#274: Chuck Robbins, Chairman & CEO, Cisco – Adapt your leadership style

22:07So, and it's given us scale and giving our customers a lot more expertise that can help them deploy the solutions.

22:13David Novak:Do you have a particular story that you tell about one of your partners that really demonstrates that? I hate to give them any airtime, but we have a partner in St. Louis named Worldwide Technology. Their CEO and I have been friends for about 25 years. They're our largest partner. They do a phenomenal job for us. And it's funny because there's an assumption, And by the way, there's 50 other partners that do the same great job they do. But, you know, there's this assumption that we're always leading and then we're teaching the partners how to do what they want to do. And that's true a lot of times, but it's not true all the time.

22:54And so I would say relative to how we've accelerated our approach in the AI era right now, Worldwide was actually ahead of us. And we went to St. Louis and sat down with those guys. You wouldn't think they'd be in St. Louis, you know. And they do a great job of really getting ahead of these trends, getting out ahead of these market transitions that are happening. And so they have, they pushed us and other partners push us. There's, again, there's a ton of them that are just like that. But it's interesting because if you go back 20 years, we were dragging the partners along. And now we have our partners that are actually really pulling us.

23:40And the only thing I'd say is there's CEOs, a guy named Jim Cavanaugh. He's the slowest golfer you'll ever play with in your life. So if you ever get asked to play golf with him, just tell him you're going to put him on the clock. I hope he sees it.

23:52David Novak:You obviously like to give the little needle and have a little fun. How important do you think it is to have humor in your leadership style? I find it to be disarming for people. And it's just part of being human, right? I think people just realize you're just normal when you have, when you're, and actually, and church is a good example of this, although I hate to pay them a compliment. real quick wit, I think, and my wife says this, is reflective of intellect. And I think that, I just think our teams and our people, they feel like I'm just one of them. I mean, we spend time together. I make jokes.

24:38I crack jokes. I tell some of my folks that, you know, back to this leadership style thing, sometimes you're being human and they want humility and they want you to be the human being. And then sometimes you're in such a mess that they need Superman. And you need to know the difference. And I was talking to one of my leaders one day. I'm like, you know, your humility is great, but you have to know the difference. So my example was in the early days of the pandemic, they wanted human, but they wanted Superman. They wanted somebody to tell us this is going to be okay. Here's what we're going to do.

25:13Here's our plan. We're good. You're going to be fine. We're going to make all the things happen. And I think that's really, it's an example of how you have to tweak your style. But I think humor is just a big part of it. And it really lowers the tension when people are stressed.

25:28David Novak:You know, I also love how you, you know, do best practice visits and you learn from the company in St. Louis and, you know, help you up your game. And I used to love to do best practices. And one of the companies I visited was Cisco. And I'll never forget this. The food company or us? I'm talking about you, your company. I went out to your corporate headquarters and I met, took my team. We met with John Chambers, who was the CEO then. And when he walked in, he had six, at least six people, an entourage, basically taking him from meeting to meeting. And, you know, when you're a huge company and a successful company like that, how do you get rid of that kind of hierarchy and bureaucracy?

26:17David Novak:Yeah. Or am I stating it too far? Maybe I'm drawing the wrong conclusion, but that was my impression. No, because we do, here's an example. We do big events. When we do big events, we'll have 30 ,000, 40 ,000 people, customers at an event in Vegas. We have a lot of people there. We have a lot of people that are staff that are building a thing. And if we let it, I could walk around that whole place with eight or 10 people around me all the time. Because you've got communications people, you've got assistants that are helping you. Maybe my head of product is going with me on something. We deliberately break the group up so we don't come off looking that way.

26:50The reality is a lot of this stuff is complicated and there are a lot of people around it. I think that optics matter a lot, in my opinion. But there's a lot of people doing really good work, but everybody doesn't need to know that.

