Practicing L.O.V.E. in Leadership: Insights from Marc Inzelstein, Author & Executive Advisor

Join us for an insightful conversation with Marc Inzelstein, author of Essential Leadership: Practicing L. O. V. E. in Turbulent Times. Hosted by Ashutosh Garg, this episode of The Brand Called You explores the meaning of essential leadership, the challenges facing leaders in today’s complex world, and the importance of practicing L. O. V. E.—not simply as a sentiment, but as a framework for creating greater coherence within organizations. Discover Marc’s unique L. O. V. E. leadership framework: Letting Go, Oneness, Vision, and Energy, and learn how these principles can help leaders stay grounded, resilient, intentional, and fully human in the face of uncertainty. Whether you are a CEO, manager, executive, or aspiring leader, this episode offers valuable insights into leading with authenticity, fostering human flourishing, strengthening organizational effectiveness, and embracing the human side of change. 🔔 Subscribe to The Brand Called You for more leadership lessons, inspiring conversations, and stories from successful individuals and thought leaders around the world.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Welcome to another episode of The Brand Called You, a podcast and podcast show that brings you leadership lessons, knowledge, experience and wisdom from thousands of successful individuals from around the world. I'm your host, Ashutosh Garg. And today, I'm delighted to welcome a well-respected author from Miami, USA, Mark Inzelstein. Mark, welcome to the show.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Thank you, Ashutosh. It's really great to be with you.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Thank you. Mark is an author of a book titled Essential Leadership: Practicing Love, L-O-V-E, in Turbulent Times. And we're going to talk about Mark's book today. So, Mark, before we come to your book, a question for you. Tell me about your journey in brief, and what was the defining moment that made you feel this book needed to be written?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you so much, Ashutosh. So, I've been in the business world now for over 35 years, maybe 37, if I want to be precise, as an entrepreneur, and for the last 25 years as an executive advisor, leadership coach, consultant to many large global organizations. And this work that I do is really, it's a labor of love. It's, I don't see of the work that it has work. It's something that I'm passionate about, and I love every minute of it. How did that begin? And how did that bring me to this book, Essential Leadership? So, I found out when I was a young child from my father that he had survived the Holocaust

• 1:43Speaker 01

  in Poland. It was a difficult, complicated conversation for a young child to integrate and understand. And it was, you know, there was some level of shock and trauma to that conversation, but it was very important and it shaped my life. The reason that it shaped my life is because as I grew up, and I saw the man that my father was, who was tremendously positive, loving, engaging, warm, human being to everybody, unconditionally, I would say,

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I had trouble reconciling this amazing human being with his past, which was highly traumatic and been through the worst of the worst. And when I was old enough to have a second conversation, a meaningful conversation with him about it, and I asked him, how do you do that? How is it, how is it possible that you're so positive and warm and loving and embracing of people in life after you'd been through such horrors as a child? And his answer was very simple to me. He said, you know, it's just a choice. And that, that, those words hit me very hard. And it took me years to understand and to integrate it. When I was a little bit older, I had the fortune to read the work of Viktor Frankl, who was very well-known. I think a lot of people know the book, Man's Search for Meaning. For those

• 3:00Speaker 01

  of you that haven't been listening to this, I highly advise that book. It's a profound work of, of understanding what the human spirit truly is. He himself was a great Austrian psychiatrist, wrote this book after coming out of the Holocaust, and explained to us the freedom that we have inside of us to make choices. That there's a place between the stimulus, what happens and the response, what we do about it. And in that space was a tremendous amount of freedom and power. And so, that, those combined experiences

