Being A Generous Leader, With Joe Davis

For Joe Davis, a generous leader is someone who selflessly helps others experience profound growth and unleash their fullest potential. They do not prioritize their personal agendas but are dedicated to elevating those around them. In this conversation with J.R. Lowry, the award-winning author and speaker shares what it means to bring generosity to leadership, which results in better communication, inclusivity, authenticity, and collaboration within a team. Joe also emphasizes the importance of providing consistent feedback, both positive and constructive, to further guide others in achieving their personal successes.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/joe-davis.

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Being A Generous Leader, With Joe Davis

Former Head Of Boston Consulting Group North America

My guest is Joe Davis. Joe is an award-winning author and speaker on a mission to bring generosity to leadership. Joe spent 38 years at Boston Consulting Group where he served as Managing Director and Senior Partner. In his new book, The Generous Leader, he offers a seven-part guide to heartfelt and collaborative actions that aim to transform the reader into a generous leader. We’ll be focusing on Joe’s new book and its many lessons.

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Joe, welcome, and thank you for joining me on the show. I know we had this scheduled for a few weeks ago. I’m glad we’re able to get it rescheduled so quickly, so thank you.

Thank you, J.R. I’m sure it was me. I did international traveling, and then I had a bout of the flu, so I apologize. I’m glad we’re together.

Introducing Joe Davis

It comes with the territory when you travel internationally. You were at BCG for 38 years. That is a very long time.

It is amazing. I know you’ve been in consulting too, and it’s not typically an old man’s game. I wouldn’t say old man. That’s not fair, but it’s not typically for over 45 or 50-year-olds in consulting.

It certainly gets a lot harder to travel in those crazy ways like you do when you’re working as an associate in a consulting firm and running all over the place, which I certainly did in my time there.

I loved it. It was actually 37, but we can round it up to 38. I think I already rounded it to 37 though.

Give it an extra year for good measure. You’ve seen a lot in your business career. Are there 2 or 3 periods that stand out most to you in terms of macro-level change?

One that stands out massively, and if you ask this question any other time, you get the same answer, which is the COVID experience. I won’t repeat it, but the fact that we all worked one way for that long, and all of a sudden, one day, the whole thing shifted, especially as you and I commented on in my consulting world, where people travel 4 to 5 days a week. That was a massive shift. With it, it’s interesting, there’s huge productivity during those two years, but it wasn’t healthy productivity.

People got out of bed at 7:00 and started working. It was working all the time, but that was not great. The fallout as far as trying to get better balance, which we’ll see if it lasts or not, but I think that’s one of the positive outcomes of this. I don’t know if I’m into hybrid work, but I’m into flexible work. You and I are both old enough to know that sometimes the plumber comes, and you and your spouse are both working. Who’s going to be there for the plumber? It was a hassle.

Now the world doesn’t end if someone stays home to meet the plumber. They can still work, except for the ten minutes they let the person in the door. I think that was the most dramatic in so many ways. I will also say in the context for me, it was probably a culmination of many years of learning, but the power of a lot of things, the power of connecting personally as best you can with your teams, and you could do it through this machine we’re on, the power of vulnerability because nobody knew an answer.

Any leader that pretended they knew an answer, everyone knew they were full of crap. You couldn’t even BS your way through it. It’s this whole concept of vulnerability or authenticity. The other thing I’d say for me was understanding others’ lived experiences. You and I mentioned a friend of ours, Debbie Lovich, who once called me and said, “Joe, you’re a senior partner. You don’t know what the hell life is like for a second-year associate right now.” Don’t even pretend to make decisions. Get on the phone with someone, or in that case, Zoom, which was very eye-opening. I thought I was always pretty good at trying to understand where someone else is coming from, but a 60-year-old and a 24-year-old are quite different.

You tell a story in the book related to your conversation with Debbie, who we were mentioning before we started recording, about how a guy was propped up in his bed, and you’re like, “Why are you doing work from bed?” He’s like, “My wife and I split the office or split whatever room there was a desk in.” That was the way it had to be.

