3 Takeaways - David Novak, Former CEO OF Yum! Brands on Motivating a Work Force, Staying Humble and Taking Charge of Your Career (#84)

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

From humble beginnings growing up as a trailer park nomad, David rose to be the CEO of Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC) where his successful techniques as a leader helped double the number of restaurants and increased market capitalization over 8 times.  He has been recognized as one of the best performing CEO’s by Barron’s, Fortune and Harvard Business Review. This week we talked about his people first approach, the essential traits leaders need, the importance of mindset and why purposeful recognition is the strongest motivational tool for leaders in any field. He explains how sometimes we have to say no in order to get what we want, as well as describes why people cried when he gifted them a rubber chicken!David continues to campaign to create more leaders by creating the student leadership program Lead4Change. This podcast is available on all major podcast streaming platforms. Did you enjoy this episode? Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.Receive updates on upcoming guests and more in our weekly e-mail newsletter. Subscribe today at www.3takeaways.com.

Welcome to the Three Takeaways podcast, which features short, memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists, and other newsmakers. Each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers. And now your host and board member of schools at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, Lynn Thoman. Hi, everyone. It's Lynn Thoman. Welcome to another episode. Today, I'm excited to be with David Novak. He's the former CEO of Yum! Brands, which was originally spun out from Pepsi and includes Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC, or Kentucky Fried Chicken. Under his leadership, the company doubled the number of restaurants to over 40,000,

increased market capitalization over eight times, and Yum! Brands became a global powerhouse and one of the largest restaurant groups in the world. David has also been recognized as one of the world's best CEOs and leaders. Barron's named him one of the 30 best CEOs. Fortune recognized him as one of the top people in business, and Harvard Business Review included him in its list of the 100 best performing CEOs in the world. David has an unconventional background for someone who became a great leader and CEO. He lived in 32 trailer parks in 23 states by the time he was 12. I'm excited to learn how he became a great leader and what his secrets to leadership are. David is passionate about making the world a better place by teaching and developing leaders. His latest book, Take Charge of You,

is on self-coaching and how it can transform your life and career. It's terrific. Welcome, David, and thanks so much for our conversation today. Thank you, Lynn. I look forward to this. Appreciate what you do. My pleasure, David. David, how did your nomadic childhood shape you?

I lived in, like you said, a lot of states by the time I was in seventh grade. And I went to about three schools a year. So my mom would say to me, would you check me in the school? And she said, David, you better make friends because we're leaving. So I think that that background really helped me get a good sense of people, understanding people, moving into new situations, working through anxiety, which you have when you go into new situations. And I also learned that you're only one friend away from happiness. Building that relationship where you get a friend that you can pal around with for a while, even if it's three months, kind of makes things go over. And once I found that friend,

I was pretty happy. And so I think it helped me learn how to build relationships quicker, faster, maybe than other people would. My mom and dad are extremely smart. They're still alive. They're 92 years old. I always look at them and I think they could have run a company if they'd had a college education, had the mentors and experience that I got. But what they wanted for me was the American dream.

They wanted me to achieve what they never achieved. I was the first kid to get a college education. That was important to them. But they still are to this day, my biggest fans, biggest supporters, and know how to raise the bar on me every now and then. David, why do you think you rose through the ranks at Pepsi so quickly and so high? Well, I had really great coaches. I first worked for Steve Reinemann. He was the president of Pizza Hut and he later became the chairman of PepsiCo. He took an incredible interest in me, gave me a chance to come into the company. I didn't have an MBA. I had an advertising agency background and I went in and ran the function. I ran the marketing function, which was very unique for PepsiCo at the time. I was a very strange cat in PepsiCo at those

times. But I think the reason why I was able to have some success at Pepsi was I was a really good marketing person. Pepsi put a high premium on marketing people. So I really love consumers. And I came up with the agency background. I knew how to work with advertising agencies so I could get really good advertising creative. And advertising is key from a technical skill standpoint. That was great. But the most important reason why I think I was able to have some success was I was really able to build great teams and hire great people and get people around me that could do what I couldn't do. People who had ideas that I couldn't come up with. But when I was in Wichita,

