Five crucial conversations for leaders

At ConantLeadership, we're committed to lifelong learning and continuous improvement. In service to your leadership growth, each month we curate this digest of resources from around the web to:

Share actionable advice from top leadership luminaries
Celebrate a range of viewpoints (inclusion is not an endorsement)
Contextualize workplace trends through a leadership lens
Illuminate cultural recalibrations in the world of work
Support your personal development in life, leadership, & beyond

Want to work with us to lift your or your team's leadership to new heights? Drop us a line or talk to Emma Anthony, our Director of Leadership Programs.

From ConantLeadership

5 Crucial Conversations for Leaders

This month, ConantLeadership hosted our ninth semi-annual BLUEPRINT Leadership Summit, a week-long special event featuring top leadership luminaries in conversation with our Founder & CEO, Doug Conant. What started as a virtual way to reach leaders in 2021 during the pandemic, when people were not attending in-person events, has blossomed into a landmark event, and we're so proud to see the engagement from the ConantLeadership community year after year.

If you missed our fall 2025 Summit, no worries, we've compiled the video replays for all five sessions below. (You can skip intros and housekeeping by fast forwarding to roughly minute seven.)

MONDAY
The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward - A Conversation with Daniel Pink

TUESDAY
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Trust - A Conversation with Richard Edelman

WEDNESDAY
Board Leadership: The Role of the Director in Today's World - A Conversation with Sandi Peterson

THURSDAY
Nurturing Cultures of Excellence - A Conversation with Margaret Rogers

FRIDAY
STEP into Your Power as an Executive Assistant - A Conversation with Melinda Vail-Goodnight

And you can explore our video library of past summit sessions with brilliant thought leaders like Brené Brown, Amy Edmondson, Bill George, Indra Nooyi, and many more here.

Founder's Corner: What's Doug Watching & Reading?

A new feature in our newsletter where we highlight a few resources that our Founder & CEO, Doug Conant, has recently found insightful and/or inspiring.

What Doug's Watching

1. A seven minute summary of Abraham Maslow on Management from SnapTale Audiobook Summaries.

From Doug: "Although I've long been an admirer of his work, it’s been a while since I revisited and studied Maslow closely. This seven minute summary is worth careful scrutiny for all leaders." Watch it here.

What Doug's Reading

1. An interview with Alan Mulally in Leader to Leader Magazine where he shares his 'Working Together' management framework.

From Doug: "As someone who ardently believes 'People First' must be the guiding ethos for effective leadership, this fantastic explanation of Alan Mulally's 'Working Together' framework speaks to me. I naturally align with it on many levels, including his clear directive to put 'People first . . . love 'em up.'" Read it here.

2. This piece from SWAY, a newsletter by Kate Bennis, on the art of giving and receiving feedback.

From Doug: This article offers smart advice from Kate Bennis, the daughter of the 'Father of Leadership' in the 20th century, Warren Bennis. In this piece, Bennis affirms one of my strongest held beliefs (a belief I borrowed from leadership gurus Ken Blanchard and Stephen Covey) that 'feedback is the breakfast of champions.'"
Read it here.

Lessons from Costco: Is a 'Code of Ethics' the Secret to Enduring Success?

"Many companies falter after a great early leader departs. An outstanding exception is Costco. Since Jim Sinegal retired as Costco’s CEO, in January 2012, the membership warehouse retailer has continued to thrive even as many other retailers have struggled or died," writes MIT Sloan School of Management professor Zeynep Ton in this Harvard Business Review piece which draws lessons from Costco's enduring success. While some companies struggle in the absence of a foundational leader, Costco continues to perform and has been able to sustain a "culture of operational excellence and integrity" even as leadership has changed hands. Ton attributes the strong culture, which continuously delivers results, to the ways that cofounder and former CEO Jim Sinegal "embedded his deeply held convictions, and the Code of Ethics in which they are rooted, in Costco's DNA." Sinegal still maintains that "business is more than making money," and requires a "commitment to a social contract," as outlined in the Code of Ethics which is displayed in every Costco warehouse, and serves as their blueprint for organizational greatness to this day.

The Costco Code of Ethics is:

1. Obey the law
2. Take care of customers
3. Take care of employees
4, Respect suppliers
5. Reward shareholders

Disciplined adherence to this Code of Ethics has become Costco's competitive advantage. Ton describes periods when Wall Street analysts would pressure Costco "to raise prices or cut wages to boost quarterly earnings," and Sinegal would simply refer to the code: "Violating principles two and three to accelerate principle five would ultimately destroy shareholder value in the long run." Following the code, and making sure it was "repeatedly reinforced in decisions competitors couldn't or wouldn't make" became a crucial point of differentiation. And it continues to pay dividends. Get the full story here.