They had a living room with a kitchen-attached kind of thing, and then a bedroom. She got the couch one week with the dining table, and he got the other one. I’ll tell you even worse. It was very interesting when people started coming in. The 22 and 23-year-olds were in our offices as fast as they could be. In Chicago, San Francisco, or New York, they typically lived in apartments probably as big as your room or my room right now, so they would rather be in an office where there are nice windows, other humans, etc.

I was thinking, in my industry, many years ago, consulting was thought of as purely strategy stuff. You come up with the idea, you write the PowerPoint deck, you leave it, and off you go. That’s changed. That didn’t change overnight, but that has shifted massively that people say, “Help me get results,” which is not a consulting thing. I think you always have to get results, but you often think in business, whatever industry, what is your role, and is it driving towards whatever the organization’s mission and business outcome is.

If you’re not doing something that drives you towards that, think a bit about what you’re doing. It can be a very supportive role as long as it works up to that. The other big shift I saw over time in my career at BCG was the drive. As one client once said 30 years ago, “Okay, this is a great idea. Now, do it.” I was on the team when the partner said, “We don’t do it.” He said, “If we knew how to do it, we wouldn’t have hired you.” Now, you’ve got to get it done.

I certainly saw a bit of that transitioning even in my own time. I was with McKinsey from 1994 to 2006. I think about the early part of my time there where we had this library in the office, we had reference librarians, and part of our advantage was we had subscriptions to every industry publication known to man. That was how we got information that our clients couldn’t easily get for themselves. That would form a lot of the fact base in the early work when you’d bring in the industry context. Now, you go to ChatGPT and get that in seconds.

It’s the combination of the bar being raised in general a lot more for what consultants need to do to stand out and the fact that you’re not doing strategy. You’re doing strategy, you’re doing operations, you’re doing IT, you’re doing project management, you’re doing a host of innovation and acceleration things, and all sorts of things. I look at the way McKinsey is structured today, given that I still have some contemporaries who were there, and it’s a massively more complicated business than it was.

Doing Something Interesting With People

You’ve also said something interesting and important if we go back to business and leadership, which is you could have that incredible library, but McKinsey in those days nor BCG was getting things done. We had to learn as well as any business leader, how do I get this done through my people? Except for maybe the new tech world where you can come up with things on that computer and someone types it, but then you’ve still got to advance it. Somebody’s got to help you advance it. Our industry was slower in how we got it done. All the intelligence in the world doesn’t solve it if people don’t understand where you want them to go or are motivated to go there or inspired to go there, whatever word you want to use.

When I was thinking about this question for you, I was thinking about my own career. You said COVID, and my mind immediately, and I’ve worked in financial services, since the crisis in 2008. I’ve certainly put COVID in my top three. The other one I would put in there is dot-com boom, dot-com bust. Being in consulting at a time, you were probably seeing it in your time at BCG when everybody was leaving. Everybody was going to do a startup. Everybody was going to join a startup. Most of them were back looking for a job a year or two later. Some of them had incredible success. I feel like that was the first era of this insane startup culture that’s become much more prominent and regular now. Back then, it was this crazy new thing that everybody was jumping out of the corporate world for.

That’s so true. When I started work, I went to Procter & Gamble. You either went to Procter & Gamble or GE if you could. Those were the blue chip that eventually if you made it there for a while, you’d be senior somewhere. It’s funny, I didn’t mention those because I think about, at least at BCG, those times were so crazy, to your point. We were busy as heck. I had a target client once. I was in Washington, D.C. I was running an office. He called and said, “We want you guys to help us.” I said, “We’re too busy.” He said, “No, we need your help, and we’ll pay you, whatever you want.” They had funny money. I said, “No, we’re too busy.”

He said, “I will drive over to your office, so you can give me the presentation.” I said, “No, I’m too busy.” He said, “I’ll drive over to your office and tell you what I want you to do. You don’t have to make a pitch.” I said, “No, we’re too busy.” Sure, people were quitting, but man, if you were around, it was busy as hell. To your point, with the crash, but in consulting, it was wobbly for maybe a year, and then, the second year was getting there, and the third year was crazy busy. I’d been around long enough, so I don’t even think about those or 2008. We were only slow for a few months.

