The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 484: Bill George - Becoming An Authentic Leader By Discovering Your True North (Former CEO of Medtronic)

Duration: 1h 0m
Broadcast on: 07 Aug 2022
Audio Format: other

Text Hawk to 66866 to receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right!

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

Bill George is a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. He is the author of Discover Your True North, Authentic Leadership, and 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis. Bill is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic. He joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was the CEO from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. Earlier in his career, he was a senior executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the U.S. Department of Defense.

Sustained excellence =
- Authentic, real, and vulnerable
- They know how to bring people together and inspire them
- They challenge, help, and coach people
People do not want the Jack Welch style today.
How did Bill earn the CEO role at Medtronic?
- Team building - "I continued to develop leaders."
- "Do your current job exceptionally well, develop others, and don't think about your promotion."
- Give people an opportunity and a sense of purpose
Your True North
- Make the shift from what you are to who you are
- Process your life story and the significant events
- The difficult times make you who you are
  - What do you want them to say at your funeral?
The "Coach" Acronym
- Care
- Organize
- Align
- Challenge
- Help
"You must be a constant learner if you want to be a leader."
Leadership Crucibles:
- Leadership is about relationships
What Bill has learned teaching at Harvard
- It's a mistake to chase external expectations
- You need to be fulfilled by your work
Keys to a great marriage:
- Communicate all the time
- You need to grow together
Keys to being a great dad:
- Be there, be present
- Listen
Bill shares what it's like leading through today's challenges, creating inclusive cultures, and how to lead through crises.
Bill shares the dangers of leading without True North, including case studies of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, WeWork's Adam Neumann, Uber's Travis Kalanick, and Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes
"Pursuing purpose with passion
- Practicing solid values
- Leading with heart
- Establishing enduring relationships
- Demonstrating self-discipline"
"You need to be who you are, not try to emulate somebody else."
"The hardest person you will ever have to lead is yourself."
"The reality is that no one can be authentic by trying to be like someone else. There is no doubt you can learn from their experiences, but there is no way you can be successful trying to be like them. People trust you when you are genuine and authentic, not an imitation."
"The role of leaders is not to get other people to follow them but to empower others to lead."

This episode is brought to you by Spring-Free Trampoline Spring-Free Trampoline is the world's safest trampoline, allowing kids to experience the fun of jumping to the fullest. With an innovative design that helps eliminate the most common trampoline injuries, kids now have the chance to make priceless memories that will last a lifetime. With excessive screen time taking away from kids' desires to play outside, Spring-Free motivates kids and families to get outside and be active. Parents can have peace of mind that their kids are enjoying a safe, fun jumping experience in their own backyard. Invented by a dad with a desire to create the safest and most fun trampoline in the world, Spring-Free is the answer to getting your kids outside and active. If you're ready to liven up your backyard with joy and new memories, go to SpringFree Trampoline.com. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leader, someone I've been wanting to talk with for years. It's the great Bill George, senior fellow at Harvard Business School, former CEO of Medtronic and best-selling author of Discover Your True North, among many others. Most importantly, he's been married for 53 years, has two children and many grandchildren. A few of the topics we discuss, the keys to getting promoted from an entry-level position to one day, becoming the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Bill shares how he did it and how you can too. And then how you can find your true north, the questions to ask yourself, the reflection needed to be done in order to find it and then take action on it. And then understanding how to work in the hybrid environment. We're in right now. Ladies and gentlemen, I think you're going to enjoy this one. It's the great Bill George. Bill, it's been years in the making. It's so great to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. You have a great show, Ryan. It's a privilege to be here. Thank you. It means a lot. I'm curious over the course of your career. You've surrounded yourself with some of the most impactful and effective leaders in the world. What have you found to be some of the common qualities, behaviors, mindsets of the world's most effective leaders, the ones who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time? Well, if we can talk about leaders, business, nonprofits, medical, stay away from politicians who run for office. The most effective leaders are ones that are real, that know how to bring people together around a sense of purpose and values and inspire them to reach their full potential. They see in each person the capacity to do more, to do better. And they reach out, they challenge them, they inspire them, they coach them, they help them reach to a greater height. But they come together as a team, like any good sports team, right? They come together as a team and any good coach because they have to play for the team first, not for the individuals. So the ones who are out for themselves are not going to make it today. The toxic leaders that are only out for their own self-interest, they're not going to make it because people can see right through that and they can smell a pony in 60 seconds and they won't deal with them. So I think that today's leaders really have to be authentic.

Transcription truncated.