Stumbling Blocks: How Great Leaders Are Made

I'm talking directly to the people who make some of those great podcasts to find out how they do what they do and to hear about what they're listening to. My guest on this episode is Jonathan Block. Hi Jonathan,

how are you?

Um I shorten it to sometimes just calling it the stumble, which is to say that all leaders have moments in their lives, it turns out, where they've stumbled or where someone has uh pulled the rug out from underneath them and has caused a stumble. Um, and in almost every case, they tell me that those moments of stumble are led to the periods of greatest growth in their lives.

And so it's a really uh fascinating opportunity to talk to some of the most interesting people in the world and learn from them about their stumble and what they learned from it.

And so maybe the story that that uh that sort of paints that picture is I was meeting once with a brand new CEO, and I asked her to tell me uh about moments uh as she was thinking about her platform, uh as she stepped into the role of CEO of a of a large Fortune 250 publicly traded company, thinking about her leadership platform. So I asked her to think tell me when did you grow the most? When have you learned the most?

And she said, It's the moments, it's those times that are the hardest, actually. And that that was about 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and it really just got me thinking that maybe there's something to this that it's not the mountaintop moments we learn uh and where others can learn from us. It's actually those places in between that we don't like to talk about so much, where we have the most to learn and the most to share.

did you suddenly decide I'll leap on the podcast bandwagon?

And in the marshes, you can find what we call cattails, which are um marshy sort of tubers that have a really tall brown fuzzy thing at the top, and they look like the microphones that President George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev used during the nuclear as the USSR wound down and then they negotiated nuclear treaties. And I was a little kid, like six, seven, uh uh, six or seven, and I would uh watching President Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev on TV at these press conferences.

And then I would go down to my family marsh and I would cut down cattails and I would hold them uh as a microphone and pretend that I was uh interviewing them or one of them. So this is something that's sort of been in my blood uh really for as long as I can remember.

What's your first clip?

And and uh of course the answer, as I mentioned, is that so many leaders have had stumbles and have learned from them, and so have I. And uh so this episode on apologizing, um, I heard her first talk about apologizing about five years ago. And not long thereafter, I had the chance to apologize for a major uh mistake I made at work where I really hurt a colleague deeply. And um, and I I I just stepped in it. I made a big mistake and I hurt her, and she's someone that I cared about a lot.

And um uh using as I really thought about it, I I I realized at the end of that year, so it's maybe three or four years ago, you know what, I I can't really end this year without apologizing to her in a true and deep way. And I need to do that meaningfully. And I leaned on Sandra's method of um apologies.

And uh as you'll hear in the clip, she talks about um say you're sorry, say what you did, say why you did it without defensiveness, just let the person know the context and then tell them how you're gonna make it right. And that model is uh it's a it's a it's a great model and a simple one, and one that I teach to my kids now.

intend for this to happen. You know, so so how mad can you get at me for something I didn't intend? And in trust terms, the answer is really a lot. You still did it. It still had these effects. And so when you think about apologizing in that kind of broader sense, uh intentionality, of course, matters.

And there's lots of research that says that when people are discovered or presumed to have bad intentions, people judge them even more harshly, of course, uh, than they would someone whose intentions they think are pretty benign. Uh, but it but when it comes to betraying someone's trust, I really don't care whether you intended to do it or not. You still did it, right? Uh and that's kind of the big thing.

And uh and and so for companies, again, that's sometimes a hard uh rubicon to cross because now we're in the land of unintended consequences, and all kinds of things happen in corporations all the time that we don't intend. But sort of saying this is what I'm gonna try to fix, that requires a certain commitment to other people's welfare that's at the heart of not betraying trust.

I don't know if you I like to think of who's gonna listen to this, why are they gonna listen to it? And you know, there's lots of different podcasts. Some are just, you know, if you're an A Hollywood A-lister or you've been on Saturday Night Live, people are just gonna want to hear you speak. You could say anything. You and I are probably not in that category. So I guessing what you're giving people in interviews like that is actual useful guidance.

Like, hey, do you want to know how to apologize? Maybe it's not as simple as you think, these steps. Is that one of the things you're aiming to do with your podcast to give people actual kind of information they can use?

