MANAGEMENT/ LEADERSHIP SPECIAL........................ Harvard’s Bill George on how leaders need to let their strengths bloom

 Harvard’s Bill George on how leaders need to let their strengths bloom

Business leader-turned-academic Bill George has often told aspiring executives that leadership is more about discovering and building on your true strengths than about becoming a different person. Author of best-selling books including Authentic Leadership and True North, he was chairman and CEO of Medtronic during a decade of high growth.

In an interview with Wharton management professor Michael Useem, George, who is now a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, shares insights about his own path to leadership and offers some advice for aspiring leaders. Edited excerpts:

Useem: When you became CEO, was there anything that was surprising that you didn't anticipate until you got into that corner office? 

George: What really shocked me was that despite our company's great values, we ran into huge ethical problems outside the US. I appointed the president of Medtronic's European operation and it turned out he was running a bribery fund. He had to be fired. I had to admit my mistake and say, "I made the mistake of appointing this guy." It took a long time to get our team up to speed while facing these ethical problems around the world.

We had to change out our manager in Italy. We had to change out people in China and Argentina and Brazil. We had to shut down every operation we had in Korea back in 1992 or 1993, because we ran into some significant ethical problems there, and just start over.
But I was shocked at how a company with such good values could tolerate such actions around the world. I think tolerate is the right word. One of my closest colleagues was a Frenchman who was head of international operations. He wasn't unethical, but he looked the other way. He was passive. He had to be replaced so that we could take the lid of all these operations and make a lot of changes. But that took longer than I thought.

Useem: If there was one thing you did to keep the 5,000 people working for you all over the world pointed in the right direction, above that ethical line, productive and ultimately profit-producing, what would that be?

George: Talk about the mission — every day, every minute, every hour — till you sound like a broken record. Travel around the world. Do mission and medallion ceremonies and give people that Medtronic medallion that says, " Our job is to restore people to full life and health." You start to say, "My gosh, people must be really bored hearing this."

No, they want to hear it every time. Bring in role models. Bring in examples. They want to know why quality on the production line is so critical. It's not to satisfy some quality inspector over there. It's because we know a human life hangs on the end of this heart valve.

Or when you're in the operating room, you know that if you don't provide the right product to the doctor at the right time, someone's going to die. I watched somebody die in Paris in an operation once in a venture we had. Or he died later that night. The message needs to pervade every aspect of what you're doing. 

Useem: A question I'm often asked as I reference the concepts in Authentic Leadership and True North, your two books, is if you don't feel that you're being the authentic you, how can you develop that authenticity?

George: When I first started writing, I was in Switzerland. I'd just given up being CEO of Medtronic about a year before. I realized we were losing sight of what we were called to do. I thought that all the leadership literature was going the wrong way. It was talking about how we can pace the trade characteristics, competency and models, and all the HR community was going this way. I just felt it was wrong.
I felt leadership has to be coming from who you are. You have to be authentic and the genuine you. That was the year of emulating Jack Welch. And how would you like to be a female executive emulating Jack Welch? It can't be done. We've got to get away from this "great man" theory of leadership and get down to the fact that everyone has qualities of leadership, but they have to be developed.
That was the whole thesis of everything that I did. That's what I always told people: "Just be yourself. If you're a tulip, be a tulip. If you're a rose, and you've got some thorns, it's okay. You can produce beautiful buds. And then bloom from that position." You have to know yourself and have selfawareness. Then you have to accept yourself.

That requires compassion for your weaknesses. You've got to realize that's the core. You can't be a leader until you do it. That's who you are. There's nothing wrong with that. Until you can accept that you came from poverty, you came from a broken family or whatever it was, until you can gain that level, you can't be a leader. Helping people walk through that process is just amazing in how it frees people up.

CDET 140725Reproduced with permission from Knowledge@Wharton 2014