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Andy Stanley - Developing Leaders with Carol Tomé · Andy Stanley Sermons

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Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed
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to help leaders go further faster. I'm Andy Stanley and our entire team once
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again is so excited to have Carol Toomey in the studio with us. And
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today we're talking about a topic near and dear really to both of us,
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and that is developing leaders. So Carol, welcome back. It's so great
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to be back. Andy. Well, last month was so much fun,
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and again this is something that we both are so passionate about. For those
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of you who don't know, Carrol's the chief executive officer of UPS, a
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role she assumed in June of twenty twenty. And as I said last month,
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I want us to all pause for just a moment to remember what was
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going on in June of twenty twenty, a pandemic that triggered international instability,
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that triggered an economic meltdown five months before a somewhat memorable presidential election. And
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as I asked Carol last time, did you lose a bet and you actually
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told us you were In return, I was, you were at home on
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the farm. I was, I was. And then you step back into
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this step back into and it's been just a real honor and a pleasure.
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Well, that's amazing. Carrol's actually the twelfth CEO for UPS. Before joining
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UPS, she served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of the Home
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Depot. She joined the Home Depot in nineteen ninety five, originally as vice
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president and treasurer. She began her career in fact, as I said last
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time, this is the first time I feel like we needed to have an
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intermission as I introduced somebody, there's so much you've accomplished. She began her
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career as a commercial lender with United Bank of Denver, which is now Wells
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Fargo. That spent several years as director of Banking for John's Mansfield Corporation,
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and just before coming to Home Depot, Carol was vice president and treasurer of
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Riverwood International Corporation. Carol and I actually first met at gathering with UPS executives
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from all over the world, and it was a very intimidating environment for me
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to walk into. And of course everybody knows who UPS is and what you
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do, but just a little bit of a behind the scenes, just a
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reminder of just how extraordinary the organization is. Now Folks who know you personally,
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Carol and professionally know that one of your primary passions is developing people leadership
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development. So my first question is we jump into this topic that is relevant
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for all of our podcast listeners. Is your passion around leadership development the result
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of the fact that someone developed you and that you're going to do for others
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what someone has done for you, Or is it the result of nobody did
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it for you and you wish they had and you want to do for others
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what nobody did for you, or somewhere in the middle. Andy, I've
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been so incredibly blessed my entire career where I had just mentors and sponsors,
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people who would take the time to invest in me, to give me feedback.
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And I believe that feedback is a gift if you're willing to listen to
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it. And so I learned from them and wanted to pay it forward by
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developing others. And I'm so proud when I think about legacy, it's all
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about the impact on people. You know, I worked for the Home Depot
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for gosh, nearly twenty five years. I was the CFO there for eighteen
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of those years. Do you know that I have sixteen people who worked for
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me who are now CFOs of publicly traded companies. Wait a minute, that's
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amazing. Isn't that cool for publicly traded companies? How many sixteen? So
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they I hired them, train them, you know, sponsored them, mentor
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them, and then they've left to work for another publicly traded and the joy
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on your face, I'm sorry, not everyone can see it. The joy
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on your face tells me for you, this is one of the greatest wins,
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or one of the things that you sincerely celebrate, perhaps as much as
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anything without a doubt. You know, as an old financed person, you
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might say the value created when I was CFO is what I should tout.
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And yes, there was a four hundred and fifty percent increase in share owner
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value while I was a CFO. I don't tout that at all. I
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tout the impact on people. I'm so proud of them, and you know,
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I think they're going to be well. I can give you some more
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data if I if I could, the person who's running home Depot Canada,
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I hired and trained him. The person who's running home Depot Mexico, I
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hired and trained him. The person who is the president of Home Depot.
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I think he might be the next CEO. I don't know, but I
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think he might be. I trained him, he worked for me for twelve
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years. So it is so exciting to think about the people I had an
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impact at Home Depot and now at UPS I get to do it again.
