What I Learned This Week: The Spoke Of Leadership & Life

CEO of Panera Bread & Brands: How to balance happiness with a paycheck

I recently had a conversation with Niren Chaudhary, the CEO of Panera Bread and Panera Brands. He is responsible for over 130,000 employees. It’s a tough but rewarding job. Niren has also had to overcome seemingly impossible challenges, the greatest of which was the loss of two of his daughters.

We had a long conversation about business and life and one of the things I asked him was how we can balance feeling fulfilled and happy with the reality of life that we need a paycheck. He shared a crucial life and leadership lesson with me that I want to share with you. In his own words: