Kris Safarova  00:45

welcome to the strategy skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and this episode is sponsored by strategytraining.com and today we have with us an amazing guest. I think this is the very first time, even though we have so many episodes over so many years, over a decade, we have been running this podcast. Think this is the very first time we have someone coming for the third time, and that is Bill George. You will know Bill from previous episodes. He is an executive education fellow at Harvard Business School and former chairman and CEO of Medtronic. And He is the author of the true north, emerging leader edition, Bill welcome, Kris.

Bill George  01:26

I’m honored to be back for the third time. I was honored to be here the first time. So thank you so much. And things are changing so rapidly, I think we have to continually look at where we stand today. So I feel privileged to be back with you

Kris Safarova  01:40

100% such an important time for us to have this discussion and for people, for our amazing listeners, to hear from you and your thoughts on how do they lead in this very difficult, chaotic times? Where do you think we should start this discussion?

Bill George  01:54

Well, I was going to say, you know, we came into this new century thinking with great promise. But if you think about the last 25 years, has been nothing but a series of crises and chaos going all the way back to the September 11, the track on the twin Trade Towers at the World Trade Center. We then we had the total financial collapse, you recall of 2008 I don’t think for all people is now saying they anticipate covid. I don’t think anyone anticipated what this terrible disease was going to do to shut down our world. And by the way, there’s a lot of post psychological Fallout, particularly for younger people today, from having been shut in during that period. And now we have like things are changing every day. It’s a world of chaos, and it requires a very different kind of leader than it did in more stable times.

Kris Safarova  02:47

And just before we started recording you and I were talking about the topic of our podcast today, and how some of the things people struggling with right now is fear so many people who have been working their whole lives developing skills, trying to be the best leader they can be. They are now scared to lose their job. They will not be able to provide for their family. They have all these fears. They see all these headlines. This company laid off a lot of people. This other company laid off a lot of people. What will be your recommendation for someone to not lose themselves as a leader, given what’s going on.

Bill George  03:22

Well, I think as a leader today, you’re everything you said is correct, and there are a lot of layoffs are, frankly, gonna be a lot more coming up. There’s a lot of changes, and so I think people are gonna have to rethink their whole approach to leadership. It’s not like leading through stable times, or all the things we’re taught in business school about accounting and process controls and finance and marketing principles, it really is a time of not just managing from within and looking down, but looking up to all the things that are happening out there, the external events are coming at us, and I’m finding and teaching CEOs at Harvard Business School that a very significant percentage of them feel very comfortable leading internally. They’re great leaders. They’re operational leaders. They know the business, they know the numbers, they know the customers, but they really don’t know how to deal with external events, and they almost fear those external events coming at them. They fear the media. They fear kind of being a public figure. But today, if you’re a leader, you are a public figure, and so you have to face that reality and lead in very different ways so that you’re a whole leader that can integrate the internal things and the external things.

Kris Safarova  04:36

And of course, your book gives people a great foundation of how to think about what is happening right now and how to not lose themselves in the process, and how to understand their values and their true north, as you call it. So let’s cover this a little bit, especially for people who still feel that even though they are successful and they have been promoted ahead of schedule and they have a team. Reporting to them. They actually still don’t know. What is that true north?

Bill George  05:03

Well, that’s it. That’s a real problem, because I think today you need to have the grounding of knowing who you are that comes Kris from your life story, the experiences you’ve had, and also comes from the great challenges you face, the crucibles, we call them, where you face great challenges. You know, when everything’s going your way, you get promoted, you get bonuses, you start to think you’re better than you are. I did that one as a tennis player at Georgia Tech. When I lost I learned all my weaknesses. So crucibles expose us and our weaknesses, and we realize it’s not about the external gratification we get from people outside saying we’re great, it’s really looking inside ourselves and being who we are. And I think the people that are really going to struggle now, the ones who are faking it to make it, that are trying to impress the outside world, but really aren’t grounded inside themselves. So this is the time to be grounded in your basic principles and your values, as I say, that’s who we are. That’s our true north. Our true north is something as simple as our principles, our beliefs and our values all rolled into one. Only when we know that and we know how to lead ourselves and the difficulties we’ve had, then we can go out and try to lead others. And I see people jumping the gun and try to get out there and try and lead other people without even know who they are, and the people they’re leading kind of don’t really have a real confidence in their leaders when that happens.

Kris Safarova  06:29

Bill and if someone, after listening to our discussion today, and they hope they will go back and watch the other two episodes as well and get your book, if they start thinking, okay, so I have a life story, and obviously it shaped me. Maybe I don’t understand fully how, but it shaped me. What would be some guidances you can give them on how they can start understanding the key life experiences and how it shaped them.

Bill George  06:54

Well, I think as you process your life story and you understand your relationships, where you came from, who your parents were, your family of origin, the living environment, the communities you’re in, you start to see the things that shaped you, and these really shape you as a leader. There’s no kind of standard mode of leaders. Here are the 10 characteristics you have to have. It doesn’t work like that, and that gives you the confidence. And maybe you face these difficult crucibles. Maybe you lost a brother or sister to illness, or maybe you had a parent that never you, never really felt was proud of you. Or maybe you yourself lost your job or went through a divorce, you realize that that really helped, that has a shaping influence, but also when you accept yourself for who you are, then you know that all you don’t need all this external gratification, and you don’t need constant validation from the outside, a title, a promotion. I see a lot of people at very high levels getting caught up. Like somebody once told me, a CEO, very successful, said, without a title, I’m nothing. Well, there’s a time you won’t have the title. In fact, my colleague Hubert Jolie, which ran Best Buy. And now, as my colleague at Harvard, Biscoe, said, You know, he actually said to the newspapers, he said, I am not the CEO Best Buy, so I’m Hubert. Jolie, that’s the title I hold. I won’t hold that forever, but I still want to be Hubert. I thought that was a really good way of looking at it. Don’t get so caught up in your title. Oh, I make more money than you do, or I’m envious because you make more money you have a bigger house. That’s if you look at life like that, you’ll never be truly satisfied. It’s only when you’re from within, you feel good about yourself as a person, and then you’re going to be able to be a loving, kind person to not just your own family, but everyone you work with

Kris Safarova  08:42

such a critical insight you’re sharing here, so many people are losing their identity when they lose their job, because their identity is their role, instead of a person they are and what they stand for. Going back to figuring out your true north, I really love the quote you had in your book from philosopher William James who said, a century ago, the best way to define a man’s character is to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which he felt himself most deeply and intensely alive At such moments, there is A voice inside which says, This is the real me. And you mentioned in the book that you felt intensely alive when you became the CEO.

Bill George  09:29

Many times in my life, go ahead. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I felt that many times in my life, but go ahead, yes.

Kris Safarova  09:34

And when I was reading it, I was thinking, of course, you felt it. Many times. You just gave one example to showcase what you felt and so people can apply to themselves in an easier way. Can you take us to that moment when you became the CEO and what specifically made you feel alive, the CEO of Medtronic?

Bill George  09:53

The important thing is I learned in my previous company, I joined Medtronic as a. And then I became CEO. Previously, I had been at Honeywell, which is a great company with great values, but frankly, their purpose, if you will, was making money. Now look in business I’ve been in and able to be with organizations and made a lot of money, and we’re proud of that, but that is fleeting, too, and so that’s not what resonates me. That’s not what I hope someone says to me at my field says about me in my funeral. Oh, Bill George made a lot of money. I would say, Wow, please don’t say that. It’s who am I? Who is my character? I felt when I got to Medtronic, I could really be myself. I felt like I was coming home to a place I’d never been before that, were the I had a real congruence of my own purpose and my values, and they came together at that time. And even though the company was much smaller than it was at Honeywell, it grew up to be much larger, but at the time it’s much smaller, we felt like we could carry out this sense of mission given to us by our founder of restoring people to full life of health and measure ourselves. But how many people did we help every day, every year? And that became the criteria for success. And if we could do that, wow. You can go home and say, Wow, we helped these people, just this one person. You see this 118 year old boy that we helped restore his whole life. It doesn’t have to be a million people, and you feel like I’m really contributing something world, if I can help other people. And I think that’s the way that 90,000 employees in Medtronic feel that are really proud of what they do. Do you

Kris Safarova  11:31

remember the most intense feeling of what this philosopher was talking about in your life when you really felt this is the real you?

Bill George  11:39

Yeah, so, you know, let’s go back to the 18 year old boy. We had something called a holiday party. It wasn’t really a party at all. If we had six patients that came in, and our founder said, take a look at this young 18 year old boy that’s coming in. Young man named TJ Flack, and he was born with cerebral palsy, and he had gotten out of his wheelchair, and he had crutches, and so I heard him tell his story, and I had tears in my eyes when he talked about how he was on the verge of suicide when he got his Medtronic pump, that really he said, this pump, this Medtronic product. He patted his his abdomen, and he said, This changed my life. And he said, Now I have a life. And he became a financial analyst, and he got married and he had children, but before he had no life. And so wow, if we can make a product to give someone like that a sense of life, and we can make it for a lot of other people, what does that do? And so that one moment said, Wow, this is what I should be doing. This what I’m called to do is to try to create a company that can innovate with new things, invent new things, bringing new products, all focused on trying to help people be restored to full life and health, in other words, meet their unmet medical needs. And Medtronic has done that. We had a wonderful product for Parkinson’s disease, where a lot of older people get Parkinson’s. We’ve got a product can really help them. So these are what I call miracles, because they do transform people’s lives, and that’s what really makes me feel like this is what I should be doing.

Kris Safarova  13:08

It is incredible to be part of an organization that makes such a huge difference in people’s lives and such a good example. And they can almost hear people listening to us, some of the people listening to us saying, Bill, it’s easy for you to say, I’m not working in an organization like that. I didn’t have experiences like that. I don’t know if I have anything to mind to fully discover what is my true not. What would you recommend to someone who is stumbled Well,