Kansas working for Pizza Hut, which was a part of Pepsi at the time, people said you couldn't recruit people in Wichita. Well, I ended up having the best marketing department in all of PepsiCo in Wichita. And people said, well, how were you able to do it? I said, well, people want to be in a growth environment. Now, I didn't go get the people from Harvard and people on the Northeast or the West Coast, but I found people in the heartland who wanted it. And it was amazing. We had incredible people. Roger Enrico, the chairman of PepsiCo, we had a management conference and we presented everything we were doing at Pizza Hut in front of all the people at Pepsi. And he came up to me and said,

you're coming to Pepsi. I didn't really want to go to Pepsi. I was really enjoying my time at Pizza Hut. He says, you're coming to Pepsi. I said, wow. So I went to Pepsi. Then I had a great relationship with the late Wayne Calloway, who you might've known when, and he took a great interest in me and I used to go see him every quarter. And I always went in with three to five ideas that I was thinking about that would be good for PepsiCo beyond just what I was doing at Pepsi, because I wanted to show them that I had more potential and I was thinking bigger and broader. And I always recommend that to everybody. If you get the opportunity to see somebody above you, go in with ideas on how you do their job

and in a respectful way, give them some good ideas. But I did it. Finally, Wayne Calloway asked me, he said, David, what do you want to do with your career? And I said, well, I want to be a division president. And he said, well, David, you're a really good marketing guy. And I said, well, Wayne, I want to be a division president. I want to run pizza, Taco Bell, KFC, Frito-Lay, Pepsi. I don't care which one, but I want to run one of the divisions.

He says, you're a really good marketing guy. And I said, well, I want to be a division president. He says, you're a really good marketing guy. I'll make you president of marketing. We don't have as many marketing people as we really should have. And you can develop the function. I didn't want to be a president of marketing. But anyway, I loved Wayne and he would give me really good feedback. And that feedback was, David, you are seen as a marketing person. You're going to have to demonstrate to people that you can be more than a marketing person if you're ever going to be a division president. So the chief operating officer job opened up at Pepsi and I went to my boss and I begged for the opportunity to run operations. I didn't have

any operations experience, but Pepsi took chances on people and gave them diverse experiences if they didn't have it. And my boss, Craig Weatherup, at the time said, I'm going to give you a shot at it. And I didn't know anything about operations. But I did know that there were a lot of people out there that did know a lot about operations. And I brought them in and asked them what they would do if they were me. And I figured out what the issues were, what the problems were. And then together, we changed a lot of the processes and developed a lot of the tools that drove our bottling operations profitability higher. And I demonstrated that I could at least get an understanding of the frontline, making money,

be a general manager. And then I got the opportunity to be president of KFC. And that was it. But one thing led to another. I think I had very high self-awareness about what I needed to do to demonstrate that I was prepared to take on more responsibility. And then I tried to make sure I did it. There was a pivotal moment for you when Roger Enrico, then the CEO of Pepsi, called you into his office and told you that you were going to be the co-leader of the new restaurant group. Can you tell us about that meeting, why it was pivotal and what you did then? Well, PepsiCo made a decision in 1997 to spin off the restaurants and the restaurants were

sort of the ugly ducklings of PepsiCo. They had low return on capital. Same store sales were down. We weren't opening up new units and the investment community said it was a drag on earnings. And so that's why they spun it off. Plus they thought that if we had more focus as a restaurant company without being a part of a package goods company, we would do what it takes to be more successful.

So I was running Pizza Hut and KFC at the time. And Roger said, I want you to be a co-leader. I said, what does that mean? He said, well, this one guy's going to be the CEO and you're going to be the chief operating officer. And I said, well, who is this guy? And he said, well, it's this guy who was at the time running Taco Bell. And I knew the restaurant business a lot better than him, but he had just been hired by Roger a year earlier. And Roger thought he had more finance experience than me. And I said, well, I don't think been hired by Roger a year earlier. And Roger thought he had

