BOB LUTZ ON LEADERSHIP

In May of '24, introduced by a friend- The legendary Bob Lutz met with Jeff Sterns and gave some invaluable leadership advice...

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:00):
If you're going to be a leader, having a degree of self

(00:03):
confidence, and being relativelyfirm in your opinions, is a good
thing. If you don't have areally firm belief in what
you're doing is right. You can'tconvince others to follow you.
But I think most people, myselfincluded, there's always this

(00:28):
tiny little voice in the back ofyour back of your head. What if
I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong?What if I'm wrong? And that
little voice gets you to listento people? And thank God, you
know, many times in my career,I've absolutely wanted
something. And my guys said,Bob, look, don't do this. It's

(00:49):
not gonna work at or we can'tbuild it. And I push back a lot
and say, Yeah, well, you guysare just negative, et cetera, et
cetera. And they'd come back andsay, Bob, listen, we gotta tell
you. One more, one morepresentation, we'll take it down
to the shops. And we'll show youthe reasons why we can't do. And

(01:12):
then finally, I'd say, Okay, Igot it. And, by the way, if you
run into that much hostility, itprobably isn't going to work.
Because the people at thatpoint, if you do a forced job
and say, I don't care what youguys say, I hear by ordain that

(01:35):
you do it, they're gonna go intomalicious obedience. And you'll
never get a decent product.

Jeff Sterns (01:41):
Right. But you'd mentioned when you get hostility
like that, but I think it's,you're really just talking about
resistance. And you know, it'snot necessarily hostile yet. But
I'm always a big fan and studentof leadership, not management,
you know, leadership. And thestory you just told was actually
a little bit surprising to me.Because you got a big persona,

(02:03):
he got a big personality, yougot a big reputation. And what
you just said, tells me that youcreated an environment that made
it safe for people to give yousome roles.

Unknown (02:12):
That was that was another thing I learned in the
Marine Corps. And it's in MarineCorps, leadership style
principles, and that is that youadapt your leadership style to
the situation at hand. And whentime permits, you listen to your
subordinates. That means for asecond lieutenant, he listens to

(02:35):
the sergeants and corporals, whohave probably been in the
infantry a hell of a lot longerthan a freshly minted second
lieutenant. When you're acolonel, you listen to
lieutenants, and SergeantMajors. And if you go to a
Marine Corps weaponsdemonstration, the presentations

(02:55):
are not like in the movies wherethere's a two star general,
standing at the with the mapsand with the pointer. In the
Marine Corps, its sergeants andSergeants Major, who gives the
presentation. So the MarineCorps strongly believes in
listening to the troops, theonly time you adopt a more

(03:19):
draconian and more absolutistleadership style is in an
emergency situation where thereis either no time for
discussion, or the situation isso dire, that the troops are
reluctant to take the measuresthat you're going to ask them to
take. And then you have to say,look, we're in a tough

(03:41):
situation. We can't argue this.We need everybody to cut their
budgets by 20%. I know it'sawful. I know, you're gonna have
to get rid of people. I knowwe're going to have to delay
programs. But that's thesituation we're in. And I always
tried to. I never said what Ialways avoided, was once when

(04:06):
they said, Well, why do we haveto do this? I never said because
I say so. That's that's the signof a weak leader. A good leader
is capable of explaining thenecessity to the people that are
being asked to accomplish thetask. And I always used I always

(04:26):
used to the extent possible. Ialways used humor. But one GM
story when I got to GM, one ofmy in 2002 1001. On my return at
age 70. I was at a first meetingof all my direct reports and

(04:47):
they were about 20 people in theroom. And I started you know
just banter and telling themwhat I thought was wrong with GM
products. And I saw everybodyhunched over pieces of paper,
scribbling furiously. I said,what do you what do you what are
you people doing? I said, Well,you're a vice chairman, and

(05:11):
you're addressing us. And you'regiving us wisdom from your
career. And we're taking notes.And I said, Guys, listen, you
don't know me very well. But Itend to run off at the mouth.
I'm what is technically known asgiven to verbosity. And I say a

(05:35):
lot of things that don't makeany sense. And what I do is I
try to trigger responses inpeople. And I say a lot of
controversial things, and I wantto hear push back. And you
people should never be worriedabout pushing back. The only
thing I just one rule. Any oneof you at any time, in any

(06:01):
meeting, can say, Excuse me,sir, you're full of sh i t. I
would just ask you to say andthis got a big laugh, I'd say
you have to preface it with thewords. With all due respect,
sir, you are full of andeverybody laughed. And, you

(06:21):
know, what, two or three weeksweeks later, we I think we were
having an argument about fakewood versus real wood and cars.
And can the cuts can theconsumer tell the difference?
Because the cost difference islike 10 to one. And I was as
fake wood today looks betterthan real wood in most

(06:44):
applications. And that's whenone guy finally said, Okay, I'm
gonna test this. This with alldue respect, sir, you are And
everybody looked horrified tosee how I was going to respond.
I said, Thank you, sir. Forbreaking the ice. I've been

(07:06):
waiting patiently for somebodyto do that. Now. Tell me why.
And once we got once everybodyunderstood that nobody was going
to be punished. We had meetingsthat sounded like verbal free
for alls we'd shout in and Imean, we insult each other. And

(07:31):
I, I accepted as well as I got,but you know what? I never
feared for my authority, becauseI knew at the end of the day,
they knew I had the stripes.They knew who what who was in
charge. And they knew that if Iput my foot down, I was gonna
get my way. So I I never saw itas threatening my authority or

(07:54):
threatening my position orhurting my ego. If people
criticized my ideas or my myopinions.

Jeff Sterns (08:05):
This has been Jeff Sterns connected through cars