Consulting tends to recover pretty fast. Remember that Fortune article that said the headlines of the cover, “Big Three are dead.” McKinsey, BCG. Consulting is dead. That was so wrong. Even now, to the point I made about driving change through people. The other thing that’s changed for all of us is you better retain your best. You better think about how to retain your best because whether it’s a startup or another company, right now, it might be a little bit wobbly or to move around rapidly in this period of time, but people can move if they don’t feel like if they’re at the right place. The best can move pretty damn fast.

I’ve worked still in financial services, and we have this concept about doing stay interviews. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense given what you’ve said because a lot of times, what you’re talking about with people is what keeps you here. What will keep you here? Because it is much more of a free-agent nation to use the title of a book that came out.

That is fascinating. What do you mean, stay, so they’re there, and then you talk to them in case you might lose?

You do a structured interview with people. You could build it into your twice-a-year performance conversations. It’s a conversation with a structured set of questions. What motivates you? Where do you want to go? It’s all about helping understand what you need to do as a manager to encourage that person to stay. I think it’s a great idea because more often what ends up happening is somebody has already got a job or they’re holding an offer in hand.

Then, they call you up.

Yeah, and you’re having a very different conversation. This is much more of a proactive way of checking in with people because a lot of times when people leave, you don’t have any explicit warning. Some people are very clear, “I’m looking outside. This isn’t working for me,” but most people keep it to themselves until they’ve got another offer in hand. At that point, it’s too late.

I think the beauty about that is that title, stay interview, is a good name for it because it does tell the manager, your job is talking about what motivates them to stay, not just their feedback. It tells them, “They want me to stay.” They’re very simple two words that are quite powerful.

Traits Of A Generous Leader

You wrote a book called The Generous Leader that came out not that long ago. Do you want to tell us about it?

It’s The Generous Leader: 7 Ways to Give of Yourself for Everyone’s Gain. Let me tell you how I define the generous leader to give you a sense of the book. I think an exceptional leader, a generous leader, is one who gives of themselves freely without expectation of direct personal benefit so others can develop, grow, and thrive at their full potential. That’s what I think leadership is. Tying to this conversation about retention, you’re talking to those people, how do you make sure you are thriving? A couple of interesting things there. One, it says without expectation of direct personal benefit, but obviously, if your team is all humming, you get some credit. That is what your job is.

The other thing I would say is it’s not only about being nice or leading with the heart. You still have to get results. Sometimes, people say, “Joe, you’re talking about being nice.” No, if you don’t get results, you get fired. You’ve got to drive results. I’m not talking about basic management skills here. There are still strategies you have to develop and do the plans and metrics. I’m talking about how you bring the motivate-and-inspire-people part into what some would say head, hearts, and hands. In there, there are seven different traits that I’ve either gathered from conversations with executives and my own career or observed my own colleagues over the years.

Let’s talk about a few of them. The first one centers around communication. What does it mean when you talk about being a generous communicator?

That came out of where our conversation started with COVID. We’re trying to connect personally and understand where that person is right now. You, the leader, want the message to land. Obviously, you want them to do something. The message is not connecting with them in any way. Maybe they’ll figure out what you want them to do, let alone whether they get inspired or motivated by it. That’s what I mean. If we could go back to my earlier conversation about when Debbie Lovich said, “Talk to these younger people. Know where they’re coming from.” It’s about making sure you’re engaging with where people are.

There’s a story in there. It’s funny. When a guy named Joaquin Duato, CEO of J&J, got the role, he asked a junior, “What are people saying about my message now?” The junior said, “You’re saying we’re going to cut costs.” He said, “I never said those words. I said, ‘Reduce complexity and simplify.’” He said, “Yes, sir. That’s what you said, cutting costs.” Joaquin did not mean that. The company is very complex. However, of course, if we heard those words, and we were working for him, we would think that. He had a tool where he’d either bounce things off like that or get a group of people together.

If he’s going to give a video or a speech to the entire firm, he will practice it the day before. He’d say, “What did I say to you?” He’d write down the words they used instead of the words he used, or he’d say, “If you were telling your spouse tonight at the dinner table what Joaquin said today, what did I say?” He’d say, “I said this, and they heard that.” You try to get it to where they are. I’m not too long on that one topic, but what I mean by that is trying to engage with where their head is.

The other little tip I have in there, which I’m a big believer in, is you have to say things three times. The first time, they sort of hear it, but trying to figure out what your game is. What are you doing? The second time, they space out. They’re thinking about dinner last night, or their child not going to bed, or whatever it might be. The third time, they engage in the story.

A friend of mine told me she was watching ice skating once, and the judge said, “When you watch, the Russian teams will do any significant moves three times for the same reason. The first time, they go, ‘What’d they do?’ The second time, the third time, ‘That was incredible.’” People need to process. Long on that topic, but I do think that if you want to drive your people to help you drive change or outcomes you want, you better be connected where they are.

You talked earlier about vulnerability too. As you said, COVID made it okay for leaders to be vulnerable. As you said, nobody had the answers. Nobody had been through anything like this before in their life. Everybody had to figure it all out together. It made the playing field a bit more level than it would normally be in a hierarchical corporate organization. You had an early morning wake-up where you decided to write something smart, which probably felt very antithetical to your definition of being a leader, and it became much more common. There are certainly good things we got out of COVID. The willingness of leaders to be more vulnerable, open, and honest and connect with people as human beings is one of the good things that hopefully we continue to take away from that period of COVID.

You have to be careful of what you don’t say, but some people hear the word vulnerable, and they think, “You want me to cry in front of 400 people?” Nobody said that. I mean, if you’re a crier and you want to cry in front of 400 people and you can manage it, that’s your business. I actually do that but that’s irrelevant. None of us will follow someone who thinks or we think they’re perfect. You can’t follow that person. First off, nobody’s perfect, so we all think, what’s the deal here? Think something’s going on with that person. You have a little edge of uncertainty about the person, which is not how you want to be as a leader.

I had a story in this book there about a leader whom I asked, “What was your vulnerability?” He said, “I was afraid to say, ‘I don’t know.’” That’s a pretty simple thing to say. When he managed his teams, if he could tell the team was getting stuck and he was in the room and they were going to turn to him, he’d leave the room before he’d get asked and have to say, ‘I don’t know either,’ if he didn’t know the answer. How unproductive is that? Now, everyone’s stuck. Finally, one time he said, “Enough of this. I’ll stay.” He said, “I don’t know,” and he was shocked because of the energy in there. No one looked at him like a loser. All they said was, “You don’t know either? None of us know.” This energy burst into the room of creativity. Since we’re all stuck, it’s okay to get unstuck together.

If they think you are going to look down on them for being stuck, afraid, or any fears, they’re not going to get past those fears. Then, you don’t have the most highly performing person. I think this vulnerability thing, authenticity, realness, whatever you want to call it, is critical. It is because you want people to assert right at their most productive and they need to know they can move past their fears without getting in trouble.

It’s that whole element of psychological safety that’s become a phrase that has certainly become better known. When I think about the early part of my career, psychological safety was not in anybody’s vocabulary.

No. Other than that, I think some may have pushed that too far to, “Don’t tell me I did bad.” I mean, we got to a stage in my firm, very talented people, but some would say, “You criticized my analysis.” That’s what we do. We criticize each other. They’d say, “Yu didn’t say it nicely.” I think there was a little bit of a went too far there. Sometimes that word can mean more than what it is meant to mean.

Why Leaders Should Listen To Learn

There’s a funny video I’ve seen. A woman comes in to do an interview with a guy, and at one point, she’s getting frustrated with him, and she says, “I’ve been here 90 seconds, and you haven’t given me one compliment.” It hits at that same thing. Related to generous communication is being a generous listener. That’s the second one in your book.

That is, to me, as a leader, or any one of us, as a husband, as a spouse, as a dad, the most essential piece. What I mean there is listening to learn. What do you know, J.R., that I don’t know? I may think I have all the answers, but you know some things that I need to know, and if I don’t know them, I’m going to be on the wrong path. Many leaders are stubborn, think they have the answer, know it from their own experience, but they don’t know everything, and they aren’t vulnerable enough to admit they don’t know. That’s why these two go hand in hand.