He comments on um the scandal that drove him out of office. Uh the he and his wife uh talk about the five years afterward that they call the kind of the wilderness, um, what the faith and and the love that led them to what was next. And they also, of course, talk about ICE and Epstein and immigration in America. So uh it's a it's a pretty it's a great discussion and and um their first joint interview since leaving office 19 years ago.

right.

And so I went into business, I went to Accenture and went to management consulting in the leadership development and change management space, which is where I've been ever since. But a couple of years into my role at Accenture, my boss, a woman, a wonderful woman named Cynthia Robin, said, Jonathan, you're great at value creation and you're great at business development, but you do not know how to run a business. And she was spot on. I didn't know, uh I didn't know in the red from in the black.

Um, and so I uh took her advice seriously and um earned an MBA. And it it the succinct answer to your question is that it taught me the language of business um and how to speak in terms that my clients could understand versus the way that I understood.

And um and choosing to working at the White House, getting to the White House, um, and then choosing to leave uh is uh w what I would call a stumble, um, an unexpected moment for sure, a curveball. Um one that I'm immensely grateful for, uh, but yeah, a definite curveball. I I I had I had sort of planned my whole life around that and then got there, got to that mountain and realized this is not the mountain that I want.

That literally the doors to the East Wing being opened wide. And I can remember before tours, and really after uh before tours, seeing um White House workers literally roll out the carpets for tourists so they wouldn't damage the floors and so they had a comfortable place to walk. And then afterward, uh I can e remember seeing um those same workers with cans of paint dabbing up the walls where kids might have scraped their elbows along the way. Um, and uh, and that is a special, special thing.

And my hope is, and it's it seems like maybe that's the intent, that the new East Wing will be equally welcoming to Americans and and and people from all over the world.

a little bit of um kind of deep sadness. So this is not this is not um what I hope this is not um I'm not becoming the human that I hoped I would become. And if I if I if I um if if what I s who I say I want to become is actually real, then then maybe this is not the direction of American politics and and especially working in political communications is not uh will not shape me into the human I want to be. And so yeah, there was an absolute sort of sense of sadness and loss.

I remember um I I really did not know what I was going to do when I left the White House. I I intentionally um scheduled a couple things. I intentionally scheduled a week-long trip to the Caribbean with my dad and then skydiving. And then after that I didn't know. But I did that because I knew people would say, What are you gonna do next? And I would say, Oh, I'm gonna go jump out of a plane. And then they'd have a laugh. And then they'd say, No, no, no, no, really, what are you gonna do?

And I'd say, Oh, I'm gonna go to the Caribbean, and then they'd maybe laugh. And then usually most people didn't ask a third time, but if they did, I'd have to say, I I genuinely don't know what I'm gonna do next. Um, I thought for a time maybe I would go to to um Ernury and uh become a uh a counseling psychologist. Um decided not to do that. I actually ended up working for John McCain and Sarah Palin after I left the White House on their failed 2008 presidential bid.

Um, and then really after that moment realized I I'm stick a fork in me.

I'm done, I'm out, uh I'm going to business.

I realized um this it just isn't compatible with the human I want to become.

And um interesting, you know, he was kind of gracious in defeat, whether you liked his politics or you didn't, he still seemed to believe in in the in the system, you know, which I'm sure most Americans would agree has huge flaws. But if you if you're playing that game and you lose the election, you you admit defeat, um, which I think was raised in this next clip. Which why don't you introduce us to who was this person you were speaking to?

went into the private sector. My first clients were were in the Department of Defense, um which seemed you know sort of fitting given what I had done before going into business. And um, Admiral Harnichek at the time was uh um uh when when I worked for him, he was um the the head of uh uh an organization called the Transportation Command inside the Department of Defense.

But he went on to become the head of all logistics for the Department of Defense, leading a $40,000, $45 billion budget and something like 40,000 people, so a massive enterprise. And um when I when I worked for him and when I interviewed him, um, you know, the man spent the first many years of his career on a submarine. So I I think he he might admit that um his go-to wasn't necessarily soft skills.

But when I worked for him, what I found was a man who had exceptionally high standards, but also deeply cared about his people and had intentionally cultivated soft skills, which is somewhat unusual for a three-star Navy admiral. Uh, they're not known for being um, you know, tough and tender. They're known just for being tough, right?