27:07David Novak:And you followed Chambers, who led Cisco for more than 20 years. What was that like? Well, first of all, John was great. I don't know if it's about three years before the transition, he started taking me on trips around the world. And I learned a ton, engaging with government leaders and doing those kinds of things. He obviously was a bit of a legend in Silicon Valley. And so it was great. Sometimes it's difficult. He was exec chair for two and a half years. And so, you know, we had a lot of ongoing discussions. He was in the office every day. People would go talk to him and sometimes. So that part was a little tricky, but we worked through it.

27:51But he was great. He was such a mentor to me. He taught me a ton. He exposed me to areas of the world I otherwise wouldn't have. He basically brought me into China and taught me and set me up to be successful in China after he was gone. I remember little nuggets that he would tell me. He told me, like, he said, block Fridays. Block a bunch of Fridays on your calendar. Because you can always, he said, you'd be amazed at the power of a long weekend if you can get one with the schedule that you keep. He said, you can always give them back, but it's hard to take them. And so that's just a practice that we've tried.

28:31And very rarely do they stick. They usually get given back.

28:35David Novak:That's true. It was great. I was shocked, honestly, when they told me they wanted me to be in the process to replace Chambers. I mean, I was like, it was just, it was surreal. Because I remember the first time I went to a sales meeting and John's on the big stage and I'm sitting in the rafters. You know, and then here I am. So it was fun. You know, when you became the CEO, what was the biggest change that you had to navigate? Well, even if you just look over your career, what's been the biggest change you've really had to take people through? Well, we had a meaningful shift to our portfolio mix, not to get too technical, but we now have over half of our revenues that are coming from software and services.

29:24So they're subscription oriented. whereas before we were a kill something and eat it. You know, every 90 days, I think every quarter about 85 % of our revenue, we sold it. We took the order in the quarter and shipped it in the quarter. And that's a hamster on a wheel business model. It's just exhausting. So we went through this shift to add more software assets to our portfolio. And that was complicated. I learned a lot. And I learned all about the underlying operational needs of big business model shifts because I didn't think about it enough on the front end. That was a big learning experience.

30:05All of a sudden, we got our product teams that built all these great subscription-based services. And I came to realize that we didn't have systems that could actually do business with customers in a subscription model. So that was a little bit of a problem. But that was a hard transition. But the other thing is I've had a couple of shifts through the leadership team, and that's always hard, but it's necessary. I think most leaders will tell you that one of the biggest mistakes they make is when they realize they got the wrong person in the job is they don't move fast enough. And that's something that I've learned over the years.

30:38You just have to suck it up and get it done. You will make mistakes. You will hire someone. You'll put somebody in a job that you shouldn't. And I put people in jobs that I've known for 17, 18 years, and it was one step too far. Or I brought people in from the outside and realized it wasn't going to work. And inevitably, you wait too long.

31:02David Novak:Hello, everyone. I hope you are loving this conversation between David and Chuck. As always, be sure to stay tuned to the very end of the episode. David and I are going to break down some of the key learnings from this conversation so that you leave this episode with something really tangible that you can apply to your own leadership and your own life. Chuck is full of insights and David and I break all of them down so that you have something really helpful that you can apply today to your life and to your leadership. So be sure to stay tuned to The Debrief and I will see you soon. You know, you've worked through many business transformations and you have to take people with you to navigate that change.

31:38David Novak:You know, how do you keep people confident when that sand shifting, in your feet and you don't really know how things are going to turn out. I mean, how do you build confidence when you don't necessarily have that answer yet? Well, there's a few things that come to mind. First of all, if you want people to go with you on a journey towards a vision that you have, they have to believe you're grounded in the reality of where you are today. And what I mean by that is a lot of times executives and leaders want to paint a rosy picture of how everything is wonderful. And now we're going to go capture this hill over here.

32:18And sometimes you're making a big shift because everything's not wonderful. And if you want your best people to go with you on the journey, you have to acknowledge, hey, you know what? This isn't good right now. We're not where we need to be. But let me tell you where we're going to go. Let me tell you what we're going to do to go get to where we need to be. And your very best people are going to want to know you're grounded in reality of where you are before they're going to buy into going on the journey with you. So that's one piece. Second piece is in times of change, frequent, honest, transparent communication is so important.