• 3:30Speaker 01

  sort of set me on my path to where I am and the type of work to do today and the way I approach my work. There's obviously a lot more there, but that's sort of the central thread.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Very interesting, very interesting. And after working with many, many senior leaders over a quarter century, what common leadership struggle have you observed repeatedly?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I feel like the biggest leadership struggle that I see consistently, and is today, especially today as well, but I've seen it for many years, is the ability to stay grounded, resilient, and fully human in the face of the complexity, the challenges that we face. And even the best leaders, those that are most committed, the most values-driven, the most talented are facing such levels of complexity today that did not exist, you know, years ago, that that, that is a real, real struggle. And that's really, it's that struggle that brought me to write this book, Ashutosh.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Very interesting. What does essential leadership mean to you? And how is it different from traditional leadership?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  So, essentially, the word, I use the word essential, because it speaks to the word essence. To me, I believe that to be at our best, we have to connect to who we are at our core as humans and as leaders. And so, and the complexity of the world today is pushing us to that very core. It's taking us to levels that we, where we don't have solutions that are ready-made. We don't have clear alignment to what needs to be done always. We have to figure it out as we're going along. And sometimes to get to these, to these solutions and to stay grounded and resilient and, and effective in this, we

• 5:28Speaker 01

  need to get to a different level of resources within our being. And so, that is what I term essential leadership, because it's going to those, the deeper level of resources within us to be able to be effective in these very challenging times that we're, that we're in.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Well said. Why did you choose the acronym L-O-V-E for a leadership framework? Can you briefly explain the four elements which are letting go, oneness, vision, and energy?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. I'm very happy to talk through them briefly. And, and also, of course, obviously, the word love is what we read before we even get to the acronym, right? And, and we have to understand that, you know, love is not, it is a sentiment, of course. It's a very common, the most common sentiment among human beings. At the same time, there's a deeper level of love, which is, it's the intelligence that rules this world. And to me, love is coherence. And what we need more than anything else in our organizations today is coherence, for the ability for things to align, to flow together with harmony seamlessly. So, how do we get there? Through the L-O-V-E. So, L is, stands for letting go. It's understanding that there's so much that we, is out of our control in

• 6:41Speaker 01

  reality. But if we try to control everything, we get ourselves stuck, we get others stuck. And there's a lot of research on science behind that. There's a lot of experience behind that. And I can go into deeper if you want later on. But that is the L in leadership. It's, we have to let go to be able to respond to the circumstances in front of us rather than react. Letting go of what we can't control, so we can really act on what we can influence. Oneness is the O. It's understanding we live in a deeply interconnected, interconnected world. And that to function effectively in this world, we have to understand that who we are, how we act, has ripple effects everywhere, as everyone else does on us. And, and what does that oneness mean? How are we affected in that oneness? We're not separate, we're not us and them. It's not the leader and the team, or leader and the organization.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  It's we're all in one very, very strong symbiotic relationship. And oneness is the understanding of what that is and how to operate in that oneness. Then V is for vision. It's understanding vision as a discipline, not just as a place in the future. And there's a very important component about understanding what conscious intention is and how important that is in our life. And finally, is for energy, because we all need energy today to function. It's essential in front of the challenges we're facing. And what does it mean for a leader to bring energy that fuels others? So, in a nutshell, that's what the L-O-V-E acronym stands for, Ashutosh.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Very interesting. So now, one, one question on each of your four elements. How does letting go make a leader stronger rather than weaker?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, letting go is not letting go of results. Okay? It's very important to understand that. Letting go is letting go of what we are trying to control, but is never within our control in reality. If we really think about it, right, we, we can, we can force compliance out of people, but we're never going to get the best results from that. People need to be inspired, they need to be connected to, then you have a sense of trust. When we let go of what I call the illusion of control, the belief that we, by putting more mechanisms, more measures, more, more, more management systems that we can control outcomes, when we let go of that, which is, I've seen in my career,

