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What It Takes to Lead a Company, with Amanda Mesler | Big Think.

Big Think | November 2, 2025



What It Takes to Lead a Company, with Amanda Mesler
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Business executive Amanda Mesler draws upon her 26 years of leadership experience to explain what it takes to be a CEO: vision, execution, backbone, and a strong support system. She also touches on the differences between the ways women executives are treated compared to men. It’s important, says Mesler, for powerful women to coach the next generation of women leaders.

This is the second video in a series on developing women leaders presented in partnership with PwC. Watch Claire Shipman and “The Confidence Code” co-author Katty Kay in a live webcast presented by PwC on February 27th. Register here for the webcast, and follow the conversation on Twitter: #PwCAspire. Big Think has partnered with PwC to promote this event, and will feature videos and other content related to it throughout the month.
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AMANDA MESLER:

Amanda Mesler has over 25 years of extensive international leadership and general management experience at CEO and board level and held leadership positions as CEO, COO, Chief Client Officer, and Corporate Strategy Officer. Currently, she is a Non-Executive Director for Pace, a FTSE 250 company and Ensygnia, a technology start-up. Mesler is also a coach and Chapter Leader for Lean In and the Chair of Women Can Ltd., a social enterprise devoted to helping women succeed.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Amanda Mesler: I’ve actually had the luxury of working for many, many great bosses, who have helped me breed who I am as a leader.

But I certainly had one individual in particular, there was a very poor boss and he was very, very visionary really. He was the CEO of a very large company. Very visionary, really wanted to take the company places and he had executives around him who just wanted to pull the company down.

And at the end of the day you can be visionary, but you’ve got to follow through when you’ve got to execute. And this particular executive did not execute and he did not follow through and he really, in my words, he had no backbone to really pull the company forward. Then the employees and shareholders suffered because of that.

So the biggest thing is that you got to be visionary, you got to follow up with the execution and you got to have a backbone. This is not an easy job being a CEO, but you’ve got to carry it through.

Yes, you know it’s very interesting because I grew up actually working for GE. I’m very young and I had responsibility for Asia. So a woman selling to the Japanese in my twenty’s. So you can imagine all of the kinds of challenges, as well as just fantastic memories I had at that time.

But I never thought of myself as different in the workplace. But over the year, especially as I coach other women coming into the workforce, there’s absolutely differences in how you are treated. You know it’s true when they say you’re a good leader, a man is tough, and a woman is a name that we won’t mention.

I am a very tough, demanding individual, demanding, no different than my colleagues that are successful that are men. But I’ve heard the names, I’ve heard, you know how you supposed to be quiet in this way or that. Absolutely, labels come with a very strong successful female that you don’t get in a man’s world.

So, all you have to do, do your job, you know. Affect your shareholders, employees, clients positively and that’s all that you can do.

Whether you’re a man or a woman quite frankly you’ve got to go for it. And you really got to learn put in what it takes in order to be successful across any field, especially the business field. But I don’t think, yet, women believe that they can go all the way to the top. There are very few role models at the CEO level, and even internationally even less role models. So you just have to, you have to get good mentors, you have to really plug in to the networks. I myself, never plug in to the women’s networks or anything. I’m now quite involved with that because I do believe in it and I think it’s one way to help individuals get mentored and be able to grasp all the way to the top if that’s what they want.

I have three girls and a fantastic husband and it is quite a challenge to balance at all. I balance or I spend as much effort balancing personal work life than I do, being a CEO, that’s how challenging it is.

But I absolutely have a wonderful support system, couldn’t do any of these without my husband, he’s just my rock, my best friend….

To read the transcript, please go to https://bigthink.com/videos/amanda-mesler-on-being-a-ceo

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Comments

This post currently has 36 comments.

  2. @OmniphonProductions

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    Another major obstacle as a boss is that many of today's young workers are unaccustomed to being held accountable for their choices, and expect to be celebrated, and even rewarded, for mediocre achievements.  In a nation where one can make more on unemployment/welfare than at a Middle Class job, far too many workers bounce around, or drag their feet…essentially just looking for a boss who will kiss their asses.  Thus, an employer may suffer prolonged personnel shortage before finding a team that will actually work.

  3. @Cloud_Seeker

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    Work hard and achive your goals without caring what some people call you? Are you stupid? That isn't how you become a good leader, you get to become a good leader by banning words like bossy. Lets just face it, women are fragile both physically and mentally so we need to ban all bad labels they can have and get so they do not get sad as they just can't handle the stress of not being liked. Everyone must love them no matter how good they are, everyone must trust in every word they say because a womens words are laws as they will cry if you do not follow them.

    And people wonder why women got the reputation of being fragile and weak as a leader when feminists bring campaigns as "ban bossy" as being the best step to make women into leaders. If they can't handle being called bossy they are not cut out to be a leader, no human man or female is cut out to be a leader if you can't handle being called bossy.

  4. @okay9994

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    I can imagine the kind of prejudice that you have gone through as a young woman in the Japanese market in the past. But if you suffered sexism, you must fight to be free from your racism, and that is justice. "Asia" today shows great variation in terms of democratic institutions, and some Asian countries, most notably Japan, have shown great effort to overcome their "isms" in the last several decades. Japan is a better society than what you encountered in the past. You need to use your imagination to give your thoughts to those Japanese women who fought for gender equality, as well as to those men who fought to win their partners' rights.

  6. @gpimlott

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    Amazing that big think attracts such small minds in the comment section. Please go back to commenting on the cat videos and let the adults talk.

  7. @LazyOtaku

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    Is it me, or did she find the success someone else deserved? She's the postergirl for 'the right place, at the right time', I couldn't imagine it coming for her any other way in this lifetime. It's really about those right people giving you the right push.

  9. @MyplayLists4Y2Y

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    I'm sick and tired of people saying women have to be as "tough" as men in business because the fact is, what most are referring to as being "tough" is just code for being a "dick," and that's not what women OR men should be aspiring to.
    FYI – it is possible to be a great leader, resolute in your convictions, clear in your vision while exercising kindness, compassion, and care for others, so let's drop the "eat or be eaten," "king of the hill" mentality that is so prevalent in the business world and reapply ourselves – women AND men – to advancing humanity together rather than scratching one's own way to the top of the hill.

  11. @cybersekkin

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    finally someone who actually gets the point in there but eems to miss it at the same time.  If you want to lead it is going to take a lot of fight and energy. lately all I hear is give it to me because I think I deserve it. Well no, It take a huge amount of work and luck if she didn't have the family support (luck-i.e. she married a guy that wouldn't help or had kids with huge issues) she herself admits she would not be where she is. Life is a challenge, fun but it takes a lot of effort.

  15. @phrostedbaron

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    where is the science?    ……. dont care what yet ANOTHER CEO has to say about their success, dont care about them…. i thought this channel was science, not sexist capitalism…. what happened? seriously

  16. @shway1

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    Not all BigThink videos with women in them are crap:
    Julia Galef: The Sunk Costs Fallacy
    Julia Galef: Think Rationally via Bayes' Rule
    Barbara Corcoran: How to Hire Like a Shark
    Jane McGonigal: Truths & Myths in Gaming
    Maria Konnikova: Unclutter Your Brain Attic Like Sherlock Holmes
    Elizabeth Gilbert: Helpful Creative Processes
    How Healthy Is Vegetarianism…Really?
    The Seven Essential Life Skills, With Ellen Galinsky
    Glennda Testone: There Were No Gays in High School

  23. @ashcapybara

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    Dear Big Think, you are getting dislikes and loosing subscribers because you are promoting capitalism, feminism and such.
    What we want here, except science, is people who are criticizing the system. People who thought enough to realize the absurdity of consumerist society, not people who are just going with the flow.

  28. @markchadwick7972

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    1M subscribers and this is the best Big Think can do? Interview a successful CEO and perform some random editing. There’s no structure to the content–bouncing between topics–and it sure doesn't match the title. The information is far too general and full of cliches to have anything of value. I do not blame this on Ms. Mesler. It is poor planning and execution by the video producer. Big Think, you have brought me many compelling videos in the past, but I think it’s time to unsubscribe.

  29. @mitchelnext1

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    Why are so many bigthink videos directed towards the business owners and other members of the 1%?  It's like the point of the channel is to increase the wealth of the wealthy… how to make your company better & how to make even more money with your wealth. idk am i a hater ? yeah i guess

  33. @frankschrodinger1424

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    Notice how it's mainly ugly women who attempt to dominate the corporate environment in order to compensate for their ever decreasing sexual value. As it diminishes with age,  they all of a sudden try to overcompensate for their loss of  power over man by playing the victim and promoting women's rights propaganda. 

  34. @panpiper

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    I've had male bosses and female bosses. I've had good male bosses and good female bosses. I've had bad male bosses and bad female bosses. I've had tough male and female bosses who were not B's at all, they were very competent and insisted upon people doing their best, they were themselves examples of excellence and did what they could to educate and empower the people they managed. I've also had asshole bosses of both genders who 'thought' that being tough meant being an absolutely despicable excuse for a human being.

  35. @Kanrail

    November 2, 2025 at 11:12 am

    I came here expecting a video about tips on how to lead a company, not a pity story on how hard women have it in the work place. Let it have its own separate video without misleading titles. Thanks, and have a good day.

Comments are closed.

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