True north realty international falls mn

True North

Discover Your Authentic Leadership

Bill George

With Peter Sims

Foreword by David Gergen

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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True North

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A W A R R E N B E N N I S B O O K This collection of books is devoted exclusively to new and exemplary contributions to management thought and practice. The books in this series are addressed to thoughtful leaders, executives, and managers of all organizations who are struggling with and committed to responsible change. My hope and goal is to spark new intellectual capital by sharing ideas positioned at an angle to conventional thought—in short, to publish books that disturb the present in the service of a better future.

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BOOKS IN THE WARREN BENNIS SIGNATURE SERIES

Branden Self-Esteem at Work

Mitroff, Denton A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America

Schein The Corporate Culture Survival Guide

Sample The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership

Lawrence, Nohria Driven

Cloke, Goldsmith The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy

Glen Leading Geeks

Cloke, Goldsmith The Art of Waking People Up

George Authentic Leadership

Kohlrieser Hostage at the Table

Rhode Moral Leadership

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True North

Discover Your Authentic Leadership

Bill George

With Peter Sims

Foreword by David Gergen

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Copyright © 2007 by Bill George. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.

Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

George, Bill (William W.) True North : discover your authentic leadership / Bill George with Peter Sims ;

foreword by David Gergen. — 1st. ed. p. cm. — (Warren Bennis series)

Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-8751-0 (cloth) 1. Leadership. 2. Organizational effectiveness. I. Sims, Peter. II. Title.

HD57.7.G4582 2007 658.4'092—dc22 2006100386

Printed in the United States of America FIRST EDITION

HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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www.josseybass.com
Contents

Acknowledgments ix

The Authors xi

Editor’s Note xiii by Warren Bennis

Foreword xvii by David Gergen

Introduction: True North xxiii

Part One: Leadership Is a Journey 1

1. The Journey to Authentic Leadership 3

2. Why Leaders Lose Their Way 27

3. Transformation From “I” to “We” 43

Part Two: Discover Your 65 Authentic Leadership

4. Knowing Your Authentic Self 67

5. Practicing Your Values and Principles 85

6. What Motivates You to Be a Leader? 103

7. Building Your Support Team 117

8. Staying Grounded: Integrating Your Life 133

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Part Three: Empowering People to Lead 151

9. Leadership with Purpose and Passion 153

10. Empowering People to Lead 169

11. Honing Your Leadership Effectiveness 185

Epilogue: The Fulfillment of Leadership 201

Appendixes

A Research Study on Development of 205 Authentic Leaders

B Authentic Leaders Interviewed for True North 209

C Leadership Exercises for Each Chapter 219

References 241

Index 247

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ix

Acknowledgments

True North is the result of collaboration with my coauthor, Peter Sims, and my colleagues at Harvard Business School, Diana Mayer and Andrew McLean. They have been tireless in their dedication to exploring with me how people develop as authentic leaders, to interviewing these leaders, and to assessing their inputs. Peter, in particular, has proven to be a true collaborator; he has provided exceptional understanding of the next generation of authentic lead- ers and of the meaning and impact of authentic leadership. Diana did a superb job in interviewing leaders across the United States and sharpening our thinking. Andrew led the research methodol- ogy, keeping our team on track with proper protocols and knowl- edge of other leadership research studies. We also received very valuable insights and guidance throughout the entire process from Warren Bennis, our executive editor, as well as from Susan Williams and Byron Schneider at Jossey-Bass.

We are especially grateful to the 125 leaders who offered their personal stories and their perspectives on leadership during the interviews, and their willingness to share with the current and future generations of authentic leaders and all those who want to understand leading from the leader’s inside point of view. Without their openness, this book would never have been possible.

During the editing process, John S. Rosenberg, Jean Martin, Jeff George, Penny George, Grace Kahng, David Gergen, Carolina Helmick, Doug Baker, Chi Nguyen, and Matt Breitfelder were espe- cially insightful in sharpening the text and the writing. Richard Sheppard did outstanding work on the graphic designs. We also

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appreciate the inputs of Bill Buzenberg, Charlie Dimmler, Paula Goldman, Daisy Wademan, Ryan Frederick, Ron Sonntag, Michal Petrzela, Matt Cain, Bryan Droznes, Kathleen Kelly, Jeannette Lager, Renée Will George, Jon George, Christopher Gergen, Daniel Salvadori, Julian Flannery, Scott Starr, Fawzi Jumean, Ori Brafman, and Gigi Sims. Special thanks go to Carol Mierau, my assistant at Medtronic, and Kathy Farren, my assistant at Harvard, for all their efforts on the book and research project. My colleagues at Harvard— Nitin Nohria, Jay Lorsch, David Gergen, Joe Badaracco, Lynn Paine, Srikant Datar, Ronnie Heifitz, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Howard Stevenson, Joe Bower, Scott Snook, the members of the Leadership and Corporate Accountability teaching group—and my MBA stu- dents at Harvard have been especially helpful to me in my under- standing of leadership and in support of my efforts, as have Peter’s colleagues at Stanford, Charles O’Reilly, Joel Peterson, and Beth Benjamin.

None of this would have been possible without the unwavering support, encouragement, insights, and patience of my wife, Penny, from whom I have learned so much about people and leading them.

To all of you, Peter and I are deeply grateful.

x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Bill George, Warren Bennis, and Peter Sims

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The Authors

Bill George was chief executive of Medtronic, the world’s leading medical technology company, from 1991 until 2001 and chairman of the board from 1996 to 2002. Under his leadership, Medtronic’s market capitalization grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion, averag- ing 35 percent a year. Currently, he is professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and serves on the board of directors of ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, and Novartis. He has also served on the board of Target Corporation.

He is the author of the best-selling book Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets of Creating Lasting Value (Jossey-Bass, 2003). He has made frequent appearances on television and radio, includ- ing The Today Show, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, CNBC, Bloomberg News, and public radio. His articles have appeared in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and numerous other publications.

He has been named one of the “Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years” by PBS, “Executive of the Year—2001” by the Acad- emy of Management, and “Director of the Year—2001–02” by the National Association of Corporate Directors. He is currently a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and World Economic Forum USA and has been board chair of Allina Health System, Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, Greater Twin Cities United Way, and Advamed.

Earlier in his career, he was an executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the U.S. Department of Defense. He has been executive-in-residence at Yale School of Management.

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He received his BS in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech and MBA from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and an honorary doctorate from Bryant University.

