REFLECTION ON “DISCOVER YOUR TRUE NORTH”

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Discover Your
True North

Expanded and Updated Edition

Bill George

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Copyright  2015 by Bill George. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

George, Bill (William W.)
[Finding your true north.]
Discover your true north/Bill George.-Second edition, Expanded and Updated Edition.
pages cm

Revised edition of the author’s Finding your true north, 2008.
Includes index.
ISBN 978–1–119–08294–1 (hardback); ISBN 978–1–119–08297–2 (ePDF);

ISBN 978–1–119–08295–8 (ePub)
1. Leadership. 2. Organizational effectiveness. I. Title.
HD57.7.G45814 2015
658.4’092-dc23 2015013574

Printed in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to my family. First to my wife, Penny,
whose love, passion for life, and counsel have enabled all the
Georges to discover our True North. And to our sons, Jeff
and Jon, and our daughters-in-law, Renee and Jeannette,
who are making important contributions to the world as

authentic leaders.

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BEST-SELLING BOOKS BY BILL GEORGE

Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value
(2003)

True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership (2007) (with Peter Sims)

Finding Your True North: A Personal Guide (2008) (with Nick Craig and
Andrew McLean)

7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis (2009)

WEBFTOC 07/02/2015 3:7:35 Page v

Contents

Preface The Remarkable Legacy of Warren Bennis vii

Foreword David Gergen xi

Introduction 1

Part One: Your Journey to Leadership 13

1. Your Life Story 15
Lead Story: Howard Schultz, Chair and CEO of Starbucks

2. Losing Your Way 41
Lead Story: Rajat Gupta, Worldwide Managing Director of

McKinsey

3. Crucibles 57
Lead Story: Daniel Vasella, Chair and CEO of Novartis

Part Two: Developing as an
Authentic Leader

77

4. Self-Awareness 79
Lead Story: Arianna Huffington, Founder of The

Huffington Post

5. Values 103
Lead Story: David Gergen, Harvard Professor and Presidential

Advisor

v

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6. Sweet Spot 123
Lead Story: Warren Buffett, Founder and CEO of Berkshire

Hathaway

7. Support Team 142
Lead Story: Tad Piper, Chair and CEO of Piper Jaffray

8. Integrated Life 159
Lead Story: John Donahoe, CEO of eBay

Part Three: Your True North Meets the World 179

9. I to We 181
Lead Story: Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa

10. Purpose 199
Lead Story: Ken Frazier, Chair and CEO of Merck

11. Empowerment 219
Lead Story: Anne Mulcahy, Chair and CEO of Xerox

12. Global Leadership 243
Lead Story: Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever

Afterword Stakeholders in Society 265
Lead Story: Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba

New Leaders Featured in Discover Your True North 275

Participants from the Original Research for True North 277

Where Are They Now? 279

References 287

About the Author 293

Acknowledgments 295

Index 297

vi CONTENTS

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Preface

The Remarkable Legacy of
Warren Bennis

Warren Bennis was one of the great pioneers in the field of
leadership. Small in physical stature, he was a giant in his intellect,
his heart, and his spirit. Just as Peter Drucker was the father of
management, Bennis was the father of leadership.

Bennis transformed our understanding of what it means to be a
leader. He was the first scholar who said leadership is not a set of
genetic characteristics, but the result of a lifelong process of self-
discovery. Rejecting the notion that leaders are born with certain
traits, he opened the door to the real source of leadership: within you.
He wrote:

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born—that there is a

genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have

certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is

true. Leaders are made rather than born.

He showed how leaders develop through their life experiences,
are shaped by their crucibles, and emerge ever stronger to take on
responsibilities of leadership. He said unequivocally, “Leadership is
character,” adding,

It is not just a superficial question of style, but has to do with who we are as

human beings, and with the forces that have shaped us. The process of becoming

a leader is much the same as the process of becoming an integrated human

being.