32:52And I'm a believer that hierarchical hope doesn't work when you're trying to get an entire organization to move in a certain direction. You got to talk to everybody. So we do full company meetings every 30 days. We just do it. And I talk to everybody in the company. And so that's the second. Frequent, honest, authentic communication is so important. Those are just some of the things that I learned along the way in trying to get through these big transitions. And, you know, we hit a, I want to say in 2000, our stock hit a high of$79 and some change. And we recently actually set a new all-time high.

33:34And it was a lot of that learning and resetting and moving forward and going. And it's been a long, hard trek to get there.

33:43David Novak:You know, Chuck, you're a huge advocate for trusting your employees. You know, we've talked about that at dinner once, you know. Tell me a story where that really showed up and how you lead. A lot of times it shows up in some of the M &A that we do, you know, and, you know, my team, you'll have a sponsor of an acquisition and you're going to spend billions of dollars. And I'm not a deep expert in some of these technologies. And so that's the ultimate trust. I trust you so much that you tell me we need to go spend$5 billion on this asset so that you can get that. And you know what? They don't always work out.

34:19But that's sort of a high-level example. but I think the reality is, you know, we have 90 ,000 people. Early in my tenure in this job, I was deeply in the product stuff a lot and I'm still like having affinity for the products because I've been here so long but we have such a great team that I don't feel as compelled and And we literally, this was a weird feeling for me. This past July, we have our biggest customer event of the year. It was June. And it's like 30 ,000 people in person and 150 ,000 people watching it streaming. We made like 22 product announcements. And before I got there, I only knew about four of them.

35:09So for me, that's like a huge shift in the trust of that team that's building these products because they're so good. That's just a big shift, which is good for me because it lets me go do some of the things that are really needing my focus right now, like the geopolitical dynamics that we're all dealing with. You know, around the world, a lot of the shifts that are happening and, you know, the deglobalization or reglobalization or however you want to phrase it. I mean, there's a lot of things that I need to be spending my time on right now that I'm allowed to do because of the trust I have in the team.

35:44David Novak:You know, Cisco has been named one of the best places to work year after year. Culture has to be a big deal for you. You have to be driving that. What's the number one behavior in your work environment that you try to drive deep throughout the organization? If you just could pick one. First of all, I think if you give people the ability and the support for them to engage in their communities, they actually feel an affinity for the company. Because people love giving back. If you have the right people working for you, they're going to love to give back in addition to competing every day. So we have this deal where we want super competitive people that want to win every day, but with big hearts that want to give back to their communities and do the things that they need to do.

36:29And I think that combination actually does. But the other thing I think that is so important is just the human element. You know, we care deeply. You know, when we have an employee who's sick, we jump through hoops to get them to the right place. we jump, you know, if it's an employee's friend, we jump through hoops to get them to the right place. We just, it's the human aspect of the company in addition to the competitive nature. And that's not one nor two, that's a whole bunch, but it's never one thing, you know.

36:57David Novak:It never is. You mentioned earlier that sometimes you miss the mark. And, you know, when you miss the mark, and I think publicly you've been pretty candid about the fact that Cisco missed the transformation of everything moving to the cloud. How do you learn from that experience? And what do you tell others when, hey, this hits the fan or you miss the mark? We just had a board meeting and we were talking about something that we didn't get quite right that we have to go back and redo. You just got to be honest and you have to admit it. And I think the worst thing you can do is try to convince the market that something is not going to happen or it's not the right thing when the market is sitting there telling you that it is going to happen and it is the right thing.

37:45And just because you haven't been able to define your role in it. And that's a little bit of what we did with cloud. And that was obviously before my tenure in this job. But like, as an example, this artificial intelligence shift that's happening right now, we made some decisions back almost a decade ago that I'd love to tell you I was an AI visionary, but there's a lot of luck involved. We made the decisions for good reasons, but it turns out that those decisions are the only reason we're being successful today. So there's an aspect of what is it when preparation meets opportunity. Yeah. But you just have, I think you just have to be honest.

