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The Lift

The Lift

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Welcome to The Lift, the show about leadership, growth, and getting what we want. On The Lift, we pull up to see the bigger picture from accomplished leaders who know how to get things done in a rapidly changing world. Host Ben Brooks dives deep into a relevant leadership topic each episode and connects the dots to leave you with powerful distinctions that you can use as a leader.

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Episodios
  • Managing Yourself First: Margaret Andrews on Self-Awareness and Leadership

    Managing Yourself First: Margaret Andrews on Self-Awareness and Leadership
    Mar 31 2026
    In this episode of The Lift, Ben is joined by Margaret Andrews, Harvard and MIT professor of executive education programs on leadership, emotional intelligence, and self-management, founder of The MYLO Center, and author of Managing Yourself to Lead Others.Key takeaways: Self-awareness is the foundation of great leadershipEmotional intelligence matters more than many leaders realize, particularly when it comes to communication, trust, and feedbackThe best bosses stand out for their interpersonal skills, not just IQ or technical expertiseFeedback and emotions are data, and leaders who learn to interpret both can make better decisions and build stronger relationships at workIf you want to change how people think, you have to change how they feelLeadership growth starts with self-reflection: understanding your values, your definition of success, and the people and experiences that shaped you What makes someone a truly effective leader? According to Margaret Andrews, it starts with a skill that many business schools and workplaces still undervalue: self-awareness.The core idea of this conversation is simple but powerful: before you can lead other people well, you have to understand how you think, feel, behave, and impact others. That sounds obvious, but in practice, many leaders skip this step. They focus on strategy, process, execution, and technical skill while overlooking the emotional and interpersonal habits that shape every meeting, every relationship, and every decision.Margaret’s own path into this work started with difficult feedback. Early in her career, a boss told her she lacked self-awareness. It was painful to hear, but it became a turning point. Instead of dismissing the comment, she began asking deeper questions about why she showed up the way she did, how others experienced her, and what she needed to change in order to become a more effective leader. That journey led her to develop a framework for managing yourself before leading others.In the conversation, Margaret shares six essential questions leaders can use to better understand themselves:Who and what ideas shaped you?What life events changed you?How do you define success?What are your core values?How well do you understand your emotions?What feedback have you received over the course of your life?These questions get at the heart of leadership development because they force people to examine the beliefs, experiences, and emotional patterns they bring into the workplace every day. Margaret makes the case that leadership is not just about getting results through others. It is also about understanding the forces inside yourself that affect how you listen, react, communicate, and influence.Margaret asserts that people are not nearly as rational as we like to think. If you want to change the way people think, she says, you first have to change the way they feel. That insight has huge implications for managers, executives, and founders. You can have the smartest strategy in the room, but if you do not understand the emotional reality of the people around you, your message may never land.Margaret also shares a practical exercise she uses in executive programs: think about the best boss you ever had, then identify the top reasons they were effective. Across years of teaching, she has found that most people’s answers do not focus on IQ or technical brilliance. Rather, they focus on interpersonal skills: things like listening, trust, empathy, communication, calm under pressure, and the ability to make others better. In other words, the qualities that make someone memorable as a leader are often the very ones organizations treat as secondary.This episode is especially valuable for leaders who have relied on competence, speed, achievement, or hard-driving standards to succeed and are now realizing those strengths may not be enough. Margaret offers a more sustainable model – one rooted in emotional intelligence, reflection, and behavioral change. She also draws an important distinction between personality and behavior. You do not have to become a different person to grow as a leader, but you may need to change how you behave.For anyone trying to become a better manager, a more grounded executive, or a more thoughtful human being at work, this conversation is both practical and deeply personal. It is about more than leadership theory. It is about how your inner life shapes your outer impact.If you want to lead others more effectively, start here: know yourself better, manage yourself more honestly, and build from there.Links: Margaret AndrewsThe MYLO Center Managing Yourself to Lead Others (Margaret’s book Harvard Executive Education programsInternational House at UC Berkeley The Lift is hosted by Ben Brooks. Find out more about Ben Brooks and his company, PILOT, here. The show is made by editaudio. Follow Ben on LinkedIn and Instagram.For even more fun, follow along on Ben’s adventures with his puppy, Jetson.See Privacy Policy at...
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    35 m
  • The High Line and Beyond: Robbie Hammond on Building The Impossible with Tenacity, Timing, and Vision