Peter Sims helped found the London office of Summit Partners, a leading global investment firm, and established “Leadership Per- spectives,” a course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business while he was a student there. He also served previously as part of the Deloitte Touche Tomatsu Global Strategy Team.

Sims has served as a member of the President’s Visiting Com- mittee at Bowdoin College and on the board of directors of Sum- mer Search. He received his MBA from Stanford and an AB, magna cum laude, from Bowdoin. He lives in San Francisco.

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Editor’s Note

As the world becomes ever more dangerous and our problems more complex and dire, we long for truly distinguished leaders, men and women who deserve our respect and loyalty. Instead, we have suf- fered far too much bad leadership in recent years. The business media have exposed one scandal after another—criminally greedy CEOs, boards that do little more than rubber-stamp executive whims, companies willing to trade customers’ lives for profits, and corrupt and partisan political leaders. Too many of our so-called leaders have functioned best as subjects of the brand of satire per- fected on television by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

But Bill George and Peter Sims’s True North is about a very dif- ferent kind of leader, the kind that we can be proud to follow. In this ambitious and important book, one of America’s most respected corporate leaders and his talented younger collaborator show that ethically grounded leadership is not only possible, it is often the most effective leadership of all. It is an optimistic message that falls on grateful ears.

To write their guide to authentic leadership, George and Sims interviewed 125 leaders in many arenas. The authors chose men and women whose leadership appeared to be grounded in their character. The subjects range in age from twenty-three to ninety- three and have distinguished themselves in corporate life, as entre- preneurs, as social innovators, in political life, and in the study of leadership itself. Some, like statesman and former Bechtel head George Shultz, have contributed in many fields. Some, like Star- bucks founder Howard Schultz and educator and frequent political

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commentator David Gergen, are household names. Others are less well known but have quietly made important contributions to our lives, including young Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America. Financial entrepreneur Charles Schwab, Avon CEO Andrea Jung, Amgen head Kevin Sharer, philosopher of design David Kelley, Judy Vredenburgh of Big Brothers, Big Sisters—all the leaders who appear in True North offer firsthand insights into the nature of authentic leadership and the way to develop it.

One of the revelations of True North is how critical these lead- ers’ personal stories are in shaping their leadership. Time after time, those interviewed describe a turning point in their lives—a cru- cible, I call it—that transformed them into the leaders they are today. These tales of how they became the people they are reveal their most deeply held values, their most passionate beliefs. Howard Schultz recalls how, as a child of seven, he was forever changed by the news that his delivery-man father had slipped on a sheet of ice and broken his ankle. The accident lost Schultz’s father his job and the family its health insurance and economic security. That experi- ence led Schultz to create a global business, one built not on lattes and frappucinos but on the conviction that every worker deserves respect and health care.

“Those early memories are with me all the time,” Schultz tells the authors. “I wanted to build the kind of company my father never had a chance to work for, where you would be valued and respected, no matter where you came from, the color of your skin, or your level of education. Memories of my father’s lost health care led to Starbucks’ becoming the first American company to provide health insurance for every employee, including part-time workers.”

Such autobiographical stories continue to inspire the leaders who lived them, keeping their moral compasses pointed toward True North. The tales are inspiring for readers as well and mar- velous to read. Novartis Chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella’s story is a saga of Dickensian proportions. It begins with the Swiss-born Vasella’s achingly lonely childhood, filled with physical pain and

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emotional loss. At the age of eight, he was struck with tuberculosis and meningitis. He was sent away to recuperate for a year—a year in which his parents never visited him. As a teenager, he joined a rowdy motorcycle gang that drank too much and fought too quickly. But Vasella and the other leaders of True North are not defeated by their struggles and setbacks. Instead, they learn from them and find their futures in them.

In his gang, Vasella recognized his own ambition and began to fashion a career in which he had more control. He went to medical school and later rose to the top of one of the world’s leading health care companies. Today his leadership is grounded in his personal knowledge of poverty and ill health. “As CEO,” Vasella told the authors, “I have the leverage to impact the lives of many more peo- ple. I can do what is right, based on my moral compass. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what we do for other people.”

There are more than one hundred such stories in this fascinat- ing, important book. Some are funny, some are cautionary, all are compelling. After a friend of mine read True North before publica- tion, he noted how different it is from most business books. Instead of simply telling readers how to get ahead, True North offers a prac- tical five-part program for developing their best selves and shows how authenticity and integrity shape great leadership. My friend wants to give the book to his children to read.

As CEO of medical-device giant Medtronic, Bill George was known as much for his integrity as for his business success. Now on the faculty of the Harvard Business School, he (with coauthor Peter Sims) has written a worthy successor to his best-selling Authentic Leadership. Building on that book’s wisdom, True North goes even further, revealing just how powerful authentic leadership can be— and, best of all, how to achieve it.

Warren Bennis Santa Monica, California October 2006

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This book is dedicated to my wife, Penny, my faithful partner for the past thirty-seven years,

who has helped me stay on course to True North, and to our sons, Jeff and Jon, and our daughters-in-law, Renée and Jeannette,

who represent the best of the new generation of authentic leaders.

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Foreword

Growing up in the shadow of a great university, I always believed that the smartest person made the best leader. That was only nat- ural in an academic family where my dad was a professor of mathe- matics and two of my older brothers became professors of medicine and psychology. Our family and friends placed great store in intel- lectual achievement, so I just assumed that smart people were the best at most things, including leadership. Boy, did I have some things to learn.

Moving to Washington in my late twenties, I began my educa- tion in the real world in earnest. Over a period of some three decades, I had the privilege of serving as an adviser to four presi- dents in the White House and working alongside leaders in gov- ernment, the press, business, and other fields. Many of them were outstanding individuals, and I shall always cherish their friendships. They also taught me a lot about leadership. Yes, there is no substi- tute for ability: to lead others, you must know what you are doing, have deep curiosity, and develop keen judgment. Competence counts. But what ultimately distinguishes the great leaders from the mediocre are the personal, inner qualities—qualities that are hard to define but are essential for success, qualities that each of us must develop for ourselves, and qualities that are explored here in these pages with great clarity and insight by one of America’s most authentic leaders, Bill George. This is a gem of a book that will guide you on your own journey.

To illustrate the importance of you embracing your own True North, let me tell you a bit more about what I discovered along the

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way. In the early 1970s, coming out of law school and then the navy, I went to work for Richard Nixon and stayed in his White House for three and a half years, ultimately running his speech- writing and research team. My mentor, Ray Price, helped me to understand that Nixon was one of the most complex men to reach the presidency. He had a bright, luminous side that to this day has me convinced he was one of the best strategists the country has ever elected. Nixon could figuratively go up on a mountaintop and see twenty or thirty years into the future and then decide how the forces of history should be nudged to favor America’s national secu- rity. Thus his trip to China and a good many other initiatives. If that were all there was to Nixon, he would have become one of our better presidents.