• 8:54Speaker 01

  it's a complete illusion. It does not work. It always backfires. You know, control creates more friction and less coherence.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  So, when we let go of that illusion, we are actually able to be in a place where we can respond wisely and intelligently. And I differentiate response from reactivity. Response is connected to the word response ability, the ability to respond. And so, when we let go of this false belief that we should and can control everything, which is not true, we can actually be wise and effective in how we respond to the situation by getting to resources within us, which are not accessible, accessible when we're trying to control everything.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  Well said. But in a corporate environment, driven by targets and metrics and, you know, very often dog-eat-dog kind of a situation in terms of competition, how can leaders practically embrace your O, which is oneness?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  It's a great question. It can seem contradictory at first. Oneness does not mean soft and fuzzy. It's not about being nice. Oneness is recognizing that the reality of our world is deeply interconnected. Everything in our world is, the way nature operates is one. Everything is in symbiosis. When we think about also from just the perspective of a corporation and its customer, customers aren't interested in which part of the organization they're dealing with. They want to deal with one company, one integrated company. They went engineering or customer service or sales, they want one experience. That experience often doesn't happen because of the silent nature of organizations. And that's where,

• 10:35Speaker 01

  you know, that's where service starts to fall, that's where failure comes in. So, oneness is understanding that, that life has taught us that things operate best, life operates best when we understand that everything is symbiotic. In my book, I go a lot to the science behind the oneness we have as humans. At the physiological level, at the psychological level, we influence each other, our emotions, our state of being. And even at the quantum level, if we go to quantum mechanics, we know that there's a deep interconnection. When we recognize the reality of oneness, instead of fighting against this, we actually operate at a much higher degree of effectiveness, and our organizations run differently. So, that's, that's, and that's when real accountability can come in, because everyone feels accountable for the whole, not just their little part of the whole.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Very interesting. Moving to V, how is vision different from the strategic vision we often hear about in business schools?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  So the the the vision we hear about in business schools that we see a lot in corporate boardrooms is is an important component of success. It's setting out a vision for the future and a strategy to get there, and that is essential. But the the V, the vision in essential leadership is is goes a step deeper. It's not just a place in the future, it's a conscious, constant discipline of what we are living into. And and what I mean by that is that we're always living into a vision, whether we realize it or not. Now, if we have the the fortune to have a powerful, inspiring vision of the future, that is, that is, that is, that is very important, but oftentimes, in the heat of the moment, in the stress of daily life, we lose sight of that vision because the short-term results,