    The High Line and Beyond: Robbie Hammond on Building The Impossible with Tenacity, Timing, and Vision
    Mar 24 2026
    In this episode of The Lift, Ben is joined by Robbie Hammond – Co-Founder of The High Line, a beloved elevated park and greenway in NYC – and the global president of Therme Group, a company centered on urban wellbeing.Key takeaways: Break big, long-term visions into small, self-contained projects that show progress and keep you motivatedTenacity matters more than perfect conditions, especially when politics and timing are outside your controlKnowing your own strengths (and limits) makes it easier to find partners who complement your skillsExternal success doesn’t automatically create internal well-being; therapy, meditation, and sometimes medication can be part of the leadership toolkitPhilanthropy and nonprofit structures can “hold the vision” while you wait for the right political and economic climateThis week on The Lift, Ben chats with Robbie about what it really takes to stick with a big idea for decades and actually make it happen.Robbie never set out to be “the High Line Guy.” In fact, he describes himself as someone with a short attention span who came from dot-com startups, not urban planning. He was working in tech when he read a 1999 article about an old elevated freight rail line that the city planned to demolish. Curious, he went to a community board meeting, sat down next to a stranger (who turned out to be his future High Line Co-Founder, Joshua David), and realized they were the only two people in the room who didn’t want the structure torn down.Neither of them had money, power, or relevant credentials. The mayor wanted it gone. Nearby property owners wanted it gone. Most neighbors wanted it gone. Robbie estimates the odds of success at the time were maybe one in a hundred. So why bother?Robbie’s answer: It was a passion project. He still had a day job, but the High Line gave him a chance to work with architects, designers, and community members he never would’ve met otherwise. Even if the park never got built, he felt like the smaller projects along the way – a design competition, an education program, a street fair, early branding – were all meaningful in their own right.That’s the core concept behind Robbie’s approach is “micro-dosing the vision.” When a project might take 10–20 years, you can’t wait for the grand opening to feel like you’re making progress. Instead, he advises, you break the journey into bite-sized, shippable milestones: a brochure here, a website there, a new partnership, a public event, a feasibility study. Each micro-project becomes proof that the idea is moving, even if the finish line is far away.Ben and Robbie also explore the invisible emotional cost behind high-profile success. Robbie shares candidly that, even as the High Line became one of the most famous parks in the world and helped dramatically reshape Manhattan’s West Side and neighboring Hudson Yards, he didn’t actually enjoy his life for a long time. Like many founders, he was driven by fear of failure and chronic self-doubt.What finally shifted? A mix of therapy, years of experimenting with different kinds of meditation, and eventually medication in his mid-40s. Those tools helped him regulate anxiety, sustain a healthy relationship, and build a family. They also gave him the internal stability to appreciate what he had already created instead of immediately chasing the next big thing.On the strategy side, Robbie talks about the value of selling different versions of the same vision to very different audiences. For city government, the pitch was an economic-development story: invest public dollars to generate future tax revenue through higher property values and new development. For neighbors, it was about public space and quality of life. For partners and donors, it was about civic legacy and design innovation.He describes how he and Joshua deliberately hired the kinds of experts developers usually use against community groups, like seasoned land-use lawyers, consultants, and lobbyists,so they could meet powerful stakeholders on equal footing.Robbie also reflects on his work with Little Island and its founder, media executive Barry Diller. Initially, he was skeptical of the project and worried about yet another billionaire-backed park in an already amenity-rich neighborhood. But he’s come to respect Barry’s sheer tenacity and willingness to keep funding both its construction and ongoing maintenance, which is something many wealthy patrons don’t stick around for.Today, Robbie is channeling his long-game muscles into Therme Group, which builds massive, urban wellbeing campuses inspired by ancient Roman baths. For him, Therme is a way to democratize wellness: not luxury spas for the few, but a social infrastructure for the many.Because those projects move slowly, he’s still micro-dosing the vision through smaller, related creative experiments: hosting pop-up sauna villages, writing his “Culture of Bathe-ing” Substack, and collaborating with a ...
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    29 m
  • From fear of uncertainty to strategic advantage: Kut Akdogan on navigating an AI-driven world