BCG used to say to my teams, “Always engage the skeptics and uncover the no’s.” Usually, the no-ologists, maybe 1 out of 1,000, a jerk is trying to block you. Otherwise, they know something way down in the plant or in the office that you don’t know, and you’re going to talk about how to make a change, and they’d say, “What about this?” All of a sudden, “I didn’t think of that.” Of course, you didn’t because you can’t think of everything. I think this whole concept of listening, meaning what is in your head that I don’t know and how to help bring it out is essential to humanity and great leadership.

Generous Leader: Leaders should give their teams a chance to perform at their best even if they fail in the end.

It’s hard to take a purely Socratic approach when you’re having a conversation with people. It’s easier to want to give them the answer, give them some advice, or throw your idea out there. There’s so much power in self-discovery, but it’s so hard sometimes.

I know, and you’re right. You’re also caught by a line, too. I mean, as a leader, if I was clear on where we need to go now, then here’s where we’re going to go. However, two things. Usually, I listen to as many different inputs as I can, probably rapidly, but also then it goes back to this vulnerability or humbleness. You’re better off as a leader if you’re humble enough to say, “That was the wrong direction,” and change your mind. The worst is people didn’t get full information, make a decision, go the wrong way and it is not right, and now you’re afraid to admit it. There’s no way you’re going to be a senior leader with those behaviors, but of course, it’s very hard.

When you talk about engaging the skeptics and the noes, you also talk about listening broadly. I mean, we’re living in this era of echo chambers right now, and I think it would certainly be a benefit to society if everybody did a little bit more listening broadly.

Sometimes, I say stop and understand where the other person’s coming from. “But they’re wrong.” I didn’t say that. Understand whether maybe they might have a belief set. You don’t agree with their belief set, but they believe their belief. Now, you at least have to understand that. Otherwise, how do you ever engage with one another? Now, you can both agree that you’re crazy and argue forever, but if you don’t even give each other a chance to know where you’re coming from.

You have a couple of elements that are focused in the book on inclusivity and allyship. I know this is one of the areas that you’ve been personally focused on in the leadership roles that you played during your time at BCG. What does it mean in your view to be welcoming to everyone?

What I meant there as a leader is including the broadest set of people outside of your normal little crowd in your thinking, and your decision-making. Every executive I’ve talked to, I’ll go downstairs and talk to the finance department, not have the analysts who report to the manager who does the vice president does, and I hear that, and I’ll go down and talk. Bring people into the room from different departments, from lower down the level, and engage them in a room. They’re usually going to be nervous or scared. Ask them a question. By that, I mean don’t hang out with whomever your cadre of advisors is or your senior team. I think that’s quite important to get a more holistic view.

Of course, if you’re going to do that well, you have to be humble enough to understand they might have something to say and you have to figure out how to be a generous listener and communicate with them. On the allyship, you could call it mentor if you want, but that came home to me once when someone said, “You’re an action ally.” I said, “What is that?” I never heard that word before. I said, “What do you mean?” They said, “You help me do something.” It was interesting to me because you could be what I call a button wearer. Yes, that’s nice, but if that’s all you do, it’s BS. You can be what I found in the books, a performative ally. Okay, I’ve been told I have metrics that mean I have to have this set of people and that set of people. I will hit the metrics.

Now, most of the people I talk to who are in less privileged groups of people say that’s better than nothing, but an action ally is someone who, and this was very insightful to me, opens the door for opportunities to let others walk through and let them do it. Failed, don’t fail, whatever. I mean give them a shot, and they want the shot. You’ve got to coach and all those things we would do for anybody, but don’t do it for them. Also make sure to open the door to opportunities, which I thought was quite interesting and quite powerful, but it was very clear. Do not do it for me.