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Wow. Well this leads to my next question. Obviously, you didn't just
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get lucky with the folks who you know, you came into contact with and
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you had the opportunity to invest in. So, and this is a question
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all of our leaders asked. Because our time is limited. No one has
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hired us to develop leaders. That's not generally on anybody's job description. That's
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somebody else's responsibility. Or you just hope you hire well and they'll figure it
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out. So how did you choose who to invest that time in that you
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didn't have to, but you saw their potential. What can you tell us
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about how to do that? Or Well, early in my career I made
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some mistake. I made some hiring mistakes. I put the wrong person in
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the job, and when I realized that and I had to deal with that,
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that was painful. So I'm like Caro, I'll go slow to go
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fast here, make sure you take the time to put the right person in
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the job. And then actually, I do think my job is to invest
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in them. I've got a whole bunch of things on my plate to do,
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but I do think my job is to invest in the people and help
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them reach their highest potential, whatever that may be. And it's also about
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putting people before you. You know, I'll tell you a story that I'm
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just so embarrassed to buy, but it's true and I learned from it.
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Early in my career. I didn't value the power of the team. I
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actually thought it was a burden. And I had a woman on my team
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who needed some counseling and I didn't want to do it because I was too
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busy doing my own thing. She needed it, and it was time to
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give her her performance review, and rather than sitting across the table with her
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and giving her direct feedback and you know, a performance improvement plan, I
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did it over the phone. And you know what she did. She quit.
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And when she I'm like, wow, she didn't quit the company,
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she quit me. And that was a real like wake up call. And
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this was earlier, early in my career, was way before home deeper days.
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And I'm like, you know what, Carol, Uh, no one's
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ever going to quit you. If they leave you, they're leaving you because
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it's time for them to leave, or they're leaving to go to a better
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job. And that's you know, that's you want to celebrate that, but
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no one's ever going to leave you again. And that happened. That incident
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where she quit me was in the eighties and since then no one has quit
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me. Wow. We should just all pause and reflect on that language.
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So it's okay for people to leave to go do whatever else they need to
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do. Yes, but you don't want anyone else to quit you, to
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quit you as a leader. You don't want them to quit you because you
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failed as a leader. Wow, that's something that's in you. What what
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do you say to the person that's like, well, Carol, I mean,
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good grief. We got to move on with life. And mean,
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people come and people go, and there's just not that sense of tenacity,
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there's not that sense of care. Is that something that can be learned or
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is that you either have it or you don't. What do you think If
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it's something that can be learned, it may not be as you know as
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natural, but it can if you accept the role of leadership. And not
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everyone should be in a leader role, by the way, because the ROI
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can be very low. Actually, just like being a parent, right,
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you accept the role of parenting, you get all the joy of parenting,
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but you get all the changing the diapers and the crying at the nighttime.
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Right. If you accept that role, then you got to understand what it
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is, and that is investing in them and putting them before you. Okay,
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so Carol, I know we need to move on, But isn't that
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uncorporate? I mean, that's just so uncorporate. It is incorporate. And
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in fact, I'm kind of freaking people out at youps because when I sit
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down to go through talent reviews with them, I am deep into the talent
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reviews and they just want to present. They just want to present and move
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on to the next job. I'm like, no, no, no,
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we're talking about this person and what we're going how we're going to invest in
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this person, and what this person's next role is. And we're going to
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talk about this person because this person needs to move on. The job has
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grown bigger than this person. He or she needs to move on and they're
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like, oh, you really care, And I'm like, I really care.
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I really care, and you should care too, because together we are
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stronger, you know, if we got the best talent on our teams,
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right, and it's our job, it's our job as leaders. So my
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executive leadership team, they all under KNOWO, they all understand my expectations of
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them in terms of developing their people. Well, that does trickle down or
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people become so uncomfortable with it they move on, then move on because it's
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just too personal, it's too close. That is so powerful, and I'm
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just guessing you know, folks who are listening to this are thinking that is
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so uncorporate. And it's not only incorporate, it's in one of the largest
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corporations in the world Top thirty. Yes, we are Fortune thirty company,
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five hundred and forty three thousand people around the world. Yeah. Yeah,
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but even there, it's working. Yeah. I think we still have opportunities.
