Becoming a conscious leader: Leading without fear, finding your life’s objective function, and getting better at vision and strategy | John Mark Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
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What does “conscious leadership” mean and how can I practice it?
Get clear on your objective function. And one way that I've gotten clear on is like trying to think about it from future me. Cause like five years from now, I'm not gonna give a shit if I made the presentation slightly better, but I'm gonna care a lot about what kind of relationship I have with my daughters. And like that means that the the next action, the next thing I do today and tomorrow, those will translate into the relationship with her, right? Not to be like morbid, but just again, most of us just aren't really. Tuned into an awareness that our lives will come to an end. We try to pretend like we're gonna live forever and just not think about it. And the horror of it is that we succeed, right?
We mostly manage to just go live our life and eat ice cream and go to work and go on vacation and do what we do. To me, an awareness and mindfulness that our lives will come to an end punctuates reality in a way that requires me to rethink my Priorities.
Today, my guest is JM Nichols. JM has been a product leader at Waymo, DoorDash, and Uber. He was also an engineering manager at Groupon, and before that, an equity trader at GetGo. At Uber, he built and launched the very first version of Uber Pool, and then went on to lead the team responsible for the infrastructure and algorithms powering the economic and logistics brain behind Uber's matching and pricing systems. At DoorDash, he was head of product for DoorDash Pro. Platform at Waymo, he led product for the commercialization of autonomous ride hailing and last mile delivery. And he recently returned to Uber to lead product for the mobility team. This conversation is a unique and beautiful mixture of hard skills, soft skills, tactics, and emotions.
I won't give away too much about the conversation, but this is a powerful one. Tears are shed, stories are shared, and I am confident you'll become a better leader. leader and human having listened to JM's insights and lessons. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that I bring you JM Nichols. Jam,
thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Lenny. Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Um Really appreciate your dedication to helping product managers kind of like improve their craft and up level. There's done a lot of great resources out there for that. And coaching and development, as I'm sure we'll get into, is a a passion of mine as well. So we have a lot of shared interests there.
Oh, I really appreciate that. I want to start with a phrase that came up again and again when I asked people what to talk to you about from your colleagues, and this phrase is conscious leadership. What is conscious leadership? What is this phrase?
To me, leadership is uh broadly defined as having influence in the world. And so by that definition, to me, everyone is a leader, right? Because we all have influence in some way. You know, it's not about whether you're a manager or not. It's like I have influence on my kids or my partner or my community, right? The world, the way I vote, the way I show up, right? So we all have influence. We're all co-creating, you know, uh kind. So that's the leadership piece. So just like the the conscious piece then is becoming more aware, waking up, right? To me, it's like learning more about my interior world, you know, what um you know my background is, my biases. You know, we all inherit sort of kind of certain belief systems from our parents or our church or community.
And a lot of times they kind of go unquestioned and then they end up in conflict. And so it's really It's about um becoming more aware and then taking responsibility for the influence that I have. So yeah, taking responsibility for my influence in the world.
As you talk about this, something that came up and something that I thought about as I was preparing for this episode is this idea of soft leadership, the power of soft skills and just how important that is in success.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does “conscious leadership” mean and how can I practice it?
0:00–13:28
2
How can I use soft‑skills and emotional intelligence to become a better product leader?
13:28–26:57
3
What were the biggest challenges and lessons from Uber’s evolution and the launch of Uber Pool?
26:57–41:04
4
Why should I allow my emotions in high‑stakes meetings instead of suppressing them?
41:04–53:43
5
How do I sharpen my vision and strategy skills for long‑term product success?
53:43–1:07:56
6
What’s the future of autonomous ride‑hailing and how is Waymo shaping it?
1:07:56–1:14:11
7
How can I balance big‑picture vision with day‑to‑day execution without burning out?
1:14:11–1:16:12
8
What are the key habits and mind‑sets for a fulfilling, purpose‑driven life?
1:16:12–1:18:02
Speakers
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