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Bennis’s early life was deeply influenced by his association at
Antioch College and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology with Douglas McGregor, author of The Human Side of
Enterprise. While in Cambridge, he connected with Abraham
Maslow (creator of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs), Peter Drucker,
Paul Samuelson, and Erik Erikson, whose theories on the eight stages
of human development influenced Bennis’s own generativity in his
later years. He went on to write 30 books. Many of today’s influential
leadership authors, such as Tom Peters, Nitin Nohria, David
Gergen, Jim O’Toole, Bob Sutton, Jeff Sonnenfeld, and Doug
Conant are indebted to Bennis for their ideas.

As president of the University of Cincinnati, he realized his
personal truth, “I was never going to be able to be happy with
positional power. What I really wanted was personal power: having
influence based on my voice. My real gift is what I can do in the
classroom and as a mentor.” Following a heart attack in 1979, he
found his home at the University of Southern California.

Bennis’s influence on business leaders was widespread and
profound. Thousands of leaders who never knew him were inspired
by his writings and adopted his approach to leadership. Many chief
executive officers (CEOs) have told me personally what a profound
influence he had on their leadership.

I first encountered his writing in 1989 when I read On Becoming a
Leader. It was a revelation: Finally, I had found a philosophy of
leadership I could resonate with. Throughout my years at Medtronic
and Harvard Business School (HBS), I have built on his philoso-
phies in my work and teaching.

We first met at the World Economic Forum in the late 1990s. He
suffered from heart problems, and had recently had a Medtronic
defibrillator implanted. In December of 2000 I invited him as a guest
patient to an annual Medtronic event, where he graciously thanked
the employees who designed and manufactured his defibrillator in
front of 10,000 people.

He was fond of saying he had Medtronic “in his heart” and then
describing how his defibrillator saved his life half a dozen times. I once

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witnessed this in person in Cambridge. While he was speaking, his
defibrillator went off, and he slumped to the ground, dropping his
papers. Ever the gracious soul, he picked up his papers, apologized for
the disruption, and continued his talk. When it went off a second
time 10 minutes later, the Cambridge Fire Department escorted him
to safety.

In 2002, my wife, Penny, and I attended a seminar Bennis and
David Gergen led at the Aspen Institute. At the time I was eager
to write a book on my experiences at Medtronic but was struggling to
find a publisher. My intent was to offer practical approaches to
leading and develop leaders that enabled people to be their authen-
tic selves, rather than emulating others. With Bennis’s encourage-
ment, Jossey-Bass published Authentic Leadership as part of the
Warren Bennis Signature Series. Bennis served as executive editor
and wrote in the foreword, “Timeless leadership is always about
character, and it is always about authenticity.”

He became my mentor, friend, and intellectual colleague, and
gave me the courage to become a writer. As executive editor for my
four books in the Warren Bennis Signature Series, he generously
shared his time and his insights. In the midst of writing True North,
Peter Sims and I spent five days with him going over the conceptual
ideas and stories used in the book. Unlike many great scholars who
protect their ideas, Bennis genuinely wanted me to expand on his
and make them fully accessible to the new generation of leaders,
which he later called “the crucible generation.” We shared a
common aim to influence the next generation to lead with clear
purpose to serve others and make the world a better place.

Two months before he died, Bennis asked my wife and me to
discuss leadership in the next-to-last class he ever taught. Although
Bennis was beset with bodily ills, his mind and humanity were as sharp
asever.Whatotherprofessorshave you knownwhowere stillteaching
at age 89? Over dinner that evening Penny asked what he would like
on his tombstone. He replied, “Generous Friend.” A generous friend
is just what Bennis was to thousands of friends, students, scholars,

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and mentees whom he influenced with kindness, buoyancy of spirit,
and wisdom.

Bennis’s last book, Still Surprised, has a photo of him walking
barefoot on the beach with his pant legs rolled up, leaving behind
large footprints in the sand. These footprints serve as a calling to
incorporate his ideas in our leadership. Ultimately, this will become
Bennis’s greatest legacy. They bring to mind a stanza from Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life:

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.

x PREFACE

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Foreword

When Peter Drucker was in his prime, CEOs often traveled across
the country to California to seek his counsel on how to lead and
manage their companies. He was an iconic figure in the business
world, the father of management studies, whose 30 books were
highly influential in shaping modern global companies. As I found in
conversation late in his life, he had a wisdom about him that was
spellbinding.