The 'RULER' Framework for Emotional Intelligence

The modern workplace can be a roughshod patchwork of competing priorities, murky ambiguity, interpersonal stress, and time-sensitive fires in urgent need of extinguishing. For leaders to manage this often chaotic landscape, it's helpful to be able to manage yourself and your own emotional tapestry first, before you blow a gasket or run out of steam entirely. Marc Brackett, the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence can help. He's created a calming framework called RULER, covered here by Jancee Dunn in the New York Times wellness newsletter.

The RULER framework has five stages: Recognize, Understand, Label, Express, and Regulate. Dr. Brackett reassures novices that "you can move through the steps pretty quickly," and as with most things, "they get easier with practice." He goes through each of the five components in detail with Dunn in the newsletter and here's a closer look at the first two.

Recognize. "We experience a nonstop flow of emotions," says Brackett, "most of which come and go without us noticing. But sometimes, they can bubble up and take us by surprise. So the first step is to pause, and accept and acknowledge that you're feeling something significant enough to notice." To start, you can try a "quick scan of your body" and take note of "any new sensations that can provide clues about how you're feeling." If you can't identify or name a particular feeling, even stopping to acknowledge that you are having an emotional reaction that may require attention, is a great first step.

Understand. In this stage, after you've recognized that some emotions are rising to the surface, you get curious and dig a little deeper about how you're feeling. Brackett says to "do some detective work about the cause and the context, and ask yourself: Why might I be feeling this way? Did someone say or do something that prompted my reaction? Was it an event, or a memory? Am I spotting any pattern in my reactions?" You might be surprised by what you discover.

Get the full story, and a closer look at all five components of RULER, here.

The 'Contemplative Leader' Embraces 'Both/And'

In this excerpt from his 2024 book, The Contemplative Leader: Uncover the Power of Presence and Connection, Patrick Boland illuminates why the most thoughtful leaders are those who can process nuance, embrace "non-dualistic ways of thinking and seeing," and engage in honest self-reflection. Boland says that "reframing the concept of leadership as our ability to influence others is a helpful first step in actively taking responsibility for what we do and how we do it," and stresses that "when our external world is ever-changing, we need to go inside our internal world and connect with what is most valuable, meaningful, and true of ourselves." Looking inward helps leaders find the clarity necessary to develop their influence and, writes Boland, "we can only meaningfully engage with others to the extent that we have already engaged with ourselves."

While inner work is an essential component to contemplative leadership, another equally important facet is the ability to engage in 'both/and' thinking that does not default to easy binaries. Boland writes: "We need to practice holding the tension between influencing from a place of authenticity and accepting that we cannot fully control any situation or outcome." Similarly, he says that contemplative leadership "is both process oriented and outcome oriented," and acknowledges that "most real-world leadership challenges don't have simple solutions." Instead, today's problems "require a nuanced kind of processing," that is able to recognize more than one truth at a time. For example, a leader can "be friendly with colleagues and have clear boundaries with them," and you can stand firm in a decision while understanding that not all stakeholders will agree. And most of all, a contemplative leader is able to focus on "both the financials and the people," and, "both the results and the road that gets us there." Get the full story here.

**For more on this, explore our 6-step BLUEPRINT process for lifting your leadership to new heights. Through small incremental steps, guided exercises for self-reflection, and abundant 'both/and' thinking, leaders discover new, authentic ways to practice the "art and science of influencing others."

The Ethics of the AI Race

"Over the past decade, ethical concerns about bias in AI algorithms, exploitive labor, where companies get training data, what AI should and shouldn’t be used for, who gets to create AI, and who gets to profit have been unfolding," writes Sage Lazzaro in this LeadDev piece on the ethics of the AI race. And now, "as society increasingly grapples with the ethical facets of AI, so are the engineers and developers ushering in this new generation of tech." Lazzaro cites LeadDev's 2025 AI Impact Survey in which "ethical issues" was one of the most pressing problems cited by respondents, and the urgency to address these concerns is only increasing "as AI development ramps up." To begin to engage with these issues, it's helpful to have a zoomed out understanding of the major ethical concerns that are plaguing developers and users alike. Lazzaro delves into four of the primary ethical conundrums regarding AI:

Lack of transparency
Overselling and misrepresenting
Environmental concerns
Societal impact

Lazzaro explores each ethical quandary in detail and here's a closer look at one.

Overselling and misrepresenting. "For some developers, the way many executives and industry thought leaders are talking about AI has become their biggest ethical objection." There is a widespread lack of understanding regarding AI's capacity and limitations. One principal engineer says, "people are overselling the technology, misrepresenting how it works, and inflating what it can actually do," and warns that "the overhyping of AI creates a gap in the perceived real-world capabilities of the tech," which can lead to people over-relying on an imperfect technology in situations where there is no room for error, like the healthcare space. Get the full story here.

NOW AVAILABLE: The New STEPS Leadership Course for Administrative Professionals
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For too long, administrative professionals have been the secret to the organization’s success. Now, the secret’s out. This is leadership training powerful enough for the boardroom, but optimized for every room you’re in. No more gatekeeping leadership skills. We’re taking elite-tier leadership training out of the corner office and into your living room, with accessible, self-paced, online programming built for real life.
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