38:26Denial is not a strategy. And if you, if you want to just tell everybody that things are beautiful when they're not, what happens when you do that is your best people leave because they no longer believe you're credible. And so you have to be honest. We missed this. We didn't get it right. And there's a certain part of our portfolio where we've been working hard over the last couple of years to get it to a better place. And my product leader is he'll get on a public forum and he'll have his team on there that's working on trying to fix it. These are new people, by the way, they didn't create the problem.

38:59And he's like, we didn't do well here. We have not done well. We're not getting it done. We're working, you know, and I finally had to tell him, I said, look, you're beating up these people that are trying to solve the problem. You need to shift into a supportive mode now. And, uh, but, but it is important to just acknowledge. And then what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And what a lot of people do, though, especially, let's say you have a competitor that's ahead of you. What a lot of people do, I would sit in these meetings and I'd have people say, in 12 months, we're going to be at par with that competitor.

39:37And I ask them, I'm like, is that because that competitor is going to stop innovating for 12 months to let you catch up? Because you're out of your mind. If you think 12 months from now, they're going to be 12 months ahead of you because they're going to keep working right now, too. So what you have to do is you have to figure out how do I how do I change the game if you're behind? How do I come at it asymmetrically? Because chasing a competitor who's ahead of you, trying to just catch up, you never will. You just won't.

40:03David Novak:You know, you mentioned your your board a little bit earlier and you also mentioned AI. You know, how you, you know, 10 years ago, you started that preparation, even though you really didn't know it was going to pay off like it has. But I understand you actually put your board through an AI boot camp. What were the two or three things you wanted them to understand so that they could provide better guidance to you as a board? Well, first of all, we were talking to them early in this, you know, probably two years ago about AI and what we were doing. and this is when everybody's frantic and they're like, what are we doing?

40:39What's our role? Where are we playing? What are you doing? What kind of skills do we have? Do we have the right talent? And during that conversation, we were just talking about, there's not a ton of talent in the marketplace because it's being developed right now. So we needed to run some internal development activities and boot camps for people to teach them. And my board is so great. They actually said, we want to go through it. And so it was really a request from them because a couple of my board members are deep technologists. So that's, it's not, it's not, they'll, they'll go learn it. But when you have people that came from the airline industry or from education, higher ed, you know, or they need us to help them.

41:26If you're a CEO, how you, how you work with your board is a whole nother conversation. But I am, what you see right now is exactly how I work with my board. I'm honest. I'm transparent. My team can tell them anything they want. Any question they ask them, they can answer. I got nothing to hide. And that's not always the case. And in this case, the more educated they were, the better they could help us. The better questions they could ask us. The better challenges they could throw at us during a meeting. And so that's true of everything. But it was really cool on the AI front that they wanted to learn.

42:00David Novak:And I've heard you talk, Chuck, about AI displacement as a human issue. And after this conversation, I can understand that even more now. But it's a human issue, not just a business one. Say more about how you're thinking about it. I think that technology transitions and industrial evolution over the last 100 years has always resulted in job dislocation, relocation. The difference is it's happened at a slower pace. And this feels like, you know, when I talk to a lot of my peers, we're all kind of like in the mode where it's not this year and it may not be next year, but it might be the year after or the year after that.

42:45And what we have to do as a business community and as citizens of the country, we need a plan for what are we going to do for these people that are displaced by AI? How are we going to help them get the next job? How are we going to help them think about what they do? And so I think that's the human aspect. And I think that's our responsibility to work together to create opportunities, some new opportunities. Because if you look at where we are as a country, we need people working. And I don't think AI is going to eliminate that. I just think it's going to shift what people end up doing for a living.

43:23And we should facilitate that as opposed to just good luck.

43:27David Novak:Are you doing anything, Chuck, with AI yourself personally that's making you a better leader? Trying to learn it. You know, trying to just stay up with it is pretty impressive. I haven't gotten into, like, having these personal coaches, these AI coaches. Some of the folks in our company are using those now. And they say they're pretty good, actually. I haven't gotten there yet. I use AI. I'm educating myself on AI. So I guess from that perspective, staying up to speed allows me to lead and to have conversations and challenge my team, just like the board conversation I was having. That's probably the biggest thing that I'm trying to do is just stay educated.