Bill George  13:33

you know, I think this idea of having purpose, where you find a congruence between your purpose and your organization, purpose is so critical. It can happen in any field. A colleague of mine was running the whole consumer side of US bank here, one of the largest banks in the country, during covid, everything shut down. Branches were all shut down. And what they did is they asked their people, Go call your customers and say, Hi. This is Tim here. What can I do to help you today? I know you’re going through a tough time, and a lot of people were financially that tough times. They didn’t have enough money to pay the rent or even buy the groceries and or even feel like they had countless leave the house. But just this idea that here’s a financial a banker, not trying to make money off you, but trying to help you and and going, I think this can be true in any business, the insurance business, certainly in wealth management, certainly too in products. You know, how are we helped by having a technology based iPhone so we’re not locked to our computers. How are we helped by having automobiles that are have some self driving features. I mean, we can go on and on to just about every business. There’s a deep sense of purpose if it’s well run now, the ones like General Electric that say we’re just making money, they’re going to wind up, frankly, going away and it doesn’t exist anymore. There’s divisions, couple divisions left out of the utter some divisions they had because they didn’t really focus on how to help people. And every business has got to focus. On that to have sustainability over time. So yeah, you can find that within your organization and where you can do that, and then you can make your contribution. Whether you’re an engineer or a salesperson or a marketeer or you’re working in the computer room, you can find, I contributed to that overall solution. They need my help. And I think I’ve seen this in a lot of organizations where they’re really mission driven, and you can see it when you walk in the door, even like in a restaurant or the people who work there, they look sour and sullen. And I hate working here. I can’t wait to get off my shift or say, hey, it’s great to have you here. How can we help you today? How can we make this lunch fun for you? And we’ve got some great food. What can I do, you know, and convey that sense, it makes you just feel good. I want to come back. And I don’t care if it’s a Michelin two star restaurant, if I don’t get treated that way, I’m not coming back. You know, they’re just kind of negative about it. So I want to be with people that are positive. And that brings up a whole nother subject, Kris, we have too many toxic leaders in business that are out for themselves, that put themselves ahead of other people. And I know so many people in mid level positions have to work for somebody like it. I had to work for people like this. It’s not fun, and it can ruin your life. And a certain point time you got to get away from it, because they drive you down. They take credit for what you do. They always critical of you. They’re never positive. And no matter how good work you do, it’s never good enough. And they you know, it’s more like, how many hours do you work rather than what work you produce? And so if you’re working for somebody like that, as many people on this line are, I think you’re going to have to find somewhere where you can work for people. You’ll work hard, you’ll do the job, and you’ll feel really good about working with them,

Kris Safarova  16:43

this deep sense of purpose really can help people face this turbulent times without it, it feels you are without the foundation, and it’s very easy then to get lost. When you work with executives, what are the biggest challenges they are facing right now. You already mentioned some of them, such as not being able to deal with external situations. Yeah.

Bill George  17:07

So in this period of chaos, I think we have to rethink our leadership. A lot of things we learned in business school, or we even teach today in business schools, are kind of irrelevant. I mean, it’s nice to know about process controls and 10 year strategic planning so no one can do it day because you don’t know what it’s going to be. Know what it’s gonna be 10 days from now, much less 10 years from now. So I think we need a much different approach to leadership. And so I developed some principles to think about that. The first one I find more people in leadership have trouble doing this, facing reality, starting with yourself. Sometimes you have to look yourself in the mirror. Maybe I’m creating this negative culture. Maybe I’m turning people off. What did I do? Maybe I can’t face this worst case that things are going to be really bad. We may have to close a factory. You may have to change the business we’re in. And so that’s the first one. And then I think Second, and this is the number one thing I’m concerned about today is I see people abandoning their principles and values. So I think number one is you have to stay true to your purpose, your personal purpose, and the organization’s purpose and your values. And if you back off, you feel like the courage to face powerful horses coming at you and say, No, this is who we are. We stand for something now, once you do that, then you can you have to adjust your strategies and tactics. You can’t just have a strategy that’s not working for today’s environment that worked yesterday. So you have to adapt quickly. You have to adapt your tactics. But I think a lot of people, what happens is they pull back and they say, Oh, they feel overwhelmed. So instead of getting their teammates involved, they try to solve the problem themselves. This is a time to get your team involved. Say, Hey guys, we got a real problem. We could lose the whole business. What ideas do you have to keep it going? And I can tell you examples of all these. And finally, actually, there’s so many people pulling back right now pick up paper any day, you’ll see number 1000s of people being laid off. This is time to go on offense, not go on defense, not to pull back, but to go forward and make bold moves. But all five of these things take courage. Takes courage to look yourself in the mirror. Takes courage to stay to your principles and values. It takes courage to change strategies and tactics, and sometimes they admit to your team. I don’t know what we should do. You tell me that takes courage. And finally, going on offense, when everyone else is pulling back, that’s a real courage. You might fail, but you might succeed tremendously.

Kris Safarova  19:32

Let’s build on this. This is so relevant, maybe. Let’s start unpacking it, starting with going on offense, since it was the last point, and very, very relevant for our leaders listening to us right now, if we unpack it, if we elaborate on it, what would you like to say here?

Bill George  19:47

Well, I think again, in business terms, it’s hard to gain market share when everyone’s investing but others are pulling back. But I think beyond that, with the change you need to lead the band. Have the. Courage not just to be a follower. And a lot of people that are cutting back are just following what everyone else is doing. Oh, it’s a good time to cut back. It’ll please the stock market. They’re not the bold leaders. I see somebody like Satya Nadella at Microsoft continuing to make bold move after bold move after bold. Very much going out, making big investment in data centers. Now only 27% of what is chat. GPT, it’s open. Ai, it’s called and making a bold move there, getting into other businesses like gaming, seeing that there’s new opportunities. And so, you know, very bold, and that’s the kind of leadership we need that has confidence to go forward. Company worth over $4 trillion I think it’s a second most valuable company in the world because he makes bold moves, and I think their stocks up 11 or 12 times since he took over 10 years ago. So that’s the kind of leadership you need, definitely.

Kris Safarova  20:52

And if we look at it from perspective of an individual leader, so let’s say it is someone who actually works at Microsoft. They are relatively senior, but not at executive level, yet. They are scared to lose their job, even though they are being told that they are valuable member of the team. How can they implement that advice?

