What is your piece of advice for building relationships that can help us all life long in business and in personal life?

Make real deep and caring friends who you respect and admire their lives: their marriages, their parenting, their health; their exercise, diet; their wealth; their position in business; their giving back in philanthropy…

There’s an African proverb that says “if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far go with others”: does it make sense in today’s organizations?

It is more critical than ever before today.

Are great leaders effective networkers?

Today we work in networks, not in traditional organization structures. Leadership today is ability to lead networks. So yes, even more than before.

In your book Never Eat Alone you make a difference between coaches and mentors, saying that mentorship involves a more emotional connection. Is that the best way to make team members grow and thrive in their career?

People have to know that you care before they care what you think. The relationship is the permission to truly influence.

In a fast-paced business world, what are the three main challenges for managers?

To innovate you need to include more people to creative thinking. To be agile you have to learn to work effectively across networks of influencers. To attract and keep people you need to create a foundation for what I call co-elevation – people committed to going higher together.