Also, if those times get tough and I’m coaching, don’t run away. A lot of times people run away. I think that could be no different if you’re mentoring, right? You open the door for somebody, you want them to go through and give it their best shot. You’ll coach them, but you might let them fail. That’s okay. Give individuals a chance to perform. You can call it being a mentor to somebody, and that’s the thing that people are looking for, is give me a chance to perform. If I don’t perform, I get it. I’ll lose my job, but you still weren’t supposed to coach and all the normal things. I say, don’t do that, but give them a chance.

Making Generous Leadership A Consistent Practice

This leads to being a generous developer, which is another one of the seven ways. Pretty much all of us could be more consistent in providing coaching and feedback to people around us. What tips do you have for making this a more consistent practice?

First off, if you start with you believe your role is to grow and develop others, you’re on the right path. I do think, as a leader, and I’m not arguing this as about being nice, this is about spending the effort to understand what people need to do to develop in your organization, which you probably do pretty well, but also understand what are their strengths that they probably can use to bring to that development, and then be real clear with people when they’re falling short, when they need feedback, etc. Kim Scott Radical Candor, I’m a big believer in direct, clear. Don’t abuse somebody. If they got kicked hard, don’t kick them again. Nobody can do anything with mushy feedback, “That was a good presentation. You talked a little bit too, I don’t know, you should work on that.” What am I supposed to do with that?

There’s a story. Once a colleague of mine who had transferred over from Europe, was very successful in Europe, and he was struggling here. At BCG, we give you three years as a partner. If you struggle three years in a row, and he was on his third year of falling short. He spoke English perfectly, but he missed nuances. As a consultant, nuances are a little important. I remember, I said to him one day, “Buddy, you either go home, quit, or I fire you. That’s where we are.” I said it like that. Those nine were, “How can you tell him that?” He goes, “Thank you so much.” I knew well he was a high performer. He was thinking all that. He needed to hear it directly to then make a move on one of the three, which of course he went home, and he was successful again.

Counter to that, I’ll tell you a story because I do think a big issue in this development is a willingness to give clear, direct feedback, and people are afraid. They’re either afraid, or they don’t make the effort to think. I was one time in a session where we were telling a person they weren’t going to get promoted. It’s an up-or-out place, so that means they’re out. The person’s rep was going on and on for ten minutes of mush.

The guy turned over to me as head of the office and said, “Am I being fired?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Thank you.” Everything that mattered happened in three words. Now, of course, he didn’t want to get fired, but he was so confused about what was going on. He then said, “Why?” We had a conversation. What am I going to do next? I’m a huge believer and care about growing them, making the effort to understand where they need to grow and what they might leverage themselves to get there, and then giving clear, direct feedback.

Back to the first few years, again, going back to my time in consulting. The first year, it’s like, “You’re doing great. Here’s your bonus.” The second year, “You’re doing great. Here’s your bonus.” The third year, “You’re doing great. Here’s your bonus.” At that point, I said, “You have a partner typically, who’s gathering feedback on you. I want somebody new because I’m not getting anything from the person who is doing this other than the amount of my bonus is great, but isn’t helping me.” The next year, I was with somebody different. He says, “Here’s what people say you’re doing well. Here’s what people need to work.” I was like, thank God. It took four years for me to get it.

It’s good that you get to fire rapidly. They’re going to tell me you’re doing great. By the way, you’re done. Why? Because you didn’t do very well in the last two years, but nobody told you.

It wasn’t like that. To your point, sometimes, people want you to be direct about it and not beat around the bush.

When I was a new manager at Procter & Gamble, I was 24 and I had career sales guys. They were 42 and 35, I don’t know, but they’re a lot older than me when you’re 24. I ride with this person every two weeks, and I’ve rarely said anything. I was petrified. What am I going to tell this guy about how to be a sales rep except for what I learned in the book at Procter & Gamble in my first two years? It came to the year-end review. I wrote down everything he needed to do based on everything I saw. I launched into the feedback, and about, I don’t know, 90 seconds in, he goes, “Hold on a minute, Joe. I think he swore. He said, “What the blank? You meet with me every two weeks, and you’ve never said a single one of these things?”

I was scared. He wanted the feedback. He was very angry. It’s not his fault I was scared. What’s wrong with you? It’s also funny because when I walked out of the room, my boss said, “Never again give feedback on paper at the end of the year where someone hasn’t heard it somewhere during the course of the year. In other words, feedback at the moment, clear and direct, is very powerful.