• 12:15Speaker 01

  the short-term obstacles, the daily stresses and pressures get in the way. So essential vision is a discipline which tells us, be conscious this moment of what is driving you. What is, where, what are you living into this moment? Because if we're not aware, we have all of our past, our past stressors, our worries, our worries about the past, our concerns about the future, that are going to jump into that space in our mind and prevent us from living into a consciously intended future. Instead, we're going to be living to an unconscious future, which is driven by our fears, our anxieties and our worries, which I think is the case for the majority of of of leaders today, because things are stressful. So that's the difference.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  It's a conscious, intentional discipline versus just a place in the future.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Great response. The last alphabet is E and which is energy. My question mark is, why is energy such an important leadership capability in today's world?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  So it's a, it's a, it's a great question, Ashutosh, and and I'd say there's several levels of answer to that. The first answer is that human beings, we require energy. We need to eat, we need to sleep, we need to drink, we need to exercise, we, all these things are fuels for our physical well-being and for our mental well-being. But we also need, I would call psychic fuel, meaning what fuels our spirit. And a leader is is the most important person in our day-to-day job for that, because he or she plays an enormous role. In fact, there's a research by Gallup that shows that seventy percent of team performance depends on the leader. So we, the leader plays a very, very disproportionate role in success.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Now, the thing that I learned over the years and that that that that even science is even showing us is true today is that a leader's presence is felt before that leader opens their mouth or takes an action. You walk into a room, people are already feeling what you're bringing with you into that room, and that to me is an energetic signature. What are you walking in with? And if you're walking in with a level of connection to your, what I call your essence, your core, to your being, where you're grounded, you're calm, you're clear, you're connected to the people, everything will be different as a result of that. And that to me is the core energy that needs leaders to transmit today. It's it's it's equanimity, it's hope, of course, for a bright future, it's positive fuel.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  And so that energy is critical because it touches everyone around you, especially when you're in a leader position.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Well said. You also believe that the most important organizational changes are ultimately human challenges. Could you help me understand this and give me an example, if you can?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Of course. So obviously, all the technical aspects of leadership are critically important, you know, whether it's, it's whether it's strategy or project management and all the different, I'd say, know-hows that go into running an organization are viscerally important, and we, we definitely never want to do away with those, we need them. But underneath all that is always a human being or a team of human beings that need to get things done. And those human beings on any given day are going to show up with their own levels of fears, anxiety, unknowns, challenges, mental, emotional challenges that they're dealing with that could be related to work or could relate to their personal life.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  And so you could have the best strategy and the best process in the world, but if the humans that are involved in those processes are not showing up as their best selves, you're more than likely to struggle at some level at some time. So underneath everything is the human, it's the most important, the human element is the most important, and I believe that's the most fundamental element, and we need to address, always address that element first. And everything is a layer that comes on top of that.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Absolutely. You also write that leadership is defined by the quality of response in critical moments.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Can you describe what happens in that space between stimulus and response?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  So many things can happen, and there's a whole spectrum of responses. An event happened, and often in leadership, stressful events happen. The question is, have we developed enough, I would say, awareness to understand that there is a choice between the time an event happens, even if it's a microsecond, and our response to that event? And oftentimes, what I've seen happen over the years is we did that, that space isn't there, it isn't even recognized. So leaders are in reactivity. So sometimes, to answer your question, what happens in that space? Sometimes, nothing happens, and the result is a reaction which could have been better, could have had a better impact. Oftentimes, the reactions that come from reactivity and stress are negative and destructive.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  So ideally, in that space, there's a pause. We remember that we are not our circumstances, that we're at, we have choice, we're at cause in our lives.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  And even that microsecond of recognition puts us in touch with inner resources that are going to allow us to respond differently. And I call that space the space of being, which is a layer of awareness which lies beneath our thoughts, our emotions and our circumstances. We all have it, but we need to now to access it to be at our best. And to me, that's, that's what we're looking for.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Interesting. Mark, what is one leadership habit, in your view, that every CEO should stop doing immediately?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Trying to control everything.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, to me, that's the biggest thing. It's impossible, first of all, it creates enormous amounts of stress. When we let go of what I would control in its negative sense, we can step into mastery. Mastery brings a whole different level of leadership.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Okay. I have time for two more questions for you.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  If, if my viewers and listeners were to remember only one lesson from your book, Essential Leadership: Practicing Love in Turbulent Times.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  What would you want that lesson to be?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Um, I would, I would love listeners to remember that wherever you are on your own leadership journey, you are a human being and not a human doing. When you get lost in the doing, you forget the being, and when you forget the being, life, leadership and work becomes empty and ultimately less effective.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Okay. And my last question for you, twenty years from now, if leadership around the world would fully embrace the principles of love, what would organizations and teams and society look like?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Um, I, I believe that if we are seeing in action, you know, letting go and oneness and conscious vision and a conscious transmission of energy, organizations would become place, true places of human flourishing. There are some examples today, no doubt, where that happens, but it's the, it's the exception rather than the rule. I think it's the place where human beings have the opportunity to become their best selves in a place where there is conscious essential leadership, and I do believe that would, that's what would happen. It would be that the, the core place of human flourishing in life would be your place of work.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Hmm, amazing. And on that note, Mark, I just want to say, what a fascinating conversation this has been with you about your book, Essential Leadership: Practicing Love in Turbulent Times. Thank you for sharing with me the four different elements of your book, which stand for L-O-V-E. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on on organization, on where people are managed, and the way leadership will look like in the years to come. Thank you for speaking to me.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Thanks for your opportunity. Thank you, Ashutosh.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Much appreciated.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Thank you for listening to The Brand Called You videocast and podcast, a platform that brings you knowledge, experience and wisdom of hundreds of successful individuals from around the world. Do visit our website, www.tbcy.in, to watch and listen to the stories of many more individuals. You can also follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Just search for The Brand Called You.