Upon his death 10 years ago, people naturally asked, “Who will
carry on Peter’s work?” Soon it became apparent that the most
obvious candidate was Warren Bennis, and once again, CEOs made
the trek to California to meet quietly with one of the sweetest, wisest
men I have been blessed to know. Warren was the father of
leadership studies in American universities, the man who gave
them academic legitimacy through his two dozen books, and the
best mentor and friend one could possibly have.

Upon his death a year ago, the question naturally arose again:
“Well, who will now carry on Warren’s work?” With the publication
of his sixth and most important book, Discover Your True North, we
may well have our candidate: Bill George. There are obvious
differences: Bill himself would modestly point out that both Drucker
and Bennis were lifelong scholars deeply schooled in theory; by
contrast, Bill first made his mark as a highly successful CEO of a large
company before becoming a major thought leader. Yet all three have
been at the forefront in shaping leadership and management prac-
tices of successive generations.

xi

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By chance, Warren introduced me to Bill along with Dan Vasella
of Novartis at a dinner in Davos, Switzerland, where we were all
attending the World Economic Forum in 2001. Bill was coming off
his years as CEO of Medtronic and was beginning to pull together his
thoughts and experiences about leadership so that he could share
them with younger business leaders.

Soon Bill published his first book, essentially a memoir, titled
Authentic Leadership, and it was quickly a best seller. Without
realizing it, he had launched an entirely new career, one with
even greater impact than his first. In reading Discover Your True
North, you will find not only a distillation of his ideas about
leadership but also revealing portraits of a galaxy of more diverse
leaders and what they have learned on their own journeys toward a
True North. This book bids to be a classic, standing alongside The
Effective Executive by Peter Drucker and On Becoming a Leader by
Warren Bennis. I am proud to call Bill a friend and trusted adviser—
and to salute him on the completion of his best book.

Here’s what is essential for a reader to understand: Experience
shows that Bill’s ideas not only work well in practice but also apply
across the board, helping not only business leaders but those in the
civic and public sectors as well. Most books that come from the
academy are intended for a small audience of specialized scholars.
That is the way advances in knowledge are often made. But non-
scholars wonder how this progress applies to them.

Bill George’s work—like Warren’s and Peter’s—intentionally
crosses the bridge between the academy and practice. Through
writing, teaching, and mentoring, he is helping leaders become
better at leading themselves and, in turn, their organizations. At
present more than two dozen CEOs of major global companies are
calling on him regularly for counsel and advice.

The evidence shows that leaders from across the world are
hungry to discover their True North and to make it their polar
star. After initial teaching stints at the International Institute for
Management Development (IMD) in Europe and at Yale School of
Management, Bill came to the Harvard Business School (HBS) as a

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professor of management. There in 2005, he introduced his course,
Authentic Leadership Development, as a second-year elective.
Students embraced it with growing enthusiasm, such that it has
become one of the most popular courses at HBS and attracts a
growing number in executive education.

Bill no longer teaches the master of business administration
course but instead is focusing on executive education, where CEOs
and senior executives focus on their leadership, including three
courses each year for CEOs. Now there is a cadre of other faculty
members who are devotees, led by Scott Snook (a retired army
officer) and Tom DeLong and blessed by Dean Nitin Nohria.

Fortunately, Bill’s course has migrated to the Harvard Kennedy
School (HKS), where I am a professor of practice and codirector of
our Center for Public Leadership. Dana Born, a retired air force
general and the first woman in any military branch to gain flag rank
while at a military academy, has just started teaching the course, and
once again students are responding with gusto. Moreover, Bill has
introduced True North to an annual training program at the HKS for
Young Global Leaders chosen by the World Economic Forum.
Attendees love what the program offers, especially the deep-dive,
small-group conversations every morning over breakfast.