44:08And honestly, one of the most educational ways that is most educational are actually AI podcasts, right? There's lots of podcasts where people are educating you and bringing you up to speed. And it's moving so fast. I mean, you look like we're not talking about a year. We're talking about a week. Things can change. And you talk to some of these companies about they build a 90-day plan. And then 30 days in, they throw out the 90-day plan because everything's changed already. And I mean, you've got to really stay up to speed.

44:40David Novak:You know, I was in North Carolina recently with our mutual friend. We talked a little bit about Eric Church a little earlier. seeing what happened there with Hurricane Helene. And I know that Cisco committed millions of dollars to building houses to contribute to that effort. What drives you to step in at moments like that? And how do you decide where Cisco can make the biggest difference? Because there's so much need all around the world. How do you prioritize? Yeah, well, first of all, I have a great team that actually does this. And what we set out to do was around our 40th anniversary as a company, which was about in 2024, we decided to take 40 communities around the world and try to make a big difference.

45:30And it was sort of mirrored after some of our work on homelessness in Silicon Valley. And I just fundamentally believe that companies, you need to have healthy communities in which your employees live and operate. And so out there, we had a big housing crisis. And people would say, well, why is that your responsibility? Well, the reality is that if we don't have firefighters or school teachers or people that, if they can't afford to live in the area, then you won't have people teaching your kids. And when your house catches on fire, nobody's going to come help you. I mean, these are just simple examples where we need to make sure we have a healthy community.

46:04So what we decided to do was do 40 of these in recognition of our 40 years. and my team has done a lot of work to go identify where those were. Sort of, we launched it right after this thing happened and Eric and I were talking and we were talking about how we could scale what he wanted to do through business because ultimately he's going to need the business community. And I said, instead of us trying to go paint a vision and convince companies to give money to something that they haven't seen be successful, I said, let us throw some money at it with you. Let's go build some houses. Let's get some people living in those houses.

46:46And then we don't have to go sell a vision. We can go sell the reality that needs to be scaled. So that was just sort of a timing issue that had occurred. And I have a heart for North Carolina because I obviously lived there for 24 years. We have a team of people that do a lot of analysis to figure out where we want to go invest and help. But the first thing that's a given is we are going to do it. The question of where is up to the team to figure that out.

47:09David Novak:And I love the fact how you encourage your team members to get out there and serve in the community because they feel better. And you've enabled that. I think that's awesome stuff. So thank you for all you're doing around the world on that. That's great. You know, this has been a lot of fun, Chuck. And I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Uh-oh. That scares me. All right. The three words that best describe you. Funny, caring, adventurous. If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be? Eric Church. Your biggest pet peeve?

47:42Mouth noises. Who would play you in a movie? Oh, Lord, no one. Your favorite childhood job? My first job, I was 10 years old, and this gentleman hired me to help him repair lawnmowers, which you can imagine how effective I was at it, but I loved it because he let me do it.

48:02David Novak:As a North Carolina fan and alum, what's one thing that Duke does really well, even if it pains you to admit it? Medical care. What's something you've been curious about lately that has nothing to do with work? I've always been a fisherman, and I'm trying to get into more of the science behind it. Learning more about everything from tying flies to weather patterns to, you know, instead of going with a guide or going with someone who's telling you where to throw it, I'm trying to understand more and get a little smarter about the science of fishing. How's that? Good. What's the one thing you do just for you?

48:40Watch Carolina basketball religiously.

48:45David Novak:Besides your family and friends, what's your most prized possession? Probably my fishing boat. If I turned on the radio in the car, what would I hear? Eric Church or country music. God, he's going to take this way too seriously. I know he is. You know, his album got nominated for a Grammy, you know. You know, he's never won a Grammy for an album or a song. Yeah, and Billboard Staff Picks recently had his number one of 2025. He sent it to me to make sure I knew that. What's something about you that few people would know? I'm a crier. That's something you and I have in common for sure. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss?