Tragically, Nixon also had another side that was dark, bitter, and twisted. The longer one worked with him, the clearer it became that he had inner demons that he had never conquered and perhaps never understood. But the resentments and furies that poured forth caused no end of harm: he set up teams inside the White House to pursue his enemies in national security, real and perceived, and those teams eventually focused their efforts on electoral politics. The crimes that were committed in his name inevitably seeped into the public arena, and eventually the whole enterprise collapsed. He became the architect of his own demise— a prime example of a man who had all the makings for the presi- dency but failed because he never developed what it took inside himself.

In the years that followed, I worked for Jerry Ford and then Ronald Reagan in the White House. Neither had any pretenses of being as smart as Nixon, but each one turned out to be a better leader, especially Reagan. Ford knew exactly who he was, under- stood his weaknesses as well as his strengths, and—because he was so well anchored—was comfortable in appointing people he thought smarter than he was to the cabinet. Within the brief time of his presidency, he assembled one of the best cabinets in modern times. While he stumbled more than once, he looks better and bet-

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ter through the rearview mirror—a man of integrity who brought honor to the White House and healing to the country.

Reagan, like Ford, had figured out who he was and liked it. He didn’t just feel comfortable in his own skin; he felt serene. Reagan not only had a compass for his life but a compass for his political beliefs, and he communicated both with a contagious optimism that stirred people across the land. Whether or not one agreed with his policies, it is pretty clear that he was the best leader in the White House since Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan didn’t pretend to be the smartest man to serve, but he was smart enough. Ultimately, however, a key to his success was how closely he fit the description that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once applied to FDR: “A second class mind but a first class temperament.”

Dial forward for a moment to Bill Clinton, the fourth president I’ve been privileged to serve. Most Americans now recognize that Clinton is truly gifted: he has mental and verbal capacities that far exceed almost everyone else on the public stage today. More than once, I had the same experience with him in the Oval Office as oth- ers: during an engaged conversation with three or four people, he could simultaneously be talking back and forth while also quietly filling out a New York Times crossword puzzle. More impressive, he sought out information and perspectives across the spectrum—not just his partisans but many others, especially those who tradition- ally lack a seat at the tables of power such as blacks, Hispanics, and women. He had what I have called “360-degree leadership”—an increasingly important quality for every leader in today’s complex world—and it enormously enhanced his judgment. In the end, he made some excellent policy choices.

Yet, as the country knows in excruciating detail, Clinton also had cracks in his character that came to haunt him. From what I saw he was working hard to repair those cracks and didn’t quite make it; I always felt that if he had come to the presidency a few years later in life, he would have been a more integrated, whole per- son whose arc would have been higher. In Eyewitness to Power, a book I published in 2000 (and in terms that show how closely my

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own views of leadership are aligned with those of Bill George), I wrote sympathetically,

Instead of a struggle between light and dark [as with Nixon], my sense is that Clinton’s central problem has been the lack of an inner compass. He has 360-degree vision but no true north. He isn’t yet fully grounded within. . . . [He] isn’t exactly sure who he is yet and tries to define himself by how well others like him. That leads him into all sorts of contradictions, and the view by others that he seems a constant mixture of strengths and weaknesses.

His critics, of course, have much harsher assessments. This is not the place to settle those arguments. What is clear to everyone is that Clinton had so much promise and that, mostly because of those cracks, his presidency fell achingly short of what might have been. Even as it was, I continue to believe that he was a better pres- ident than his critics will ever concede. In the years since leaving the White House, let us note, he has also become more authentic in the sense that Bill George means here—and as a result, he is doing great good deeds for mankind.

What does all this add up to? Simply this: ability matters to a president, but inner qualities matter even more. As historian David McCullough wrote in assessing the leadership of Harry Truman: “Character is the single most important asset of a president.” I would add this thought: that character without capacity usually means weakness in a leader, but capacity without character means danger.

Bill George and his talented younger collaborator in this book, Peter Sims, make a persuasive argument that the journey toward authentic leadership—that finding and pursuing your own True North—is the key to leadership in all fields, whether in business, government, or the nonprofit arena. I agree. Over the past decades, I have had the opportunity to observe and sometimes counsel lead- ers who have been in every walk of life, some young and some old, some women and some men. For all of them, the authenticity that Bill and Peter talk about here is essential to their success as leaders.

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And certainly no one knows better than Bill, whose own life story is a model for others. He is now devoting much of his energy to teaching and helping rising young leaders, and I have watched with awe as he has talked to students at Harvard about authentic leader- ship and their eyes have lit up.

What he says here, drawn upon the life experiences of the 125 leaders he and Peter have interviewed, is just the sort of thought- ful, practical wisdom that every aspiring leader needs. They have written not only an important sequel to Bill’s earlier, acclaimed book, Authentic Leadership; they have also written an invaluable guide to self-discovery that will serve generations to come. I wish you a good read—and a good journey.

David Gergen Cambridge, Massachusetts October 2006

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Introduction

True North

What is your True North? Do you know what your life and your leadership are all about,

and when you are being true to yourself? True North is the internal compass that guides you successfully

through life. It represents who you are as a human being at your deep- est level. It is your orienting point—your fixed point in a spinning world—that helps you stay on track as a leader. Your True North is based on what is most important to you, your most cherished values, your passions and motivations, the sources of satisfaction in your life.

Just as a compass points toward a magnetic pole, your True North pulls you toward the purpose of your leadership. When you follow your internal compass, your leadership will be authentic, and people will naturally want to associate with you. Although others may guide or influence you, your truth is derived from your life story, and only you can determine what it should be.

Discovering your True North takes a lifetime of commitment and learning. Each day, as you are tested in the world, you yearn to look at yourself in the mirror and respect the person you see and the life you have chosen to lead. Some days will be better than others, but as long as you are true to who you are, you can cope with the most difficult circumstances that life presents.

The world may have very different expectations for you and your leadership than you have for yourself. Regardless of whether you are leading a small team or are at the top of a powerful organization, you will be pressured by external forces to respond to their needs and seduced by rewards for fulfilling those needs. These pressures and

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seductions may cause you to detour from your True North. When you get too far off course, your internal compass tells you that some- thing is wrong and you need to reorient yourself. It requires courage and resolve to resist the constant pressures and expectations con- fronting you and to take corrective action when necessary.

Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes says: “The most important thing about leadership is your character and the values that guide your life.” She added,

If you are guided by an internal compass that represents your character and the values that guide your decisions, you’re going to be fine. Let your val- ues guide your actions and don’t ever lose your internal compass, because everything isn’t black or white. There are a lot of gray areas in business.

When you are aligned with who you are, you find coherence between your life story and your leadership. As psychologist William James wrote a century ago, “I have often thought that 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 intensively active and alive. At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says, ‘This is the real me.’ ”

Can you recall a time when you felt most intensely alive and could say with confidence, “This is the real me”? When you can, you are aligned with your True North and prepared to lead others authentically. Professionally, I had that feeling from the first time I walked into Medtronic in 1989 and joined a group of talented peo- ple dedicated to the mission to “alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life.” I felt I could be myself and be appreciated for who I was and what I could contribute. I sensed immediately that the organi- zation’s values were aligned with my own.

The Leadership Crisis

An enormous vacuum in leadership exists today—in business, pol- itics, government, education, religion, and nonprofit organizations. Yet there is no shortage of people with the capacity for leadership.

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The problem is that we have a wrongheaded notion of what con- stitutes a leader, driven by an obsession with leaders at the top. That misguided standard often results in the wrong people attaining crit- ical leadership roles.

There are leaders throughout organizations, just waiting for opportunities to lead. In too many organizations, however, people do not feel empowered to lead, nor are they rewarded for doing so. The purpose of True North is to enable you to discover your authen- tic leadership so that you can step up and lead while remaining true to who you are.

During my time as chairman and CEO of Medtronic in the 1990s, I witnessed firsthand many of the wrong people being cho- sen to run corporations. Under pressure from Wall Street to maxi- mize short-term earnings, boards of directors frequently chose leaders for their charisma instead of their character, their style rather than their substance, and their image instead of their integrity.

When problems surfaced at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Ander- sen, Tyco, and dozens of other companies, the severity of the leader- ship crisis became painfully apparent, creating a widespread erosion of trust in business leaders. This may surprise you, but I am not so concerned with people who broke the law, such as Jeff Skilling, Bernie Ebbers, Richard Scrushy, and Dennis Koslowski. Our legal system has proven quite effective in dealing with them.

What concerns me are the many powerful business leaders who bowed to stock market pressure in return for personal gain. They lost sight of their True North and put their companies at risk by focusing on the trappings and spoils of leadership instead of build- ing their organizations for the long term. Many of those who failed walked away with enormous financial settlements.

The result was a severing of trust with employees, customers, and shareholders, as public trust in business leaders fell to its lowest level in fifty years. In business, trust is everything, because success depends upon customers’ trust in products they buy, employees’ trust in their leaders, investors’ trust in those who invest for them, and the public’s trust in capitalism.

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Learning from Authentic Leaders

In large part the leadership vacuum has resulted from a misunder- standing of what constitutes an effective leader. During the past fifty years, leadership scholars have conducted more than one thousand studies in the attempt to determine the definitive leadership styles, characteristics, or personality traits of great leaders. None of these studies has produced a clear profile of the ideal leader. Thank good- ness. If scholars had produced a cookie-cutter leadership style, people would be forever trying to emulate it. That alone would make them into personas, and others would see through them immediately.

The reality is that no one can be authentic by trying to be like some- one 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. As Dr. Reatha Clark King of General Mills said, “If you’re aiming to be like somebody else, you’re being a copycat because you think that’s what people want you to do. You’ll never be a star with that kind of thinking. But you might be a star—unreplicatable—by following your passion.”

Amgen Chairman and CEO Kevin Sharer, who gained price- less experience working as Jack Welch’s assistant in the 1980s, saw the downside of GE’s cult of personality in those days. “Everyone wanted to be like Jack,” he explained. “Leadership has many voices. You need to be who you are, not try to emulate somebody else.”

Since turning over the reins of Medtronic to my successor in 2001, I have focused on this leadership crisis by helping develop the next generation of business leaders through teaching, mentoring, writing, and speaking. In 2003 I wrote Authentic Leadership to chal- lenge the new generation of leaders—from new CEOs to young leaders just embarking on their careers—to lead authentically.

The feedback I received from readers of Authentic Leadership, including many CEOs, was that they had a tremendous desire to be authentic leaders. Many people asked: “How can I become an authentic leader?” Author Jim Collins raised a similar question in

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Good to Great, asking, “Can you learn to become a Level 5 leader?” His conclusion: “I still don’t know the answer.”

With the assistance of coauthor Peter Sims and my colleagues Diana Mayer and Andrew McLean, I set out to get definitive answers to the question. We interviewed 125 authentic leaders to learn the secrets of their development as leaders. They were open and honest about how they developed their leadership and candidly shared their life stories, including their greatest personal struggles, failures, and triumphs. Many said they had never granted such a personal interview before. These interviews constitute the largest in-depth study ever undertaken about how business leaders develop.

The leaders we interviewed ranged in age from twenty-three to ninety-three, with no fewer than fifteen per decade. They were cho- sen based on their reputations for being authentic and our personal knowledge of them. We also solicited recommendations from other leaders and academics. After the interviews, we assessed each leader against the dimensions of authentic leadership described in this book.

Our interviewees are a diverse group of women and men from an array of racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds and nation- alities. Among them are Dick Kovacevich of Wells Fargo, Andrea Jung of Avon Products, Chuck Schwab, founder of Charles Schwab & Co., and Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys. Half of them are CEOs, and the other half includes a broad range of nonprofit lead- ers, midcareer leaders, and young leaders just starting on their journeys. (For more on our research methodology, see Appendix A. A complete list of the interviewees is shown in Appendix B.)

After interviewing these leaders, we believe we understand why academic studies have not produced the profile of an ideal leader. Leaders are highly complex human beings, people who have distinctive qualities that cannot be sufficiently described by lists of traits or charac- teristics. Leaders are defined by their unique life stories and the way they frame their stories to discover their passions and the purpose of their leadership.

Reading through three thousand pages of transcripts, our team was startled to see that these leaders did not identify any universal

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characteristics, traits, skills, or styles that led to their success. Rather, their leadership emerged from their life stories. By con- stantly testing themselves through real-world experiences and by reframing their life stories to understand who they are, these lead- ers unleashed their passions and discovered the purpose of their leadership.

