Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly and I'm Carol Masser. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Extra. It's a weekly podcast bring you an in
Speaker 1: depth interview you will not hear anywhere else. And this
Speaker 1: one man, we just love talking with her. Well, this
Speaker 1: is one of these times where you're listening to my
Speaker 1: voice that you can't hear me like rubbing my hands
Speaker 1: together because I'm so excited to bring you, guys, this interview.
Speaker 1: It's with Francis Fry. She's got a new book, Unleashed,
Speaker 1: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering everyone around You. This
Speaker 1: was one of these interviews that the moment she came
Speaker 1: on the line, we were excited because she's a real person.
Speaker 1: She's had real experiences. She told some great stories, and
Speaker 1: she's been in the trenches, well trenches meaning uber and
Speaker 1: we were check it out. I think that there are
Speaker 1: great leaders and then there are people that are not
Speaker 1: very good leaders. I think leadership can be taught. So
Speaker 1: for those that for those leaders that aren't doing a
Speaker 1: good job, if they have the desire to get better,
Speaker 1: we can teach them. If they don't have the desire
Speaker 1: to get better. I wish for them to step aside.
Speaker 1: How do you teach them? Because these are these are
Speaker 1: tough people who are often in positions where they are
Speaker 1: and you have run into some of them very directly,
Speaker 1: who are very confident and they know where they're going.
Speaker 1: I just finished listening to a six part podcast on
Speaker 1: we Work, and you know more about that story, uh
Speaker 1: than I do. But but I do wonder how do
Speaker 1: you break through to two people or there's some who
Speaker 1: just can't be broken through. Well, I find that if
Speaker 1: you can break through, it's usually either through emotion or logic.
Speaker 1: And the lesson to be learned is that if someone
Speaker 1: is if someone is like at an emotional level, no
Speaker 1: amount of logic is going to penetrate. And if someone
Speaker 1: is at a logical level, no amount of motion is
Speaker 1: going to penetrate. So you have to see where they
Speaker 1: are and then bring either the moral or the rational
Speaker 1: argument to them. Um, I will tell you, in my lifetime,
Speaker 1: I have met very few people that uh didn't want
Speaker 1: to improve. Well, so, so okay, so take us back
Speaker 1: to you are hired, You're tapped to be Uber's first
Speaker 1: senior VP of a leadership and strategy, curious about the
Speaker 1: conversations to get you there, and then you walk in
Speaker 1: the and then you walk in the door, and then
Speaker 1: what so just take us back there. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: was asked to go by a former student to go
Speaker 1: and meet with the then CEO, Travis kalmick Um. And
Speaker 1: my first reaction was no, because I, like everyone else,
Speaker 1: had read the newspaper and said, I only like to
Speaker 1: help good people win. This does not seem like a
Speaker 1: good person. So no. And the student was said, Um,
Speaker 1: I think he's a very good person. I think he's
Speaker 1: out of his depth on parts of the job. Will
Speaker 1: you do me a favor and come meet with him?
Speaker 1: And so I flew out to California. I was planning
Speaker 1: to meet with him for an hour and I stayed
Speaker 1: for three days um talking with him and realized that
Speaker 1: this was a person who was last job, he had
Speaker 1: led eight people, this company had gone through hyper growth.
Speaker 1: It now had between ten and fifteen thousand people, so
Speaker 1: he totally needed help and leadership. But you know how
Speaker 1: I knew that. He said, I totally need help on leadership,
Speaker 1: and then on the strategy part. You know, he's like
Speaker 1: a mad genius in his mind. But it wasn't getting
Speaker 1: out into the minds of everyone in the organization, and
Speaker 1: so he asked me to help strategy, at least in
Speaker 1: so far as we could communicate it so that everyone
Speaker 1: was going off the same script. And then he said,
Speaker 1: you have full license to do whatsever necessary. That was
Speaker 1: my conversation with him, and then I went and met
Speaker 1: with a lot of employees, bought a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I think I interacted with about employees before I said yes,
Speaker 1: because I only like to help good people win. And
Speaker 1: if I didn't have the sense that this was overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: good people, I could never have gone to the organization.
Speaker 1: And I have to say it was overwhelmingly good people.
Speaker 1: And you walked out of there feeling the same way.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So you know, nine months later, the culture
Speaker 1: was completely turned around. Everything that you read about in
Speaker 1: the culture back in two thousand and seventeen, none of
Speaker 1: that could happen today, like just literally none of it.
Speaker 1: And we had it, We had it. None of it
Speaker 1: could have happened within nine months. UM, And we've taught,
Speaker 1: We've brought in the largest executive education program I think
Speaker 1: ever into a company. UM, And I've never met such
Speaker 1: willing learners I love this notion that you talked about
Speaker 1: in the book, which is in in some ways turning
Speaker 1: leadership on its head, or at least broadening there, widening
Speaker 1: the aperture a bit, because I think we we think
Speaker 1: so much about you know, I'm the leader, I'm the decider,
Speaker 1: and you know it needs to be about me and
Speaker 1: I need to sort of have this command and control.
Speaker 1: And you make a different argument. I think, help us
Speaker 1: understand your sort of rubric I guess for thinking about leadership. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I do make I think the exact opposite argument,
Speaker 1: which is that so you're exactly right, no, as what
Speaker 1: you were saying, Oh good, okay. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I really misunderstood what you're saying. No, no no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I was giving sorry they you couldn't see me. I
Speaker 1: was nodding vigorously. So leadership is about making other people better,
Speaker 1: Like leadership fundamentally is about other people. And so the
Speaker 1: mistake that some people make is that they think their
Speaker 1: job is to be lead really and it's like they
Speaker 1: have a mirror in their office and they keep looking
Speaker 1: in their mirror to see how they're doing. And you
Speaker 1: should really put a window in your office, because you
Speaker 1: should be spending all of your time seeing how other
Speaker 1: people are doing. And a job of a leader is
Speaker 1: to make others better in there as a result of
Speaker 1: their presence and into their absence. And so I do
Speaker 1: think that it does really turn around what leadership is
Speaker 1: because it's not about the leaders. In fact, our first
Speaker 1: chapter is all it's not about you. So how do
Speaker 1: you do that? Like? What does that look like in practice?
Speaker 1: When I walk into a meeting if the most interesting
Speaker 1: person in the room to me is me, and I'm
Speaker 1: happiest when everyone else is looking at me. But if
Speaker 1: when I walk into a room, the most important people
Speaker 1: to me are everyone else in the room and my
Speaker 1: helping to set them up for success, and I will
Speaker 1: be looking super curiously and with all of my attention
Speaker 1: of how can I make you better? Like what are
Speaker 1: the obstacles in the way? How can I get you
Speaker 1: to reach higher? How can I get you to develop
Speaker 1: more skills to do a better job. So it's really
Speaker 1: it's it's not self distracted, it's other distracted. We're just
Speaker 1: like sitting with this, Jason and I are looking at
Speaker 1: each other because this is pretty powerful. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: apply it? And I wonder how are you looking at
Speaker 1: what what you're saying right now and what you've just
Speaker 1: written in this book with what's going on in the
Speaker 1: world and what's been going on in the world for
Speaker 1: the last three months. The virus first of all, and
Speaker 1: what's been kind of put front and center once again
Speaker 1: those things that ail our society. We knew they were,
Speaker 1: they were there, but you know, we're being confronted with it.
Speaker 1: And then certainly what happened with George Floyd in Minneapolis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'll start with George Floyd. Uh that which is
Speaker 1: you know, our country has been grappling with issues of
Speaker 1: race for I don't know, close to four hundred years,
Speaker 1: and we've never dealt with them. And UM, I think
Speaker 1: that everyone probably because we're all in COVID together and
Speaker 1: we're all breathing the same breath. Everyone witnessed, it seems
Speaker 1: at the same time, the death of a man because
Speaker 1: of the color of his skin, and this time it
Speaker 1: has sparked collective reckoning UM and feels like at least
Speaker 1: the first moment in my life where we might be
Speaker 1: willing to change. UM. But what we know about change
Speaker 1: is you have to do three things. If you're going
Speaker 1: to change, you have to honor the past. We've never
Speaker 1: done that regarding race. You have to have a clear
Speaker 1: and compelling change mandate. We have that right now, and
Speaker 1: you have to have a rigorous and optimistic way forward.
