Joe Davis — Leadership Redefined: Embracing Generosity as Your Competitive Edge

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to the Becoming Preferred podcast where we focus on insights to help you level up your game and become the best version of you.

When you think about what makes a business or a leader valuable, it's easy to focus on strategy metrics and technical execution.

Most people associate top tier strategy consulting with pure analytics and spreadsheets.

Our guest today proves that the highest yield leadership strategy on earth is actually generosity.

Joe Davis spent nearly four decades at Boston Consulting Group serving as Managing director and Senior partner leading the BCG North America and co founding its public sector practice, guiding leaders right through the heart of the 2008 banking crisis.

He's helped build innovation hubs across Silicon Valley and now serves as an award winning author and speaker on a mission to redefine high performance leadership.

In his landmark book, the Leader, Joe shows us why treating people with deep intentional generosity isn't soft.

It's your greatest competitive advantage.

Please join me for my conversation with Joe Davis.

Well, hi Joe, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

Hi.

Thank you, Michael.

It's great to be here.

Now, where are we speaking to you from today, Joe?

Well, I'm in northern Minnesota, a small town named Cloquet, Minnesota, near Duluth.

Some people probably heard of Duluth, Cloque maybe.

Beautiful.

Been to Duluth a few times.

So I've been flying airplanes for about 40 years and I picked up an airplane out of Duluth that was made.

So it's kind of like an airplane capital of the world there.

Yeah, no, very beautiful.

And that northern Minnesota, some lots of lakes, lots of fishing.

So I'm glad you're having a good summer.

Beautiful summer.

I'm excited about our topic today.

We're talking about your book the Generous Leader and how that works and basically how leadership as evolving because a lot of us are entrepreneurs, a lot of us are business executives and we're always trying to figure out what's that latest tool that we can use to help our organizations, how can we build our cultures?

The book, you've obviously been thinking about it.

We're going to have it in the show notes.

But You've got a 40 year career working with Boston Consulting Group.

You went to, got a Harvard mba.

You've done and accomplished a lot of different things.

I thought one of the most interesting things was getting the 50th Super bowl over to San Francisco, being part of that.

That was fun.

Yeah, I'm jealous about that.

So we have, we maybe talk about that.

But let's talk, let's go back in time.

First, Joe Back in high.

I want you to go back to.

You're in high school.

You're deciding what I want to be when I grow up and go to college or university.

Take us back there.

What put you on the path that brought you to where you are today?

Yeah, it's an interesting question.

I listened to some of your shows, so I knew you'd ask me this and you know.

Well, first off, I grew up in Seattle, Washington.

Bellevue, Washington.

Went to Bellevue High School, which is not really relevant to anything.

I think there's a couple things.

As I thought about that I had jobs like from sixth grade.

I had two paper routes.

Now, a lot of your listeners may or may not remember what a paper route is, where we had a morning and an afternoon paper, which is unheard of.

Two papers in one town, which was a little bit of teaching me the value of hard work.

And then I started working once I was 16, at a restaurant.

Ice cream, it was called.

It was a food plus an ice cream place.

Like it was called Early Dawn Ice Cream.

You kind of like Farrell's if you made it out of Swensons.

And there the real thing that put me on the tracks, I had a mentor.

And I didn't think about this until your question, but the owners of the company, Roy was the guy.

He was intense and hardworking, but he cared about you.

And his wife Marie seemed to be nicer, but she wanted the numbers to get hit.

And they took me under their wing.

I started with them.

I was 16.

I was an assistant manager at 17.

And I managed two of the restaurants in Montana and Seattle area during college summers.

And really what was.

Obviously there's a couple points there, the value of hard work, that was clear.

I don't think I knew I was learning it, but I was learning it.

The value of mentors who push you because they want you.

You to be better.

And then I think and I one little silly thing, but I did want to go to Harvard Business School like from age 8.

I have no idea why.

I read about it somewhere now.

You know what?

10,000.

It's luck that you get in because I'm sure half the people that applied are actually good enough.

But only, you know, 8% get in or something.

So that was the only thing at that early days.

But I went to.

Went to college, went to business school.

And then that's how I landed the BCG career.

Everyone interviews for consulting firms.

Sounds silly.

Investment banks.

I got BCG offer the summer, stayed there.

And 37 years later, but the same thing to Keep me, people.

Why do you stay 37 years?

And obviously there's many reasons, but one of the main ones, I had a mentor from my second year until I actually was running North America, or maybe the north eventually stepped back, but.

But he was my mentor for 20.

And he also pushed me very hard.

Very hard.

But it was also, he's one of those guys that the minute he wasn't pushing you, you know, he wrote you off.

It was like, oh, that's a bummer.