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Remember I've just been there since June of twenty twenty, so we still
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have opportunity for it. Right, Well, dovetailing into that, you're also
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a firm believer, no one's going to be surprised at this in servant leadership,
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and that's a phrase that gets talked about all the time. I think
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everybody knows they're supposed to be and everybody wants to be Well, what does
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that mean for you? Servant leadership? Well, I really I have to
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credit the founders of Home Depot Berney Marcus, Arthur Blank and Ken Lang Gong
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because they put together this inverted pyramid management construmt where the leaders at the bottom
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of the pyramid and the associates are at the top. And you hear people
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talking about this, but I saw it in action, which was fantastic to
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see it in action, you know, making decisions where you the leaders fare
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the weight for the decisions that they make and the actions that they take.
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They bear that weight and free of the associates just to have fun, to
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take care of the customers. And in my tenure at Home People, I
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saw that pyramid flipper where actually the associates were at the bottom and the leaders
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were at the top. At one point in my career there I was being
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fed every day. I had a car, I had a badge that I
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would walk into the building. It would take me up to the twenty second
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floor because I didn't want to stop on any floor and talk to anybody,
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And can I pause and correct me if I'm wrong? Just though our listeners
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get the picture. So you step onto the elevator, or let's say you
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get it on the second floor. There's seven people in the elevator. You
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swipe your badge and it goes past all of their floors to yours. Absolutely
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does. Life was perfect? Right, Life was terrible because here's what happened.
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During that brief time. We lost our way. We being the Home
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Depot lost their way. In fact, they started to lose market share to
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their largest competitor, lost their way. Do you even speak the name of
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the largest competitor? Can't? It's difficult. It's just like you can't.
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It would be like I won't ask you to. It's like at ups.
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There's this company in Purple. I can't. I just can't. They're headquartered
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in Memphis. Just in case you want to know who they are, just
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can't talk to them. But when Frank Blake became the CEO of the Home
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Depot, he flipped that pyramid back upside down. And guess what happened.
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Even though we went through the worst recessions of the Great Depression. We got
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through that and we started to gain share again, a lot of share,
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and we were just taking it to the competition. So again proof positive that
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this servant leadership works if you bear the weight as a leader for the actions
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that you take in the decisions that you make, and you free up the
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people to take care of the customers. At UPS's world, it's delivering packages,
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it's moving our world forward by delivering what matters. We bear that weight.
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We're going to take it to the competition because we are. I remember
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when I had Frank Blake on the podcast. I don't know if we talked
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about it on the podcast or offline, but he talked about when he came
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into that position at Home Depot the immediate changes he made, and that's how
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I knew about the elevator. He told me that story. He said,
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it was just embarrassing. You just get on the elevator and there's folks who've
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been waiting and you just ignore them. And so he went in and he
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removed a good number of those perks almost immediately, which of course changes the
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culture. Was so smart. Yeah, it was brilliant, brilliant. So
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back to the servant leadership concept. Was this a value system that in some
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way you grew up with or was this did you bump into this in a
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corporate environment? Does it go beyond your professional life? It goes beyond my
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professional life. I love to talk about the home depot story, but if
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I think about how I was raised by my parents. I grew up in
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Jackson, Hawayoming, which was a town of three thousand people at that time,
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and my parents instilled in me to be first, you need to be
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last and a servant of all. So that was a great lesson to learn
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as a young child, but a lesson that most people just assume doesn't work
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in the marketplace. But it does. It does. That's amazing and it
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does. And you know, comment on this. It does because people are
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just people. I mean people come to work, but then people were people
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before they got to work. And of course, you know, we dress
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appropriate and we say all the right things and get all the lingo. But
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at the end of the day, people are people and they want to be
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valued, they want to be loved. They want to know that people embrace
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them for who they are and see their potential. And that's just true.
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And we're children that's true regardless, right. I think allowing people to bring
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their real, genuine, authentic self to work is so very important. It's
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an important part of being a leader. And I have to tell you.
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When I went to the UPS, I'm like, oh, my goodness,
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gracious, our tattoo policy is more restrictive than the US Army. I'm like,
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I think we can let people uncover their tats as long as they're respectful.
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We didn't allow natural hair, so if you were African American, you
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couldn't braid or twist or have a fro. Really yeah, and men could
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not have facial hair. Now, of course we want to be professional,
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of course we do, but I'm like, hello, bring your authentic self
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to work every day. That those may seem like symbolic moves, but really
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powerful moves from a leadership perspective. And again this is another topic, but
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symbolic leadership space actually in a large corporation pays enormous dividends because, especially in
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your position, you can't do for many, but you can do for one.
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And those those stories again as symbolic leadership. If I had the opportunity
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to do this for everyone, I would, So when you make those public
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changes at the top, especially when it comes to how a person presents himself.
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That just speaks volumes about your overall value system. And I'm sure again
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there was trickle down from that as well. Well. I think we're seeing
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it in our satisfaction results, which are getting better. So I'm hoping,
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you know, we're starting to really move the needle there because it's important to
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me. It's important to me for people to want to work there. And
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was there if you can answer this, was there a lot of pushback when
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you came in with I mean, because it's the way you've just resented it.
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It's like you got there, you open up the personnel manual and you're
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like, what I mean, was it? Oh? Oh, if I
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could share with you some of the emails that I received from insiders, uh
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huh. Yeah, there was definite pushback. Yeah, some really quie because
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they felt like we're losing something. Yet don't they right talk about that?
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Because again, when you've been with an organization a long time, or especially
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if you're we're around during the days of the founders, it's easy to confuse
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the growth engine or the thing that fuels productivity. Sometimes we get confused between
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that and the things that we just held onto because we've always held onto them,
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and in that moment you differentiated. You've essentially said without saying, okay,
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the tattoo policy is not a means to our success. This is just
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a thing, right, It's just a thing. And then people push back
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because they felt like they're losing something core they did, and it particularly ups
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rs who've been with the company for a long time. You know, I've
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had We have some ups rs who've worked for us for fifty years or longer.
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They actually knew our founder, Jim Casey, and they're quick to share
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stories about Jim Casey, who by all reports, was a remarkable man,
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a man ahead of his time. But I'm quick to report back to them
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that I don't think a beard or a tat is actually changing the way that
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we are interacting with our customer, and will share the stories of amazing newps
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ers who do life saving acts every day. That hasn't changed. They may
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have a beard while they're doing that life saving act. Think about it.
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We have upsors who are delivering a package. They arrive at a home and
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they see someone on the ground who needs CPR. They administer' CPR. There
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are incredible stories of ups are saving people's lives, and if they do that
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with a beard or with a tat, I think our founder Jim Casey would
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be just fine with that, but not everybody thought so initially, No,
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no, they did not. But you know, I've done a few things
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to try to help people understand how I tick, which is important. So
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I do a wildly important video every month that goes out to all ups RS,
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wildly wildly important to what's wildly important to me. And none of it's
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scripted, so I'm none of it's scripted, so I'm just talking. And
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I also share with people where I've screwed up, And I think that's helpful
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to show vulnerability because we make mistakes and again admitting that, learning from that,
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showing how you've learned moving on from that, I think that's important too.
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So I maybe doubling down from a communication perspective, just so people can
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say, oh, I get why we're doing what we're doing. Well,
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you brought about change. Change is difficult, and you have to push a
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little extra hard early on to let people know you're serious. And yes,
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I get the depression. You're serious, pretty serious? Yeah, So again
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a little bit different topic. How has your if it has, how has
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your outlook on being a CEO changed since taking on this job? And did
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it? I mean, I'm sure there were surprises You've already talked about some
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that align with your expectations. And maybe what was the biggest surprise, because
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I know we've said this, You've had an extraordinary career. Is this your
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first CEO? Ye, so think about this. Your first job as CEO
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is Oh ups, let's start there. You had already retired, so there
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were some expectations. What's been the biggest surprise? And again, how what
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kind of empathy have you gained for other folks who sit at the head of
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the table. Yeah. So I was told that CEO roles are really lonely
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roles, and I'm like, oh, how lonely can it be? It
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can't be that lonely. It's extraordinarily lonely. It is. And I'm kind
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of a social person, and I'm like, oh, you don't want to
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hang with me. It's lonely. So I've had to understand that. Okay,
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I reach out then, so I you know, I'm really blessed.