And and and what I mean by that is that um he uh he sp what he spoke speaks about in his in the in the podcast interview that I did with him is that he grew up under admirals who had likely served um in but potentially in the Korean or in the Vietnam conflict and in the Korean conflict before that. And uh he talked about a couple of them who deeply changed him.

And what he said was he called them humorless and that they uh the only the only positive reinforcement that you got was the lack of negative reinforcement and maybe more work, right? Um, and also anger. He talked about how one of the admirals he worked for always had anger simmering under the surface. And he, when he was a young officer, he he he didn't want to become like that.

But then as he grew in his career, he realized he was becoming like they, like they were, with anger always under the surface. And he said he he kind of had an aha moment where he realized I'm having too much fun to be angry. I'm leading too great a team to be angry at them all the time, and also leadership is a mirror, and I will get back from them what I give them, and so I'm not going to be angry anymore. And and uh amazing man.

having too much fun to to to ever get angry, you know, or or impatient. You know, now that doesn't mean that you can't have high standards and and be very demanding, yeah. But um, if you're a leader of of a big well, any organization, frankly, but especially a big one, you you have to look like you're having fun.

Um, that's a remarkable story. Just tell us a little bit about that episode.

Uh and and um it was an effort to combat uh child essentially childhood malaria across the globe. What um those presidents realized was fundamentally um uh there are there are uh several hundred thousand cases a year of malaria and tens of thousands of kids, uh hundreds of thousands of kids actually die globally of malaria.

And that's a moral travesty, but it's also a national security risk because people whose kids are dying of a disease that is immensely curable um uh historically um can pose security threats to the nations around them because they want their kids to thrive and survive.

And so um president the the the this initiative was uh a pretty simple effort to provide bed nets, to provide paint that kills mosquitoes, and and some other pretty simple tools to help nations with uh um the kind of mosquito that spreads malaria combat that disease. And Admiral Zemer, uh, through the work that he led that American taxpayers spearheaded the funding for, ended up saving uh over 16 years 12 million, 12 million kids who would have otherwise died of malaria.

Hello and welcome to the Stumble. Since this is President's Day week, I've invited a man who served three presidents and saved 12 million lives while carrying out the mission they gave

him. He is Admiral Tan Zemer. He spent three decades in the Navy, and then when the president came calling, he left a comfortable retirement to launch and lead the President's Malaria Initiative. It's an effort that every American can be proud of, regardless of party, because it saved more than 12 million people, mostly kids, from dying because of malaria and helped prevent another two billion cases. Admiral Zemer's service to country and the world is bookended, though, by deep personal tragedy.

what our military and and and and humanitarian functions has done over the last 50 years is just nothing short of extraordinary. And there are stories that every American can be proud of, regardless of what side of the aisle you might sit on or you maybe you used to sit on. Um what we have the way that we have projected strength through peace is is is remarkable. And there are stories worth telling.

Tony Blair actually I think did lots of good things, but history has shown, and many of us thought at the time, the invasion of Iraq was was foolish and and and wrong for many reasons. And I think both of them that will be a big legacy. For George W. Bush, the good legacy, you know, was the work he did on AIDS in Africa, the work he did on malaria, slightly less well known, I would think, but that we you talk a lot about in that episode.

Presidents of the United States, and I guess prime ministers of the UK and any of these big world leaders, they are concerned about their legacy, aren't they? And and again, coming back to that question you ask, how do you want to be remembered? Jonathan, this is a question you ask at the end.

Donald Trump's got a, you know, he's got three years left to play, but at the moment, one of his legacies might be just dismantling all that good work from previous presidents, and maybe he did it because it was previous presidents, because if he didn't do it, he's not that keen on it. I don't know. Do you have a view that you'd like to express on what's going on in that area now?

my opinion as to his as to his uh motivation. But what I can say sort of just from a historical perspective is that, as you said, the humanitarian effort that efforts that the United States and and and and the UN and allied nations uh like Britain have undertaken uh really since um the post-World War II era and and pro post-World War I even to some degree, have created an environment of economic growth that is unparalleled in human history. Period. Right?