Because you didn't, you know, because he wasn't.

You thought, okay, this person' going to really drive to improve themselves, deliver.

Yeah.

So what was he pushing you on, if you don't mind?

What would be a typical Something where he's making you stretch for me.

Couple things.

That's two.

Inchy thing.

One, and all of us could learn this.

He said, joe, you have tummy rumbles when something's wrong.

You can tell it, but you don't want to go deal with it because it's a hassle.

It's hard.

You're afraid.

Do not run from that.

The minute you feel that tummy ruble, go face it.

I know you're scared.

But that was pretty interesting because he was right.

This is, oh, I don't want to deal with it, but how easy all of us do that.

That was one thing that I remember early on.

The other one, he once said a story to me, I'll tell it all those little.

He said, joe, if I put you in a room with four white walls and.

And this other guy, not together, but it gave you the hardest BCG problem you come up with, this other guy would solve it every time and get out of the room.

You probably wouldn't solve it by yourself.

You won't get out of the room.

However, when you get out and now we get it done.

He'll never get it done.

Never.

But you will get it done every single time.

So there was a but.

He said, now I'm saying just because I'm saying that, keep pushing yourself to try to solve the problem.

So he also said, you know, just do not give up.

Do not quit.

You know, push, push, push to solve the analytics.

But the message that was positive was you actually are incredible at collaborating, teaming with others.

You're willing to leverage them and work with others and willing to put people that are better than you in different place, in different aspects around you.

Don't lose that.

Those are good advice.

And we're getting that from you, from your mentor as well.

So we're killing Two birds with one stone, so to speak.

That's good.

So let's talk about leadership.

I remember, you know, I grew up in the one minute manager.

You grow up at the same time all the different management by walking around, there's all these leadership, different styles.

Tom Peters In Search of Excellence.

These are all books that I know you've read and gone through and became themes.

How have you seen it evolve in leadership and then how did it evolve from?

You know, when you're building your career, when you were first put in positions of leadership and then where do you see it moving to today?

And you've added an element, the generous leader which we want to unpack for sure.

But how have you seen it evolve over that 37 year career?

Well, you know, I think at the bottom line and you say the thing that's evolved is that the work life world has blurred.

BlackBerry started it.

Now it's 247 every day.

And Covid and now AI is going to only accelerate it even more.

And when the work life world evolved, you as a leader of all the people that working need to bring a bit of their human self to work and they want to see a bit of the human from you.

So the tough guy, everything's great.

I know all the answers those days just don't resonate.

No certain genius who's got a lot of companies but it seemed to collapse right and left as people quit on him too.

But the tough guy, I think a Jack Welch who someone said no, Jack, Joe, Jack, Kel cared very deeply but it was all a tough guy thing.

You couldn't get the tough guy world.

That world has evolved.

So that's a evolved.

That's what I've seen evolve over time.

Especially this whole who are the people I'm working with and teaming with or that work for me?

How am I connecting with what matters to them so I can inspire and motivate them as opposed to dictating what you do.

And the other thing that's changed is you say no, they just keep telling they have a job.

But the ability, especially in the tech world to kind of change this is the ability to change jobs went through the roof as well as the world.

We didn't have a guaranteed life in Japan, but IBM once you worked there, you were there forever, you know, cog in the wheel.

So that got broken as well as employees said well wait a minute, I don't like working here, especially in Silicon Valley.

I can walk down the street and now with COVID you can walk to Dallas and Not move your house and go work for another employee.

So I think two things have happened.

The work life blur because of technology and the ability to quit or the need to retain your best people.

That's no, it's interesting.

And you use some examples like Jack Welchley.

You know, these were all the stalwarts of business, but it was more, it.

Seemed like a command and control structure.

And the way I would describe it, I was working for some of the banks around Y2K era.

And my philosophy has always been, you know, the old philosophy was there was this pyramid and you're at the top, the leaders at the top and driving everything down the organization.

To me, I always thought let's invert the pyramid and that leader should be at the bottom supporting the organization and to be, let's use your words, generous with that organization.

And it takes a different kind of leader and there's an evolution to that.

And I think I'd be interested in examples of who does it well in today's world.

So for instance, we see, even in our politics we're seeing the old style command and control and it doesn't work well.

We get decisions that are not by consensus.

We get unilateral thinking, we get disharmony.

You know, culturally look at it without picking a team or a side.

But our results, we gotta look at the results.

And if we look at our results, we've got a divided company or that is country or countries because we've got different ideals and different plans of debt from a leadership point of view.

And there's those who want to follow the old.

I want that strong leader.

And we still have a lot of biases because of that.

Right.

And people are worried.

They want to keep those old structures.

Is there an example of a leader that you in your mind that is generous has evolved into the kind of leader can you think, or any of that?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I can give you some examples.