Rather than waiting to get to the top to become leaders, they looked for every opportunity to lead and to develop themselves. Every one of them faced trials, some of them severe. Many cited these experiences, along with the people who helped them develop, as the primary reasons for their success. Without exception, these leaders believed being authentic made them more effective and suc- cessful. Their experience in becoming authentic leaders parallels my personal experience: successful leadership takes conscious develop- ment and requires being true to your life story.

True North is written for anyone who wants to be an authen- tic leader. It is for leaders at all stages of their lives, from those at the top of organizations to students preparing to become leaders to lifelong leaders looking for new opportunities. You are never too young, or too old, to take on leadership challenges and to lead authentically. It is grounded in the hundreds of years of experi- ence of the 125 authentic leaders we interviewed as well as my own forty years in leadership roles. For you, the reader, it is an opportunity to learn from authentic leaders about how they devel- oped and to create your own development plan to become an authentic leader.

The bottom line is this: You can discover your authentic leadership right now.

• You do not have to be born with the characteristics or traits of a leader.

• You do not have to wait for a tap on the shoulder.

• You do not have to be at the top of your organization.

• You can step up and lead at any point in your life.

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As Young & Rubicam CEO Ann Fudge said, “All of us have the spark of leadership in us, whether it is in business, in government, or as a nonprofit volunteer. The challenge is to understand our- selves well enough to discover where we can use our leadership gifts to serve others. We’re here for something. Life is about giving and living fully.”

So why hold back? Why not lead now? In considering whether to step up and lead authentically, ask

yourself these two questions: If not me, then who? If not now, then when?

Wendy Kopp: Stepping Up at Twenty-One. Many people feel that in order to lead they must have the power that comes with authority. For twenty-one-year-old Wendy Kopp, all that was required was finding her passion. As a senior at Princeton University, Kopp was uncertain about what to do after graduation. Burning with desire to change the world, she did not want to pursue the typical corporate training track her classmates were following. To address her interest in reforming education to reduce disparities, she orga- nized a conference of students and business leaders to examine ways to improve the nation’s K–12 education system.

During the conference an idea came to her: “Why doesn’t this country have a national teacher corps of recent college graduates who commit two years to teach in public schools?” Her rhetorical question inspired her to found Teach For America, the most suc- cessful secondary educational program in the past twenty-five years.

Kopp grew up in a middle-class family in an affluent area of Dal- las. Looking back, she said her community was “extraordinarily iso- lated from reality and the disparities in educational opportunity.” At Princeton she was deeply involved in leading the Foundation for Student Communications. Not sure what to do after graduation, Kopp went into “a deep funk” during her senior year. As she explored teaching in public schools, she realized there were many like her who believed that depriving kids of an excellent education was a national tragedy.

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Seeing the need for more committed teachers in the public schools across America, Kopp created Teach For America to recruit thousands of graduating students to teach in public school systems. Passionate about Teach For America’s purpose, she also recognized the challenges her teachers faced in closing the achievement gap. “Corps members care deeply about their stu- dents,” she said. “Our biggest challenge is figuring out how they can stay centered, strong, and healthy, and reenergize themselves around our mission when they’re pressured by so many other challenges.”

It wasn’t easy. Lacking management experience and a perma- nent funding base, Teach For America lurched from one crisis to the next. The organization was constantly short of cash. Time and again, Kopp threw herself into fundraising as she restructured bud- gets and financing to cover deficits. Her passion for the mission kept her going and inspired others to stay with the organization through its trials and tribulations.

Fifteen years after the founding of Teach For America, Wendy Kopp’s tireless efforts and passionate leadership are paying off. Today the program has ten thousand graduates, 60 percent of whom have remained in teaching. Kopp’s organization continues to attract exceptional college graduates to join its teacher corps and has estab- lished a sustainable funding base to support its programs. In 2006 Kopp was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by US News & World Report. Kopp’s experience at such a young age captures the essence of authentic leadership: find something you are passionate about and then inspire others to join the cause.

The Authentic Leader

A dramatic shift is taking place today in the caliber and character of new leaders. Led by General Electric’s Jeff Immelt, IBM’s Sam Palmisano, Xerox’s Anne Mulcahy, and Procter & Gamble’s A.G. Lafley, these leaders recognize that leadership is not about their suc- cess or about getting loyal subordinates to follow them. They know

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the key to a successful organization is having empowered leaders at all levels, including those that have no direct reports.

Authentic leaders not only inspire those around them, they empower them to step up and lead. Thus, we offer the new defini- tion of leadership: The authentic leader brings people together around a shared purpose and empowers them to step up and lead authentically in order to create value for all stakeholders.

In Authentic Leadership, I described authentic leaders as genuine people who are true to themselves and to what they believe in. They engender trust and develop genuine connections with others. Because people trust them, they are able to motivate others to high levels of performance. Rather than letting the expectations of other people guide them, they are prepared to be their own person and go their own way. As they develop as authentic leaders, they are more concerned about serving others than they are about their own suc- cess or recognition.

This is not to say that authentic leaders are perfect. Far from it. Every leader has weaknesses, and all are subject to human frailties and mistakes. Yet by acknowledging their shortcomings and admit- ting their errors, they connect with people and empower them.

Figure I.1 summarizes the five dimensions of an authentic leader:

• Pursuing purpose with passion

• Practicing solid values

• Leading with heart

• Establishing enduring relationships

• Demonstrating self-discipline

Pursuing Purpose with Passion

Most people struggle to understand the purpose of their leadership. In order to find their purpose, authentic leaders must first understand themselves and their passions. In turn, their passions show the way

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to the purpose of their leadership. Without a real sense of purpose, leaders are at the mercy of their egos and narcissistic vulnerabilities.

Practicing Solid Values

Leaders are defined by their values, and values are personal—they cannot be determined by anyone else. Integrity, however, is the one value required of every authentic leader. If you do not have integrity, no one will trust you, nor should they. The values of authentic leaders are shaped by their personal beliefs and developed through study, introspection, consultation with others, and years of experience. The test of authentic leaders’ values is not what they say but the values they practice under pressure. If leaders are not true to the values they profess, people quickly lose confidence in their leadership.

Leading with Heart

Authentic leaders lead with their hearts as well as their heads. To some, leading with the heart may sound soft, as though authentic leaders cannot make tough choices involving pain and loss. Lead-

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Figure I.1 Dimensions of Authentic Leadership

Purpose

Values

RelationshipsSelf-Discipline

Heart The Authentic

Leader

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ing with the heart is anything but soft. It means having passion for your work, compassion for the people you serve, empathy for the people you work with, and the courage to make difficult decisions. Courage is an especially important quality for leaders as they navi- gate through unpredictable terrain.