Bill George  21:11

Well, cocky, losing jobs. There’s two reasons lose jobs. One, because the business not going well, and the economy is cutting back. The other thing is happening, though, that so far that hadn’t happened, but that will happen, there’s no doubt, because we do go through economic cycles. It has through all history, but the one that they’re not really facing into is the impact of artificial intelligence. And so I think you have to rethink your leadership. If you’re just coding with Python, you’re doing routine jobs, particularly with the brains, as opposed to you’re a welder or something. Out those jobs, the ones the frontline people are not those jobs aren’t going away, but I think a lot of the mid level jobs are because people don’t realize, where am I unique? Where? Where can I bring uniqueness? Well, machines don’t bring empathy and compassion. They may spin out lots of nice words, but it’s really that being a leader that has a high level emotional intelligence, has high level self awareness, and can express a deep sense of purpose, but also for their colleagues, express empathy for what people are going through, compassion for the challenges they face, and then obviously, courage. Machines don’t have courage, so somebody just writes an algorithm and you follow that. But I think having people having those qualities that can then integrate really complex subjects into a new whole and say, here’s what we should do, that’s the kind of thing the machine can just look backward at. What’s there. Your job as a leader is to say, where do we need to go? And that’s just not at the top, but at all levels. And we’re looking for people with that spark of creativity who can really think out of the box and think new ideas and think, How can we do it better? Not just linear thinkers that say we’ll do it the same as you always have. Those are the jobs that, frankly, are going to go away, but to have a job and to be promoted, it’s the people come up with the innovative ideas for this environment, and that’s I’ll give you an example. Now this goes back five years, so forgive me for that. But during covid, Corey Berry, who was CEO Best Buy, she’d taken over six months before, realized something was going on, this disease coming in, and within days, she realized, I’m going to have to close 80 I’m have to close 1000 stores and lay off 52,000 people. And her predecessor had even written a book that said, Don’t lay off people. She had to do it. She had to furlough these people, hoping someday to get them back. She did that. But then she said to her team, how can we keep going? And they created a whole new way of taking their showrooms to see all the products where you come in, look at them. You couldn’t go in there during covid. Make them into distribution center of all the product there. Drive your car up, send us a text that you’re out front. We’ll bring your product out. We’ll put it in your trunk, pop your truck, put it in. No one touches anything, and you drive away, and you’ve got that new computer, you’ve got that new television set at home entertainment center or whatever the product is. It was just a whole different way of thinking about they reconceptualize the business. Well, today, people with ai, ai wasn’t around as much then. Now we have to reconceptualize our business. What unique services are we going to provide when AI can do so much? Well, take the AI and build at it. Don’t kind of deny its existence or compete with it, or just say, Oh, it makes mistakes. Yeah, sure, it does things always make mistakes, but I think it’s really thinking about new ways of looking at things. I hope your listeners will and you don’t have to be CEO to do this. We need people at all levels. As CEO, I value people at all levels, particularly people, oftentimes in the trenches, that had the most creative ideas because they understood the business so well.

Kris Safarova  24:45

So building on that, sticking with an individual who is relatively senior, but not yet executive at the major organization, what skills do you think they should be building right now, given the time we are living in, they

Bill George  24:58

should learn all aspects. Of the business and how to integrate them into a creative way. It’s like they’ve reformed the business. Not just it’s like a Rubik’s Cube. You’re not just lining up a way, but you’re thinking about it differently, in more creative ways. And I think bringing working as a team today. You know, frankly, if you even see the Nobel Prize, they’re not going to one person, going to teams. You have to be able to pull a team together. So pull together a cross disciplinary team from people who represent all aspects of the business or the organization, and then sit and talk among yourselves and involve with creative ideas and bring be the person that’s the glue, if you will. I can tell you a little secret about my career. When I was at much lower levels, is even at the highest level, I’ve never had anyone I’ve never had anyone report to me who knew I that knew is that knew more about everyone knew more about the visit I did. In other words, I stumbled where everyone knew more than I about the visit I did. My job is to integrate people together. They were the experts. So my job is to bring people together and figure out tough problems with good solutions, because we got inputs from lots of people. And so it wasn’t just going one way or the other way. It was trying to think about, how do we think creatively about this? But my job is to be that integrator, and that’s why I did every job I ever had in my life, from the lowest level to the highest level.

Kris Safarova  26:21

That is very smart, and that is true leadership. I see it with clients as well, clients who are most successful over a period of time as I see their careers unfold and they go to executive level and lead globally, those are people who heavily invest in their team, promote the best people. It’s not about they’re not scared about being replaced, they actually train in replacements because they know that another opportunity will come. They’re not trying to protect the role they have right now.

Bill George  26:50

Yeah, that’s very well said. You want to have everyone in your team be better than you are at what they do, and your job is to pull them together and integrate it whole. You think of what we shifted the way from the traditional salamanjo, what I call a coaching leader. So what does a coach do? Coach doesn’t actually play the game. Sembles a team of the best people at each position, you know. And the first thing people to work with you, they have to know you care about them. That’s number one. And second, then you want to get them all into what we call their sweet spot. That’s the area where they’re most skilled, use all their skills, and they’re highly motivated. If you take a soccer team, some people would rather play defense than play offense. Great, you know? I mean, let’s get them, keep them on defense, so let’s get somebody in the goal that loves to be in the goalie. But I think that’s the motivation and the skill level. And then this, we’ve talked about it before today. It’s the alignment. Get everyone aligned around your purpose and goals, and if they aren’t aligned around that, it’s not going to work. You’ll have team going in different directions. You can get different input. So once you make a decision, it’s like having a crew on the Charles River. Everyone has to pull in in the same direction, at the same pace, and the coxswain that you are as the coach calls the order, and then you everyone goes and does that. That’s what whether it’s a football team, basketball team, soccer team, I don’t care. That’s what teams do and but I think somebody will think, Oh, this is kind of soft. There’s nothing soft. You have to challenge everyone. All my life have been made up of how to help leaders reach their full potential, often that means challenging them. Kris, I know you can do better. Let’s see how we can take your game to the next level, and then finally, get down to work with your people and help leaders are spending too much time in their offices and meetings, looking at PowerPoint charts to fill their data and just reading reports. Get out there and be with the people and understand the problems and talk about, how can we solve that? Maybe we need to bring in some experts, but it’s that. So it’s really having the ability of caring about people, organizing them around their sweet spot, aligning them around a common purpose, and then challenging them to step up, and finally helping, and getting in there, helping them do better.