I just want to first comment on your comment on government, the country.

Because I did worry, oh my gosh, this new, not this old attitudes trying to come back.

Is my theme generous leader going to be any.

The fact of the matter is it's just gone the other way.

People say, wait a minute here, they want to talk about that.

And maybe if you work in the White House, there's the way it is.

But the rest of us are still employees somewhere.

And you know, we got.

We gotta be inspired to stay there.

That hasn't changed.

So a couple people, I will tell one guy named Scott Kirby, CEO of United who?

Stories about in my book.

And he's a.

He's.

I can't remember.

He's military guy.

I can't blank him, which I think he was Air Force.

He's not some lightweight guy.

He went through the Air Force Academy, blah, blah, blah.

And he's pretty impressive as what you and I would call it, whether you're going to call it humble or someone that listens.

Can I get a quick couple quick stories?

One thing.

Yeah, please.

Told me one thing.

He told me when Covid hit.

He said he wanted to go on the video and tell his town hall and tell everybody.

I don't know when we're going to fly again.

We'll do our best to take care of everybody and furlough if we have to and.

But not fire people.

And his team said, you can't say you don't know.

You're the CEO.

You have to have all the answers.

Old school.

He said, this one's obvious a guy, but I don't.

So what do you mean to go lie?

These people aren't stupid out there.

And so Scott just said, you know, humbly.

He said, I don't know.

Boom, boom, boom.

Another quick story.

When after George Floyd's shooting and murder, Scott's wife was on a flight and the captain came out, said, oh, Mrs. Kirby, it's so great to see you.

You know, thank you.

I'd be on my flight and I just love your husband, not the boss.

And I would do anything to fall for United.

She goes, why so?

Oh, and it was a black female.

And she said after the George Floyd murder, he called every captain black person of color just to check in.

Didn't have an answer, didn't have anything to do, just to check in.

Simple, small act of humility, caring about what was important to them at that moment, not to him.

And it was a huge impact.

So I can.

We'll wait till we go.

I have other stories about Scott, but he's very good at engaging with the people, listening to them, thinking about where they are humble acts.

That's one example.

Another great example.

If you.

Sorry, I'm picking Covid, but arnie Sorensen, the CEO of Marriott, this one, you can see it on YouTube.

But when Covid hit, he was dying of cancer.

He was in the middle of chemo and he has a video there, it's bald.

And it went on and on about all the articles about it, but he talked about same thing.

I don't know where we are, where, when it's going to reopen all the hotels are shut.

I'm sorry, we'll furlough you.

We won't fire anybody.

We're taking pay cuts at the executive level and we'll just all be in this together.

And he was, you knew he was dying of cancer.

Here he is bald, but didn't hide it.

And it was a very humble, vulnerable talk, you know, another example of.

Not the Jack Welch bottle, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

Inspired.

Inspired everybody.

And even in the tech world, I was once.

Someone asked me once, what about all these guys?

Zuckerberg, Musk, blah, blah, blah.

I said, fine.

There are some people that create a technology and a product that's so unique, they get to ride it for a long time.

But I don't know about you.

I have a lot of friends whose kids went into Facebook for three years and they said, I'm out of here because they like the resume, they like the money, but they were out.

They want to work in that environment.

Whereas the other guy is Satya Nadella.

You know, he turned around Microsoft after Ballmer took it nowhere.

And Ballmer is the old school.

And it was culture that he talked about.

No more silos.

We're gonna question each other and ask and listen to each other.

We're going to work together.

He was still tough, he still had clear strategy and he still expected excellence.

But he did it more in a team environment versus a command and control.

So there's.

Sorry, there's a few examples.

Oh, it makes sense.

Your pilot example with United.

That's.

Isn't that incredible?

One of your key principles, that's your generous inclusion, inclusive to invite collaboration, show respect, which they're doing.

And then you talked about generous communication with the CEO of Marriott.

Yeah, that's.

You're connecting.

You're being real, right?

And authentic.

And I think it matters with the generations.

Like, I don't know what you've noticed.

You and I are baby boomers.

And we saw Kennedy get shot, we saw Martin Luther King get shot.

We had black and white baby photos.

That's that we.

Black and white tv.

We watched the Ed Self.

We saw the Beatles arrive, right.

And sing on television.

So the other generations think that was, you know, lasted forever.

And you have all these different generations now.

We have five generations of workers out there and balancing work, life, balance.

And so the millennials and the Gen X and the Y's, they're all products of our upbringing and they don't want to be us.

They don't want to be us.

Now you, you talked about paper routes.

You know, I Whenever I talk to successful professionals, I always ask them if they're a certain age.

I go, did you have a paper out?