Altogether,some 6,000men and women havenowbeentrained at
Harvard alone in Bill’s ideas about authentic leadership. Longitudinal
studies are not yet possible on how much he may have shaped lives and
leadership, but anecdotal evidence points to encouraging results.

One group that has had lots of exposure to Bill and his work is
students who have pursued joint degrees at HBS and HKS and in
their third year have received scholarships from Bill and Penny
George. These George Fellows, typically in their late twenties, have
a home at our Center for Public Leadership and meet frequently,
often with Bill and Penny. Bill generously mentors a number of them
and remains close long after they have graduated. Altogether, the
George Fellowship now has 100 alumni.

To be sure, many had transformative experiences that strength-
ened their leadership before they became George Fellows. Even so,

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their recent achievements have been impressive. Here are a few whom
Bill continues to mentor: Seth Moulton won an upset victory in his
campaign for Congress and has attracted a national following. Maura
Sullivan is now serving as an assistant secretary at the Department of
Veterans Administration. Nate Fick is CEO of Endgame as well as
former CEO of the Center for a New American Security and author of
One Bullet Away. Brian Elliott founded Friendfactor, a lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) nonprofit for straight people that
has been pivotal in winning battles for gay rights. Rye Barcott is
running a venture fund for solar installations in North Carolina; was
selected as a Young Global Leader at Davos; and is author of It
Happened ontheWayto War. John Colemanis a principal ofInvesco in
Atlanta and coauthored How to Argue Like Jesus. Stephen Chan is
chief of staff forthe Boston Foundation.Peter Brooks works for a water
technology company and directs the Warrior-Scholar Project. Jona-
than Kelly runs a private equity company based in Singapore. And
Claude Burton is directing marketing for a rapidly growing informa-
tion technology firm in Brazil. Can there be any doubt that the ideas
here apply to emerging leaders from every sector of life and across
national boundaries?

As this book is being published, the world is slipping ever more
deeply into a leadership crisis. For people everywhere, life is becom-
ing ever more volatile and unpredictable. Instead of putting a firm
hand on the wheel, many leaders seem unable to steer toward safe
ports in the storm. A survey of global opinion the World Economic
Forum published in 2015 found that 76 percent believe we have had
a serious loss of leadership. Business leaders have recovered some of
their ground lost since 2008–2009, but they rank only modestly
above political leaders.

This book can perhaps help us find our way. If individual leaders
can recognize when they have drifted away from True North and
make successful course corrections, as Bill George argues, nations
can as well. Surely, authentic leadership beats what we have now.

David Gergen

xiv FOREWORD

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Introduction

Have you discovered your True North? Do you know what your life
and your leadership are all about?

Leadership starts with being authentic, the genuine you. The
purpose of Discover Your True North is to enable you to become
the leader you want to be. In the process you will discover your
True North—the internal compass that guides you successfully
through life.

Your True North

True North is your orienting point—your fixed point in a spinning
world—that helps you stay on track as a leader. It is derived from
your most deeply held beliefs, your values, and the principles you
lead by. It is your internal compass, unique to you, that represents
who you are at your deepest level.

Just as a compass needle 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. As Warren Bennis said, “You are the author of your life.”

Discovering your True North takes a lifetime of commitment
and learning. 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
are leading. 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 life presents.

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The world may have very different expectations for you than you
have for yourself. Whether you are leading a small team or at the top
of an organization, you will be pressured by external forces to respond
to their needs and seduced by rewards for fulfilling those needs.
These pressures and seductions may cause you to detour from your
True North. When you get too far off course, your internal compass
tells you something is wrong and you need to reorient yourself. It
requires courage and resolve to resist the constant pressures and
expectations confronting you and to take corrective action when
necessary.

As CEO of Sara Lee Brenda Barnes said, “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

values, you’re going to be fine. Let your values guide your actions and don’t

ever lose your internal compass. Everything isn’t black or white. There are a lot

of gray areas in business.