Establishing Enduring Relationships

The ability to develop enduring relationships is an essential mark of authentic leaders. People today demand personal relationships with their leaders before they will give themselves fully to their jobs. They insist on access to their leaders, knowing that trust and com- mitment are built on the openness and depth of relationship with their leaders. In return, people will demonstrate great commitment to their work and loyalty to the company.

Demonstrating Self-Discipline

Authentic leaders know competing successfully takes a consistently high level of self-discipline in order to produce results. They set high standards for themselves and expect the same from others. This requires accepting full responsibility for outcomes and holding others accountable for their performance. When leaders fall short, it is equally important to admit their mistakes and initiate immedi- ate corrective action. Self-discipline should be reflected in their per- sonal lives as well, because without personal self-discipline it is not possible to sustain self-discipline at work.

Discovering Your Authentic Leadership

Becoming an authentic leader is not easy. First, you have to under- stand yourself, because the hardest person you will ever have to lead is yourself. Once you have an understanding of your authentic self, you will find that leading others is much easier.

Second, to be an effective leader, you must take responsibility for your own development. Like musicians or athletes born with great

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abilities, you must devote yourself to a lifetime of development in order to become a great leader. That sounds logical, but often you don’t know how. That is the purpose of this book—to show how you can discover your authentic leadership.

Kroger CEO David Dillon says that most people he has seen develop as good leaders were self-taught. “The advice I give to indi- viduals in our company is not to expect the company to hand you a development plan that will take care of everything. You need to take responsibility for developing yourself.” To assist in this process, in Appendix C, you will find a series of exercises corresponding to each chapter that you can use to build your own leadership devel- opment plan.

Part One of True North examines the journey to authentic lead- ership. It begins with the leaders’ life stories, which are unique to them and more powerful than any set of characteristics or leader- ship skills they possess. Next, the three phases of the leader’s jour- ney are dissected, looking at the key steps in each phase of the journey. During their journeys, many leaders lose their way and end up derailed. To understand how this happens, five types of leaders who see themselves as heroes of their own journeys are described. Finally, by exploring the life-changing experiences leaders have had, we see how they made the transformation from “I” to “We” and learned the importance of empowering others to lead.

On your journey, you will need the True North of your internal compass to stay focused and to get back on track when you are at risk of being derailed. Part Two provides you with that compass and the development plan to stay true to who you are while you confront the challenges in the world around you. (See Figure I.2.) It includes five key areas of your development as a leader: self-awareness at the cen- ter of your compass, and at the four points, your values and princi- ples, your motivations, your support team, and the integration of your life.

Part Three describes how you can follow your passions to dis- cover the purpose of your leadership. It illustrates how to empower other people to step up and lead by inspiring them around a shared

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purpose. Finally, it addresses how you can achieve superior results through your organization by optimizing your leadership effective- ness. In the Epilogue I share my thoughts on how fulfilling leader- ship can be.

By dedicating yourself to your development, you will discover your authentic leadership.

Note to the reader: Before going on to Chapter One, you may want to complete the Introduction Exercise found in Appendix C.

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Figure I.2 A Compass for the Journey

NW NE

Purpose for Leadership

True North

Values and Principles

Self- Awareness

SW SE

MotivationsIntegrated Life

Support Team

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Part One

Leadership Is a Journey

There is no such thing as the instant leader. Your journey to authen- tic leadership will take you through many peaks and valleys as you encounter the world’s trials, rewards, and seductions. Becoming an authentic leader takes dedication to your development and growth, as there will be many temptations to pull you off the course of your True North. Maintaining your authenticity along the way may be the greatest challenge you ever face.

In interviewing authentic leaders about their journeys and their development, what stood out was the passion they felt about their life stories and the motivation these stories gave them to become leaders. Begin by asking yourself: What is my life story? In under- standing and framing your story, you will find the calling to lead authentically, and you will maintain fidelity to your True North.

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3

1

THE JOURNEY TO AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP

Leadership is a journey, not a destination.

It is a marathon, not a sprint.

It is a process, not an outcome.

—John Donahoe, president of eBay

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz is a leader who used his life story to define his leadership. In the winter of 1961, seven-year-old Schultz was throwing snowballs with friends outside his family’s apartment building in the federally subsidized Bayview Housing Projects in Brooklyn, New York. His mother yelled down from their seventh- floor apartment, “Howard, come inside. Dad had an accident.” What followed would shape him for the rest of his life.

He found his father in a full-leg cast, sprawled on the living room couch. While working as a delivery driver, Schultz’s father had fallen on a sheet of ice and broken his ankle. As a result, he lost his job—and the family’s health care benefits. Workers’ compensa- tion did not yet exist, and Schultz’s mother could not go to work because she was seven months pregnant. The family had nothing to fall back on. Many evenings, Schultz listened as his parents argued at the dinner table about how much money they needed to borrow and from whom. If the telephone rang, his mother asked him to answer it and tell the bill collectors his parents were not at home.

Schultz vowed he would do it differently when he had the opportunity. He dreamed of building a company that treated its employees well and provided health care benefits. Little did he real- ize that one day he would be responsible for 140,000 employees

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working in eleven thousand stores worldwide. Schultz was motivated by his life’s experiences to found Starbucks and build it into the world’s leading coffeehouse. After being CEO for thirteen years, he has turned the reins over to his successors but remains as chairman.

Memories of his father’s lack of health care led Schultz to make Starbucks the first American company to provide access to health coverage for qualified employees who work as few as twenty hours per week. “My inspiration comes from seeing my father broken from the thirty terrible blue-collar jobs he had over his life, where an uneducated person just did not have a shot,” Schultz said.

That event is directly linked to the culture and the values of Starbucks. I wanted to build the kind of company my father never had a chance to work for, where you would be valued and respected, no matter where you came from, the color of your skin, or your level of education. Offering health care was a transforming event in the equity of the Starbucks brand that created unbelievable trust with our people. We wanted to build a company that linked shareholder value to the cultural values we create with our people.

Unlike some who rise from humble beginnings to create great personal wealth, Schultz is not ashamed of his roots. He credits his life story with giving him the motivation to create one of the great business successes of the last twenty-five years. But understanding the meaning of his story took deep thought because, like nearly everyone, he had to confront fears and ghosts from his past.