Speaker 1: And so I think great leaders will honor the past
Speaker 1: and we'll have an optimistic, a rigorous and optimistic way forward.
Speaker 1: And the same thing. And if that's like poignant lead
Speaker 1: for George Floyd, it's also what's happened with COVID, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: Like I think you could line up great leaders, great
Speaker 1: world leaders, from top to bottom and look at how
Speaker 1: well their countries are responding, and it's like a one
Speaker 1: to one, Like great leadership is playing out on the
Speaker 1: world stage. We're all given the same conditions. It's just
Speaker 1: whether or not it's about setting others up for success
Speaker 1: or whether or not the leaders thinks that leadership is
Speaker 1: all about them. It's like pretty straightforward. Yeah, when I
Speaker 1: feel like we're seeing that at companies too, right, I
Speaker 1: mean we're seeing you know, both in terms of COVID
Speaker 1: and in terms of the reaction to the to the
Speaker 1: murder of George Floyd. You know, the that exact am
Speaker 1: thing that it's all the same circumstances and and granted
Speaker 1: their little variables here and there about what type of
Speaker 1: company you run. But but it seems like so much
Speaker 1: of it is ultimately about and we have these conversations
Speaker 1: all the time, leaders being willing to to say something
Speaker 1: in many ways, and it seems so simple. But I
Speaker 1: feel like that gets lost. It's like Twitter versus Facebook
Speaker 1: right now. Oh, you know those are two platforms. I
Speaker 1: just got on my first social media platform and that's LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: I'm on neither Twitter nor I don't do well with distractions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but tell us about that notion of communicating and and
Speaker 1: the importance of leaders for saying something. Yeah, So here's
Speaker 1: what I would say. I mean, if if you are
Speaker 1: a person of color in the United States today, you're hurting.
Speaker 1: You're hurting not just for what happened to Georgie Floyd,
Speaker 1: but that's like horrific, but that you're hurting for what's
Speaker 1: happened in your life, that you're cheating. You know, you're
Speaker 1: you have to teach your children not to run and
Speaker 1: to keep their hands in plain side. I don't have
Speaker 1: to teach my children to do that because I'm white.
Speaker 1: Like it's like there, it's just this aching about race.
Speaker 1: And so if we look at c e o s,
Speaker 1: you can watch them doing one of two things. If
Speaker 1: they're a white CEO, are are they primarily worried about?
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, Now is the time like what led
Speaker 1: up to what happened with George Floyd and we are
Speaker 1: now going to address it. And we all stand together.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. If I'm comfortable with my race,
Speaker 1: it's my job to go and fix racial inequality. It's
Speaker 1: not the job of people that are destabilized by race
Speaker 1: to have to fix it. It's like when people used
Speaker 1: to ask women to fix gender problems. No, no, no.
Speaker 1: If we're like we're the bird and we're dishouldering the
Speaker 1: burden of it, don't ask us to fix it. You'll
Speaker 1: fix it. I think that's exactly what we're seeing. And
Speaker 1: so we're seeing amazing CEO is stepping up. Now I'm saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: we got this. You're right. We have been waiting for
Speaker 1: others to fix it. Now we're going to fix it.
Speaker 1: And that feels like a pretty magnificent moment in our history.
Speaker 1: And that was Francis Fry. She's Professor of Technology and
Speaker 1: Operations Management at Harvard Business School, and a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago she was tapped to be Uber's first senior
Speaker 1: vice president of Leadership and Strategy. I loved hearing about
Speaker 1: the story about how a student got her to talk
Speaker 1: with Travis Kalinek of Uber. I mean, that's how she
Speaker 1: got involved in the company and what she did Jason,
Speaker 1: before she agreed to do the job talking to hundreds
Speaker 1: of Uber's workers, she had to feel good about the
Speaker 1: people who were there before willing to work with them,
Speaker 1: and she made a difference. That's clear. It's a different
Speaker 1: company because of what she did and a lot of
Speaker 1: those lessons there in her new book, it's called Unleashed.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra, be sure
Speaker 1: to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live Monday through
Speaker 1: Friday at two bm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jays and Kelly. This is
Speaker 1: Whooper