The answer is always yes.

I can almost predict it.

That's really cool.

Yeah, same for me.

Because you had to learn to deliver the papers, then you had to collect.

Then you had to go knock on the door and get the money from Mrs. Johnson and get her $2.50 a week or whatever that was.

And hopefully you got a tip at Christmas time or some cookies or something like that.

So I remember those.

I did the same thing.

I'll tell you the other thing that you can interrupt is if I had the morning round, if I delivered late, in other words, the dad had gone to work.

Oh, my.

I heard about it.

So customer service mattered too.

If you deliver after they left, they can't read their paper.

You were mad.

You gotta be on time.

Yeah.

You were more important than the milkman.

Yeah.

So with the different generations, has that been part of it, why it's evolved that way?

I call it consciousness, and evolvement is called eq.

So, you know, I have a new book, we were talking about it earlier coming out about staying relevant, and I say EQ is the new mba.

You've gone through a traditional and had Harvard mba.

You work on cases, you're looking at analytics, you're working on all those details.

Do you think with the generations, it's kind of forced, that evolution?

Like, I took calculus and trig when I was in college, they're teaching it in high school.

And now I can just simply ask my AI tool or say, my professor said to me, the reason you need to learn how to do this in long form is one day you won't have your calculator with you.

Well, that's not true.

I've had that one the other direction.

I've had it with me the whole time.

And it does even more now.

I have my personal assistant.

So, you know, it's like school.

If you were math and science, you went to, you were in one track.

If you were vocational, you went another way in a different truck.

Today it seems like we're looking for creativity.

We're looking for innovation.

We're looking at, can you see the big picture?

Can you think?

To me, it's an evolution of our consciousness.

Even as society, I mean, you know, black people got the right to vote in 1965, and we're still challenging those things, those norms.

Where we've evolved, there's still part of society wants to go back versus the younger folks that are More idealistic.

They're looking for purpose.

What are you saying?

Well, a couple of things I think someone once asked me, isn't it just the young kids will grow up one day like us and have a mortgage and go back to normal, whatever that meant, you know, our normal and just do what you're told.

I don't believe that actually, but I don't.

It's not just sure.

I think it's because the world has changed.

I mentioned the technology.

Now you could be on all the time.

It changed the workforce.

Now you work at 9 at night at home.

So now you got to figure out how to draw boundaries or your life's just screwed.

You know, we, we drew a boundary by going home or working harder than going.

Right.

So the technology made a big change.

The other thing, you probably know this data too, but all these Gallup Survey, Deloitte survey is that 40 plus percent of the gen Z millennials are stressed every day.

Every day they're feeling anxious.

See I think what also happened is we got to the next.

Then the social media thing and now you picked your phone.

You just go like that.

You can be depressed because Iran bombed this and they bombed that and this or Trump said that or someone else didn't take long some shooting.

Now your whole like holy crap.

So this is why I think that this generation is a little bit about wait a minute.

First off, you better connect me with you boss as a person because nothing else is.

These machines are helping and the idealistic that I don't know, we'd have to really look.

I think that you could find people that had talked about purpose but sure the ideals are always different.

The younger people that Mark might change.

The values, it's a value difference.

But the value of how am I getting engaged?

Well you talk to me in advance about being with your grandchildren on Saturday they would think even harder about how am I going to be engaged with my family because otherwise I'm on all the time.

And we were not all we could go home now.

I worked all the time.

You probably did too.

But not everybody worked as many hours.

You didn't have to.

It's your paper route point.

So I think that's one of the big changes is the technology is forced to and the social media and the world just comes at you so fast.

So now the stress is a different level.

The anxiety that's real.

That is.

You've seen the charts.

You can see the anxiety in young people and, and the, the phone, the ubiquity of the phone and social Media.

It's the most perfect line in the world.

You don't need two dots and have a partner just say, oh, that's a line.

This is a real line year after year.

And so that's I think the biggest change.

Which means as a manager, or not even a manager, because a manager can just do their job.

But as a leader, you really want to be a leader.

Like, wow, people say I want to follow you, you know, like that black captain.

I will do follow Scott and united anywhere within reason.

Of course.

If you want to be that kind of leader, you have to connect with your people.

It's just you have to, you can be a fine manager, you can get a long ways up.

I'm not saying that won't happen.

But to be really an inspiring leader and move mountains, you need to be connecting.

Yeah.

And I think thinking of them first, that's why I say it's an EQ item.

Yes.

I think that's the course action and it's the.

And I'm curious because realm of with AI affecting us.

To me, the AI is an application tool that just like every other you and I have lived through several disruptions.

Right.

We saw computers, we've seen how that works.

Everybody, oh, the end of the world.