49:25First thing in the morning, it's just news, news, news, news. And that's a terrible thing to say, but that's what I do. I'm a junkie in the morning. Because the world is so complex that I just get up in the morning, I got to figure out like what happened overnight that's going to affect something that I have to deal with today.

49:39David Novak:All right. We're out of the lightning round. Great job. And I got just a few more questions. I'll let you go. You're married with four kids. How do you think about leadership at home? Whatever my wife tells me.

49:54people people find it hard to believe that she's a stronger personality at home how do you get her involved in decisions or do you i do she is she is my number one sounding board period she you know i've always said she has this uncanny ability because she's not in the emotional day-to-day of everything so she can look at things very pragmatically but she knows enough about our business enough about me enough about my team enough about everything that when i lay out there, I'll say, she's like, what's going on? That's complicated. What's going on? It's complicated. She'll tell me and I'll tell her and she'll go, doesn't sound that complicated to me.

50:30And she's always right.

50:31David Novak:And you have four kids and, you know, I know this is a broad question, but, you know, when you think about having kids, what do you think the biggest thing having kids teach you? Oh, humility for sure. And, and it teaches you how to deal with immense fear because you worry about them nonstop. And it's so out of your control, especially as they get older and older and older and older. And my wife and I joked that, you know, bigger kids, bigger problems. You know, when they have a problem, when a bigger kid has a problem, they're just a bigger problem than what you dealt with. That's such a good point.

51:09David Novak:It does teach you how to have intense fear. You know, when people who have known you for a long time and they see you now, What do they say hasn't changed about you? At my core, I'm the same person I always have been. And I'm going to, I am going to be, I'm wide open. My wife says, you don't have to tell them everything. I don't worry at all. I don't, I tend not to worry. Especially things I can't control. I just don't worry about them. And that's never changed. What do you see, last question here. No, not second to last question here. What do you see as your unfinished business, Chuck, both for Cisco and for you personally?

51:51Well, for Cisco, I think getting us relevant in this AI era is a big, big deal. And we've made a lot of progress and we're having a lot of success right now. We still have a lot of work to do to really cement our place in the next decade of AI. For me personally, I've got to get a better golf game.

52:14David Novak:Some things aren't even in the car for a Superman like you. There you go. Last question. What's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? Be a human first. Be a human first. People want to be led by human beings, not by executives, not by robots, not by someone. They want an honest, authentic human to work for. That's it. Well, Chuck, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to do this and have this conversation. And you are one hell of a human being. And the impact that you're making in this world and with this company and, you know, how you lead and the example you set as an example all leaders lead to follow.

52:59David Novak:So thank you very much. I appreciate you. Thanks for doing this. I know it's helpful to a lot of people. So thanks for having me. I was honored to be here.

53:11David Novak:David, Chuck Robbins just sounds like a great guy. I want to just hang out with him, maybe play golf with him. I don't know. He's just a good old boy who hadn't forgotten where he's from. Yeah, I love the fact he's a big North Carolina fan. He wore that little baby blue that they have at North Carolina. I don't really think much of North Carolina because I'm more of a Louisville Cardinal basketball fan. But anyway, he loves the Carolina team and supports them aggressively. You know, I heard about Chuck from Eric Church. And Eric Church, you know, obviously, you know, renowned country songwriter, singer, said, you got to get to know Chuck.

53:51David Novak:He's just a great guy. And, you know, I ran into him at a dinner and we chatted and, you know, we really hit it off. But I really appreciate the fact that he never really has forgotten his roots. And I think he goes out of his way to be approachable with his people. I mean, you know, Cisco is, you know, it's a huge, huge, huge company. And so he could take on a totally different air. But his air is one that appears to be very, very grounded. And I'm sure his people relate well to that. Absolutely. You can just tell that in the way that he talks and the way that he talks about his people and how he cares about them and how he trusts them.

54:30David Novak:And David, in this debrief of your conversation, I want to be sure that we give everybody listening some real practical tools that they can take away and apply to their own leadership and their own life. So I've pulled a couple of themes from your conversation with Chuck, and I want you to just break them down for all of us so that everybody listening can really understand how they can incorporate some of Chuck's magic into their own leadership. The first theme, David, is about adapting your leadership style. Now, Chuck stays true to who he is and how he leads, but in the conversation, he says that based on the situation that you're in, sometimes you need to shift your leadership style.