Kris Safarova  29:02

Yes, seeing what is their potential, seeing them as leaders they can be, and communicating it. And you, when you tell someone, I know you can do bad, and you’re not saying it with criticism, you’re saying it because, look, you’re doing great. I really appreciate all your work, but I know you can do better. It reminded me of your dad telling you when you were nine. Obviously, you know it better than I am that he wishes that you I don’t remember exact words, but it was something along the lines of, he hopes you will become a leader. He didn’t become

Bill George  29:33

exactly, exact. Fact, he actually told me, why don’t you be a CEO? And even named the company, the Coca Cola Company, the great company. I worked there for a while. I might have stayed with him, but, you know, it was kind of No, yes, it was. But he cared about me, and he was putting out very big challenges out there for me at a very young age.

Kris Safarova  29:52

And when someone believes that you can operate at that level, it resets the threshold in your own mind of what is possible for.

Bill George  30:00

You. So think about what you just said. Kris, if someone believes in you, you can really step up. Think about someone doesn’t believe in they’re constantly criticizing whatever you do. No matter how hard you try, you’d be criticized. I’m a graduate of Georgia Tech, and the second game of the season, the top star quarterback as a candidate the Heisman trophy was injured, and so they brought in a freshman, an 18 year old kid. And first play, a set of downs, he fumbles, okay, they lose the ball. Second set of downs, he throws an interception. Now the kids coming off to feel his head down, thinking his coach is just gonna murder him, you know? And the coach says to him, Aaron, that’s good. You got those out of your system. Now, next time you get out there and do it well. So the third set of downs, he throws a touchdown pass, and he comes off with a big grin on his face. Coach, that’s the way I play football. So it’s that belief in his coach that, hey, I know you can do it. Instead of beating up on it for criticizing I worked for two leaders that did nothing but beat up on me. Frankly, they were the CEO, so there was nowhere to go. I wouldn’t go to the board and complain. So I eventually had to change jobs, because I can’t spend my whole life getting beaten up on when I know I have given frankly, you know, they just had a different philosophy of leadership that I did, and I didn’t want to work in that environment. I wanted to work in a positive environment, where people believed in each other and they built great teams. To me, that’s what it’s all about.

Kris Safarova  31:26

Just yesterday, I sent an email to our community about Thomas Edison and his mom. There’s an interview with Thomas Edison about how he came home after he overheard that his teacher said that he is not smart enough, and his mom got really angry. She went to school and said to the teacher, he is smarter than you, and all kinds of things like that. And he said that at that moment, he knew that he had to prove that she was trying.

Bill George  31:52

That’s great, sir. There’s another Thomas Edison story where he was trying to find the filament for the electric light bulb. You know, he invented this, and he had a foreman that was doing these experiments. And the foreman said, Mr. Edison, it’s not working. We’re going to give up. We’ve tried 1000 ways to find this, make this villain work, and everyone has failed. And Edison looked at him, he said, nonsense. Now, you know, 1000 ways it didn’t work. Go find the one that did. So he did find the one that did

Kris Safarova  32:22

exactly and what we were talking about. Now, I learned it for myself in real life when I immigrated. First time. Immigrated three times in my life, so the first time was to South Africa, and I immigrated, and my degree couldn’t be found in a database, so it was like, I don’t have any degree, any kind of education, and I had to start from scratch again, and my English wasn’t yet very good, so I went to university, and I was really worried, because I had to translate every word in the textbook, every word I had to translate, and I was starting to prepare for my first set of exams, and I said to my friend, I’m afraid that I’m not going to pass, even though I am studying every waking moment, I can find a way from work, because I was also working full time and part time. And he said, not only you going to pass, you’re going to graduate with straight A’s, wow. And he said it, and the three set the threshold. And what do you think I went through the first set of exams and all A’s, and then I graduated with straight A’s few years down the line, and then went to the NBA with straight A’s. It is one person one time saying something, and it can have that kind of impact on the person

Bill George  33:34

and believed in you Yes, see, that’s the thing. I think I find an interview I’ve interviewed, you know, like 250 leaders from my true north book, and in depth, like 75 minutes, the one thing a lot of them come up with, I had a mother that really believed in me. Said, you can do anything. Remember, Ken Frazier, the CEO of Merck, came out of almost abject poverty in toughest area, Philadelphia. But he had her mother said, Ken, you can believe in you. And a father who said, Stay true to your principles. Don’t, don’t spend your whole life worrying what other people think of you. You just do what’s right. And those two principles carry Ken through to become CEO of Merck and do a fantastic job. It was that belief that you just talked about Kris so you had somebody who believed in you. And I think bosses and leaders can do that for their people, that I believe in you, even if they don’t believe in themselves. By the way, I’m working on somebody right now who doesn’t really believe in himself, and no one’s ever told him how good he was. I know how good he is, and I’m telling him. He said, I don’t like compliments. I said, that’s okay, but let me tell you how good you are. I’m just giving you feedback. You have this potential, so go for it.

Kris Safarova  34:40

And I think when we don’t have somebody to believe in us, we need to believe in ourselves.

Bill George  34:44

Well, that’s true, but where does that belief come from? Maybe it comes from within. Maybe it’s a spiritual belief, but you also have people around that you can find that really do believe in you. So if there’s no one else, you can find a mentor, a guide, a boss, you know, a coach who really. Will believe in you, and having that person there can really inspire you to reach, as they say, reach for the stars, reach for the higher level.

