Guest: Rose Cartolari

Specialist in Strategic & Inclusive Leadership, Executive Board Director and Successful Entrepreneur

Rose is a leadership advisor, executive coach and entrepreneur with over 30 years of success in the corporate world. In addition to working for organizations such as American Express and UNICEF, she co-founded and served for many years as COO of Scharper, a European pharmaceuticals company, which she successfully sold in 2011.

HIGHLIGHTS & TAKEAWAYS:

• KG: Therefore my first question is that in your stellar, impactful career so far, you do so many different kinds of things all around the world: you speak, you write, you mentor are just a few things. What’s the red thread that ties all of it together for you? What’s the driving force behind all that you do?
• ROSE: So I think this thread that has been throughout my career is how I can maximize different strengths, different perspectives not only because I find that fascinating and that makes my thinking broader, but it’s also good for the way we run businesses. And it’s also good for helping us find solutions to problems that we don’t even know exist yet. So I would say that’s kind of where it comes from.
• KG: One of the topics that fascinates me is thinking about ethics and integrity. I imagine that all of us wake up in the morning wanting to do the right thing, wanting to be our best selves, and then through the day having to prioritize. As a person who was running a pharmaceutical company and all the activities since that time, what is your take on the terms ethics and integrity?
• ROSE: If you talk about ethics by itself without any context, I think of principles or standards of right and wrong that you have that guide your behavior. And there are some that are shared by everybody and there are some that are individuals. I think today it’s not really also black and white. I think many of us face small and big sort of ethical questions, but they look different because we’ve evolved differently.
• ROSE: And because we are making decisions big and small, everyday that are aligned around what is the right thing to do, what is the correct thing for me to do. And we talk about integrity when we talk about ethics. Integrity is also very tied around the qualities of being trustworthy, of being consistent and adhering to your ethical values or your ethical principles, being honest. What is going on in the world is nuanced. Their ethical decisions are not necessarily, am I going to break some rule and falsify data? We all know that’s wrong and everybody would agree. And in fact, it’s illegal. But I think the things that we deal with are much more nuanced today. Am I treating everybody the same? How do I make a decision? Who gets to share a voice? Am I doing this for the right reasons? Am I making decisions the way my shareholders really want me to do it or am I doing it because of my own personal interests? And the truth of the matter is I think people are really hungry for leaders, leaders who are going to make ethical and moral decisions. This was not something that was always asked of leaders. And now it’s a requirement of leadership. It’s one of the fastest-evolving requirements of leadership.
• KG: Can you share a personal experience where perhaps you had to take a call on something like an ethical dilemma that was difficult and maybe in the way you shared it, it’ll help people have a template of how they too can navigate such experiences? And I’m particularly interested in hearing how that experience really shaped you, and how you now look at such tricky dilemmas.
• ROSE: The word ethical is for me, it’s a very heavy word. And so, I really don’t think I’ve had these huge ethical dilemmas to make. There are rules when I was in the pharmaceutical business or before that in financial services. There are rules and there are compliance issues and I stuck to them. So from that sense, I don’t see myself as having big ethical dilemmas because I follow the rules, I believe in the rules.
• ROSE: Other people might not have that luxury or that set of values that they need to align to. So this for me was the big dilemma because who doesn’t want to have that income stream, right? But quite honestly, what I see is this seeping or leaking of our sense of ethics, our sense of integrity, our sense of right and wrong.
• ROSE: I think, I believe particularly women need to talk about themselves. They need to be polished. They need to stand out. But I also wonder if over-polishing is the right thing to do, right?How can you be authentic in a way that really aligns with who you are? Because in the end, everything we know about leadership says it comes through vulnerability, it comes through connection, shared experiences, adding value, and sort of real stories of growth. And that’s where trust comes from. Because why do we do all of this ethics and integrity and stuff. It’s because as leaders, we need people to trust us. We need to be credible.
• KG: It’s that daily erosion, that sense of trading off on what you need to project to fit in with your peers and what seems to be on trend with feeling fully aligned and honest about who you are and how you show up in the world. And I believe at a more personal level, it’s not only because it’s important for other people to trust us, but also at the end of the day, I always think of it as being at peace with who you are. Some of the things we all feel the pressure to do on social media absolutely feel like it’s perhaps almost a denigration of authenticity and being truthful and real, which is so important.
• ROSE: You know, we tell people you do need to stand out. You do need to be visible, know, unabashedly visible, be out there. But I don’t think we’re as good at teaching people who are not as good at doing the work to understand what that means.