If especially if you think about sort of Europe post-World War I and post-World War II, um, and then and then some of the economic development that's happened uh elsewhere since then. Uh if we look at malaria, um, 12 million lives saved, as we look at PEPVAR, PEPVAR has saved 25 million people. PEPVAR is a president's emergency plan for AIDS relief. It's that the the the the global effort to fight AIDS on the continent of Africa. Um, these are staggering numbers.

12 million people saved from malaria, 25 million people saved from HIV AIDS. And um in dismantling them, I think there are two cautions. The first is of course just the moral um the moral question we have to ask ourselves. Uh and and something that President Bush often said when I worked for him was to whom much is given, much is required. I happen to believe that's true.

And I happen to and so I I do think that at the end of um as we think about our legacy as a country and individually, uh the question of what we did with our tremendous wealth and what we did with our extraordinary technology and our advances in medicine will be asked of us. And it will be something that we want to tell our kids in the generations to come what we did for good with the wealth that um we have been lucky enough to build and to inherit. That sort of question in the the the first.

And then the second is that again, across history we see that um nations and peoples whose who who uh face epidemics and famines and know that their neighbors can help them and their neighbors did nothing, historically it has not bode well. It does not bode well for those neighbors who did nothing.

upon that as a question?

I shouldn't call them distractions, but on any number of I'll call them brush fires. But it's the leaders who know how to answer that question, what do I want to be known for? What values guide my decision making, who make it through the the quarters when numbers don't look great, because they have their eye on a North Star. And the leaders who can't answer that question clearly and succinctly oftentimes get capsized by the quarter where numbers don't work out so well.

And so that's why I ask, because I'm curious to see. Can you answer the question? And if so, what is your answer?

equity model in the US, you know that permanency is uh not a word that is used frequently, right? Um, generally speaking, uh private equity firms here, you know, buy for three to five years and then and then exit uh after they have sort of rung the company that they purchased, um, wrung it dry, which is a harsh term, but true in many cases. And Brent's company is really different. Um Brent Brent invests with an intentionally long time horizon, 27 years is his typical time horizon.

Um, and he invests to be, he he, as he calls it, a good steward of companies while he owns them, uh, and a and a responsible steward to the employees who work there, and a responsible steward to the investors who've pooled their money with his to help him buy companies. It's just a very different way of speaking about companies, uh, or pardon me, about about private equity that you just don't hear often in the in the states and and really anywhere.

And uh so I asked um Brent, if you read his quarterly um his pardon, his annual letter to shareholders, which I commend it to everyone, they're shocking. Uh they talk, of course, about business outcomes, and his business outcomes are remarkable. He's doing the the company's doing great. Uh it's it's blown the doors off.

But he also talks about some of these things that you and I have just talked about, about values and earning trust, and um, some of these concepts that sometimes have been a bit lost in the shuffle in American business. And so I asked him uh uh about that and kind of especially if you look about 10 years ago, there's a bit of a shift in his annual letters.

And and one of the things he talks about is that he says, um, Jonathan, or he's he says in his letters, pardon me, about 10 years ago, you know, for a long time we tried to be someone we were. We tried to act like the East Coast private equity firms, uh, and we tried to sort of cover up the fact that none of us have pri uh uh uh Ivy League degrees. Um, and that just didn't work.

And then we again writing about 10 years ago, he says we just we made a switch and we just decided to be who we are, which is that we're a midwestern American private equity firm and we invest for 27 years, and none of us went to Ivy Ivy League schools. And in doing so, we kind of unlocked something in ourselves and in the market.

a like a like a uh very modern idea of just be be you, right? Be more you. Like that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is uh God gave us a design. Um we are uh we we we have a tendency to be herd animals, right? Like we like to be homogenized into the safety of the herd. And uh what it results in is we all listen to the same things and do the same things and say the same things and watch the same things.

And and I I I I mean, I look, I think that some of that is shared culture and commonality and and community results in that. And I think that can be really powerful, but I think that um a lot of my life I was trying to pretend to be the things that I thought other people wanted me to be. Um, and so I was constantly scanning the room saying, okay, who who is that person? What do they like? What if you know, how do I need to adjust myself to be them? And uh it's exhausting.