55:05David Novak:He says, sometimes people need their leader to be a human, and sometimes people need their leader to be Superman. So as a leader, how do you know when to switch gears and sort of customize your leadership style based on where you are? Yeah. You know, I always brought my marketing discipline to managing people. You know, And in marketing, I always ask this one question, what perceptions have a belief you have to change, build, or reinforce to grow the business? And then when I was thinking about how to take people with me, I always ask myself, what perception, habit, belief do people have that I need to either change, build, or reinforce to get them aligned, to get done what really needs to be done?

55:50David Novak:And that means that you got to know your people just like you know your customers. and you stay true to who you are as a brand, who you are as a person, but you want to make sure that you're relevant to your customers and that they'll relate to you. And sometimes you might be in a meeting and you're working on an issue and it's really not that challenging of an issue, but you can just kind of deal with it in a laid back, more low-key fashion and really show your humanity. And other times there might be a crisis and everybody's looking for that leader to step up and take charge and do what that leader needs to do.

56:34David Novak:And only that person can do it. And that's when you got to take on that Superman quality. And I think that's what Chuck was getting to. But I think that the main thing, as you point out, is he knows who he is. So he stays true to his core, but he knows that anything he can do to make himself more approachable, more relatable to the people he has the privilege of leading, you know, he wants to do it because he knows that they're going to be much more linked into who he is and view him as someone that they want to follow. I love that you distinguish between, you know, something that's, and maybe a more laid back scenario, like you're in a meeting, trying to come up with ideas versus when you're in a situation that is a crisis, because the people that you are leading are looking for someone to say that it's going to be okay.

57:22David Novak:And it's in that moment, I can see Clark Kent in my mind, when Superman needs to come in with his cape and say, hey, we're going to be okay. Here's where we're going. Trust me and we'll get there. Yeah, sometimes the leader really needs to save the day or give people the sense that they together can save the day, which is even better yet. And I think that's what he's getting to. David, the second theme that came up quite a bit in your conversation with Chuck was this idea of trust versus control. And I was shocked in the interview and he said that at a recent event that they had with their company, he only knew four of the 22 product announcements that his team made.

57:59David Novak:And to me, that symbolizes that he has a tremendous amount of trust in his product team and in his people. And I'm curious from your point of view, what are some signs that a leader might be struggling to let go of control? Or how do you know how much of that trust to give away? I thought that was very interesting too. And And obviously, Chuck has been in the company for a long time. He knows his product development team. He knows their capability. And so he's able to turn over to the range to the product development leader, hold him accountable for developing the best products, and go into a meeting where maybe he doesn't know everything to the intimate detail.

58:42But I'm sure that he provided that kind of autonomy after it was earned.

58:51David Novak:You know, if he had a bunch of new people in there developing new products, I guarantee you he'd spend a lot more time on it. And I think that's part of going back to the original point. He adapts his style to understand the people that he's leading. And so I really believe in the notion that autonomy is an earned right. And in that particular case, that team had demonstrated time and time again that they could really develop great new products. And the company's been on a roll under Chuck's leadership. And so they seem to be doing well because he's developed the right kind of people capability and knows when he can let go.

59:28David Novak:So, you know, there's analysis, there's this, you know, example that people, you know, I've heard used before. It's like, you know, if you're teaching your kid how to ride a bicycle, you know, you put the training wheels on. And they learn how to pedal that bike and move it down the street. And once they get good at that, you know, they can hang on to the handlebars. You take off the training wheels and you run alongside them, but you make sure you can still catch them. And then finally, you let them go after they really demonstrated the skill. And I think that's a great way to think about how you give people more responsibility.

