The New Currency of Leadership with Maryam Malek

Leaders have a rippling effect in the organization, says Mary Malek in her interview with Doug Crowe. She talks about the vital role of leaders in the corporate world and how crucial it is for them to be accountable to their people. From a couple of decades working for different organizations, Malek saw how leaders failed to recognize the importance of soft skills – communication, culture, and motivation. These, which she called the new currency of leadership, are what she hopes to instill with the CEOs and executives in her professional groups. This is also the core topic of her book, "New Currency of Leadership”.

 

Key Takeaways/Main Points:  

 

In this episode we discuss….

1. “What I'm doing now is the most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my life, which is working with CEOs in the orange county, Los Angeles area, trying to help them become a better version of themselves, as well as, as we know, leaders have a rippling effect on the organization.” (2:32)

2. “I was teaching at Pepperdine and Chapman University and I was working with students, but I realized it was from the bottom up and I really needed to do from top-down in order to make that difference.” (3:25)

3. “And the whole idea is how can we collectively make each other's lives better, come up with best practices and really question each other about the decisions that we're making.” (4:27)

4. “I really think that running a company without having some sort of an accountability from a peer advisory board is really malpractice.” (5:04)

5. “The book really came from a couple of decades of working in organizations and recognizing some of the things that were not addressed well, and they were the soft skills that needed to be there, but they weren't.” (7:19)

6. “Sometimes when it goes through an MBA program, a lot of focus is on the financing and the financial well-being of an organization and the responsibilities to the shareholders, but what happens to their responsibility, to the people that worked at.” (7:40)

7. “The new currency is how are we, these things that do actually contribute to the bottom line and those things are: are people motivated? or are they engaged? or is there good communication going on?” (8:53)

8. “How do you measure the currency of innovation?” (9:25)

9. “You've got to know what's going on in the front line. You got to know what's going on at the middle management and then really see where the gaps are.” (12:35)

10. “The book is called New Currency of Leadership by Mary Malek, number one bestseller” (17:32)

You can purchase Maryam's book on Amazon The New Currency of Leadership to read her 16 point plan to be a better leader.