Podcast
Leadership That Wins the Workplace, Part 1 with CEO Doug Conant
- Pariveda CEO Margaret Rogers sits down with Doug Conant, Founder and CEO of Conant Leadership, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Doug has led at the highest levels at Campbell Soup Company, Nabisco Foods, and Avon.
About the episode
Pariveda CEO Margaret Rogers sits down with Doug Conant, Founder and CEO of Conant Leadership, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Doug has led at the highest levels at Campbell Soup Company, Nabisco Foods, and Avon.
In this two-part conversation, Doug shares some of the moments that shaped his leadership from the inside out, including getting fired early in his career, a life-altering car accident, and becoming CEO at Campbell Soup and inheriting the worst employee engagement survey results Gallup had ever seen in a Fortune 500 company.
You’ll learn
- What employees actually look for from a CEO when times get hard and anxiety is at all time high
- How to improve employee engagement in a way that lasts
- What it looks like to balance accountability with humanity, and why Doug says the soft stuff is the hard stuff
- Doug’s core operating belief for performance and winning in the marketplace
Episode outline
0:00 Intro
2:06 Ordinary, yet still extraordinary
3:44 Your life story is your leadership story
10:29 Getting fired, and the reset it forced
12:26 The mentor who changed Doug’s trajectory
18:05 The near fatal accident and the “I’m here” leadership lesson
22:50 Becoming CEO of a company with Gallup’s worst engagement score, and the culture turnaround
28:34 Tough-minded on performance standards, tenderhearted in leading
29:28 Anxiety, AI, and why the human side matters
37:09 Closing Part 1 and setup for Part 2
Episode links
- Conant Leadership
Doug Conant Resources
- The Blueprint
- TouchPoints
- The Blueprint Boot Camp – June 2026
Referenced books and related resources
Referenced leadership organizations
About the guest
Doug Conant is Founder & CEO of ConantLeadership and is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, a Top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and was twice-named a Top 100 Most Influential Author in the World. He has served as President of Nabisco Foods, President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and Chairman of Avon Products, and has served on countless for-profit and nonprofit boards.
Doug is also a seasoned teacher. He is a former instructor of leadership at the Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance and he teaches the concepts advanced in his book The Blueprint in his signature leadership development course, The BLUEPRINT Boot Camp. He is also a LinkedIn Learning Instructor and the instructor of our STEPS leadership program for Administrative Professionals. Deeply engaged in the contemporary leadership conversation as a teacher, speaker, and mentor, Doug speaks daily to professionals on the front lines of the modern workplace.
About the Doing Good by Doing Better podcast
Hosted by Margaret Rogers, CEO of Pariveda, the Doing Good by Doing Better podcast highlights founders, executives, and innovators who share hard lessons, bold ideas, and real strategies for purpose-driven growth.
Every conversation offers practical insights you can use to solve forward. In each episode you’ll meet leaders who prove that being impact-driven and achieving meaningful success are not mutually exclusive.
Follow Doing Good by Doing Better on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and join us every other week as we keep learning how to do good by doing better.
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