This month, we're highlighting some of the best conversations from the 2025 HBR Leadership Summit held in April. In this episode, Janti Soeripto, CEO of Save the Children US, shares how the organization navigates overlapping global crises—from pandemics to war—while staying focused on its core mission: ensuring children survive and thrive. With 24,000 staff members working across 115 countries, Save the Children provides health, education, protection, emergency response, and advocacy services. Soeripto offers hard-won lessons on leading with clarity, measuring impact in volatile environments, and remaining agile while never losing sight of mission—and why optimism and data must coexist.
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Customer-Obsessed Innovation
This month, we're highlighting some of the best conversations from the 2025 HBR Leadership Summit held in April. In this episode, David Risher, CEO of Lyft, shares how he’s driving a turnaround at the rideshare company by anchoring everything in customer obsession. Since Risher took the wheel in 2023, Lyft reached record bookings and a 31% increase in annual revenue and its first full year of profitability. Risher shares how his own experience behind the wheel as a Lyft driver informs product innovation. And why listening deeply—whether to a single passenger or a room of drivers—can lead to breakthrough ideas. He also opens up about navigating layoffs, launching inclusive features, and preparing for an autonomous future while keeping human dignity front and center.
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Building an AI-Powered, Talent-Friendly Organization
Over the next four weeks, we're highlighting some of the best conversations from the 2025 HBR Leadership Summit held in April. In this episode, Jane Sun, CEO of Trip.com Group, shares her leadership approach to scaling one of the world’s largest online travel companies. From pioneering the use of AI in customer experience and internal operations to reimagining hybrid work and gender diversity, she shares how she's steering a global company through rapid change and geopolitical uncertainty. She discusses her emphasis on hiring for integrity, competence, and curiosity, and outlines how AI is embedded throughout the business—from resume screening and customer personalization to employee training and product development.
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Don’t Just Coach Your Employees—Teach Them
Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, encourages leaders to approach their direct reports like teachers. As Finkelstein explains, being a teacher-leader means continually meeting face to face with employees to communicate lessons about professionalism, points of craft, and life. He says it’s easy to try and that teaching is one of the best ways to motivate people and improve their performance. Finkelstein is the author of “The Best Leaders Are Great Teachers” in the January–February 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review.
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How to Resolve Team Conflict
People management consists of a fair amount of mediation and diplomacy, and you can’t expect to get the hang of it right away. You’re in the middle of a lot now. Initiating difficult conversations, and then getting all the way through them, takes planning and practice (and sometimes even a breather). Holding tension takes restraint. Amy Bernstein and Kelsey Alpaio interview Amy Gallo about the types of conflict that new managers should expect to handle, as well as options for responding. They talk through real experiences and common scenarios. Like that time Kelsey needed to tell a direct report they were falling short of her expectations (but didn’t end up saying anything). Or that time Amy G started reporting to a friend. They also give guidance for intervening or not when team members are arguing and for discreetly clueing your group in about the office politics going on. Key episode topics include: managing conflicts, interpersonal skills, interpersonal communication, difficult employees, hard conversations, leadership Listen to the original Women at Work episode: How to Manage: ConflictFind more episodes of Women at Work.Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org.]]>
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Every Wednesday, the editors at the Harvard Business Review hand-picked conversations and case studies with global business leaders, management experts, academics, from across HBR to unlock the best in those around you.
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