Scott is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Southern California office. He co-leads the firm’s global CEO Excellence service line and is the author of six books, including the bestseller Beyond Performance. Scott spent his early consulting years working on business strategy and operational topics until his life was turned upside down when his second child was born with profound special needs.

After taking time off to attend to his family, Scott returned to McKinsey with the desire to bring the best of psychology, social science, and the study of human potential into the workplace. He is a cofounder of Digital Divide Data and one of a few hundred people in history known to have traveled to every country in the world. His most recent book written with Carolyn Dewar and Vikram Malhotra is titled CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.

In this conversation, Scott and I examine McKinsey’s research on what the top CEOs do (and avoid) when building great teams. We look at a few of the key mindsets that the best CEOs bring to their organizations — and how teamwork plays into this. Plus, we explore some of the key questions top leaders should ask when determining if it’s time to exit someone from the team.

• Top leaders staff for both aptitude and attitude. The have an eye to both the short and long term.
• The most successful CEOs have a mindset of “first team” and expect leaders in the organization to prioritize serving the whole team/organization over any functional area.
• New CEOs are often known for acting quickly on staffing, but the most successful leaders also temper this with fairness. They use the four questions below to act with both fairness and speed.
• Top leaders stay connected with people throughout the organization, but also keep some distance. There’s a key distinction between being friendly and making friends.

The best CEO’s ensure that have positively addressed all four questions below before removing somebody:

• Does the team member know exactly what’s expected of them: i.e., what the agenda is and what jobs need to be done to drive that agenda?
• Have they been given the needed tools and resources, and a chance to build the necessary skills and confidence to use them effectively?
• Are they surrounded by others (including the CEO) who are aligned on a common direction and who display the desired mindsets and behaviors?
• Is it clear what the consequences are if they don’t get on board and deliver?

• CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra
• The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben

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Frances Frei is a professor at Harvard Business School. Her research investigates how leaders create the context for organizations and individuals to thrive by designing for excellence in strategy, operations, and culture. She regularly works with companies embarking on large-scale change and organizational transformation, including embracing diversity and inclusion as a lever for improved performance. In 2017, Frances served as Uber’s first senior vice president of leadership and strategy to help the company navigate its very public crisis in leadership and culture.

Her partner Anne Morriss and her are the authors of Uncommon Service and The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You. They are also hosts of Fixable, a leadership advice podcast from the TED Audio Collective, and they are recognized by Thinkers50 as among the world’s most influential business thinkers. Their newest book is Move Fast & Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems.

A lot of us assume that going fast is reckless. There are certainly times when that’s the case, but it’s also true that leaders going too slow at the wrong time can make things worse. In this conversation, Frances and I discuss how to do a better job of moving quickly when it’s time to address the toughest problems.

• Many of us believe that going fast is reckless and going slow is righteous. While there are times that is true, there are many examples where it’s not.
• The fastest way to speed up your company is to empower more people to make more decisions.
• Dare to be bad at something. Deciding what not to address allows you to go faster at what you’re best at.
• Two key elements of completing work are work-in-progress and cycle time. Most leaders address cycle time first and miss the more substantial work-in-progress opportunities.
• Create a way to fast-track projects that become important and build this into the culture of the organization.

• Move Fast & Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss

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Colonel Eileen M. Collins, USAF (retired), earned a place in history as the first American woman to pilot, and later to command, a space mission. She flew on the space shuttle four times, twice as commander – including the 2005 “return to flight” mission after the tragic Columbia accident. She is the subject of the documentary movie Spacewoman and author of the book Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

We all have times in our careers where all eyes are on us. In this conversation, Eileen and I explore the critical moments of her career and how she stayed grounded while soaring among the stars.

• Until we are tested, we don’t know what we are capable of.
• Nerves creep in at times for all of us. When they do, it’s helpful to think about representing your role instead of representing yourself.
• When decisions become difficult, always come back to, “What’s the mission?”
• Train for the skill, not for the task.
• During high-stakes times, remember your family and personal life. They will help you stay grounded.

• Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission by Eileen Collins (Amazon, Bookshop)*
• Spacewoman documentary, featuring Eileen Collins

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• How to Lead and Retain High Performers, with Ruth Gotian (episode 567)
• The Way to Handle Q&A, with Matt Abrahams (episode 681)
• How to Start the Top Job, with Scott Keller (episode 752)

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