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Every system we move through runs on norms: rules and agreements that are both explicit and implicit. And nowhere are they more powerful–or more invisible–than in how we lead and how we build our businesses.
In fact, sociologists have consistently found that norms don’t announce themselves.
They travel through families, schools, workplaces, and entire cultures through repetition and imitation, often persisting long after the conditions that created them have changed. We absorb them before we can name them. And once they are inside us, they feel like “just the way things are.”
As a result, the model leader–despite decades of language to the contrary–still looks and sounds like a very particular kind of person.
My guest today offers that leadership development has been trying to make better leaders for a broken system, rather than questioning whether the system itself needs to change.
Nilofer Merchant has spent her career making the invisible visible–naming the norms, the systems, the daily routines that keep us collectively stuck. In this conversation, we go deep on the difference between caring and caretaking, what it means to trust yourself when the ground keeps disappearing, and what it actually takes to stop trying to fix what is not working and become someone who builds what is needed, right where you are.
Nilofer Merchant is the co-founder of Intangible Labs. She spent over 25 years leading technology companies (Apple, Autodesk, GoLive/Adobe) and personally launched over 100 products and services, netting $18 billion in revenues. She is ranked among the top 50 influential management thinkers in the world (one of her TED Talks has been referenced 300 million times). Our Best Work is her 4th book.
Why accepting our current norms won’t get leaders where they want to go
How what we call personal agency is in reality socially constructed and driven
Why we need more real care and less caretaking in our relationships at work and in life
How teams can shift towards situational leadership and recentering how we think about the unique value and capabilities individuals bring
How ownership, shared purpose, and co-creation help us build new systems, unstuck from the status quo
Nilofer’s lessons about self-trust, taking risks, and approaching the future of work with hope
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nilofer/
Our Best Work: Break Free from the 24 Invisible Norms That Limit Us
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What’s one “normal” leadership rule or workplace expectation you’ve started questioning lately and what helped you see it differently?
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