Brooklyn is burned into Schultz. When he took his daughter to the housing projects where he grew up, she surveyed the blight and said with amazement, “I don’t know how you are normal.” Yet his experience growing up in Brooklyn is precisely what enables Schultz to be so normal that he can connect with anyone. He speaks with a slight Brooklyn accent, relishes an Italian meal at a familiar restaurant, dresses comfortably in jeans, and respects all types of people. He never forgets where he came from or lets his wealth go to his head: “I was surrounded by people who were work- ing hand-to-mouth trying to pay the bills, who felt like there was

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no hope, and they just couldn’t get a break. That’s something that never leaves you—never.”

His mother told him that he could do anything he wanted in America. “From my earliest memories, I remember her saying that over and over again. It was her mantra.” His father had the opposite effect. As a truck driver, cab driver, and factory worker, he often worked two or three jobs at a time to make ends meet but never earned more than $20,000 a year. Schultz watched his father break down while com- plaining bitterly about not having opportunities or respect from others.

As a teenager, Schultz felt the stigma of his father’s failures, as the two clashed often. “I was bitter about his underachievement and lack of responsibility,” he recalled. “I thought he could have accomplished so much more if he had tried.” Schultz was deter- mined to escape that fate. “Part of what has always driven me is fear of failure. I know all too well the face of self-defeat.”

Feeling like an underdog, Schultz developed a deep determina- tion to succeed. Sports became his early calling, because “I wasn’t labeled a poor kid on the playing field.” As star quarterback of his high school football team, he received a scholarship to Northern Michigan University—and became the first person in his family to earn a college degree. His fierce competitiveness never faded: it just shifted from football to business.

Schultz started his career at Xerox but felt the environment was too bureaucratic and rigid for him to flourish. While others thrived in the Xerox culture, Schultz yearned to go his own way. “I had to find a place where I could be myself,” he said.

I could not settle for anything less. You must have the courage to follow an unconventional path. You can’t value or measure your life experience in the moment, because you never know when you’re going to find the true path that enables you to find your voice. The reservoir of all my life expe- riences shaped me as a person and a leader.

Schultz then got involved in selling coffee filters, where he encountered Starbucks Coffee during a sales call at Pike Place

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Market in Seattle. “I felt I had discovered a whole new continent,” he said. He actively campaigned to join the company, becoming its director of operations and marketing.

On a buying trip to Italy, Schultz noticed the unique commu- nity experience that Milanese espresso bars played in their cus- tomers’ daily lives. He dreamed of creating a similar sense of community in the United States, using coffee as the vehicle. Upon his return, Schultz decided to launch the new business on his own and opened three coffeehouses in Seattle. Learning he could acquire Starbucks from its founders, Schultz quickly rounded up financing from private investors.

As he was finalizing the purchase, Schultz faced the greatest challenge of his business career when one of his investors pro- posed to buy the company himself. “I feared all my influential backers would defect to this investor,” he recalled. “I asked Bill Gates Sr., father of the founder of Microsoft, to help me stand up to one of the titans of Seattle because I needed his stature and confidence.”

Schultz had a searing meeting with the investor, who told him, “If you don’t go along with my deal, you’ll never work in this town again. You’ll never raise another dollar. You’ll be dog meat.” On leaving the meeting, Schultz was overcome with tears. For two fren- zied weeks, he prepared an alternative plan that met his $3.8 mil- lion financing goal and staved off the alternate investor.

If I had agreed to the terms the investor demanded, he would have taken away my dream. He could have fired me at whim and dictated the atmos- phere and values of Starbucks. The passion, commitment, and dedication would have all disappeared.

The saddest day of Schultz’s life was when his father died. When he shared with a friend the conflicts he felt in his relation- ship with his father, his friend remarked, “If he had been successful, you wouldn’t have the drive you have now.”

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After his father’s death, Schultz reframed his image of his father, recognizing strengths such as honesty, work ethic, and commitment to family. Instead of seeing his father as a failure, he came to believe the system had crushed him. “After he died, I realized I had judged him unfairly. He never had the opportunity to find fulfillment and dignity from meaningful work.”

Schultz channeled his drive into building a company where his father would have been proud to work. By paying more than mini- mum wage, offering substantial benefits, and granting stock options to all its workers, Starbucks offers its employees what Schultz’s father never received. Schultz uses these incentives to attract and retain peo- ple whose values are consistent with the company’s values. As a result, Starbucks employee turnover is less than half that of other retailers.

Among Schultz’s greatest talents is his ability to connect with people from diverse backgrounds. He tells his story and the Star- bucks story at special events and visits two dozen Starbucks stores per week. Each day he gets up at 5:30 A.M. to speak by phone with Starbucks personnel around the world. He says Starbucks gave him “the canvas to paint on.”

Starbucks is the quintessential people-based business, where everything we do is about humanity. The culture and values of the company are its signature and its competitive difference. We have created a worldwide appeal for our customers because people are hungry for human connec- tion and authenticity. Whether you’re Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, or Greek, coffee is just the catalyst for that connection. I don’t know if I was drawn to this business because of my background, or whether it gave me the opportunity to connect the dots, but it has come full circle for me.

Schultz’s experience is instructive in the way he consciously used his life experiences to envision the kind of company he wanted to create in Starbucks and then made it happen. His exam- ple is one of dozens from authentic leaders who traced their success and inspiration directly to their life stories.

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Your Life Story Defines Your Leadership

Asked what motivates them to lead, authentic leaders consistently say they find their motivation through understanding their own sto- ries. Their stories enable them to know who they are and to stay focused on their True North.

The stories of authentic leaders cover the full spectrum of life’s experiences. They include the impact of parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors who recognized their potential; the impact of their com- munities; and their leadership in team sports, scouting, student gov- ernment, and early employment. Many leaders find their motivation comes from a difficult experience in their lives: personal illness or the illness of a family member; death of a parent or a sibling; or feelings of being excluded, discriminated against, or rejected by peers.

What emerges from these stories is that virtually all the leaders interviewed found their passion to lead through the uniqueness of their life stories.

Not by being born as leaders. Not by believing they had the characteristics, traits, or style of

a leader. Not by trying to emulate great leaders. Some outstanding leaders like former Merck CEO Roy Vagelos

said they did not see themselves as leaders at all. Instead, they viewed themselves as people who wanted to make a difference and inspired others to join with them in pursuing common goals. If that isn’t leadership, what is?

Let’s focus on the life stories of three more leaders. As you read these stories, think about the ways your life story inspires you and defines your leadership.

Dick Kovacevich: From Athletic Field to Premier Banker. During the past twenty years, Dick Kovacevich, chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, has compiled one of the most successful track records of any commercial banker. In his interview, he did not focus on his professional success but talked

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instead about how his experiences growing up in a small town in western Washington shaped his leadership philosophy.