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I got an amazing network, So I reach out to my network outside the
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company, outside the company, to my husband now of almost forty years,
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who's an amazing support, and to my dear friends, and I let them
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fill the void of the loneliness that you get in the country. So you
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haven't made the mistake of trying to fill it with company insiders, because that
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is a mistake. It is a mistake. And tell from your perspective,
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why is that a mistake? Because that's the tendency. These are the people
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I spend most of my time with, my most productive hours with, So
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why wouldn't I try to pull them into that void? But it's almost always
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a mistake. You get friends of Carol. You can't have friends of Carol
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as people start to play off of each other, and the political sides of
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corporations is pretty fascinating actually, so you just don't want to get into that
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whole political for it, and then you don't want anyone to say it's because
19:23
he or she is a friend of general. So I've learned to get comfortable
19:29
with my loneliness and figure out ways to fill it. That's not a corporate
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myth. It is lonely at the top. It's so lonely it's supposed to
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be, is it. Yeah? Okay, well you just told us why.
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I know it's almost dangerous for it not to be. Yeah, but
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you also just pointed to a very important principle. And I hope our podcast
19:47
listeners take this in. Because there is a natural void, healthy leaders figure
19:53
out how to fill it in a healthy way, the way, and if
19:56
the void remains for too long, it begins to fill itself, generally in
20:02
unhealthy ways. Correct. And you've been proactive, as you said, You've
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reached out, You've recognized this. You're not trying to fix it. This
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is a tension that just has to be managed. It can't be solved.
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And it sounds like you've done it the right way. But then again,
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you had retired. You do not need this job. I do not.
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If he just messed with you for too long, You're just going back to
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the farm. Just back to the farm, that's right. But I do
20:22
have some things I need to get done, you know, And I do
20:26
not want our board to have to go to the outside for the next CEO.
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So I'm laser focused on talent developments. So when it's time for me
20:33
to go, the board will look at the talent and say, oh,
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we've got several candidates here, let's pick, and they'll pick one. Frank
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talked about the same thing. It's one of the biggest takeaways from just knowing
20:42
Frank that that was in his thinking about when he decided when to step down,
20:47
Yes, because he didn't want to steal an opportunity from the person behind
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him. I've never heard a leader say that before, and I'll never forget
20:55
it. So, speaking of leaders, do you have any advice for aspiring
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leaders and they're early stages, you know, they're just beginning their careers,
21:03
especially as it relates to as you've illustrated, investing in other leaders, because
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there's a tendency to think, well, I don't have anything to offer,
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I can't fill anybody else's cup. I'm new at this, and so I'm
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going to wait till I've accomplished some things before investing in other leaders. And
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my observation is the leaders who do it early do it forever, and the
21:22
leaders who wait never do it. So but just in general advice to young
21:27
aspiring corporate leaders, Well, they're in such a privileged place because they are
21:33
digital native and for us who've been around for a while we are not,
21:37
So take every opportunity to do reverse mentoring, mentor up because we are,
21:42
we are. We need we take pictures of QR codes. Thank you,
21:51
thank you. They're writing them. So you know, if you think about
21:55
my generation, you know, we code it in Cobalt. You know,
21:57
you can't even find engineers who code in Cobalt any longer. It's all Python
22:00
in different languages. So just you know, take advantage of that and mentor
22:03
up. Take advantage of networks. You know, the power of networks cannot
22:08
be under estimated. It's just incredible how it can help grow you. If
22:15
you leverage your networking. That can be a network in communities or in churches,
22:18
or in schools or however you build your network. But leverage, leverage,
22:21
leverage that network. And then you know, my favorite poet is Maa
22:23
Angelo, and she said this, She said, don't make money your goal,
22:26
and said, do what you love and do it so well that people
22:30
can't take their eyes off of you. And as a young leader, I
22:33
say it one more time, don't make don't make money your goal. Instead,
22:36
do what you love and do it so well that people can't take their
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eyes off of you. Well, apparently you've done that, and you're such
22:44
an easy person to talk to, and you so break the mold of the
22:48
corporate CEO in terms of image, and people who meet you I think are
22:53
immediately at ease. Of course, I've not met the people who are direct
22:56
reports to you. Maybe you're a different person at the office. I don't
23:00
It's very difficult to imagine. But your disarming manner, with your tenacity for
23:07
the growth of people and ultimately the growth of the company is just working.