Kris Safarova  35:07

Yes, actually, if you find someone who is kind hearted and aligned with who they are, they see everyone in terms of their full potential, what they can become, and they, by default, will believe in you. Just need to find a person like that. They do exist. So let’s talk about courage. When you spoke about abandoning principles and values and how courage is required, let’s say someone listening to us right now, and they feel that because of what is going on and things are moving much faster than they can stay on top of they sometimes have to abandon their principles and values. How do they start approaching the situation differently?

Bill George  35:47

Well, I don’t believe that, first of all, a lot of people are living in fear right now. That’s no way to lead your life. Do you want to live a whole life in fear that somebody’s got to dominate you? So I think you have to pull back from that idea of fear and really ask yourself the question, what’s the worst case? What do I have to lose? Suppose I got fired from my job. Look, I’m capable. I could always find another job. Maybe I just need some time to reflect it. Maybe when that one door closed, maybe another one’s going to open that I never even saw her. As long as I was in this job, I couldn’t see that new opportunity. So I think it takes real, it takes courage to go through that and to power through. But the people of the great leaders of the world are ones that have the courage to power through, or great athletes who are losing and they figure out how to come back and win. They’re the winners. Do you have that? And so I think, but that courage comes from within. It’s not something against somebody. I can’t teach you courage. I can’t sit in a classroom and teach 60 students how to have courage. It has to come from within you. But I think once it does, then you can step up and realize, hey, I can do this. And by the way, part of Kris having courage is saying I may fail. It may not work out, but that’s okay. I’m very capable. If it doesn’t work out here, I’ll find somewhere else where it does work out to really believe in yourself. And I think it’s having that, but that goes all the way back to where we started, about your life story, your true north, and knowing that you are capable, you’re lovable and capable.

Kris Safarova  37:19

And I think one of the things that really helped to find courage is if you stop thinking about yourself and take attention away from yourself to people you’re trying to help through your work. Because we all do some kind of work, and if we focus on how we can be helping people through that work and placing our attention on them, that immediately changes the mindset and takes away fear. It works when you do public speaking. It works when you’re leading a team through a very difficult situation.

Bill George  37:49

Yeah, that’s very well said. Is that the fact that I may fail and I’ve got to get myself wrapped in around the axle, so to speak, and spend all my time praying, what if I fail? What if I fail? No, you have to believe in yourself, and I can say, if it doesn’t, you might fail, but you might learn from that failure and come back. One of the reasons Silicon Valley has been so great, unlike other countries, where the people are equally smart, equally intellectual, is people are afraid. In many countries, if I fail, like, say, Japan, if I fail, my career is over in Silicon Valley. It’s a learning experience. Kris, what did you learn from that? It didn’t work out. Did you say? Oh, yeah, now I’ve got a better idea. I learned about this. Here’s what we got to do, and we’re going to win. And they do, they come back and win. So it’s striking to me that attitude of but it is come from an inner belief, a deep seated sense of confidence in self, belief in yourself. And I think to have that, it helps to have someone, whether it’s a spouse, a parent, a loved one, a coach, a mentor, a best friend, who believes in you. And I think that’s critical that you have people around who believe you can do it. And so I think as a leader, I mentor, not just as a leader, I mentor dozens and dozens of people on a regular basis. I’m having like, six mentoring sessions this week. But I believe in these people, and I think when they get really down, they need someone there can pick them up and say, You’re terrific. Here’s what you can do.

Kris Safarova  39:16

And you mentioned the spouse. Spouse is such a critical decision in your life. People don’t realize that, that there’s also a career decision in a way, because if you have the right person by your side, it will make all the difference.

Bill George  39:29

And you know that person knows you better than you know yourself, and you need to listen to that person that can see you as you really are. So when you get down on yourself, my wife Penny has been that person for me, when I get down on myself, she’s the one to pick me up. If I get too high on myself, she’ll call me out. So I think having that person in your life is invaluable. Not everyone has that loving, kind spouse or is still seeking it, but they can always have a best friend, a colleague, a parent, a coach somewhere, a mentor who will help you along the. Way, that’s what I try to do when I’m mentoring people, is to believe in them and see their potential.

Kris Safarova  40:05

And they’re very lucky to have you, and they know you do so much with your wife to help people through your different initiatives. Let’s talk about facing reality, starting with yourself. Yes. What about someone who is trying to face reality, but they just don’t see their blind spots.

Bill George  40:21

They don’t see their blind spots, and they aren’t willing to face how bad it could be, and so they kind of go into an unreal course not realizing that they’re driving into the ditch. That’s why you need feedback. You need people around you that will give you honest feedback. And that’s, I think that’s what it’s you know, I used to be so blind I couldn’t see my own blind spots. But having people around me that would give me that honest feedback, who cared about me. So I think if you just get feedback on people that don’t care about you’re trying to take you down. You don’t let it in, because you kind of get defensive, and you put on the armor. But if you have people that care about you, you take that in and see that they want the best for me, I’ll take that feedback, and they can say, Bill, you’re not looking at this right, or you’re missing something, or you really offended someone, be careful, or whatever the feedback is, take that in and really integrate that into your leadership and to your approach to other people, your relationships.

Kris Safarova  41:16

Bill, and you’re so frank in the book, the way you were talking about how during university years, early on, you were trying to get leadership roles and couldn’t get it. And then eventually someone gave you feedback that, look, you’re just moving so fast you don’t have time to spend with anyone else. And you took it to heart, and you adjusted, and then people started seeing you as a leader.

