1101: Navigating the Four Seasons of Leadership with Carolyn Dewar

How to Be Awesome at Your Job

How to be Awesome at Your Job

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4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Carolyn Dewar shares insights from top CEOs on how to master each season of your leadership career.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) How to avoid the nearly universal blind spot of leaders

2) How to thrive in any leadership role

3) How to nail your first impressions and set the right tone

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— ABOUT CAROLYN —

Carolyn Dewar is a senior partner in McKinsey’s San Francisco office. She coleads McKinsey’s CEO Excellence service line, advising many Fortune 100 CEOs how to maximize their effectiveness and lead their organizations through pivotal moments. She has published more than 30 articles in the Harvard Business Review and McKinsey Quarterly and is a frequent keynote speaker. She is also the founder of and faculty member for many of McKinsey’s client master classes for sitting CEOs and those preparing for the role.

• Book: A CEO for All Seasons: Mastering the Cycles of Leadership

• LinkedIn: Carolyn Dewar

• Corporate Profile: McKinsey & Company

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Book: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (One World Essentials) by Trevor Noah

• Past episode: 1066: How to Thrive When Your Resilience Runs Out with Dr. Tasha Eurich

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Go into those moments being really conscious of what's the tone you want to set?
0:15.1	How do you want to show up as a leader?
0:17.1	What signals do you want to set?
0:18.9	Because whatever you do in those moments will have a ripple effect down through the organization,
0:23.2	whether you are intentional about it or not.
0:25.2	So you want to set the right tone.
0:28.1	The biggest risk is your own success makes you complacent.
0:32.2	Things have been going well, and so you hope you can just keep running that play,
0:35.7	and it's going to continue to go great.
0:37.4	That's when leaders feel caught out.
0:38.9	That's Carolyn Dewar.
0:52.0	She's a senior partner McKinsey and Company's San Francisco office and co-leads the McKinsey
0:56.1	CEO Excellence Service Line, advising many Fortune 100 CEOs how to maximize their effectiveness
1:02.4	and lead their organizations through pivotal moments.
1:05.0	Her new book, The CEO for All Seasons, Mastering the Cycles of Leadership, talks about
1:09.6	navigating the distinct phases of leadership
1:11.2	that every leader must pass through on their way to mastery. So you'll learn one, how to avoid
1:16.6	the nearly universal blind spot of leaders. Two, how to thrive in any leadership role. And three,
1:23.4	how to nail your first impressions and set the right tone. And you want a quick summary write-up of some of the actionable takeaways that Carolyn shared,
1:31.0	I recommend you sign up for the free Gold Nugget email newsletter found at awesome at your job.com.
1:36.3	I'm Pete McItis.
1:37.2	This is How to Be Awesome at Your Job.
	...

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