Well, now it's, it can now allow us to do even more.

And if you look at the core essence of your book, you've got generous communication, generous listening, include generous inclusion, generous ally, generous development.

We're going to pick a couple of those apart generous moments.

Give up the mask, which I love that one.

Those are evolutionary thinking things.

So I'm curious.

Let's talk about.

I call it debunking the weakness myth.

You came from a high stakes consulting firm like BCG and they're famously intense competitions there.

You've got to produce.

There's a lot of executives out there that and entrepreneurs hear the word generous and maybe they worry about it being too soft or avoiding hard conversations or lowering expectations.

How do you define generosity in a high performance environment?

Yeah, well, it could be in a low performance environment too, but this is actually very relevant consulting.

So I define generous leadership as really you, the leader given of yourself freely, without expectation of direct benefit, to help others grow and develop and thrive at their full potential.

Now, the obvious point, first off is that they're humming.

Your team's humming.

Oh, guess what, you're humming too.

So there is benefit.

But at the minute the people think, oh, you're just doing it because you want to be better.

Good luck actually really getting them to follow you.

So that's some how I think of generosity, but that's how I define it.

And I think, I think actually that's been around for a long time because you can come back to you.

It's your inverted pyramid.

You as the leader think about, okay, everybody else has got to be humming.

It's not soft, someone's, oh, it's all fluffy crowds, clouds and unicorns and ponies.

That's not true.

If you're really doing what I say, saying you're going to develop people.

If people need to hear clear, direct, tough feedback you will give them that.

I learned this when I was like 24, maybe 25.

I was Procter and Gamble sales manager.

I started sales rep and got promoted three career reps working for me.

They were like 40 years old.

I thought they were old guys, but I now know they weren't.

But I was 25 so they were I with them every, every two weeks and I this one guy was at the doing his year interview.

I'd written down everything he should have worked on according to what, what I observed.

But who am I.

But according to the manual I'd been taught with and I get about a minute into this thing or two May.

So wait a minute.

Joe probably swore like what the blank.

You ride with me every two weeks and you've never told me anything.

What the hell is going on?

I mean, whoa.

I just, you know, that was now I was scared first point, I didn't.

Who am I to tell him something?

But the interesting thing is that guy was sitting there and then I write it all down at the end.

That was massively indirect and not on point, not at the moment but.

And he was telling me though wait a minute.

I would have preferred to have the feedback throughout the time where I was afraid this 40 year old guy thinks I'm a dumb snot nosed kid.

You know, if my, my boss said never again do you write after the guy left, never again do you write a review where every word on that page or they don't haven't heard already.

No, no, it makes sense.

Well and I think your book speaks to it.

Well, generosity means holding high standards while giving people the resources, the mentorship and psychological safety that they need to reach those standards and you take care of it.

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And now back to my conversation with Joe Davis.

Let's talk about leading through high stake crisis.

Back in 2008 you worked with Sheila Blair in the FDIC in the eye of the banking crisis.

So everything's on fire.

Human instinct is to retreat, protect resources, micromanage.

We always kind of take, we circle the wagons, right?

How does a leader stay generous when the stakes are existential?

Quite frankly, what's different?

I mean if your team is not humming now, you might have to be more clear on the expectations, more clear on lines, more clear on time.

I mean the standard management stuff, that's changing one bit.

But if you're not inspiring your people, listening to them, motivating them to deliver in those moments with some humbleness, good luck.

I'll tell another story, another friend of mine, this I was asking him when he takes down his mass and showed some vulnerability and he said the thing is, I'm afraid to say, I don't know, that's like the simplest thing in the world except we were trained not to say that.

And he said if I'm working with the team and just think if the team were in a crisis and they turned to me, want help and I don't know the answer.

He said I'll leave the room before I'll say anything.

Now that's very unproductive.

And he said one day I stayed in the room, said oh well, you know, I don't know the answer either.

He said it was like the energy went oh, boss doesn't know, we don't know, nobody knows.

Creativity started flowing but what he did was remove their roadblocks of admitting they didn't know and so nothing was getting done.

So I tell you, in the crisis Showing that level of humbleness or humanity, probably even more valuable because if there's a roadblock and you don't have time, you can't be futzing around, you know, you can't just dictate to what I mean, sure, yeah, it's a three week thing.

You can say, come on guys, we gotta do this and this, this, everybody gets that.

But, but even then, you better have earned some of the right for them to follow you.

Yeah, they don't need the panic.

They don't need to see you freaking out.

My hair's on fire.

They want to see you radiate that composure so that they can go.

The calmness and go, hey, we're gonna get through this.

It's a challenge.

We'll figure it out.

And I think that's.

And if they can be part of the solution, I think that's, you know.

Yeah.