It's uh it's a form of codependence, it's a form of hiding. Um, and you're constantly trying to adjust and and maneuver and um manipulate in many ways. Yeah. And so I, you know, as I get older, it's like, man, I just want people I want to be, and I want people to be true. I just want the truth.

a Jewish father and a Quaker mother. Um, I grew up uh uh between two cornfields, uh, although they did not they grew they grew up in in in cities, um Boston for my mom and St. Louis for my dad, and they decided they wanted to raise their kids in the country, and so they raised us in the country between two cornfields. Uh, and because I'm Quaker on one side and Jewish on the other, I use old English at home, like Hamlet. Uh, and um, but I'm also Jewish.

And so, like at Passover, which is coming up here just in about a week, um, I might say to my wife or to my my family, hey, will thee pass the matzah? Or is, you know, is that stack of matza thine? Right? So it's this crazy combination of of cultures and even linguistics. Um, and I've been sort of reticent to talk about it because I didn't know how to talk about it.

And what Brent says, and what I what was so helpful to me about that conversation with him is just be who you are and just talk about it and let it sort of settle out in the wash, and it'll be okay. You don't need to worry about how other people perceive it.

I mean, it's funny you you say about being yourself and you present a podcast, and it's interesting because there's always an element of performance, isn't there? I'm talking to you now, slightly different, probably if we were literally

in the same room and we weren't recording this. Sure it would be mostly the same, but I am aware other people are listening to it. I hope they are, you know. And and also the way you speak, um, I don't use old English. I grew up with but I I grew up with a um, I don't think I do, you know. I I grew up with a fairly pronounced regional accent, which over the years I've lost.

Uh, you know, I I I sound British to you, I know that, but I I would have had a regional accent from the Midlands of England. And I'm sure if I still live there, I'd still have that accent. Would I, you know, do I put on a voice to be on a podcast? I don't I don't know anymore. I've been doing this for six years now. I don't know anymore. Do you find that? Do you find yourself performing on microphone?

Um, just the same person that I am that you see publicly and privately and personally are sort of aligned. They're all the same, Jonathan. And um uh that is helpful to me just as a human. It helps me go to sleep at night and sleep well, uh, knowing that I'm the I represented myself to myself and to my family and then to the world in the sa as the same person.

But also I think, you know, Robin, in the age of AI, and I know you've had a lot of discussions on AI on uh in your other podcast, um in the age of AI where anybody can create a perfect podcast using Notebook LLM, or anybody can create a perfect picture or a perfect video, people are actually hungry for um the chinks in the armor. They're hungry for imperfections and the the

the the faults and foibles that make us human and make us unique from the robots.

I think that's why I would recommend your podcast to people, because yes, it's got you know news you can use, right? It's got that kind of here's how to apologize, or here's how to learn this thing, but it's also just got that. This is a human experience, those are the most interesting things. How did you know, how did you recover from this thing? Why did you realize you were going up the wrong mountain? You know, these are the questions you ask people.

And I share that because I think there are so many Americans right now who are in similar positions, where their role has been subsumed by AI or by budget cuts or what oh, you know, Doge or what have you, and they're really struggling to find what's next. What's what does meaning look like in a world where an a robot can do my job ten times better and ten times faster than I did? And I worked for 20 years to develop that craft.

And so these are the stories that we that we want to hear because they help us figure out life, and robots can't do that yet.

fun, and I think I used the expression with you, bring one that's eat your greens. Did I say that to you? You did, yes. And eat your and and she said, What on earth do you mean, eat your greens? I said, what I meant was a nourishing one that you listen because it will make you a better, cleverer, smarter person or something like that. I don't I these are early days on the pick of the pods podcast. I might change my question, but for the moment.

But you did you stuck to the script and you brought us an eat your greens and a fun one. So give us whichever one you want to start with.

young men and what we can do about it because there's a trend that I see right in my own neighborhood.

I think young men are really struggling in a world, again, that we've just talked about, where AI AI plus so much more. And I think we've done in many senses a real disservice to them. And I think what Prof G is saying is is spot on. And then and then after I emailed you that, you hosted Prop G as best I could I I did.