more finance experience than me. And I said, well, I don't think he has any more experience than me. He says, well, you got to be with him. You're going to work for him. Okay. You guys are going to be a teamwork, but you'll figure it out. You'll be the spiritual leader, et cetera. You'll use your tools, but he should be the CEO. So I go meet with them and it was like looking in the mirror. Okay. He had the same experience I had. He didn't have any more finance experience to me. He'd come from Circle K, which had been bankrupt. And he wasn't the guy that took him out of bankruptcy. It was this other guy who was a lawyer and a finance person. And he was the operating guy. It's more like what I would be,

except for he didn't know the restaurant business any better than me. So now I'm really convinced that I shouldn't work for him. So I go to Roger Rico and said, I'm not going to work for him. I mean, he's a good guy, but, and he said, yes, you are. And I said, well, no, I'm not. So then I go back to Louisville, Kentucky, which where Kentucky fried chicken was. And I get this phone call from Bill Bensel, who's the chief human resources officer. He says, David, you need to take this job. And he said, you're going to get fired. I said, well, fire me. And I hung up and I go, geez, what have I just done here? I said, you're going to get fired. I said, well, fire me. And I hung up and I go, geez, what have I just done here? I said, there's only one person that wins in a situation like that. And it's not me, it's the boss. And if I'm making him that mad at me, I'm going to be out of here. So I decided that I needed to do something. So I called up Roger and Rico and said,

can I come see you? I want to talk to you about what I want to do with the company. And it was on Martin Luther King day. I remember to this day in 1996, I actually went in 97 and I had a presentation, 40 page deck or something on basically what kind of company I thought we could build, what we would do, what our culture be like, who should do what, what processes needed to be better, et cetera. And I said, I don't mind working for somebody, although I think I can do this job myself, but it's got to be somebody I can grow from. In fact, I said, there are two people I recommend. One would be Don Kendall, because he loves the restaurant business and doesn't think we should be spinning it off. And the other would

be Andy Pearson, who was the former president of PepsiCo, was now a teacher at Harvard Business School and working with Clayton Dubler and Rice, a leveraged buyout firm. And Roger says, okay, you don't have to work for this guy, but you're not going to be the chairman of the company. I got to get you somebody that can help you do the finance and all that kind of stuff. So I went back to work and trusted Roger that that would be the case. And he came up with a couple ideas for the chairman. One was a former Procter and Gamble guy, arts. Another was Jan Karlsson from Swedish Airlines, but neither one of them were really serious candidates. I knew it, but we still needed somebody I was going to work for. And then finally, one day he comes to me, you know, I've been thinking, what about Andy Pearson?

Well, I'd recommended Andy Pearson to him like three months earlier. And I go, okay, that'd be interesting. So I said, great. So I have dinner with Andy and we forged a deal and the rest is history. But Andy told me, he said, David, there's one thing he said, it's an interesting story because Andy's big thing was he loved being Fortune's 500's 10 toughest bosses. He was undercover. And I was sort of like the king of recognition at PepsiCo. And I was very much of

a people person. And I asked him, who's your favorite CEO? And he said, Bob Crandall. Well, Bob Crandall was one of those 10 guys who is one of the toughest guys in business on Fortune 10 Toughest Bosses. And I said, well, you know who my favorite CEO is? Herb Keller from Southwest Airlines, who is Mr. People First and all that kind of stuff. And I said, if you like Bob Crandall, who's a hard ass, and I like Herb Keller, and I want to build a company like Herb Keller's building at Southwest Airlines, we're going to have a problem. It's not going to work out. And I i said i'd like you to read this book and it was a book called nuts on southwest airlines a great book and you get all kinds of ideas i recommend it to everybody today so andy reads the book and i come back and meet with him a few days later and he says i can

support you i can see why you need to build a company that's frontline oriented like southwest airlines is okay but there's one thing you need to know i company that's frontline oriented like Southwest Airlines is. Okay. But there's one thing you need to know. I said, what's that? And he says, I want to be the CEO of the company. Now I thought he was going to be the chairman of the company. And he said, I haven't been a CEO before, and I'd like to be the CEO. And I said, well, Andy, if you want to be the CEO, that's fine with me. And because I figured this, I think he was 72 at the time that if I couldn't convince Andy in the board within three years, which he had a three-year contract that I should be the next CEO, there's something wrong with me. And I was clearly going to be the next