Oh, that's.

You just said the other element.

I think that underpins my sense of a real generous leader.

What we're talking about is study after study.

And every CEO I talk to is they're exceptional, asking questions and listening to the answer.

And that's just what you, if I'm not included, you asking me, what do you think we ought to do?

And I used to say at work, I said, the BCG years, because we're supposed to drive change through our client, but there'd always be no ologists.

Oh, it's not going to work.

And I said, most of those neurologists actually know something you don't know.

And without knowing that, you can't solve it and we won't deliver.

So you engage the skeptics and uncover the nose and then work to find it.

But rarely are they just a pain in the neck.

Rarely are they just blocking you.

They actually know that the knob on that door won't open so that you want to go to that door, but you can't.

But you're complaining about.

Oh, you just think I'm complaining about the door's broken.

Yeah, it is.

You know, I mean, it's a silly example.

I just think an example.

So this is even more important in a crisis.

You just, you said the word engage.

But.

And listen.

Ask and listen.

No, and delve into the question.

Let's talk about.

In your book, the Generous Leader, you break down seven specific ways leaders can give of themselves for an entrepreneur running at 100 miles an hour, which of these seven give the highest immediate return on leadership energy?

Well, I think, I think generous listening curiosity, which really is ask Questions.

And yeah, just.

I could go on story after story.

But yeah, I agree.

That's the best way to learn instantly.

And especially if you got.

You're just you and you got 19 people out there, 47 people or 200 people.

They know a lot, you know, but the arrogance, which is for stubbornness or lack of humbleness to not say, I don't know it all.

And I ask, I just think that's the number one.

And yeah, and I think listening means being present in that moment.

It's actually.

And I've been guilty of that, like, you know, even raising kids and family.

We both, we talked about this earlier.

Now when my grandkids come in and talk to me, I stop working on the computer and I stop and I look at them in the eyes and talk to them.

I'm fortunate.

I get to spend Fridays with Nana and Papa Fridays.

And it's challenging because sometimes you got other things on your mind.

And I don't want to read the Gruffalo for the 50th millionth time, but to make it come alive again or to go through that process and really enjoy the joy that comes from that.

So let's talk about mentoring and scaling the next generation.

You spent decades mentoring elite talent working alongside startup founders at bcg.

What separates leaders to build enduring institutions from those that, say, burn out early?

That's interesting.

I would think the main thing, the same thing we're saying, those that burn out early are those that think they can do it all themselves.

Yeah.

You know, and I know they're typically brilliant and they typically have all the great ideas, but just like I tell people, when you're a first manager and you manage three people, if they screw up, you could stay up all night and get it done.

You know what the three.

But when it's 10, and I don't know where the line is, but at 10, you can't stay up all night and get it done.

So now if you're really going to be.

You're really going to win in your company, there's all the things you have to do with those people.

Develop them, grow them, Pick the best ones.

Let the ones that aren't performing the level you expect go.

None of this doesn't stop.

No.

But I think that's the biggest difference is those that leverage their teams massively.

Yes.

Yeah.

I'm working with a startup right now.

This guy's an AI company.

It's great.

Guys had three startups.

Startups.

He's very successful.

But I just know it's getting A little bit bigger.

And the other day he said to me, I want to get the system in place to monitor what everybody's doing.

I said, what you want to know?

They go to the bathroom.

It was just felt like that.

He said, well, I don't mean that.

But I said, what are you talking about?

He said, when I was running this other company, we got to a thousand people, and I discovered 100 weren't doing anything useful.

I said, what answer.

That's corporate America, my friend.

You just.

Not everybody is doing something.

It is a job.

Work.

I would say he missed 15%.

Yeah, yeah.

I said, fine.

But he wanted to micromanage this thing, and no chance.

No chance.

So delegate.

Don't micromanage the standard things, give away.

The credit, delegate the authority, celebrate their wins.

Public.

And it's our egos that I think that get in there.

And we've all met leaders with egos, and it's all about them.

And you know what I've learned a long time ago is if you don't get the issues raised, you got to be able to have a safe environment where you can raise issues.

Then you get better decisions.

When we don't do that, we surround ourselves with yes people.

And I know you've seen it.

Just tell me what I want to hear.

And I get that all the time.

Work with CEOs like G. You mentioned Jack Welch.

I've done work for some of these clients.

They all ask me all the time, what do you think about this?

What do you think about that?

And I tell them, and they go, why won't my own people tell me that?

And it's because they're so busy kissing their butts there or playing the politics to it, where, as outsiders, we don't have to kiss that.

But we're there for the engagement.

We're there to tell them the truth.

Truth and how that works.

I want to talk about.

I want to get this in because it's.

And like you say, don't be a lone ranger in your business.

Start.

We all need sidekicks, right?

So start developing your sidekicks.

Let's talk about overcoming executive loneliness.

Many CEOs founders feel very isolated at the top.

They always feel like they have to be on and have all the answers.

How can leaders give generously to others without running their own batteries down to zero?

I'm laughing because a friend of mine, when I, she read my book, she goes, joe, you just forgot the take care of yourself chapter.

I said, oh, very good.

We're all guilty of this.

We're all.

Because we just keep doing it.

Right.

Yeah.

You know what I would say to that?

And it's gonna be more practical.

Answer is you individually need to find your recharging thing.

I had a friend that used to say the glass gets half full or half empty.

And he refilled the glass up for me.

It's pretty simple.

I like to run.

I needed to run.

I love to run.

And so I exercise.

But I just think it.

You're gonna have to.

You said loneliness and you said recharge are two different things.

Loneliness.

I'm probably not.

Well, I'm not qualified.

I mean, get some circle of friends in which you trust, you know, but the.

But the recharging.

I just think everyone's got to find their recharging mechanisms.

And you do not compromise those.

I mean, you do in a crisis for a couple of weeks kind of thing, but you do not compromise those.

You know, if you read it, more power to you.

That's really good.

If it's running fine and you got to think about it carefully, you can't say, well, I want to play golf three times a week.

Because that's a lot of hours, you know, so.

Sorry.

Some days you have to give up.

Just if you really are doing what you and I are talking about.

No, it's.

For me, it's spin class.

I go to sp.

My knees.

I used to run and can't.

The knees wear out.

And I go to spin five, six times a week and I enjoy it.

It's 50 to 60 minutes of high intensity.

And I go in dragging and come out just elevated, feeling great.

The endorphins have kicked in and it makes me feel better.

I had one manager, she's a partner at bcg, worked on a project with me, and she would literally at 5:30, say, I'm done.

No, not done.

She wasn't done.

I'm leaving.

And she'd go work out, then had she have a quick meal, then she'd be back for her team at seven.

Now that's a little tricky because if they wanted to work till 7, then go to dinner, it wasn't really fair.

But she was very disciplined.

This is how I quote, unquote, recharge.

But the main point is she was disciplined about it.

She had her thing and did it.

Yeah.

Let's focus.

Let's dive in on generous moments where you make small acts of acknowledgment, important moments to make maybe a big impact.

So I call it the microhabits of generous leadership.

So you've got all these little habits.

Right?

Right.

So what is one microhabit a listener can start tomorrow morning.

Costs nothing.

Takes them less than five minutes, but fundamentally shifts their team dynamic.

I'll give you.

I'll give you three real fast.

One, if someone does a job well done, take a moment to write an email to them or text.

But email's better because they can print it and just congratulate them if you.

Even better if you can copy your boss.

Copying the team may be a problem.

You know, one time I was talking to someone who was writing a book about leadership because.

Oh, that's amazing.

You said that.

My daughter.

Last night I got an email about a great job or yesterday at work and we sat there at dinner and dissected the email.

We were so proud of her.

She was a stupid little.

Not really.

But a stupid email on a job well done.

And the whole family would talking.

That's what the other thing I would say is if you can remember their birthday, you want a simple one, get the birthday, put in your damn calendar.

And then I.

What I do is I write in the subject line, happy birthday, Jimmy.

Hope you have a great day.

You don't have to write a novel.

And the people if I miss now, even though I retired, I still do a lot of my.

Oh my God, it was like a different year.

I didn't get your note.

So that.

No, I tell you.

Well, I called the first one a gratitude drop too, as well.

So just a.

Hey, great job.

Here's what it did.

Here was its impact to the organization.

Love your thinking.

And then on birthdays, I got a good friend of mine, he phones on your birthday and he always calls.

He tells me, he goes like, I don't really want to talk to them all because I got not too much time.

So I call when I know I'm going to get a voicemail and he dumps it into the voicemail and just go, hey, Joe, just wanted to call.

Wish you a happy birthday.

I hope it's a great one.

Hope you get spoiled.

Great having you on the team.

And they're getting their voice or personal.

They don't delete those voice.

Those ones kind of say.

But like I say with the email.

As well, you're dating yourself on voicemail.

You know, the CEO of BCG2, two CEOs ago used to call every partner.

It was stunning.

It was stunning.

There's one point, he was like 500, 700, maybe a thousand by time he quit.

And I'm sure he got a lot of voice but fine, yeah, let's talk.

About giving up the mask.

Be emotionally accessible with authenticity and vulnerability.

I learned this as a speaker when I started my career over 30 years ago.

I was younger.

I didn't want to show any weakness whatsoever.

And it was always, here we are.

