accenture) on the value of staying calm in crises and how it’s the most important thing a leader can do. (26:45)
Tony Blair
A Call to Lead
06/24/19 • 19 min
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently sat down with me at A Call to Lead in Orlando. And on this week's podcast, we bring you the enlightening conversation. When the Prime Minister, who urged me to call him Tony, talks about the world or recalls his own experience as PM, he dispenses loads of wisdom about leadership. There's plenty in this episode. Here are just 3 points among many that make this show a terrific listen:
- No matter what field you're in, the mark of a leader is the same, Tony says: "The thing that distinguishes someone who leads is that you step forward and other people step back. If you're going to lead, you've got to understand you're going to step forward."
- PM Blair reflected on the inherent contrast between governing and campaigning, saying “One of the things you learn about politics is that running for office and governing are two completely different things. One is about communication and persuasion, the other is about executive capability.”
- The hardest thing about leadership is making change, Tony says: "What I've found about change is that everyone loves it in general. They just hate it in particular. And when you first propose it, people tell you it's a bad idea. When you're doing it, it's hell. And when you've done it, you wish you had done more of it. So it's important to have people around you who are good and capable, but also prepared to challenge you, to make you think innovatively. Because keeping that spark of creativity around, whatever you do, is incredibly important."
You can learn more by visiting: www.sap.com/acalltolead. And you can subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. We welcome your feedback on the pod! Tweet me @JenniferBMorgan and use the hashtag #acalltolead or e-mail us at [email protected].
Where to Listen: Subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher.
---
Jennifer Morgan is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of SAP’s Cloud Business Group.
Michelle Yeoh
A Call to Lead
07/22/19 • 40 min
This new episode of A Call to Lead has me in Singapore, sitting down in front of a live audience with one of the world’s most respected and popular global movie stars. Michelle Yeoh grew up in Malaysia and England, gained her early fame in Hong Kong action films, and went on to star in mega-hits such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, Star Trek: Discovery, and Crazy Rich Asians. Michelle played family matriarch Eleanor Young in that blockbuster romantic comedy. As a master of her craft, Michelle shared great advice that applies to leadership in business and life. Here are 5 Points that my team and I found particularly valuable.
- Like every good leader, Michelle fuels her work with empathy. “Empathy plays a big role for all of us. If you can't empathize, how can you lead?That is how I approach the different characters they I played, like a geisha. I don't know anything about that world. It’s one of the most beautiful cultures, from Japan, and out of respect to that culture, I have to get it right.”
- Michelle speaks my language: lead with humility and vulnerability: “As a leader, a lot of the times you are personified in a certain way—be eloquent and give good advice and lead. God, that must be so tiring. Isn't it much more interesting if you can communicate and empathize and be able to have that moment of vulnerability? If I feel that you care for me—that you're vulnerable and you understand a loss of a child or a close family member—then I believe you will begin to understand me.”
- Never fear failure, Michelle says: “The more you fear that you're going to fail, you've already failed. Because you're just going to conform to something that you are comfortable with and probably just do it the same old way and regurgitate the same things. And there will never be an improvement.”
- Ask for help, she adds. “I'm never afraid to ask for help. I believe that I don't know enough. One of the reasons why I didn't use to come to these talks, apart from stage fright, was, ‘Oh my God, they're going to discover that I know nothing." And then I thought: It's okay to know nothing.’ If I knew everything, it's only downhill from there because then I would be so arrogant.”
- Practice self-control: “I was a squash player, and I had one of the best teachers. Once, when I lost a match and threw my racket across the room, he said quietly, "What was the point of that?" I never threw another fit again. To be a really good player, learn self-control. Respect when you fail. That's when you can get better.
You can learn more by visiting: www.sap.com/acalltolead. And you can subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. We welcome your feedback on the pod! Tweet me @JenniferBMorgan and use the hashtag #acalltolead or e-mail us at [email protected].
Where to Listen: Subscribe and listen to episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher.
---
Jennifer Morgan is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of SAP’s Cloud Business Group.
Show more best episodes
Show more best episodes
FAQ
How many episodes does A Call to Lead have?
A Call to Lead currently has 29 episodes available.
What topics does A Call to Lead cover?
The podcast is about Leadership, Enterprise, Software, Podcasts, Technology, Business, Advice, Interviews and Careers.
What is the most popular episode on A Call to Lead?
The episode title 'Michelle Yeoh' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on A Call to Lead?
The average episode length on A Call to Lead is 31 minutes.
How often are episodes of A Call to Lead released?
Episodes of A Call to Lead are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of A Call to Lead?
The first episode of A Call to Lead was released on Oct 1, 2018.
Show more FAQ
Show more FAQ