Leadership lessons from private equity CEOs

Leadership lessons from private equity CEOs

From The McKinsey Podcast by McKinsey & Company

March 19, 2026 · 20 min

About this episode

This episode discusses leadership lessons from private equity CEOs and their transformative tactics.

Companies backed by private equity (PE) tend to transform faster and more often than public or family-owned firms do, leading to consistently outperforming their peers. Marla Capozzi and Sacha Ghai , McKinsey leaders, researched nearly 300 CEOs across PE and private-capital companies to define their tactics and share their best practices with others. They and their coauthors published the findings in a recent Harvard Business Review article , and in this episode of The McKinsey Podcast , they speak with Editorial Director Roberta Fusaro about lessons from PE that any company can implement. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw. See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

People in this episode

Host: Roberta Fusaro

Guests: Marla Capozzi, Sacha Ghai

Topics covered

  • leadership
  • private equity
  • business transformation
  • CEO tactics
  • best practices

Keywords

  • private equity
  • CEOs
  • business performance
  • transformation
  • best practices

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: McKinsey & Company, Harvard Business Review

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