These superhuman people see what we do, and they see us on stage, see us with books, and they.

There's a Persona that's crafted and constructed and same way in our roles in leadership, whatever they're crafted and constructed, we manage those Personas and behind the scenes, you know, marriages could be falling apart.

The vulnerability, things all happening, and it's tough to be vulnerable.

Once I brought in the authenticity and vulnerability to it, it lost the slickness, but resonated more.

And to your point, the connection word connected with my audiences more and my work went through the roof.

It just kept us busy, and it's what keeps us busy today.

And it's a hard thing to do because you have to have faith in that in order to do that.

What's a good place to start?

Can you think of any examples of, hey, giving up that mask and going, and this is who I am, and should there be some boundaries around that?

What should they be and how can we make that work?

Well, I told you the story of the guy that said, I don't know in the room.

I mean, the simplest way to start to give up the mask is just say, I don't know.

If you don't know now, if it's three plus three and you should know the answer, then you better not say duh.

But otherwise, the simple I don't know frees so many other people.

The boundaries point's interesting that I tend to cry, and I only cried when I was leading North America.

But someone said to me, Joe, you're 62 years old, you're a white male, and you're the head of BCG North America.

You can cry all you want.

It ain't gonna cost you anything.

I mean, if I was a female, 33 year old, or maybe any, you know, the social norms make that hard, but you can push past those a little bit.

So one simple one is the.

I don't know.

The other thing I have to tell you not to say like that, I'm sorry, but if you're really gonna ask questions and you talked about it, understand where they're coming from, what are they saying?

Listen to the words they're saying and process them them.

You have to be humble enough to ask the question and to shut up, which is a different Point.

So I think this, I don't know, is the easiest example.

Just stepping across the line and sharing a little bit of your human self.

I'll get real intense for one minute.

You and I talked about this at the beginning.

My dad was gay.

And for many years I've never talked about it.

And then finally talked a little some people.

And I was at the Pride Network at bcg Pride Network meeting in Chicago.

And I said, okay, I'm going to tell these guys say this now.

It's very dangerous because I didn't want them to think I know what their life's like because I didn't exactly.

But I said it, I said it.

Actually prepped my chief of staff, happened to be gay.

He'll prep me.

You know, I prepped it carefully.

But I said, I don't really live your life, but I have a little inkling because my father was gay.

I'll tell you, that group of people, there's like a hundred of them, they, their whole opinion of me changed.

And by the way, in a good way, you know, because first off, I said that out loud.

Knowledge that I don't know if I broke up or not, but.

And they were my friend or whatever friends, but you know, they, to this day I get noticed.

That was so nice, that meeting in Chicago.

I've never forgotten that.

You know, that's, that's a little big step.

You got to think about your step across your line.

But once you make one step, you can make another, you can make another.

It's not so hard.

And that's what makes us human.

And I, I think that's the biggest part.

And we talked about this.

Even in the age of AI, with all the AI tools, you've seen the tools come and go.

You've seen computers, PCs come into the market.

You've seen a thing.

It's the humanity.

And that's the part I love about what you're book kind of covers is it's an innovative, heartfelt, seven part guide to collaborative actions that people can take, all right?

To elevate their heart and lead with humanity.

Because that's going to be the new competitive advantage.

I think what AI can't do is be responsible.

It can't be accountable.

It just isn't.

Can't connect.

Really, truly.

No, no, it can't.

It can't read the room, okay?

It can't look for those verbal clues.

It can't be intuitive, all right?

It can read patterns.

It's great.

It can create content, it can create all.

It can analyze Those are great.

That's where we should elevate and use those things.

But I really think you've nailed it and it's a perfect time for the book.

The book's called the Generous Leader.

Seven Ways to Give of Yourself for Everyone's Game by Joe Davis.

And Joe, thanks for being our guest.

Lots of great insights, lots of good value that we can all take back and I love where this is all going and I'm glad that you're still staying relevant.

I know you've left your career in the consulting world, but now you're speaker and if people want to get hold of you, we'll have everything in the show notes.

So if they want to talk to you about speaking engagements, help to inform and educate their leadership teams.

I know you got a great program.

Thanks again for being our guest today.

Thank you very much, Michael.

It's a lot of fun.

I appreciate it.

As you're listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that's caught your attention and why does it.

Matter so much to you?

And who is one person who can.

Share that idea with either sharing this.

Episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is that generosity drives performance.

True leadership generosity isn't soft.

It holds high standards while providing the mentorship resources and psychological safety people need to excel.

Or maybe it's that small axe.

Build trust microhabits like sending a prompt thank you email, remembering birthdays or simply saying I don't know, create massive alignment.

And long term trust.

Thank you for listening, for learning and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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