Bill George  41:38

I was quite young. It took me a while to go through what I call my own self help development program. But yeah, I was, you know, thinking I was actually building a great resume, but not great relationships. I went ahead and realized Kris is that leadership is all about relationships. You build that and it’s a caring relationship. It’s a two way street. All leadership is a two way street, and so I hadn’t really learned I was trying to be a leader without learning about myself, not understanding my own weakness, my own flaws, and accepting those and trying to work on them.

Kris Safarova  42:11

Bill and when you made those adjustments, what were the key adjustments you made that changed the way people viewed I

Bill George  42:18

made a lot of changes. I went and started spending a lot of time with people, just listening to them. Was trying to try to sell them on my ideas. Just saying, Hey, how you doing today? What’s happening? What’s going on in your life? What are the most important thing, anything I can help with? What challenges are you facing? That’s when I started mentoring other people and helping other people. But it wasn’t until I started asking those questions, because before that, I was kind of telling him, here’s what I think I’d like you to believe. I’d like you to think if people just resist all that. But by taking time for people, I remember, even when I was in college at Georgia Tech, I would take two hours over lunch. So because we had where I ate, there were two different lunch servings, one at 12, one at 11, and one at 12. And so by taking two hours, I get to talk more people. So that was a huge change for me. Now that’s that’s about all I do is sit and talk with people. Say, how can I help? And that’s whether it’s in the classroom or whether it’s on a one on one

Kris Safarova  43:12

basis, and such a simple adjustment. Well, wasn’t it simple? It took me

Bill George  43:17

a while to really get understand what I had to do? Yeah, I guess it is simple, but it took me a while to adjust my whole approach to people.

Kris Safarova  43:25

It is simple, but it is not easy for somebody who is very driven, because you value every second of your day and you spending time talking about little things that will not really make a big difference for the other person. It’s not like you’re saving their life. That’s different. You will take them out of your day to save someone’s life, but spending just the time on Small Talk for someone very driven feels like such a waste of time. But you stopped. You were able to do it. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about is about three qualities of authentic leaders, which you mentioned in your book, truth, tell and transparency and building trust. Truth telling is especially interesting, because with some people, it feels that it is really 5050, chance if what they’re saying is true or not, and you don’t know, how can you possibly trust them? Why do you think it is so normal in corporate America for people not to tell the truth?

Bill George  44:20

They want to mislead. They want to make it look better than they are. They want to blame someone else not facing their own reality. I saw a long email day from somebody that I worked with blaming everyone around him and not taking responsibility himself. I think that. But you know, today, when you go to we’re all on our iPhones, we’re all on the internet. There’s a lot of negative and a lot of bad information out there. So what is truth? And I think we only get that in relationship to people that tell the truth. I had a colleague once that, you know, he would say, Bill, we had a problem we got to fix. And I said, tell me, you know, truth telling is not the absence of. Lying. I want to know the whole story. And if we have problems, I want to understand not just a quick, easy answer. Let’s get to the core. Let’s tell the whole story, and then we can get experts to come in there and help us solve it. But I think it’s really telling the truth, no matter the good, the bad and the ugly, as we say, How bad, because it you know, there are always issues, so having that truth is really important,

Kris Safarova  45:21

and some people didn’t grow up in a family where they were taught that it is not right to not tell the truth for someone who is an adult now let’s say they are 40 years old and currently not telling the truth. How can they become the kind of leader who demands of themselves to tell the truth?

Bill George  45:39

Why don’t you tell the truth? Because you had to be perfect. Your mother said you had to be perfect. I know people like this that, so I can’t actually face that. It’s not perfect. Here are all the problems. Here are the problems I created. So I think it’s really knowing that you have confidence in yourself and can tell the truth, but a lot of that failure, unwillingness is insecurity, that I’m afraid if I tell you the truth, I’ll get fired. I’ll lose my job. You won’t like me anymore. You’ll reject me. No, no, tell them the truth. We have this with crucibles. If you really knew who I was, you might not like me. You don’t like me as some former CEO. No, actually, if you know about the things I face, you know that I face problems just like you did.

Kris Safarova  46:24

That is very true. And another thing I really want to point out for our listeners is that you are really the father of authentic leadership, in a way, because you were writing about it in 2003 way before anyone was talking about it. Really what made you pick that topic out of all the topics you could have written given your incredible depth of experience,

Bill George  46:46

well, I always wanted to write about it, but I saw in the business world, in the late 90s, when I was at Medtronic, a lot of leaders are trying to fake it, to make it, trying to tell you a big, puffed up Jeff, they’re mostly white males, and they’re kind of telling you how great they are. And they want to say, Oh, look at all the positives, not really facing the reality and trying to put themselves above other people. And I realized leadership is not that, you know, for instance, when I teach, I will not I wander around talk to people. I will not stand up on a stage and give a lecture. I just won’t do that, I think, because you want to be one of the people. But I saw a lot of leaders doing just the opposite. So I thought, why are you trying to tell me how great you are? Why are you trying to go for adulation? Why are you trying to get all these kudos, these awards and never bigger title? And so that’s why I came out. The idea of an authentic leader. An authentic leader is someone is real and they’re genuine. People said, what’s it mean to be authentic people writing books today, it makes no sense that. You know authentic leaders don’t change. They don’t adapt. Well, of course, you change. Anyone who’s authentic knows they have to continue to grow as a human being. That is the essence of every one of us our lives. I I’m older than most people I work with. I’m continuing to grow. I’m continuing to learn. Because I never walk into a classroom, unless I’m going to learn from all the people in the class, I want to have a mentoring session. A mentoring session. Yes, he was a 22 year old just starting his career. I learned so much from him about what it’s like to start a career and how he’s doing, and I got excited listening to him. So he didn’t just come to learn from me. I learned from him. So all relationships are two way learning. So what am I going to learn? What are you going to learn? How do we share and become better people and better at what we do because of that? So I think that is critical when you think about how you lead and lead authentically. So it’s not about it’s frozen in time, no, and you constantly take in feedback. If you want to grow you talked about blind spots, you have to, you have to be willing to hear that feedback and then adapt. And if you don’t do that, you’ll have a high level lack of self awareness. And a lot of people do. They don’t want to be really aware of the impact they have on other people. I found in life Kris, one of the hardest things do is to see yourself as others see you. You know how you want to be seen, but you don’t know how other people see you.