23:11
And in so many ways you are an extraordinary role model for men and women
23:15
in the corporate world and just in the world in general. And I'm so
23:18
glad, even though you may not be, I'm so glad you came out
23:21
of retirement. What a what a gift, not just a UPS but really
23:26
the world in the corporate community. So I'm so grateful that you took some
23:29
time to come on the podcast and closing, you can just say no to
23:33
this. Do you think about legacy? I mean again, I did the
23:36
math, and the average tenure at UPS for somebody in your roles about nine
23:40
and a half years, and that's not necessarily a median, but it's you
23:42
know, just kind of averaging and all out. So in terms of your
23:45
legacy, or I can ask it this way. I was in a men's
23:48
group years ago and we had to answer all these emotional questions, you know,
23:52
and one of them was what would we want put on our tombstone?
23:57
And so my answer was I'm going to be cream to try to get past
24:00
having to answer the question, you know, and they didn't let me get
24:03
that doesn't count. So when you think about, and not personally but just
24:07
corporately, what legacy. So this has been a journey for me. If
24:12
I go back maybe twenty years ago, I had a wake up call and
24:17
I'm like, you know, what's going to be on my tombstone? She
24:21
worked hard? And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no,
24:25
no. Twenty years ago, I'm like, nope, it cannot be
24:27
that. It is not my purpose. So I thought long and hard about
24:30
it, and I said, okay, I wanted to read she made a
24:33
difference in my life. So that's sort of what I'd been talking about for
24:37
a long time. But then I got to ups and I'm like, Carol,
24:40
uh uh. Lots of people can say that what is your purpose?
24:45
You know, and how does that then translate into your legacy. So I
24:48
thought about a lot, and this is what I've landed on because and it
24:52
really speaks to why I came out of retirement. I lead to inspire,
24:56
I serve to create. I give to remains, and when I think about
25:00
the output of that, it's people, it's performance, it's purpose. And
25:07
then platforms and platforms are really about what we're doing from a sustainability perspective and
25:11
from a digital perspective to make sure that UPS is here the next one hundred
25:18
and fourteen years. Wow. And I know this is off limits, but
25:21
have you ever considered running for office? I did? Would you consider it
25:27
again? I won't because I've been happily married now for almost forty years.
25:33
And that was the only time, actually we've had strife in our life.
25:36
Oh wow, because and it was not comfortable because I wanted to do it
25:40
so badly, and finally my husband said okay. And when he said yes,
25:44
I'm like, I won't do it because I knew it was the ultimate
25:45
sacrifice for me and I love him too much to do this, so I'm
25:48
like, forget it, I'll go to something else. So it's all good.
25:51
But there it is again, this deep abiding character, This security around
25:56
who you are and who you aren't. It's so powerful and it emanates from
26:00
you, and that's a gift to the world. And unfortunately that's all the
26:07
time we have. Carol, thank you so much for being on our podcast.
26:11
My pleasure. Thank you, and to all of our podcast listeners.
26:15
Wasn't that amazing? Thanks for joining us, and I hope you'll check out
26:18
the Andy Stanley dot com website where you can download the Leadership Podcast application guide
26:23
that includes a summary of this discussion along with questions for your entire team,
26:29
and be sure to join us next month on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.
26:33
We'll see you then.