    From fear of uncertainty to strategic advantage: Kut Akdogan on navigating an AI-driven world
    Mar 17 2026
    In this episode of The Lift, Ben is joined by Kut Akdogan – entrepreneur, strategist, and Managing Partner at Gaussian Holdings – to explore how leaders can build strategy in a world defined by uncertainty, rapid change, and AI disruption.Key takeaways: Why humans are wired to resist uncertainty – and how leaders can work with that wiring instead of against itHow to define a clear “North Star” so uncertainty feels like crossing the Atlantic rather than drifting aimlessly at seaWhy traditional 3–5 year planning often breaks down in volatile environmentsHow to treat AI as a powerful tool, not a god or a gimmickHow to earn complexity by starting small, solving real problems, and scaling what actually worksHow agile, incremental strategy creates stronger outcomes than rigid long-range plansWhy this episode matters:Uncertainty has become the water leaders swim in.Markets shift overnight. Technology evolves faster than the planning cycle. And AI seems to promise everything while threatening everyone at the same time.In this conversation, Ben and Kut unpack what uncertainty really is, why it feels so destabilizing, and how leaders can navigate it with more clarity, better judgment, and stronger strategy.In this episode, Kut explains:Why uncertainty has a “brand problem” in businessWhy saying “I feel uncertain” is often treated like admitting weaknessHow human beings are wired to crave both comfort and progressHow a clear long-term objective can make uncertainty more manageable – and even productiveKut uses a powerful metaphor to underscore his main idea:If you get in a boat with no destination, every wave feels existentialIf your goal is to cross the Atlantic, storms are still stressful, but they make sense in contextFor leaders, that means the first job is to define a North Star: a clear objective that stays steady even when conditions change.A better approach to long-term strategy:Kut argues that too many organizations still build strategy as if the world will remain mostly stable.He says that approach no longer works.Instead, he advocates for “incremental moonshots”: pairing a bold long-term ambition with smaller, testable steps that allow you to learn, adapt, and course-correct over time.Rather than pretending uncertainty is just a downside risk, leaders should build strategy that assumes change is coming.That means:setting a long-range directionmaking smaller betscreating room for adjustmenttreating learning as part of executionAI, strategy, and the danger of magical thinking:Ben and Kut also dig into the biggest source of modern strategic anxiety: Artificial Intelligence.Kut is deeply optimistic about AI’s potential, but he is equally clear that leaders need to strip away its sci-fi mythology.His view is simple: AI is a tool. A very powerful tool. But still a tool.They explore:why flashy AI demos often create unrealistic expectationswhy “weekend experiments” rarely translate into real enterprise valuewhat the “95% of AI projects fail” statistic reveals about poor implementationwhy leaders should stop using AI hype to justify eliminating roles they do not fully understandhow successful AI adoption starts with specific problems, not broad promisesKut’s principle here is earning complexity:Start with a real problem.Run a contained experiment.Create actual value.Then scale.What leaders should watch for next:In his “heat check” on the future of work, Kut predicts:a more grounded correction in AI expectationsa new generation of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs emerging from today’s uncertaintywinning organizations will be the ones that combine clear anchors with enough flexibility to experimentHe also shares a Moby-Dick quote that captures the restless, creative energy many founders and leaders feel when they are drawn toward difficult, uncertain work:“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”What leaders should remember:If you are trying to lead through AI hype, market volatility, or constant ambiguity, this episode offers a useful reframing:You do not need to eliminate uncertainty. You need to anchor it.Set the destination.Take smaller steps.Solve real problems.And keep moving.Links:Kut AkdoganGaussian HoldingsMoby-Dick by Herman Melville“Pale Blue Dot” by Carl SaganThe Oregon TrailHome AssistantThe Lift is hosted by Ben Brooks. Find out more about Ben Brooks and his company, PILOT, here. The show is made by editaudio. Follow Ben on LinkedIn and Instagram.For even more fun, follow along on Ben’s adventures with his puppy, Jetson.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    38 m
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