How to Lead in a Polarized World with Karthik Ramanna

The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

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/

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Book Recommendations

• The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World by Karthik Ramanna

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