Sublime

OL: I need to hire people who are top performers so we can make our goals, because my own performance will be measured by that standard. SL: I want to hire people who will perform well because that will bring them satisfaction in their work, affirmation of their calling and success to the team. OL: Judy is a rising star. I need to be sure she

“Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”

Leaders who talk in this way sound very different from typical authority figures of the past—managers, teachers, parents or politicians. True, some of those people were inspiring. But most of them communicated in the familiar top-down, paternalistic, authoritarian, domineering, I’m-in-charge-so-I-know-what’s-right manner that people in positions of

Peter Drucker.

Chau began running panels of about twenty people. “I’ll pick a topic I’m trying to get smarter on,” she says. “Then I’ll find three senior operators, and I’ll ask them to be a panelist. It’s a way for me to build my network of operators, and then I’ll go invite the twenty founders that are building companies in this space that I want to meet. In

Red Organizations are wolf packs. In Amber, the metaphor changes: a good organization should be run like an army.

So I came back and I started to write my direct reports to other senior executives’ parents narrating the story, my cultural background, what happened when I went to India. Then I wrote a personal paragraph of what their child was doing at PepsiCo and said, “Thank you for the gift of your child to our company,” and it opened the floodgate of

If you are not in a position of authority, then you can help protect troublemakers by making sure they are invited to meetings. And when they do say something that creates disequilibrium, you can choose to be curious: ask them to say more about their idea rather than allow everyone else in the room to ignore them.