A bit like what one of our other, uh, one of your other guests who we mentioned earlier. And yeah, and we had him on because exactly of this issue. It's actually a colleague of mine who suggested him to me um and who co-hosts that episode with me. Um, if Scott Galloway happens to be there, can we get him in and talk to him? And it was very, very interesting. He's an interesting guy because um he's he's he's a bit of a bro himself, at least in his personality.

You know, he's not, although he considers himself what the Americans would call liberal, what we might say left-wing, um, he considers himself in that camp, he considers himself a feminist, um, which is quite unusual to hear a man call himself a feminist. And uh, however, he has some opinions about uh gender roles and stuff that wind quite a lot of feminists up the wrong way. And uh, you know, several people have said to me, Why are you talking to this guy?

And my answer was I think it's very interesting. And the issue of masculinity, of boyhood, the manosphere, all that stuff. I've done a number of pick of the pods related to that. Um, I did one just last week, um, which was about Louis Thoreau's um uh documentary on Netflix. Very interesting. Um, it wasn't the Louis Thoreau podcast, he was on someone else's podcast, but you can find that on Pick of the Pods.

Um it's just a very, it's a very it's a really crucial subject, and not just for men, but for everyone else as well, just like The position of women is an issue not just for women, it's an issue for men as well. These things are absolutely you can't separate them. And so yeah, I thought it was really interesting. Tell me about this podcast because I'm not familiar with Kerry Newhoff. Who's Kerry Newhoff?

is really speaking to um people like Prof. And and other folks sort of in the leadership space. So CEOs, former government officials, former military officials, um, so you know, many of the same maybe folks that you might interview or I might interview, um but specifically the angle of um helping the listener very practically become a better leader.

Uh and it's um it's it's it's been an interesting byproduct of asking people probing questions about what drives them.

I think America is slightly different from from Western Europe when it comes to religion, but always always worth listening to, I think, uh those conversations.

he calls his sister and uh has some sort of non sequitur thing to tell her, and she usually laughs and then kind of hangs up on him or something like that, right? And it reminds me so much of my big sister, Cak, who is four years older than I am. She's a nurse practitioner, uh primary care provider in Texas. And she and I are very close, and she has an outrageous, wonderful laugh.

And I do damn near anything to make her laugh, including things like um, I might call her to tell her that I got gas at a really good price. Uh, I might call her to tell her um that you know it's been a couple of days since she's called me, and I am disappointed that it's been a while. Um her uh most of her friends at work now know me, and they call me Johnny, which is what she calls me. And so I might call her to ask about her friends at work when she's at work, knowing that she's there.

Uh and so all in the pursuit of making her laugh. And uh she does, and it makes my day, and the calls are usually pretty brief, and uh uh, but it's a great joy in my life, and I suspected hers too.

funny, yeah. Actually, now I think of it, there are a couple of people I love to listen to who do remind me of friends of mine. Like just a little bit, just that little they might have said that little quip, you know. Right. Um and it's people you like, and I guess you and it's a very subjective thing, you'll listen to those people. Some people won't, I think, particularly when it comes to humour and that kind of co-host banter stuff.

That there's there's things I just can't I've had lots of podcasts recommended to me. I've not listened to heavyweight yet, so I I I don't know whether it will chime with me or not. Um, but I've had quite a few because I'm always asking people because I do pick of the pods every week. Sure, I need I have a churn of stuff, so please I'm I'm desperate for um for recommendations, and so many people have said, Oh, you'll love these two guys, they're hilarious.

I'm two minutes in, and I'm absolutely sick of them, you know. But but because it's so personal, you know. But there are others that I love that other people might just find annoying. Um, I think we're coming to the end of the time. I can probably uh keep you for Jonathan. I'm just gonna ask you the couple of questions about um what would be your dream podcast or your dream interview?

probably be either severely injured or killed when they walked across the bridge at Selma and did so many other heroic things, but did it anyway because they thought it was the right thing to do.

and uh had the chance to impact more than 2,500 kids uh across his career uh and be placed into permanent loving fam adoptive families. And then the third is um I think I'm gonna go with uh President George W. Bush.

You'll probably get them on. Is your dad still with us?

with Jonathan Block.

If you enjoy this podcast, please give us a rating on your podcast app and tell your friends they might want to listen to. For now, from me, thanks to you for listening. Thanks to Jonathan and goodbye.