Let Go & Lead with Maril MacDonald

Work has been in a chaotic flux since COVID-19 began, but as Julia Hobsbawm reminds us, it wasn’t going that well before the pandemic, either.

The author, Bloomberg columnist and futurist of work has been researching connectivity, social health and humans’ relationship with technology since before the age of hybrid work. She talks with Maril about the ways work is changing — from new office models to technology developments to the norms of new generations — and what the best leaders can do to build productive, fulfilled, connected cultures through it all.

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ABOUT LET GO & LEAD

Let Go & Lead is a leadership community created by Maril MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Maril brings together provocateurs, pioneers, thought leaders and those leading the conversation around culture, transformation and change. Over the course of the past 14 years, Let Go & Lead has existed in many forms, from video interviews to resource guides to its current iteration as a podcast. At its core, it remains a place where people can access a diversity of perspectives on interdisciplinary approaches to leadership. Maril is also working on a book incorporating these insights gathered over the past several years from global leaders and change makers.

Maril has interviewed over 140 leaders — from business to academia and nonprofits to the arts — through the years. In each conversation, from personal anecdotes to ground-breaking scientific analysis, she has probed the lessons learned in leadership. From these conversations, the Let Go & Lead framework has emerged. It is both a personal and organizational resource that aims to serve the individual leader or leadership at scale.

ABOUT GAGEN MACDONALD

At Gagen MacDonald, we are dedicated to helping organizations navigate the human struggle of change. We are a people-focused consulting firm and our passion is improving the employee experience — for everyone. For more than 25 years, we have been working with companies to create clarity from chaos by uniting employees across all levels around a single vision so they can achieve results and realize their future.

We have been a pioneer in bringing humanity to strategy execution, leading in areas such as organizational communication, culture, leadership, and employee engagement. Our Vision is to lift all humanity by transforming the companies that transform the world.

Full episodes also available on:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LetGoAndLead

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/let-go-lead-with-maril-macdonald/id1454869525

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Gaf7JXOckZMtkpsMtnjAj

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Gagen MacDonald is a woman-owned, human-focused transformation consulting firm and trusted partner to the C-suite. We specialize in internal communications, employee engagement, culture change and leadership development. Learn more at http://www.gagenmacdonald.com.

In this episode of Let Go & Lead, Innovisor Founder and CEO Jeppe Hansgaard talks with Maril about how influence really works within organizations. Diving into the field of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA), they discuss the enormous impact that a few employees have on the success of their entire organizations — Innovisor has shown that just 3 percent of your employees can impact up to 90 percent of change — and how rarely leaders can guess who those people really are within their own ranks. Jeppe and Maril explore the different ways that networks change as you progress up organizations; how Gagen’s Six Levers of Culture can go hand-in-hand with ONA; and the promise of network analysis as a boon for human connection, belonging and organizational agility.

Learn about:

5:23 How 3% of your employees impact 90% of change

9:54 How COVID-19 has changed organizational networks

11:23 Understanding gender in informal networks

14:39 How Gagen’s Six Levers of Culture connect to organizational network analysis

20:05 Assisting the “Lost Generation” inside your organization

25:27 The impact of Organizational Network Analysis on Mergers & Acquisitions

33:06 The most influential person in the organization

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Jeppe Vilstrup Hansgaard is the Founder and CEO of Innovisor, a boutique advisory within organizational network analysis and change analytics that has a bold vision to eliminate change failure.

Jeppe has working experience from across five continents, including from many U.S. companies such as Chevron, Caterpillar and Eli Lilly. He is a frequent speaker to executive groups, leadership programs and business schools around the world. His and Innovisor’ s groundbreaking work has been featured in more than 15 leadership books, including Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. Jeppe holds an Executive MBA from Henley Business School, U.K., and a Certificate in Strategic Decision and Risk Management from the Stanford Center for Professional Development.

Jeppe is the proud dad of three kids, and spends most of his spare time helping out in the local track & field community.

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Let Go & Lead is a leadership community created by Maril MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Maril brings together provocateurs, pioneers, thought leaders and those leading the conversation around culture, transformation and change.