in line. So Andy took me under his wings. We had a great partnership. He became my best friend. He was a co-founder of Yamaha and we did it together. We call her, you know, basically everybody sees us as the co-founders and he was my best friend when he died at 80. And I, I gave the eulogy of his funeral and I think of Andy every day, but it was a lot of self-coaching going on there. I could tell you that. It is such an extraordinary story for so many reasons, David. First, you are obviously hyper competitive. And when you were going to be named the number two position at YUM, you figured out a way to make it work for you.

And you brought in a great leader as CEO that you learned from, who then became your best friend and essentially your coach? Yeah, he's Andy and I worked together. He turned over the range to be a CEO after two years, because he said, David, you're doing the bulk of the work. You should be the CEO. And I kept him on the board until he died. There wasn't a day I didn't talk to Andy Pearson. I loved Andy. And you know what? He never made a decision that I can recall, but he probably made a lot of them that I didn't know about just because I listened to him and I respected his point of views. But I always felt like I made the decisions. And I thought that

was a great learning there because you take the joy of the job away when you take the joy of the decision away. And I always felt like I was making every decision at Yum! Brands from day one. And that just shows you how wise Andy was. He was able to influence me in a way that I never felt him micromanaging or telling me what to do. And he gave me enormous confidence. He told me from the very beginning, he said, David, and Jamie Dimon was on our board too. Jamie Dimon, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase was on the board. At that time, he'd been fired at Citigroup and was on the beach, as they say in the financial world.

And he told me, he said, you know what? You and Jamie Dimon are going to become two of the finest CEOs of your era. I didn't really know what a CEO did. I was learning the ropes and he told me that. And Jamie wasn't even a CEO and he told Jamie that, but he believed in us before we even believed in ourselves, like you need to. But Andy was a very special guy. So you learned about leadership essentially by looking around you, by practicing

it, by seeing who you thought were great leaders and with working with some of the best leaders. Let's talk about some of the traits and characteristics of great leaders that you've identified. One of your major ones is humility. Can you talk about that? With my podcast, How Leaders Lead, I interview all kinds of CEOs and leaders of industry and sports leaders. And it's amazing. All of these leaders are extremely confident because you know what? It's an important trait to have because people are not going to follow you unless you give them a sense, you know, where you're going. So confidence and belief in yourself and belief in what a business can be

is really essential. And all the best leaders really have it. But it's married with humility, with the sense that, hey, I don't know everything. I need you. And that humility of letting people know that you need them, I think is just an essential trait. And a lot of times you have so much success that you start thinking that you know everything and people don't get what you get and you lose your humility. The great John Weinberg from Goldman Sachs told me once, he said, David, you either grow or you swell. And I think the best leaders, they grow and they manage their ego. That putting their ego aside and believing in what other people can bring to bear, I think is absolutely essential. One of the other traits that you talk about is reframing.

You reframe it in a very particular way using the word yet. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, that's Jason Goldsmith is my performance coach who wrote the book, Take Charge of You with me. That's one of the tools that he taught me. You might say, I haven't hit a 20% margin. And he just adds dot, dot, dot, yet. Put that yet at the end of everything you haven't done. And it means that you can still do it.

And I think that's an essential way to think. You don't want to block off the progress that you can make. If you're a golfer, I haven't shot par yet. Keep giving yourself the openness that you can do that. And you got to reframe opportunities. Sometimes negative things happen to you. For example, I had cancer and I kind of reframed it as a blessing that I've got a great opportunity to tell everybody I love. I love them. They can

tell me they love me and I have a chance to tackle this and move on and I'm going to do it. But I reframed it as an opportunity to get in even better shape, learn more, do more, get myself prepared to win and versus saying, oh no, I don't know what I'm going to do now. I think that that's an important way to look at things. The best leaders, when they get into adverse situations, they look at what can be learned from it and how they can turn the situation around on its ear, use it as an opportunity. You have a problem, let's say with a new product. How can you turn that problem into future opportunities by learning from it, figuring out what went wrong and what are the steps that you need to do to take it to the next level the next time so it doesn't happen again? But I think the best leaders are always looking for ways to find positive, even out of a bad situation.