The Power Of Regular Feedback

I finished reading a couple of books that are more aimed at new managers. I was reading them a little bit for background for something. One of them was talking about this idea that you have to deliver feedback super regularly. You need a seven or ten to one positive to negative ratio. Their recommendation was to deliver it the same way. “You did this. When you do this, this is what I see. Please do this going forward. Can you do that?” That would be more of a negative. It could be, “You did this. When you do this, here’s the benefit I have. Can you keep doing that?” They were like 10 to 15 seconds, do it all the time. Make it so regular, and everybody knows to expect that they’re going to get it from you all the time.

They’ve tested this to death and tried all sorts of variations on it with thousands of managers over the course of a few decades, so it’s hard to argue with. They’ve got research credibility in terms of trying it in a practical environment. How many people have you ever worked with that had a seven or ten to one positive and negative?

The positive and negative are tricky, but I think the other thing I heard from you is giving feedback frequently, directly, and tied to the moment, which we all know is the best way to learn. That’s very powerful.

It’s interesting. I have not put it into personal practice yet, but he also said you need to tell your team you’re going to do it, and you need to do nothing but give positive feedback for the first eight weeks. They have to get used to it.

What you are doing there is building trust. I can get away with pretty direct feedback. You can ask anyone who worked for me over the years, they know all I care about is them being better. I don’t care about anything else because when they’re better, we’re all better. When it comes from the heart, people can take a lot. If you’re off base and wrong, that’s a different matter. You shouldn’t be a manager.

If you don’t want to do that, you shouldn’t be a manager because it’s also about people.

When I was a young person, I used to read reports, and the first page was always the CEO, and he’d say, “It’s all about my people.” They all said that. They can’t do anything. They’re way up there. To them, it’s all about them. You got a good product, but someone could screw it up. They have to make the product better to keep up with the service. I thought, it’s true, but you cynically don’t get that when you’re junior partly because you think you can do it all yourself if you have to. That’s the thing I’ve learned. You might manage three people. If they screw up, you can stay up all night and maybe get it done. Once you have 5 or 10 people, it doesn’t work that way anymore.

Being Generous With Your Growth

Not one of your seven elements, but you also had a chapter on being generous with your growth. You sort of snuck an eighth in there at the end. What did you do to be generous with your growth over the course of your career?

I guess a couple of things. I mean, I had good mentors who didn’t have these seven to one positive to negative ratio, but they had the ‘I only want you to be better’ ratio. I think one thing is I was non-defensive. You could easily be defensive if I think of the way you asked that. Sure, sometimes it was painful, but okay, there’s something in the feedback here that’s going to make me better. That was pretty critical. When you talk about my career, I had some experiences over my life that showed me vulnerability is okay. When I got married, I was 23 years old and I cried my vows. What 23-year-old guy cries his vows? I was so embarrassed, but afterward, all these people came up to me, the warmth, the love, and the emotion in the room were amazing.

At 23, I didn’t process that at all, but that was a beginning lesson for me. It’s okay to be honest and authentic. It inspires people to be that way. I didn’t know that then. When you say generosity of growth, I’m pretty good at observing what people react to positively versus negatively and not building or living in a stereotype. A guy can’t be vulnerable, a guy can’t be upset, or you always have to be right if you’re in charge. I think those are a couple of things for me, the willingness to be more authentic that people followed and the willingness to be humble enough to say, “The feedback I’m getting, if it’s unpleasant, is going to make me grow. Now, how do I figure out how to grow and all that?”

For me, reading Carol Dweck’s book Mindset about growth mindset and fixed mindset in the scheme of things, I think if you give yourself the gift of appreciating that you will grow as a person and that it’s not like the sense of ‘I did something wrong. It doesn’t make me a loser.’ It can be a failure and separating the act from the identity to me was probably one of the most foundational things I took away from that book. If you can think that way, then you’re much more open to accepting the feedback because you don’t feel so much like it’s a personal attack on you or your character. It’s an attack on something that didn’t go the way it should.

