570: Former Biotech CEO and Harvard Medical School Faculty Member Margaret Moore on the Science of Good Leadership

The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving

Margaret Moore, faculty member at Harvard Medical School and former biotech CEO, brings decades of experience at the intersection of science, strategy, and human development to this conversation. In this episode, she unpacks The Science of Leadership, the forthcoming book she co-authored after reviewing hundreds of meta-analyses and large-scale studies, ultimately synthesizing leadership science into a framework of nine essential capacities.

Moore emphasizes the role of conscious leadership, defined as the ability to “see things clearly” by quieting internal “ego noise”, the arousal, impatience, and worry that cloud judgment. She highlights the emerging concept of the quiet ego, noting that “you’re still impactful... but with a way of being quiet about it that people can absorb more easily.”

Challenging conventional strength-based approaches, Moore advocates for psychological wholeness, encouraging leaders to access underused capacities—such as empathy, creativity, and intuition—to become more balanced and mature decision-makers: “You’ll be surprised that you have it there… You actually, if you pause, can access [it], like playing or being an orchestra conductor.”

She also discusses how intuition, often misunderstood as abstract, is a skill that can be developed through stillness, reflection, and experience: “Creativity is flow, and flow is when you let go of control… It’s the opposite of our main mode.”

The conversation underscores the importance of strategic adaptability. Drawing on research, Moore shares that while humility doesn't improve a leader’s own performance, “other people’s performance is improved if you’re humble. So you don’t do it for yourself, you do it for them.” But she also cautions: in crises, “humility is not what people want. They want strong leaders out in front, in charge.”

Finally, Moore distinguishes between empathy and compassionate leadership, where compassion is “respect and understanding… with action,” and can be both more sustainable and effective in driving accountability.

For leaders ready to evolve beyond performance and toward genuine transformation, this conversation offers a research-grounded framework and an invitation to reflect: “In the moment, there’s always the potential. If you’re just awake, you will feel it. And you can act on it.”

Get Margaret’s book here: https://shorturl.at/tuRKR

The Science of Leadership: Nine Ways to Expand Your Impact

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