Kate Johnson

Kate Johnson, the President and CEO of Lumen Technologies, thinks we need fewer know-it-alls and more learn-it-alls leading businesses. Leaders owe it to their teams to get past thinking of themselves as the smartest people in the room, Johnson explained.

Where did Johnson develop her leadership theory? On the tennis court, of course! “Just as you acquire new shots and approaches to tennis, you have to be constantly looking for new ideas and wanting to learn everything you can in business,” she said in the podcast. “You have to be nimble and agile enough to respond to any new situation or challenge.”

The key to corporate agility, Johnson emphasized, involves getting past thinking of yourself as the smartest person in the room. “Being curious and thinking through it collaboratively, that is the difference between ‘know it all’ and ‘learn it all,’” she said.

It may seem like a stretch to try to apply the same mindset on the tennis court to the corner office of one of the world’s biggest, most connected fiber networks and one of the largest providers of digital connectivity to businesses and the government. But Johnson insists the “thinking game” is the same. Listeners will learn the principles Johnson champions in the workplace including:

• Feedback is your friend: “Going from bad to good to great to the greatest of all time requires the ability to take feedback on how you are performing today,” she offered. “Don’t think about it as criticism. Think about it as a way to get to the next level. That shift and orientation is everything.”
• Getting it right trumps being right: A culture built around getting successful results determines “everything from how you show up in a room full of executive leaders who are trying to think through problems together, or presenting to the board about our quarterly results, or even on an earnings call,” Johnson pointed out.
• Focus on the basics: “Have you ever been coached by somebody, and they give you 72 things to work on?” asked Johnson. You have to tell me just three basics.”

Resources:

• Connect with Kate on LinkedIN
• Commencement Address by Roger Federer at Dartmouth that Kate mentioned
• The book Kate mentioned reading repeatedly Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck