ETL 44: Jonathan Dahl on Korn Ferry’s Totally Engaging Podcast

Transcript: Jonathan Dahl and Bob Buday

Bob Buday: Jonathan, this is round two on “Everything Thought Leadership.” We did an overview of your role in thought leadership at Korn Ferry in the previous one. Now we’re going to focus on the Briefings Podcast, which is really innovative. I haven’t seen anybody with the techniques that you folks are doing. And I think this is a great opportunity to talk about things such as why you started a podcast and why you believed it had to be very different than most other podcasts out there.  Where did the idea to do a regular podcast come from? 

Jonathan Dahl: I used to listen to a lot of podcasts, particularly around history. And there’s this neat one, “American History Tellers,” and it always starts with the scene from history. You know, “It was 1993 and blah, blah, blah.”  Here they took a subject that was kind of dry – history — and found a way to make it interesting. I’m always looking for ways to do that with corporate content. That’s why I have a daily website playing stuff off the news. Well, I have a national magazine to show it, and I wanted to try it on podcast. I must say, it was many years in the making. It was not an easy sell. In the beginning, it was like, “Oh, here’s another one of his crazy ideas.” 

The way I managed to do it was I finally found some people who could do it and scrimped up a few funds. We showed [Korn Ferry Chief Marketing Officer] Jill Wiltfong, who would become the host, what it would look like. Maybe 20 seconds into it, she said, “Oh, we got to do this.”  

If you can find some way to create whatever you want to do that’s innovative, it goes a long the way to getting it done.  

Selling the Podcast Idea 

Bob: A lot of the people watching this don’t have a podcast. They’re trying to convince somebody higher up in the company that “We should do a podcast.” What pushback did you get? And how did you answer it? 

Jonathan: The first was funding. When we had tried podcasts, it was like $30,000 per podcast when we went to outside firms. I assume that was many years ago. It’s come down, but it was once pricey. That was the first issue. 

The second issue, of course, is “Why would we need it? How is this going to enhance our business?” My selling point was that we do webinars and stuff like that, but we’re not really getting [a big] audience for it. It’s not like blowing up.  

And from the start, I was focusing on YouTube, not Apple [as the podcast platform]. I think we were way ahead of the game. Turns out, YouTube has surpassed Apple and Spotify as the number one podcast channel, and that’s because it’s visual. 

Bob: So the importance there is YouTube is a video podcast, and you can derive an audio version from it. But Apple, Spotify and others are all audio podcasts. 

Jonathan: Right from the start, the idea was to show scenes, create skits, pull in movie clips, add a visual element to make it more interesting. It’s the same thing, I would say, with other thought leadership content. There’s a lot of stock content that companies use. It’s just showing somebody working on something and it just isn’t very interesting.  

We try to do provocative art, both in the magazine and online. And it was the same concept. 

Bob: So you got the go-ahead? What were your initial goals? 

Jonathan: Well, obviously, try to create a large audience. It’s another vehicle to show off the thought leadership of our company. We wanted to show maybe one outsider [a person external to Korn Ferry], but always one insider from the company to show how smart they were. Then hopefully that would get attention, not just necessarily for the podcast and the views, but also in the greater sphere, the media, whatever is another vehicle to try to sell it. So we do a real indirect sell in thought leadership. It’s not saying, “Well, this is what we have.” That’s great. It’s implying that if you went with us, we would know these things.  

One of the other goals was to take on topics that might be difficult in an article, but visually you could make interesting. You can do a skit about somebody trying to do it. We just did recent one on AI agents. We actually interviewed an AI agent, which is a computerized robot, and that really gets the point across. It wouldn’t in [an audio podcast] and it wouldn’t in print. It’s more about taking topics that lend themselves to something that’s visual. 

Bob: Did you look at any other video podcast before you launched this and think, “I like a piece of this. I like this part of that”? 

Jonathan: Well, I like your podcast. You ask provocative questions and don’t waste time with kind of the fluff questions, and you edit it down. I did pick up quite a bit from how you handle the Q&A part. Our Briefings podcast is divided into different parts. In the Q&A part, I didn’t use many from others because I thought they were pretty dry. 

Building the Podcast Team 

Bob: How did you convince Jill Wiltfong to host the podcast? Was that an easy sell? Because I know she had TV news experience in her background. 

Jonathan: It was a little difficult in the beginning. [We wondered whether] we should be spotlighting somebody else at the company. But I convinced her that I’d seen her TV anchoring skills, so I knew she’d be very sharp right from the start. And I thought that was very important: That if we’re going to do this, we need somebody right away who is very good. 

The second half of it is: We have a freelancer. I hired Rupak Bhattacharya, who is from the Hollywood world. He’s both an actor and a script writer, and to me, he’s extremely colorful. He had no business background, business reporting, business content. But somebody from my network recommended him. He’s turned out to be brilliant. 

The third component is one of our producers, Jaron Henrie-McCrea, who does the visuals that have the little pop exploding things that come on. We did a skit about how much time do you need to make a snap decision? He has little hands going like this, snapping it down from 10 seconds. We never tell him what to do. We just let him ride with it.  

Bob: How many people are involved in the producing the podcast? Yours typically runs 12 to 15 minutes. 

Jonathan:  Most podcasts I see or listen to are too long. I said we should keep it at 15 to 16 minutes. It’s a very small team. It’s me, Rupak, Jaron and Jill. Then there’s a very strong marketing team that helps promote it. But our core team is pretty small. 

Bob: And it’s not costing $30,000 an episode, right? 

Jonathan: It’s a fraction of that. And that was a big selling point. 

Techniques That Captivate Audiences 

Jonathan: One of the tricks that’s worked for us is to switch things up with our guests — to have not only an academic expert, but other types of guests.  For example, when we did one on Gen Z, we actually talked to a Gen Z person and asked them whether what people were saying about them was fair? And that was really done well. 

Bob: I’ve also seen that you summarize up front what people will see in the remaining 12 to 14 minutes. Many podcasts have no upfront discussion of what people are going to learn. So this may be totally obvious, but why is that so important?  

Jonathan: Well, you’re not going to get people to invest the time unless they know what’s coming. You obviously kind of tease them. As you saw, we use movie clips. People might wonder, “Why is Brad Pitt in there?” Maybe they’ll watch it for eight minutes just to see how we might tie Brad Pitt to leadership. And actually, it’s very easy to do that with these clips. 

One of the problems I find in corporate thought leadership is there’s this assumption that the audience will pay attention to them. Well, people may not be interested in that particular topic at the moment. That’s why we do a lot of timely subjects, both for the podcast and online, because we’re trying to give people what they might need at the moment. If they are paying attention to tariffs, we will give them something on tariffs. Some podcasts are still discussing topics that might have been interesting a year ago, but I don’t know why I might watch it now.  

Bob: One problem is that producers have put so much time into scripting something, and think people ought to watch it because they invested so much time in it. And, of course, that it doesn’t work that way.  

Jonathan: No. And also, it starts with the headline, right? You know, we had “Jolt of Uncertainty” to talk about the terrorists. We had “Fire Your Boss” to talk about the period when bosses started getting to be prone to taking command of their work staff. “The New Unemployables” — who’s not going to click that, find out what that is? So we spend a lot of time on the headlines, like we do throughout our content, to get people invested in it.  

The Power of Humor 

Jonathan: We use bloopers…who else does that?  Jill is a great sport to allow us, because she’s typically the blooper, but it keeps people watching through the end. We also have a six-minute clip about what’s in the news this week in the middle of the podcast, as a kind of a break. We’ll interview someone in the first segment, then do the newscast, then go back to the interview and end with the blooper.  

We also strive for interesting visuals throughout, including displaying some of the key words in case somebody is not paying attention. A lot of other podcasts forget to keep putting up the name of the person you’re watching. And, of course, you forget who it is. And that’s a common misstep that we’ve tried to correct here.  

In our skits, we take a topic and have fun with it. And Rupak is just a great actor, and he comes up with really ingenious ways of showing something. If the topic is, “Do leaders need a special superpower?” he will do his thing with it.  And if we’re discussing negotiating for salary, he’ll play somebody doing it all the wrong way possible. If we’re going to show how bosses have gotten meaner and meaner, he’s going to show this boss getting bigger and bigger as a way to make it visual. It’s just a lot of fun.  

Bob: Comedy is a great way to show office politics. Look at the popularity of Michael Scott and his crew in “The Office.”  

Jonathan: People may say, “What does this have to do with our business? Are you making us look silly?” That’s a risk, and the response to that is, first of all, look at the format. We’re putting this on YouTube and Instagram, not on our home page, so it’s for a particular audience. It’s basically to get our name out there and attract some of this audience to think about Korn Ferry.  

Bob: So do you think some of the audience you’re attracting is a younger audience? During my era, marketing was buttoned down, corporate, and boring. White papers, not podcasts. Now we have younger people who’ve grown up on MTV, and even later than that, and they can’t sit still for a 5000-word white paper. Many of them won’t read it.  

Jonathan: Well, a key thing I’ve learned since coming to Korn Ferry is that there are different segments of audience. When I was at the Wall Street Journal, we’d be just talking to 100 million people, and trying to grab as many as you can. Now it’s about identifying segments who will spend money on you or have a big, important role, so our platforms talk to different segments. “This Week in Leadership” is going to be geared to a higher level. Other segments are more for Gen Z, and that’s an important auidience to get. I think it’s one of the biggest problems today in that the business world isn’t understanding or trying to learn from that group. Older people will complain that Gen Z’s don’t pay attention in interviews. Well, that’s because the interview questions are pretty stupid and so why should they answer that? Why would they pay attention to that? You know, we’re beginning to see more than 50% is the is the gig workforce. Gen Zs were the ones that started that.  

Bob: Some of these Gen Z-ers are starting companies in Silicon Valley or other places where venture capital is flowing and they’re the CEO, they’re the man, they’re the leadership team, right?  

Jonathan: Millennials have already taken over. Of course. They represent more than 50% of the workforce. And then Gen Z is just going to be coming up. That’s a problem because this important audience is not as engaged in the corporate world. We had a study about how a large percentage of them have never even talked to somebody over 50, and many over-50s don’t talk to Gen Z.  

Fine-Tuning the Programming 

Bob: So let’s talk about the reaction you’ve gotten in the marketplace. How does the feedback come in, and has that feedback resulted in making adjustments from the very first episode?  

Jonathan: We’re coming up to the golden 50th episode, and we’ve definitely learned a lot along the way. We’ve had to play around with the length of the skit, how long we would talk to people, and other things. We had to discover what topics kind of resonated a little bit more. I will say that we’ve been surprised. 

If you’re doing something about how to increase your pay, negotiate your salary, or fire your boss, you naturally going to get attention from that. Other topics require more work to engage people. We also featured a study that showed our brain capacity is down to about 40 seconds when it used to be three minutes. There’s a readership for topics like that, and if you can bring them in, they’re actually going to stay and listen to it. But we have to be clever about how we do it.  

We’ve more than doubled the audience since we started. I think we’ve tripled our subscribers, it’s like 30,000.  A lot of people inside the company really like it, and our CEO has said a lot of nice words about it. Jill really likes it. It’s a fun thing, and it seems to have done very well on social.  

Bob: Do your consultants ever tell you: “I was with so and so CEO or VP of marketing or whatever, and she really likes this.”  

Jonathan: Since we’re a client-oriented business, our partners come to us trying to in improve the connection with a client. We can suggest that a client appear on our podcast. We did one on private equity — which, by the way, did really well. The client has to be ready to play ball and enjoy what we’re doing. And lot of companies look at this and go, “No, it’s not us.” And that’s fine.  

Bob: I was a business journalist back in the early 80s, then moved over to the thought leadership in 1987 and stayed there ever since. I’ve always thought business communications and marketing were way too stuffy, buttoned-down, stilted, and boring. And that carries over to a lot of thought leadership as well. But your approach pokes at humor in the workplace to introduce people to important ideas and trends. Korn Ferry consultants today can’t spoon feed the audiences the same way we would spoon feed them 30 years ago, or even 10 years ago.  

Jonathan: My dad actually did internal public relations for IBM, so I grew up in that stilted world. He had eight white shirts and the hat all lined up. The work world has definitely relaxed, and content needs to relax with it. Of course, that depends on the business. We’re an advisory and search business, and it’s a little easier when you’re in the advisory role to kind of poke fun at what’s happening in business, because you’re actually showing people a problem that they didn’t realize they have. And humor may be a more effective way of getting their attention without insulting them, and doing it in a colorful way.  

Taking on Difficult Topics 

Bob: We also know that during recessionary times, there’s a lot of fear and other concerns in companies, which gets to a kind of survival instinct: Will I lose my job or get the pay increase that I feel I deserve when the company is laying people off? So working in companies during really difficult times can be difficult, especially for young people right out of college. They are going from the great college scene to business, where everything is serious and you can’t say anything that might get you in trouble or even fired. For a firm like Korn Ferry to make the workforce more human through a podcast like this is refreshing. 

Jonathan: but that also fits with our larger branding, our slogan: “Be More Than.” We’re trying to show the people side of things that we’re working on here. That does include leadership… leaders are also people. One of our segments was called “I Forgot,” and it was talking about the memory problems of older workers coming back into the workforce, and even younger workers under stress. That’s a human problem that you shouldn’t be afraid to talk about. Another key thing that’s happened is what is expected of the corporate world. Mental and physical health were not really a part of IBM or GE decades ago. But now it is, and it’s expected to be, and particularly if you want Gen Z and the younger workforce involved. So you have to show through your thought leadership that you’re thinking about these things, and noticing problems that are happening to the workforce. You’re noticing that bosses are really clamping down and wanting people back to the office. And it doesn’t mean you’re taking the workers’ side, but you are explaining what’s happening so they can better understand it, whereas in the past, they would just say “come to work” and that would be that.  

You never used to have to explain anything. You would just tell people what to do. But now that world has changed, so I think that’s a little bit of what’s reflected here.  

Bob: Yeah, and it’s much healthier. There are a lot of discussable issues now that were not discussable when you and I entered the workforce. Big companies where you wouldn’t even ask your boss about certain things.  

Jonathan: We have a very funny piece this week on politics — the fact that everyone talks about it, but you’re not supposed to talk about it. So what can you do? The old corporate response was to tell people they couldn’t talk about it. Well, you know what? You’re on a phone with a client, and that client is talking politics, and all we can say is just don’t talk about it. Well, that actually can upset the client more than saying something. It’s the same when you’re talking with colleagues: It’s like this was something that was just verboten even five years ago, but now it’s creeping up, and we have to help workers know how to handle that.  

Bob: So, do you think the podcasts have helped attract people to come to work for Korn Ferry? Showing them you’re kind of a fun place to work, where it’s OK to discuss things? You have a sense of humor and perhaps some of your competitors may not have that image.  

Jonathan: You’re a very good salesman for our podcast. I talk to a lot of new people who come to the company for an interview, and it’s one of the first things they bring up. They saw the podcast and really liked it. So it definitely helps that way. It doesn’t mean that it’s always a home run. We definitely have some button-down people in the company, and they’re doing kind of a button-down business. Nothing is wrong with them; they just may not want to be a part of it for that reason. It’s not universal, but I think the podcast does give that message that we’re not afraid to make fun of ourselves.  

Advice for Launching a Company Podcast 

Bob: So what do you think are the biggest lessons you’ve learned that other B to B companies can take from your very innovative podcast?  

Jonathan: it doesn’t have to be as expensive as you think it does. You have to take risks. You’ve got to bring in people who may not know anything about your business, but can do the visuals for you. You need sharp, fun, buzz-worthy headlines. You need to take on new subjects, not just how to get a job or  improve your career. You need to understand that people are smart and want to be engaged in difficult topics that they might not get someplace else. 

Bob: And Jill as moderator, right? She had years of being very comfortable behind a camera, being on TV, right? I would think your choice of moderator would be very important,  

Jonathan: The same goes for Rupa Bhattacharya, who was very, very comfortable with it. The right people are critical, and another lesson is that this extends to the guests, too. We do a pre-interview, and you’ve got to have the guts, even with a partner, to realize after the interview that they won’t work on the show. Don’t say it to their face, but hopefully just don’t get back to them and they won’t be upset with you. Putting them on isn’t doing them a favor. If they’re not comfortable being a guest, you shouldn’t put them in that position.  

Bob: Can people get better, either through media training or practice? Can you tell them to practice something and then come back to us in six months? 

Jonathan: Well, certainly there are people who have really become media savvy. Alan Corino, who has an almost regular post on CNBC, it’s just brilliant on TV. I don’t think he started out that way. You can teach yourself how to do it. I used to go on the Today Show, where we had a regular segment. I was just God awful. I don’t really think I learned anything…I was awful at the end, too. 

I think everyone can learn something, but that’s an uncomfortable position to put someone in. If they come to us and say, “Well, what can we do to make it better,” we will definitely offer it to them. But I’m not going to usually tell a partner who’s bringing in $3 million a year that they are terrible on the podcast. 

What’s Next 

Bob: No, it might not be a good career move. So, any other new podcasts now in the works, given your success with this one?  

Jonathan: We have started an internal podcast called “catch up” with a K that includes the same team plus our public relations team. And instead of putting out a boring newsletter once a month about our accomplishments, we have very colorful segments where we feature an employee.  One of them does auctioneering, and so we showed her as an auctioneer, and then we explained the business that she does. We also bring in company leaders and do quizzes with them. We humanize just about everybody at the company, and then we explain the business. It can be hard to figure out Korn Ferry, just like a lot of other companies. What is the advisory? What is the search? What does it mean to have a real estate practice? So we have somebody coming on and explaining it, but that podcast is only five minutes because that’s a tough audience. When people see something from public internal public relations, it’s human nature to kind of turn it off. My poor dad had to live with that forever, but we’re having a lot of fun with that.  

I do see opportunities. We have really expanded our content with a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Alyssa Abkowitz, for board practice and CEO issues. We had a big cover called “CEO Breaking Points.”  I’ve also thought we could humanize our directors. Whenever I talk to them or to the CEO, they’re far more colorful than anyone realizes if you get them in the right scenario, and their knowledge base is just mind-boggling.  

Bob: Any thoughts on a longer podcast, like an hour or two hours? I don’t know if you’ve seen the podcast “Acquired,” which can be two or even three hours. I’ve read that they will spend a month doing the research behind each monthly podcast. 

Jonathan: We’ve tried a few mini-docs or documentaries, and it’s not effective unless you can put money behind it. One of the compliments we get about our podcast is how well it’s produced, but that’s because we’ve kept it short, and we brought in these different segments. When you start doing things like mini-docs, you need camera people outside. We have to do much more with this, but we will keep trying, because the cost and time required are coming down for mini-docs just like for our shorter podcasts. The other thing to consider is, how much would we gain from that? It would be lovely to take one of our briefings covers and really dive into it, but how much that would engage an audience and get us name recognition? I’m not sure.  

Bob: I’m not sure either, although when I look at the numbers for the downloads and viewership of “Acquired,” I see they have about 500,000 subscribers and think they must be doing something right. And what is it that they do? How are they able to keep an audience for two hours? 

Jonathan: You just need to talk about fascinating topics. We had a piece on called “Mortal Leadership” about death, and how Western society’s inability to accept and deal with death is one of the reasons why people don’t switch jobs or retire when they need to. These are humanizing stories of people facing difficult times and how that all related. I would love to be able to engage people that long. But again, that will require a much bigger operation.  

Bob: Jonathan, anything more about the Briefings podcast and where it’s going? 

Jonathan: It’s fun. It’s really important that you and your team really enjoy the process. That’s what makes people innovative. We did “The Briefings Podcast Road Trip.” It’s the was our best audience size ever. We did another one that looked like Hollywood Squares. When it’s just fun, I look forward to the calls about it. I’m not dreading it. And as long as it stays fun, your team will be very innovative. And I think when it comes to thought leadership, innovation is just critical.  

Bob: Absolutely. This is great stuff. And I hope a lot of people watch this podcast and revise the podcast they have or use these principles in the new podcast that they launch. Thank you so much for your time. Jonathan.