Kovacevich was raised in a working-class family and interacted with people of all income and education levels. The dairy farmers, loggers, and workers at the local Weyerhaeuser sawmill that he knew were intelligent people who worked hard and had high ethi- cal standards but lacked a college education. His teachers had a tremendous influence on him, encouraging him to do well academ- ically and go to college.

From the age of eleven through high school, Kovacevich worked in a local grocery store, which stimulated his interest in business. He would go to school, play sports from 3 to 5:30 P.M., run home and eat, and then be at work from 6 to 9 P.M. Eventu- ally, he ran the produce department in the summer when the produce manager went on vacation. He did the displays, pricing, and ordering and learned he enjoyed business. Those experiences taught Kovacevich disciplines that stayed with him ever since: “I developed the intuition and leadership skills needed in business, more so than in business school where there weren’t any leader- ship courses.”

Athletics had a significant impact on Kovacevich’s develop- ment as a leader. From the age of four, he played a team sport sev- eral hours every day, becoming the team’s leader as captain in baseball or quarterback in football. “On the athletic field I learned that a group of people can perform so much better as a team than as the sum of their individual talents. Through my early leader- ship experiences, I learned skills by trial and error that I could apply in business.”

If you were quarterback of a team of quarterbacks, you would lose every game. Just as quarterbacks are overrated, CEOs are too. You can’t be an all-star quarterback unless you have some great linemen, outstanding receivers, and a good running game. Diversity of skills is an important element of any effective team. I am amazed at leaders who surround themselves with people just like themselves. There is no way they can be

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effective. We need to recognize our weaknesses, but don’t want to amplify them. You need to surround yourself with people whose strengths comple- ment your weaknesses.

Dick Kovacevich has made good use of that principle through- out his business career, from Citibank to Norwest Bank to Wells Fargo. He has surrounded himself with talented executives who build the bank’s individual businesses, giving them the authority and latitude to lead in their own way while continuing to act as quarterback of the team.

His life experience of growing up in a small town has pro- foundly shaped his banking philosophy. While other banks were using computers to eliminate customer-service personnel, Kovace- vich endeavored to make Wells Fargo the most client-friendly bank in every community where it operates by having its employees adopt an attitude of helping their clients meet their financial needs. For example, when you approach Wells Fargo for a mortgage on your home, the loan officer is likely to ask you about setting up a savings account for your daughter’s college fund or an indi- vidual retirement account. Because Kovacevich has surrounded himself with highly talented executives and has remained so deeply engaged in the business, Wells Fargo has been able to sustain the highest growth in earnings over the past two decades of any com- mercial bank.

Ellen Breyer: Recapturing Her Passion. Ellen Breyer, CEO of Hazelden Foundation, the leading chemical dependency treatment organization, relies on passion to guide her leadership. As a college student in New York in the late 1960s, she was an activist involved in many causes. She protested the Vietnam War, organized civil rights marches in Washington, and led voter registration drives in her hometown of New Rochelle, New York.

Breyer did not know the federal government was taking notice of her activities, or that it considered them subversive. Then one day she was notified that her federal student loans had been with-

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drawn. “The government was taking pictures at rallies, looking at petitions, and identifying college students. I was one of four people in my class who had their student loans pulled as a result,” she explained.

There were some borderline activities, but I wasn’t part of them. The anti- war movement was a long continuum, and we played within the law. We had strong feelings, passions, beliefs, and a solid rationale for what we were doing. It was remarkable that you could put your energies into some- thing and make significant change. I loved it.

Breyer married after graduation and went into business, rising to head of corporate marketing for Godiva Chocolate. After her three sons were born, she cut back on her work schedule to spend time raising them. As a result of her husband’s promotions at Amer- ican Express, the Breyers moved to London, back to New York, and then to Minneapolis. Each time Ellen took a new position in the corporate world. When her youngest son graduated from high school, she decided to take a sabbatical. “It is interesting how my life came full circle,” she reflected.

I was spending a lot of time on nonprofit volunteer activities and enjoying that more than my day job. I went skiing in Aspen for a season and thought about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I asked myself, how can I make the transition from the for-profit environment to working in a nonprofit?

While serving on the board of Hazelden Foundation, Breyer was made interim CEO as the board conducted a national search. Seven months later she became permanent CEO, enabling her to fulfill her desire to help people with dependency issues.

This experience has reconnected me with my passions. I feel strongly about helping people recover from alcohol and drug addiction. On a personal level, my father died of alcoholism. There is a direct link to what I did

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before I was thirty and what I am doing now, in terms of connecting your work life with your passions, and the belief that you can change things in a dramatic way.

Breyer’s ability to recapture the passions of her early years and link them to her current work is impressive. She has reframed her life story by taking experiences from her past to define and empower her present. As a result, her passion for leading has a remarkable impact on those around her.

Reatha Clark King: From Cotton Fields to the Boardroom. Reatha Clark King’s roots trace to a rural community, where she was encouraged by many to become a leader. King acknowledges, “I didn’t get here on my own. I am standing on the shoulders of the giants in my life who reached out and helped me get launched, and all those who helped me along the way.”

King grew up in Georgia in the 1940s as the daughter of farm laborers. Her father left the family when she was young, so her mother worked as a maid to support her three children. Her family was so poor that she often had to leave school to work in the cot- ton fields for $3 per day so her mother could pay the bills. “Those were bitter moments in my experience, because white children didn’t have to leave school,” she recalled. “That contrast was so clear and so wrong.”

The young King found her church a haven amid the constant poverty and discrimination. “I have fond memories of going to church every Sunday morning at eleven and being there until two o’clock. I can still close my eyes and see my grandmother praying.” The older women of the church, known as “sisters,” identified her special abilities, noticing her intellectual potential, initiative, work ethic, and dependability. “The sisters, my teachers, and people in the community kept an eye on me, and encouraged me to over- come unjust barriers against black people.”

King credited two mentors with influencing her development the most: her grade school teacher for seven years and the school

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librarian. They encouraged her to go to Clark University in Atlanta, where she won a tuition scholarship and worked in the library for 35 cents an hour to pay for room and board.

While studying at Clark, King was mentored by the chair of the chemistry department, who stimulated her interest in becoming a research chemist. She applied to the University of Chicago’s doc- toral program, a bold step for a young woman from Georgia. After earning her Ph.D. in physical chemistry, she worked at the National Bureau of Standards and then taught at York College in New York. Even there, things were not easy. “One black faculty member called me an Uncle Tom for trying to resolve issues,” she recalled. “That was one of the most hurtful moments of my life.”