Over the course of the past 12 years, Let Go & Lead has existed in many forms, from video interviews to resource guides to its current iteration as a podcast. At its core, it remains a place where people can access a diversity of perspectives on interdisciplinary approaches to leadership. Maril is also working on a book incorporating these insights gathered over the past several years from global leaders and change makers.

Maril has interviewed over 120 leaders — from business to academia and nonprofits to the arts — through the years. In each conversation, from personal anecdotes to ground-breaking scientific analysis, she has probed the lessons learned in leadership. From these conversations, the Let Go & Lead framework has emerged. It is both a personal and organizational resource that aims to serve the individual leader or leadership at scale.

Full episodes also available on:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/let-go-lead-with-maril-macdonald/id1454869525

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Gaf7JXOckZMtkpsMtnjAj?si=WZjZkvfLTX2T4eaeB1PO2A

Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9sZXRnb2xlYWQubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/let-go-lead

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We’re excited to share that the third season of Let Go & Lead will premiere on April 14. We have some fantastic guests for you, including award winning organizational psychologist Francesca Gino, Hyatt’s Chief Human Resources Officer Malaika Myers and U.S. Navy SEAL Commander Rorke Denver. Thanks for listening and for being a part of the Let Go & Lead community!

In this episode of Let Go & Lead, Maril talks with Sylvia Burwell, the 15th president of American University. She shares the leadership principles that have guided her through an impressive and wide-ranging leadership career — from serving as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration to Chief Operating Officer at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to her current role as the first woman to lead American University.

Sylvia and Maril discuss the importance, for a leader, of creating a leadership team that doesn’t look like you, with true diversity of perspective; of being a calm, optimistic presence during crisis; and of taking it on yourself to “see around the corner” as a leader — to ensure your energy goes more toward anticipating the future than preserving the past.

Learn about:

10:55 Three critical leadership principles

12:01 The key elements of great teams

14:52 How inclusion creates excellence

22:10 The role of community to build alignment

27:44 The role of emotions in decision-making

33:50 What leaders need to let go of

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Sylvia M. Burwell is American University's 15th president and the first woman to serve as president. A visionary leader with experience in the public and private sectors, President Burwell brings to American University a commitment to education and research, the ability to manage large and complex organizations, and experience helping to advance solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges. Burwell joined AU on June 1, 2017.

Burwell has held two cabinet positions in the United States government. She served as the 22nd secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services from 2014 to 2017. During her tenure, she managed a trillion-dollar department that includes the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, and the Medicaid and Medicare programs; oversaw the successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act; and led the department’s responses to the Ebola and Zika outbreaks. Before that, she served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, working with Congress to negotiate a two-year budget deal following the 2013 government shutdown. In both roles she was known as a leader who worked successfully across the aisle and focused on delivering results for the American people.

Her additional government experience is extensive and includes roles as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, deputy chief of staff to the president, chief of staff to the secretary of the Treasury, and special assistant to the director of the National Economic Council.

Burwell has held leadership positions at two of the largest foundations in the world. She served 11 years at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, including roles as the chief operating officer and president of the Global Development Program. She then served as president of the Walmart Foundation and ran its global Women’s Economic Empowerment efforts. Her private sector experience includes service on the Board of Directors of MetLife.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in Government from Harvard University and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

A second-generation Greek American, Burwell is a native of Hinton, West Virginia. She and her husband Stephen Burwell are the parents of two young children.

ABOUT LET GO & LEAD

Let Go & Lead is a leadership community created by Maril MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Maril brings together provocateurs, pioneers, thought leaders and those leading the conversation around culture, transformation and change.

Over the course of the past 12 years, Let Go & Lead has existed in many forms, from video interviews to resource guides to its current iteration as a podcast. At its core, it remains a place where people can access a diversity of perspectives on interdisciplinary approaches to leadership. Maril is also working on a book incorporating these insights gathered over the past several years from global leaders and change makers.

Maril has interviewed over 120 leaders — from business to academia and nonprofits to the arts — through the years. In each conversation, from personal anecdotes to ground-breaking scientific analysis, she has probed the lessons learned in leadership. From these conversations, the Let Go & Lead framework has emerged. It is both a personal and organizational resource that aims to serve the individual leader or leadership at scale.

