Joly on leading with the mind and ‘other of our body parts’

Yeah, I think that we've all learned tremendously during the pandemic. One of the things we've learned, if we had not learned a lesson before, was that our teams were made of human beings, right? Because we feared for their health and safety as relates to the frontline workers, and then for those who were working from home, we got to know their family, right, didn't we? We also learned about their struggles, you know, health struggles, mental health struggles. And so there was a deeper connection that was built, and we couldn't just continue as before. We had to rely on building that connection. The other thing we learned is that, my favorite phrase now, Francis, is 'My name is Uber and I don't know,' right? Because maybe you, Francis, had the manual on how to deal with COVID or back to the office or how to deal with inflation, supply chain issues. No, we're in a situation where regularly now we have some unprecedented crisis that's being thrown at us. And so the model of the know-it-all leader who knows all of the answers and is there to tell other people what to do, that doesn't work. So we have to be able to say, 'I don't know. We're going to have to figure this out together. We're going to have to figure out who's the best equipped, who are the people we need to consult.' The other thing, and that's going to be my... I mean, there's so many lessons, but maybe another one was to learn to lead with all of our body parts. I was trained, you know, when I was in business school or at McKinsey in my early years as an executive, to lead with my left brain. Now, I had my head cut off from the rest of my body for many years as a leader. I know now that I need to lead with, of course, my head, but also my heart, my soul, my guts, my ears, my eyes. And then the last thing I would say is I need, as a leader, and all of us are leaders because at the minimum we're leaders of our life, we need to take care of ourselves, right? Remember, Francis, when we used to fly around, when the steward or stewardess would tell us, 'If the oxygen mask comes down, put it on yourself first so that you can, before you can help others.' And if we want to be resilient leaders, spending time with ourselves, taking care of our health, thinking through how do I want to be remembered after this particular crisis, and being centered, authentic, human leaders, I think is a huge lesson. When you sort of knew that before, now it's become really obvious.