And hand in hand with that, you believe in keeping a neutral mindset? Yeah, if you get in a neutral mindset, you believe in keeping a neutral mindset? Yeah, if you get in a neutral mindset, you're open to ideas. It's a growth mindset. If you have a lot of anxiety, negativity one way or the other, or you're too positive, you really can't look at things in a balanced perspective. So try to get neutral in your approach. The other thing I really believe that's important is that you do everything you can to manage your moods as a leader. You make your worst decisions when you're angry, resentful, and tired. You make your best decisions when you're grateful,

when you're in a state of gratitude. So I always try to work my way up the mood elevator and get myself into a state of gratitude the best way I can. And I try to be conscious of my moods. If I'm angry or irritated about something, I try to find a way to get my mood up to the point where I can at least be curious and interested before I make a decision. And I think that being aware of your moods is critical. I love your quote from Stan McChrystal, the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who has also been a Three Takeaways guest. And the quote, the temptation to lead as a chess master controlling each move must give way to an approach as a gardener, enabling rather than directing. A gardening approach to leadership is anything but passive unquote.

Tell us about that gardening approach that you believe so strongly. And I really think that your job as a leader is to look at your people as people that can really flourish under your leadership. If you create the right environment for them, you help them, you coach them, you develop them. And that's, you coach them, you develop them, and that's how you get the best results. To me, nothing big happens by yourself. In order to take people with you, taking people with you is the only way to make big things happen. So you have to have people on the journey. You can't micromanage, you can't control. You've got to do what I call unleash the power of people,

get them knowing that you need them and getting them involved. And that leads to commitment. There's one law in leadership that has been proven over and over again. You have no involvement, you have no commitment. And I think a gardener looks at a way out of bring everything together in that garden so it becomes beautiful. It's almost like an orchestra conductor. The garden will sing and the instruments will play and it all works together.

That's what leadership is all about. And one of the tools that you use to do that, to get everyone to play together and give their best is recognition. Can you talk about some of your examples, your rubber chickens or your cheese heads? Well, go back, if you don't mind, just to my roots of recognition. Why is it that I believe in recognition so much? I always have believed in people. I always felt that people should be thanked for what they do, respected for what they do. Colin Powell told me once that recognition says that you're watching. As a leader, you're

watching what's going on. When I was running operations for Pepsi, I used to go out in the field and meet with the frontline people. And I was in St. Louis one time and I was meeting with a route salesman. And I was asking about merchandising. It was early in the morning, 6.30. I brought in coffee and donuts and we're all sitting around this round table. And I said, tell me about merchandising. Who's doing it well? What are you learning these days? And merchandising at Pepsi is critical. It's like how your products are placed and whether the facings were right. Did you have enough display space and all this? So everybody started talking about this guy named Bob who's sitting directly across from me.

And they said, Bob is the best merchandiser I've ever seen. Bob taught me so much in a half a day. I learned more from Bob in a half a day than I learned from other people in my first four years at Pepsi. This guy's amazing. And everybody's raving about this guy. I looked down at the end of the table and he's crying. And I said, Bob, why are you crying? He said, well, I are you crying? He said,

well, I've been in this company for 47 years. I'm retiring next year. I'm sorry. I'm retiring in two weeks. He said, okay. He said, and I didn't know people felt this way about me. And that hit me in the gut because it was like, here's this guy is so good at what he did. People were raving about him and he didn't feel appreciated. He didn't know that he was so highly valued. And I said to myself, if I ever have any opportunity going forward, the number one value that I'm going to use to drive performance is recognition. And so as it turned out three or four months later, I got the opportunity to go be president of KFC.