ABOUT GAGEN MACDONALD

At Gagen MacDonald, we are dedicated to helping organizations navigate the human struggle of change. We are a people-focused consulting firm and our passion is improving the employee experience — for every...

In Pulitzer-nominated sportswriter Sally Jenkins’ experience, great leaders are less in the business of winning than the business of teaching.

Over a wide-ranging conversation, Maril and Sally explore the leadership lessons Sally has learned from a career interviewing and writing about the world’s great athletes and coaches. They discuss why discipline is something that leaders can’t impose, but have to call up from within people; why it’s less important to take a popular position than a good position; and why leadership is less like holding the steering wheel and more like conducing an orchestra.

Learn about:

3:18 The leadership factor with the most impact 6:21 Why winning isn’t the only motivator for leaders

7:49 Why discipline is misunderstood and an interior construct

24:44 What leaders most need to let go of

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Sally Jenkins began her second stint at The Washington Post in 2000 after spending the previous decade working as a book author and as a magazine writer. She was named the nation’s top sports columnist in 2001, 2003, 2010 and 2011 by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In 2013, she won a first-place award from the AP for an investigative series co-written with Rick Maese on medical care in the NFL, titled “Do No Harm.” Jenkins is the author of 12 books, four of which were New York Times bestsellers, most recently the No.1 “Sum It Up” with legendary basketball coach Pat Summitt. She is also the author of “The Real All Americans,” the historical account of how the Carlisle Indian School took on the Ivy League powers in college football at the turn of the century and won. Her work has been featured in Smithsonian, GQ and Sports Illustrated. A native of Texas, Jenkins graduated from Stanford and lives in Sag Harbor, New York.

Honors and Awards: 2017 National Press Foundation Chairman's Citation; 2017 Best Sports Stories; 2013 First Place, Associated Press Sports Editors for Investigative Series; 2011 Sports Columnist of the Year, Society of Professional Journalists; 2011 First Place, Associated Press Sports Editors, Columns; 2010 First Place, Associated Press Sports Editors, Columns; 2008 Sports Columnist of the Year, Society of Professional Journalists; 2007 Best Sports Stories; 2005 Inducted National Sports Writers and Sportscasters Hall of Fame (first woman); 2003 First Place, Associated Press Sports Editors, Columns; 2001 First Place, Associated Press Sports Editors, Columns; 2001 Sports Columnist of the year, Society of Professional Journalists.

ABOUT LET GO & LEAD

Let Go & Lead is a leadership community created by Maril MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Maril brings together provocateurs, pioneers, thought leaders and those leading the conversation around culture, transformation and change.

Over the course of the past 12 years, Let Go & Lead has existed in many forms, from video interviews to resource guides to its current iteration as a podcast. At its core, it remains a place where people can access a diversity of perspectives on interdisciplinary approaches to leadership. Maril is also working on a book incorporating these insights gathered over the past several years from global leaders and change makers.

Maril has interviewed over 120 leaders — from business to academia and nonprofits to the arts — through the years. In each conversation, from personal anecdotes to ground-breaking scientific analysis, she has probed the lessons learned in leadership. From these conversations, the Let Go & Lead framework has emerged. It is both a personal and organizational resource that aims to serve the individual leader or leadership at scale.

ABOUT GAGEN MACDONALD

At Gagen MacDonald, we are dedicated to helping organizations navigate the human struggle of change. We are a people-focused consulting firm and our passion is improving the employee experience — for everyone. For almost 25 years, we have been working with companies to create clarity from chaos by uniting employees across all levels around a single vision so they can achieve results and realize their future.

We have been a pioneer in bringing humanity to strategy execution, leading in areas such as organizational communication, culture, leadership, and employee engagement. Our Vision is to lift all humanity by transforming the companies that transform the world.

Full episodes also available on:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/let-go-lead-with-maril-macdonald/id1454869525

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Gaf7JXOckZMtkpsMtnjAj?si=WZjZkvfLTX2T4eaeB1PO2A