Kris Safarova  49:04

George and I want to finish with a question that I know is very relevant to so many our listeners, because our listeners are very driven people, yes, very successful, but they’re so hard on themselves, and that is completely easy for us to understand, because you and I also driven people and what many people experience, and they see it with clients who are very successful compared to almost anybody, but they constantly feel that they’re behind. They’re not doing well enough. If they’re comparing themselves to someone they want to do an MBA with. They are not doing as well compared to certain people, even though they’re doing better than a lot of other people. And they may listen to you, Bill, and think, okay, yes, of course, Bill, it’s easy for you to say you had a very successful corporate career. Now you are Executive Education fellow at Harvard Business School, and you work with CEOs. Of course, you can feel good about your career. What about me? And then they may say, oh, but I’m just I have that role at this company. It can be company that is highly respected, like Microsoft and so on, but still they feel they’re not enough. What would you tell them?

Bill George  50:07

They’ll never be enough, enough power, enough fame, enough glory, enough money, you know, and if that’s what your goal is, no you find that within yourself that’s that deep inner reserve. And you see this in great leaders. They know who they are, if you’re always I see some very powerful leaders that I have to have a bigger boat, a bigger house than you have. I have to have a bigger title. My revenues are higher than yours, and my stock price is worth more. This is all nonsense. If you get caught up in that game, you’re going to lose. You’ll never be you’ll never feel that deep level of fulfillment and satisfaction. You know, I get my fulfillment. I realized my purpose. I never been the expert at anything where I’ve ever worked. I certainly wasn’t the expert in Medtronic. We had hundreds of experts around me, around us, but I realized my satisfaction comes from enabling leaders to reach their full potential. And why do I want to do this podcast? Well, I was so eager to do it, I love the discussion, but no, it’s for everyone, every one of you on this call. My hope for you is you’ll reach your full potential, because we need leaders. Leaders make the difference between success and failure. And you can see organization. Jack Welch is successful. GE, Jeff, ml destroyed it, you know. And we see a new leader coming in. Boeing, after five failures. You really have to have great leaders. And I want everyone on this call Kris, and I think you do too, to become a better leader you can be. Maybe you not even have any direct reports yet. Maybe you’re just a new hire. Maybe you’re at the first line supervisor, a middle manager. But if you can reach your full potential, you don’t have to be CEO, you don’t have to have a big title, but if you can do really great work and help other people, then you’ll feel that deep sense of fulfillment, and then you can do anything, but you will feel good about yourself. So I hate to think of people that felt they never felt good about self, because there’s always wanted more that

Kris Safarova  52:01

is very true. Bill, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. Where can our listeners learn more about you? Buy your book, anything you want to share.

Bill George  52:10

Thank you. Well, I hope you’ll all read true north, my latest version of the book. Let’s see. I didn’t have it here, but it’s the Emerging Leader edition, because I think everything we’ve been talked about, we’re kind of covering in the book. It’s much more exciting to talk to you, Kris about it than just reading it. But it’s in there, and I think you’ll find a workbook goes with it. But, you know, I have a website, Bill george.org, and you can find me there, and I’m happy to communicate. I’m on LinkedIn. I think I’ve got 277,000 people that I’d love to chat with you. So any way I can, I try to do feedback with people. I don’t respond to political requests for money, but I do try to help people whenever I can. So it’s a privilege to be with you, Kris, and reach so many of your listeners that in themselves, are great leaders and have so much potential. And I just hope each of you listening in on this will take your leadership to the next level.

Kris Safarova  53:02

Bill, thank you so much. Thank you for everything you are doing for leaders. I agree with you 100% right now. We need leaders so much. We need it as a country. We need it as a world. We are all citizens of earth here. We need great leaders. There are so many issues, so many troubling challenges that we are facing right now. Our guest today, again has been an executive education fellow at Harvard Business School and former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, Bill George, by now, you guys should know, without even introduction necessary, he’s the author of true north emerging data edition is the latest one you can get, and you can actually access the key insights and practical action steps from this discussion at firms consulting.com, forward slash action this is a new thing. We are trying because I want you guys to make the most of this very important session, and it’s so easy to forget, because many of you are driving, you are traveling, you’re in the airport, you’re listening where you can because you’re so busy, and I want you to have that download so you can make sure that you make the most of it. And you can also get some gifts from us. You can get how to build the consulting practice level one at firms consulting.com forward slash build. You can get the overall approach used in well managed strategy studies at firms consulting.com forward slash overall approach. And you can get McKinsey and BCG winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms at terms consulting.com, forward slash resume PDF. Bill, again, thank you so much for being here. I loved our discussion. I love always seeing your posts on LinkedIn. And thank you so much for all you do.

Bill George  54:35

And thank you for inviting me back. I appreciate your leadership, Kris and bringing these ideas of so many wonderful people.

Kris Safarova  54:42

Thank you Bill. Thank you everyone for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to see you next time.