When you discover your True North, you find coherence
between your life story and your leadership. A century ago psychol-
ogist William James wrote:

I have often thought that the best way to define a man’s character would be to

seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which . . . he felt himself

most deeply and intensely 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”? Professionally, I had
that feeling from the first time I walked into Medtronic in 1989 and
joined a group of talented people 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.

2 INTRODUCTION

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I sensed immediately that my values aligned with the organization’s
values.

The Rise of Authentic Leaders

When I wrote Authentic Leadership in 2003, the most common
question I received was “What do you mean by authenticity?” To
me, being authentic was the natural way of leading, but many people
in that era of charismatic leaders considered leading authentically a
new idea.

Today authenticity is seen as the gold standard for leadership. No
longer is leadership about developing charisma, emulating other
leaders, looking good externally, and acting in one’s self-interest, as
was so often the case in the late twentieth century. Nor should
leadership be conflated with your leadership style, managerial skills,
or competencies. These capabilities are very important, but they are
the outward manifestation of who you are as a person. You cannot
fake it to make it, because people sense intuitively whether you are
genuine.

The hierarchical, directive leadership style so prevalent in the
past century is fading fast in favor of today’s collaborative leaders,
who believe in distributed leadership at all levels. The old notion of
leaders as the smartest guys in the room—as Enron CEO Jeff Skilling
typified—has been replaced by leaders with high levels of emotional
intelligence (EQ).

Because of this move toward greater authenticity, we are blessed
with much higher caliber leaders today. In discovering their True
North, they have committed to leading with purpose to make a
difference in the world and leave behind lasting legacies. The quality
of today’s leaders is reflected in the lasting results they are achieving
within their organizations.

For this all-new edition, my colleague Zach Clayton and I
interviewed and studied 47 authentic leaders that represent the

INTRODUCTION 3

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diversity of the new generation of global leaders—among them,
Unilever’s Paul Polman, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, Alibaba’s Jack Ma,
the Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, Merck’s Ken Frazier, and
Sojourners’ Jim Wallis.

Before writing True North in 2007, our research team of Peter
Sims, Diana Mayer, Andrew McLean, and I set out to get definitive
answers to the question of how to develop authentic leaders. We
interviewed 125 authentic leaders to learn the secrets of their
leadership. This research constitutes the largest in-depth study
ever undertaken on how business leaders develop.

We circled back to most of the leaders interviewed for the first
edition to get updated on their progress as leaders. Much to our
pleasure, we found that the vast majority of them are doing excep-
tionally well. Some have moved to new positions, some have retired
from their organizations and taken on new challenges, but almost all
of them continue to make vital contributions to business and society.
Only a handful have failed.

In Discover Your True North, we retain the structure of the first
edition, but go much deeper into what we have learned about
leadership in the past decade. It includes many insights that my
Harvard Business School colleagues and I, as well as practitioners
and scholars around the world, have learned about leaders: how they
discovered their True North, developed as authentic leaders, became
global leaders, and stayed on the course of their True North
throughout their lifetimes.

Although the 47 new leaders included in Discover Your True
North are more international and more diverse than the first group,
their stories and beliefs about leadership showed a high level of
congruence with the earlier interviewees. (The back of the book
contains the list of interviewees for this updated edition.)

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 primary reasons for their success. Without exception,

4 INTRODUCTION

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these leaders believed being authentic made them more effective
and successful.

As the result of our research into these leaders, we have a clearer
understanding of what constitutes an effective and authentic leader.
We know that each leader is unique, just as each human being is.
The reality is that no one can be authentic by trying to be like someone
else. You can learn from others’ experiences, but you cannot be
successful trying to be like them. People will only trust you when you
are genuine and authentic.

If you create a false persona or wear a mask, people will quickly
see through you. As Reatha Clark King, chair of the National
Association of Corporate Directors, 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—unreplicable—by following your passion.

Amgen chairman and CEO Kevin Sharer, who gained priceless
experience at the beginning of his career by working as Jack Welch’s
assistant, saw the downside of General Electric’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.”

The Leadership Transformation

What has caused this dramatic change in …