Leadership Slam Dunk | Mind The Pay Gap | The End Of Globalization

Plus: How to handle tough conversations with remote workers

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the CxO newsletter.

I must admit, I’m not the biggest basketball fan. But a recent piece penned by Carmine Gallo, a senior contributor to Forbes, has piqued my interest in March Madness—more specifically, in Duke’s coach, Mike Krzyzewski.

After defeating the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday, his Blue Devils are advancing to the Final Four, where next weekend they’ll face-off against rival North Carolina Tar Heels. Coach K, who has said he’ll retire at the end of this season, is just days away from setting yet another record in his storied career, this time for the most Final Four appearances in the history of the NCAA college basketball tournament. You don’t have to know anything about basketball to know he’s doing something right. And that something, Gallo suggests, is his storytelling.

“Influential leaders,” Gallo writes, “inspire people to work as a team to pursue a common goal. Few leaders have inspired teams as successfully as Mike Krzyzewski.” This, he continues, is “partly the result of a powerful communication device Krzyzewski has expertly adapted to produce winning teams: the analogy turned symbol.”

As Coach K writes in his book, Leading with the Heart, “I look at the members of our team like the five fingers of a hand . . . If five talented individuals don’t perform as a team, they may not be as strong as five less-talented individuals who do.”

By comparing a concept as abstract as teamwork with something as tangible as a hand, he ensures his message is not only impactful, but memorable.

To be sure, Coach K isn't the only leader using storytelling techniques to inspire. Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invoked allusions in an address to members of Congress, while Arnold Schwarzenegger employed the three elements of persuasion—ethos, logos and pathos—in a speech to the people of Russia. Though their audiences were different, their aims were the same: to connect to shared values, to change hearts and minds.

No matter what challenges you and your team may face—maybe you're struggling to retain top talent, or perhaps a series of supply chain snarls have left you spinning your wheels—storytelling can be an important instrument in your communication toolbox. One might even call it a leadership slam dunk.

Thank you for reading, and feel free to share your ideas with me at vvalet@forbes.com.

What's Next

Mind The Gap: The gender pay gap still looms large for women across the country, but a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data suggests slight, but promising, progress. As my colleague Jena McGregor reports, though the median woman under 30 who works a full-time job makes just 93% of what her male counterparts take home, in 22 of 250 U.S. metros—including New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.—they’ve achieved parity and, in some cases, are even out-earning men. But women still have a ways to go, and business leaders can do more to help. ForbesWomen’s Maggie McGrath spoke with Shellye Archambeau, advisor, author and former CEO of MetricStream, and Tina Tchen, president and CEO of Time’s Up Now and Time’s Up Foundation, about what companies can do to accelerate change. Here’s what they had to say.

The End Of Globalization: BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink is warning shareholders that Russia’s war on Ukraine will have long-lasting consequences for the global economy. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades,” he wrote in a letter sent Thursday, noting that companies and countries will find themselves forced to further “reevaluate their dependencies and reanalyze their manufacturing and assembly footprints.” His letter comes one month into the conflict, which has resulted in the U.S. and its allies waging an all-out “economic war” on Russia. In case you missed it, check out this piece by Forbes Senior Contributor Michael Posner on how corporations have, and should, respond to the crisis.

Crisis Communication 101: The show must go on, or at least it will in New York City, where on Thursday Mayor Eric Adams exempted performers and athletes from the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for private sector workers. While some have been delighted—like the Brooklyn Nets’ Kyrie Irving, who after refusing to get his shot has spent much of this NBA season warming the bench—others have been dismayed, criticizing the mayor for, what they say is, a double standard. Consistency is crucial to communicating, especially during times of crisis. Edward Segal, a crisis communications expert and senior contributor to Forbes, outlines what corporate leaders can learn. 

By The Numbers

$119.4 million

The amount that activist investor Ryan Cohen has spent this year buying up nearly 7.8 million shares of Bed Bath & Beyond, according to a regulatory filing. The flailing retailer announced Friday that it had reached an agreement with the 36-year-old billionaire to expand its board and explore a sale of its baby-focused business, Buy Buy Baby. This news comes just weeks after Cohen took a nearly 10% stake in the company, while slamming its management for “disappointing shareholder returns and perpetual underperformance.”

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