How can leaders navigate the complexities of polarization and build trust in an age of outrage? Kevin sits down with Karthik Ramanna to discuss strategies for effective leadership in a world marked by heightened emotion, distrust, and division. Karthik shares his five-part framework for navigating outrage, which includes turning down the temperature, building trust, scoping organizational responses, understanding power, and fostering resilience. He emphasizes that leaders must first work on themselves before attempting to manage others' reactions. He also shares practical insights like the importance of environmental conditions in managing conflict and building trust through shared experience

Listen For

00:00 Introduction
02:13 Meet Karthik Ramanna
02:56 Karthik's Leadership Journey
05:06 Why Outrage is Rising
06:28 Root Causes of Polarization
08:23 Declining Trust in Leadership
09:51 Five-Part Leadership Framework
12:13 Internal vs External Leadership
14:10 Turning Down the Temperature
16:09 The Neuroscience of Outrage
17:15 Strategies to De-Escalate Conflict
18:37 Active Listening & Understanding
21:50 Trust and Psychological Safety
23:33 Defining Organizational Response
25:57 Disney's Strategy Misstep
27:55 Power and Influence in Leadership
29:22 Building Resilient Organizations
31:03 Managing Expectations as a Leader
36:15 Closing & Next Episode

Karthik's Story: Karthik Ramanna is the author of The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World. He is a professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government, where he has served as director of one of the world's most diverse leadership programs. Previously a professor at Harvard Business School, Professor Ramanna studies how organizations and leaders build trust with stakeholders. His scholarship has won numerous awards including the Harvard Business Review-McKinsey Prize for "groundbreaking management thinking," and three times the international Case Centre's prizes for "outstanding case-writing," dubbed by the Financial Times as "the business school Oscars."

http://karthikramanna.com/

https://hbr.org/2023/01/managing-in-the-age-of-outrage

https://www.instagram.com/prof.kr.ox/