So I went in there and the morale was down. It was very negative. KFC hadn't made plan at PepsiCo since it would have been acquired. It was really a tough environment. The franchisees hated the company, the company hated the franchisees. So I said, I got to change the attitude around here. And I said, I'm going to use recognition to do it. But I wanted to have fun because it was a very dour culture. Nobody was having fun. People were too busy hating each other. So I heard about this guy in IT who had a meeting once a month, his department meeting, and he recognized people by giving away this rubber chicken. So I went to him and I said, geez, I love your idea. And I'm looking for a recognition award that I can give away here at KFC as the president's word. Would you mind if I used your

rubber chicken as that? He said, no, I'd be honored if you did that. And so I started giving away rubber chickens. I'd number them, go in to a restaurant, see somebody's cooking original recipe. The quality is great. Find out they'd been in the company for 19 years, that they were the number one team member on the team. They were focused on quality. And I go in and I say, gee, Lynn, you're the best original recipe cook I've ever seen i write down you're the best original recipe cook quality is what makes us tick thank you for all you do sign it david novak then i would give him this rubber chicken and then i say i want to take a picture of you i take a picture of them and i say i'm going to send you a framed picture you can throw it in a trash if you want, but I'm going to put your picture on my office wall because you're what makes our

business tick. And I gave him a hundred dollars because you couldn't eat a floppy chicken. And people started literally crying when I give them these rubber chickens. It was amazing. And so I started recognizing people whenever I saw the behaviors that I knew were going to drive success. And it was amazing how people started working together, more positive energy, more accountability, more teamwork. But I believe that recognition should be very purposeful. You need to figure out what the five, six things are that if your teammates do it, it will drive the behaviors that drive results.

And then if you recognize those behaviors every time you see them, you don't have to give away a rubber chicken. But I did. That was what I did. But people will do more of those things. So if you want customer focus, when you see people really focused on the customer, say, hey, God, I can't believe you're doing that with the customer. That's so exciting. I mean, that is fantastic. That's what's going to make our business good if you want innovation somebody develops a new product or comes up with a new process it's awesome go to their office or go to and say gee i heard about you doing this thank you so much that's exactly what's going to make our business go and it's amazing how people do it well it works so well at kfc we helped me turn around the business there then i got promoted to be president of Pizza Hut.

And I went there and I gave away cheese heads, Green Bay Packer cheese heads. And I wrote on them, numbered them, et cetera. Then I got promoted to be the head of Yum. And I gave away these walk the talk teeth and I'd write on them, number them, take pictures and all this. Now, if you come to my office in Louisville, and it's still there, my office is lined from floor to ceiling of people that I've recognized all around the world. And then if you look up on the ceiling, people say, what happens if you've run out of wall space? I said, I'm going to put them

on the ceiling. So if you look up, you'll see pictures on the ceiling. Now, everybody, when they come to the corporate office, we call it the restaurant support center. They want to see the CEO's office, everybody, the restaurant managers come in, they want to see it. So when they come to the corporate office, we call it the restaurant support center. They want to see the CEO's office, everybody, the restaurant managers come in and they want to see it. So when they walk into my office, they know what our business is all about. People, people and recognition. And this took off. If it had just been me doing this, it wouldn't have led to all the results we got, but people saw the power of it. Other people came up with their recognition awards and then everybody had their own recognition award and people were doing recognition all around the world. And I just talked to David Gibbs, who's the CEO of Young Brands. They're going to have

me come speak at their 25th anniversary in March. And he said, you know, the bedrock of our success is the recognition culture that you started when you were the CEO. It's still there. We all have our recognition awards, et cetera, et cetera. But that makes me really feel good because people, it's been quantified time and time again, people leave companies for two reasons. One, they don't feel appreciated. And two, they don't get along with their boss.

So they're part and parcel. The boss should really be a coach and the coach should be appreciating you when you're doing good work. And then people are going to be happier and they're going to stay. And very few times people change their life by changing a job. There are very few quantum, quantum leaps where it's like, you know, you go to one job and you get like a massive salary increase. It's more incremental.

But the one thing you can change is the job, is the boss and the culture. And so I think you can feel a culture when you walk into a restaurant or any business, you can feel what the place is like. So to me, recognition is really created a powerful culture at Yum. And it was a performance-based culture because we recognize people around the values that we knew would drive results. And I also recognized bad behavior, too. I mean, if you didn't perform, you got fired. You got coached first.