1:00:05David Novak:And I think it comes when they've earned it. I always thought empowerment was a very overused and oftentimes misunderstood phrase. It's like, I never really liked it. It doesn't mean I don't like to empower people per se. but you know i think people talk about getting empowered i want to be empowered to do something well do your job show people you're really good at it and then you then you'll get empowered but don't ask for empowerment before you've really earned it that's so good david autonomy as an earned right is something that i that i remind myself of quite a bit as uh more people come into the fold and and i continue to give away more and more control i love that idea of of autonomy and empowerment having to be earned.

1:00:57David Novak:The final theme, and this is a fun one, but I noticed it quite a bit. And when you listen to this conversation between you and Chuck, it's just fun. And I found myself laughing out loud a couple of times. And you even asked Chuck in the interview, you know, Chuck, you're a funny guy. What role does humor play in leadership? And I loved his answer. And I'm curious what your answer would be to that question, David. What role does humor have in leadership? You know, I think it plays a huge role because I think, you know, one of the things that a leader can do is make people feel comfortable. And if you can, you know, poke fun at yourself, and I think the biggest thing I got out of Chuck's humor, it's self-deprecating humor.

1:01:36David Novak:You know, he's not that smart. Well, he is that smart, but I mean, he kind of, you know, he doesn't take himself too seriously. You know, people often say, you know, take the business seriously, but don't take yourself so seriously. And if you can make people laugh while you're doing the job, you know, and have fun while you're doing the job, it's a lot more fun to go to work versus being with somebody that grits their teeth and grinds them to the point where they don't have any teeth left. That doesn't go over well. So, you know, it's much, much better when you can have fun at work. And I think humor can play a role in that.

1:02:12And by the way, most people who

1:02:14David Novak:have a really good sense of humor are really smart. And they're also very confident because you're not going to stick your neck out there if you don't think you can do it and get that smile. You know, you're not worried about the joke falling flat. You know, you take, you're more of a risk taker. You know, I think that the people that have a good sense of humor, you know, they're pretty damn smart. And their humor that they have is because they're confident. And, you know, I think that can be contagious too, by the way. I think people want to be around people that are fun to be around, have a good time, and still get the work done, obviously.

1:02:55David Novak:You know, you go to work for one reason. You know, obviously you want to enjoy your job, et cetera, et cetera. But in terms of the end result, you're there for one reason. It's to win. You want to take your team to victory, okay? And that's why you're getting paid. People aren't paying you just to show up. They're paying you to win. I love too that humor is so disarming and it allows your humanity to show too. So kind of going back to what we chatted about in our first main takeaway, knowing when to be human and how to connect with people and how to stay grounded. Humor is a great way to do that.

1:03:31David Novak:It just disarms people and kind of like allows folks to exhale a little bit and understand that even though you're the one in charge, they can still connect with you in a real human way. Yeah. And, you know, what's the single biggest thing that really stuck out to me, you know, with this conversation with Chuck is that here's this guy running this incredible company. You know, I mean, this is like they've got, you know, tremendous market share. You know, their market cap is just growing through the roof. But he understands the importance that, you know, you got to stay grounded. You got to be human.

1:04:10David Novak:You got to know that, you know, you can't get intoxicated by your success. You got to go, you know, know that what you did today is yesterday's newspaper. And you got to create some new news. And, you know, I think he really gets that. And he gets the importance of being real. You know, people talk about authentic and authenticity and being real and genuine, being such a tremendous leadership trait. It is because you can't be someone you're not. and I think he's a great example of being someone who stays true to who he is. And as a result, people don't see him as a fake. People see him as the real deal.

1:04:50David Novak:And he commands respect. And I love that. And the other thing I really like is he's a learner. I love the fact how he took his board of directors and took them through AI training. I thought that was great. And he's trying to get better at it. And he wants to be challenged. That's cool. I love the fact that he wants to be challenged. And so I really think Chuck is a terrific person. I look forward to playing him in golf because I know he's a good guy. He'll have a few jokes. And from what I understand, he's really not that good at it. So you'll beat him. That's why you want to play. Well, maybe.

1:05:26David Novak:I'm not that good at it these days either. I love it, David. Well, everybody, that does it for today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in to How Leaders Lead with David Novak. Stay tuned for another great episode coming next week.