Sep 21, 2026 · 57 min · 13 segments
One of the seven laws of the advertising universe — as articulated many years ago by The Wizard of Ads Roy H. Williams — boils down to this: "Win the hearts of the people, their minds will follow."…
Douglas E. NollGuestDean RothbartHostWhat comes to mind, Doug, in years of reporting for The Wall Street Journal and covering and interviewing corporate CEOs, typically a very successful companies, not always, but typically successful.
And I raised three individuals with you that I don't think anyone could argue were not successful CEOs, but I don't think anyone could also argue that they deployed tricks.
He had a system where managers were required to identify the bottom 10 percent of their workforce every year and fire them.
He fostered a corporate culture of what he called constructive confrontation, where shouting matches in meetings were not only tolerated, they were expected as a way to hammer out the absolute best ideas.
And third exhibit and final exhibit, so that not everything is in the corporate world, Maggie Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, the UK Prime Minister, they called her the Iron Lady.
The point being that maybe empathy leadership is effective and maybe it produces good results, but do you think if Jack Welch, Andrew Grove, and Margaret Thatcher had shown more empathy, they would have been more successful?
What comes to mind, Doug, in years of reporting for The Wall Street Journal and covering and interviewing corporate CEOs, typically a very successful companies, not always, but typically successful.
And I raised three individuals with you that I don't think anyone could argue were not successful CEOs, but I don't think anyone could also argue that they deployed tricks.
He had a system where managers were required to identify the bottom 10 percent of their workforce every year and fire them.
He fostered a corporate culture of what he called constructive confrontation, where shouting matches in meetings were not only tolerated, they were expected as a way to hammer out the absolute best ideas.
And third exhibit and final exhibit, so that not everything is in the corporate world, Maggie Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, the UK Prime Minister, they called her the Iron Lady.
The point being that maybe empathy leadership is effective and maybe it produces good results, but do you think if Jack Welch, Andrew Grove, and Margaret Thatcher had shown more empathy, they would have been more successful?
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