And then if you didn't get your act together, we asked you to go to some other company and make people miserable. But that's how we looked at it. David, what's the one question you believe that every leader should ask their people? How can I help you? It's the one question you believe that every leader should ask their people? How can I help you? It's a great question. You write about extraordinary authenticity. How can leaders be more authentic, including showing more vulnerability? I think you got to recognize, first of all, that the only person you can be is you.

And people recognize a phony every step of the way. If you're not being yourself, people recognize it so easily, it's unbelievable. So you can't fake it. You got to be who you are. If you want to be authentic, you have to be vulnerable enough to ask people for help. You have to be vulnerable enough to let people know you screwed up. I taught a leadership program called taking people with you. And believe me, people loved hearing my stories of where I screwed up more than they did my success. My failures were much more enjoyable for them to hear about. They really loved hearing them because I think it was like, Hey, this guy got to where he

is and he failed. I can get there too. But I always looked at those things as learning experiences and I try to share them. But I think when you stand up and talk about how you screwed up and what you could have done better and that's being vulnerable, that makes you authentic. My authenticity came through for my recognition awards. I'm a floppy chicken kind of guy. That's who I am.

Not everybody's a floppy chicken person. Not everybody can give away cheese heads, but that's who I am. That made me authentic. And very special. Well, I don't know about that. What has surprised you about leadership? I would say how much in demand it is. I think 80% of people go to work and they're not engaged according to Gallup polls. I find that to be just shocking. And that's an indictment on leadership. That's why in my new life, I'm focused on making the world a better place by developing better leaders. I have the David Novak Leadership Company and we have How Leaders Lead Brand and digital

training and podcasts and books. And it's all nonprofit and it's all geared towards developing better leaders. And we're trying to do it in elementary school with global game changers and middle schools, high schools with Lead for Change, which is the largest privately funded leadership development program

in middle schools and high schools in the country. We've got 15,000 teachers signed up this year. I have the Novak Leadership Institute at Missouri. And then for aspiring leaders, I have How Leaders Lead. And so I'm trying to develop leaders at all ages. And I'm thinking, geez, if just one of them can be the president of the United States someday, we can teach them how to lead just one of them. What a home run that'll be. And to me, it's just such a sad state of affairs that we have the leadership that we have in our country and have had for years. It doesn't matter which party. And it sickened me to think of all these people going to work every day and

they're not engaged and they don't feel valued. I think 70% of people feel like they're not appreciated by their boss. The numbers are huge. I don't know if that I think 70% of people feel like they're not appreciated by their boss. The numbers are huge. I don't know if that's the exact number, but the Gallup numbers are just amazing. And I'm trying to teach people about taking people with you and recognition and those kinds of things. It makes such a difference at all levels in terms of being a friend, being a partner in a local community organization, in a small business, in a big business, or in politics?

Yeah, it's be the leader, act like the leader. You can be a janitor, you can be an admin, you can be a vice president, you can be a CEO. Everybody can lead in their piece of yum. I always said yum was our company. So you lead in your piece of Yum. If everybody leads in your piece of Yum, then it'll all add up and we'll be doing great. But don't wait for to have somebody tell you what to do. This is why I really wrote the book, Take Charge of You. It's we want people to take accountability. Your life and your career is way too important to delegate it to

someone else. Learn how to coach yourself. And by the way, once you learn how to coach yourself, you'll be able to coach others better. And that's great. David, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today? I'd say number one, take charge of your life and your career. Don't delegate it to someone else. It's the most important thing you can do, and it's important. So make sure you learn how to really self-coach yourself. Number two, purposeful recognition is your most powerful motivational tool. And in my case, have fun doing it. It really can light up your team and light up your company. And the third thing is, is that you have to have the humility, be confident yet humble enough to know that you

have to take people with you to make big things happen. Nothing big ever happens by yourself. Thank you, David. This has been terrific. I really enjoyed your new book, Take Charge of You. Well, thank you very much, Lynn. And I appreciate what you're doing on the leadership front, the great guests that you have and the thoughtfulness of all your questions.

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