When you think about that, it also could become quite freeing. I’d get nervous when I was a kid about tests and finals like anybody else. In one hour, I’m still going to be alive, so I’ll do my best and it ain’t going to matter what little bit. Now, that was nice. That’s a little bit of that version. Okay, I screwed that thing up. I’m still here. The world’s still going on. What do I learn from that thing? That can go both ways. One, you can cause you to get blocked. I screwed up three times in a row. I’m not taking any more chances. Good luck to you. Talking about how failure is where you learn.

Shaping A Long-Lasting Legacy And Final Nugget Of Wisdom

At this stage, you wound down your BCG career. Where does legacy fit in for you in terms of its importance?

That’s good. I started to get this question more and more, and people say, “What do you think back over the years?” I loved the clients I served. That was great. I liked the management roles, but that was fun, and you get paid well, that’s nice. I tell you, I had a story once, it was maybe 5 or 10 years ago, a person who worked for me 25 years ago. It was maybe five years. He sent me an email fifteen years later and said, “I got promoted to CEO, and I wanted to thank you. You did it.” I haven’t talked to this guy in fifteen years. I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “One time I asked you a question and you answered. I don’t know what I said, but it changed the way I think about things.

Now, of course, he did it himself. He was talented, but what matters most is if you touched people in ways that moved them to be better. That can be your children, it could be a coach, it could be at work. That’s what teachers do. Look, when you say legacy, and if I think about what I want to do next, I have been starting to read this book, Arthur Brooks’ From Strength to Strength. You might be a little too young to read it, but maybe you’re not.

I could have read it fifteen years ago, but it all talks about how now it’s my turn to figure out how to give back because that is one reason I wrote that book and do these podcasts. Someone said, “What do you want out of this?” I said, “I want a handful of people to maybe think a little differently on how they lead.” It’d be nice if they read the book, but that’s not the important thing. I think differently about how you lead. That’s what matters. Will someone do that for me? I’ll never know, but I’ll feel good somewhere.

You talk at one point in the book about small gestures that have big impacts and contribute to something more meaningful. This is a way that you’re doing that, which is great.

That’s right. I know we were right on time, but this whole small act, big impact, congratulations, a thank you, an email to someone who did a good job copying their boss. These things are very powerful, and they’re easy. You didn’t let your bonus as opposed to here’s what you do great. Your face lit up when you talked about that one. It says nice. It’s not the point.

That was my motivation. Any last advice you want to leave our audience with, Joe?

Do understand that your role as a leader, a new leader, or a manager is motivating and inspiring everybody else to perform at their best. If nothing else, you’ll benefit. If you need that to go, but also they’ll benefit. Your team will benefit. Someone said to me yesterday that potentially, there’s a ripple of benefit beyond you and your team.

Thank you for doing this. It was good to get to talk and do a little bit of a consulting war story.

I hope that’s not boring to the audience consulting side.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you. Take care.

You, too.

—

Thanks to Joe for joining me to discuss his new book, The Generous Leader. As a reminder, this episode was brought to you by PathWise.io. If you’re ready to take control of your career, join the PathWise Community. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on the website for the PathWise Newsletter. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks. Have a great day.

Important Links

• Joe Davis
• Boston Consulting Group
• The Generous Leader: 7 Ways to Give of Yourself for Everyone’s Gain
• Debbie Lovich on LinkedIn
• Radical Candor
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• From Strength to Strength
• PathWise on LinkedIn
• PathWise on Facebook
• PathWise on YouTube
• PathWise on Instagram
• PathWise on TikTok

About Joe Davis

Joe Davis is an award-winning author and speaker dedicated to promoting generosity in leadership, drawing on his 37-year career at the Boston Consulting Group where he served as a Managing Director and Senior Partner, leading BCG North America, founding its Center for Inclusion and Equity, and co-founding BCG Digital Ventures across various global locations. A TED Talk speaker and author of “The Generous Leader,” which offers a seven-part guide to collaborative leadership, Joe holds degrees from Whitman College (where he now chairs the Board of Trustees) and Harvard Business School, and is married with four children and eight grandchildren.