• KG: What’s your personal formula for staying true to yourself?
• ROSE: Well, so I have what I call a personal brand, but it’s actually really just values, the top three or four values around how I want people to speak about me when I’m gone or in three years when people look back and they say, Rose is…So everything that I do, I always have that criteria. These criteria, by the way, always change. Like every few months I add one, take away one, but they are now part of my thinking style. And this is where I was saying before, in terms of decision-making, I think this is where ethics and integrity really come in. Are organizations willing or even have the appetite to make decisions, and build their processes around their values, around their goals? And then how do you know? How are you checking? How are you holding yourself accountable?
• KG: You have both been the absolute leader of organizations and you also collaborated with peers in large organizations. And I think organizations are made of people and therefore, even if you’re one amongst other leaders, by being who you are, by bringing clarity, to how you show up, you can absolutely impact the culture of the organization, even though you are one amongst other leaders too. Would you agree with this? Have you seen that you’re able to actually meaningfully impact the organization's culture?
• ROSE: Absolutely, this is what we’re trying to work with leaders on. This is really about values. We all have values. And we all want to, I’ve never met a leader who wants to be a bad leader, who wants to not be loved and taken care of. Then you also make different difficult decisions. I’m not saying that everything that you do should be around values or it should be around values, but that means that you’ll forget all of the data and decisions because you actually have deliverables and you have people’s livelihood in your hands.
• ROSE: I want to be doing it in a way that’s inclusive. So absolutely I see that. But more importantly, I see much more joy. I see people enjoying their work much more. I see teens enjoying being together and working together. And that is a really important part of innovation. Everybody’s talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but the diversity part only matters if the people are listened to and included because by having ideas where people are chatting and disagreeing and laughing, ideas ping against each other. And then that’s where the next idea comes from. Some will fall by the wayside, but some will come through. And that is actually a very critical job for leaders today to make sure that all these different elements are coming through.
• ROSE: What does that have to do with integrity? What does that have to do with ethics? It’s about the questions of integrity and ethics today are much more about inclusion, and fairness. Does everybody have access to information? Equitable access to information. Is there enough transparency? Is a process unbiased? This is why we talk about all of those things because people want their leaders to ensure that for them. The world’s just hungry for leaders who bring character.
• KG: Do you have any observations on ethical dilemmas that you see as most prevalent today amongst leaders and what they bring up to you? And do you have any advice on these classic ethical dilemmas of the era?
• ROSE: First is AI, how do you balance using that with privacy? Another one is treatment and employees. Is everybody getting equal opportunities or is there favoritism? So I think these ideas that are coming through are still evolving. And it always comes back to the leader being very clear about internal values, being very clear about organizational values and reminding people when you’re making a decision, here are a set of values. Here’s the idea, to decide whether or not we’re gonna go through with the idea, how do they stack up against these criteria? And the criteria need to involve your values. Usually, the criteria are much more profitability based, short-term profitability based. So by consistently adding personal and organizational values, which hopefully should be aligned. I think it makes a difference.
• KG: Is there a quote or book that has particularly inspired you recently?
• ROSE: My favorite quote in the whole world is one from Rumi.
• “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I’m changing myself.” I really believe leaders have to accept and really accept at a visceral level that I have to change before anything else can change. I have this model of evolved leadership, which is very influenced by Daniel Goleman’s work in mindfulness and emotional intelligence and Ellen Langer’s work. And so I have my own guiding sort of principle around that, which is that true leadership actually begins with inner clarity, which then manifests itself in purposeful action. So it’s sort of a more practical take on my favorite quote.
• KG: You’re a brilliant speaker, You’re also such a beautiful writer. What’s your preference? Do you enjoy writing more or speaking more?
• ROSE: I enjoy speaking more. I find speaking a way of thinking. So things come out of my mouth sometimes which I say, yeah, that’s right. That is what I think. I really love the keynote speaking or the workshop, the small leadership workshops, because it really allows me to delve further into very specific issues in a way that is enjoyable to me. And I get a tremendous amount of energy interacting with people.

REFERENCES & LINKS:

ROSE’s LinkedIn/Website page

LINKEDIN

WEBSITE

ROSE’s Suggested Book

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE by DANIEL GOLEMAN MINDFULNESS by ELLEN LANGER

The Human Conversation Podcast Channels

APPLE PODCASTS

SPOTIFY