Real Leaders: Oprah Winfrey and the Power of Empathy

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1976, broadcast journalist Oprah Winfrey moved to Baltimore to coanchor the evening newscast at a local TV station. But she struggled in that spot and was moved to the morning talk show. That demotion led Winfrey to discover a professional calling that aligned with her personal sensibilities and emerging strengths. In the final episode of a four-part special series on leadership, HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius and Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn trace Winfrey’s career as an entrepreneur and leader of a media empire. They discover lessons on how to cultivate self-awareness, cross traditional boundaries, and responsibly wield influence.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When leadership advice feels like buzzwords and platitudes, it's time to get real.
0:05.9	HPR's podcast Coaching Real Leaders brings you behind closed doors as Muriel Wilkins coaches anonymous
0:11.9	leaders through raw honest career questions
0:14.6	that we all face.
0:15.9	Listen and follow coaching real leaders for free
0:18.3	wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HPR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Adi Ignatius.
0:33.0	This is real leaders, a special series examining the lives of some of the world's most compelling
0:38.1	and effective leaders, past and present, with lessons for all of us today.
0:45.0	This week we are ending our four-part series with...
0:50.0	Oh my goodness! I'm at Harvard!
0:58.0	Yes, that is Oprah Winfrey giving the commencement speech
1:01.1	at Harvard University back in 2013.
1:03.8	Not too many little girls from rural Mississippi have made it all the way here to Cambridge. My one hope today is that I can be a source of some inspiration.
1:18.0	I'm going to address my remarks to anybody who's ever felt inferior or felt disadvantage, felt screwed by life.
1:26.0	I'm Audie Ignatius, editor and chief of Harvard Business Review, and I'm here with Nancy King, the great historian
1:34.7	and professor at Harvard Business School.
1:40.4	Nancy has written a case study on Oprah Winfrey's life as an entrepreneur and as the leader of a media empire.
1:46.3	Hello Nancy, hey Oddie.
1:48.3	And Nancy, that's not the only time Oprah visited Harvard.
1:51.6	She also came to your class at HBS, right?
1:54.0	I taught the case for the first time in, in I believe 2005. I talked her on the phone
1:59.0	twice at great length and all of her top staff.
	...

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