David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well, folks, I am beyond honored to have one of our nation's most admired and successful leaders joining me today. That's right. My guest is none other than Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the former United States Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. These days, she's the director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and recently became a part owner of the Denver Broncos. Now look, it's not every day that you get to learn from a leader who's negotiated with Vladimir Putin, and performed a piano concert for the late Queen of England. But you know, when I look at Gandhi's remarkable career, I see a leader who knows how to play to his strengths. She understands her unique skills and contributions. And she steps into any situation with a firm grasp on how she can apply those strengths and get the right outcome. Now, that's something that all great leaders need to understand. So let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours. Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

First off, congratulations on being one of the new owners of the Denver Broncos. You know, as a leader, I always like going into turnaround situations. How about you?

Condoleezza Rice 1:41 

Well, yes, well, I don't think this is exactly a turnaround situation. I think, first of all, it's a great franchise, Denver is a terrific city. You know, I kind of grew up in Denver, we moved to Denver when I was 12. And it has great fan base, really a talented team, I'm confident that we'll be able to return Denver to winning pretty pretty soon here.

David Novak 2:01 

That's great. You know, you said there's nothing more American than the two minute drill in football. Why is that?

Condoleezza Rice 2:08 

Well, it's not there's nothing more American than having to be very focused, having to have an outcome. Having to do it with a time clock. I've always quarreled with my friends who say, Well, you know, baseball is the American game, I actually think football has many more characteristics. So with all due respect to baseball, I like it to a lot more characteristics. And, you know, we're always as a country, there's an urgency for Americans, we believe in having to deliver in a specific period of time. It's why this country has been so successful and entrepreneurship and under pressure. And so I kind of liked the underpressure with an outcome needed. That's what I liked about the two minute drill. And that's what I like about its American character. Yeah. And

David Novak 3:01 

I also think about the two minute drill requires tremendous leadership, you think about Tom Brady, and all those two minute drills ease that over his career?

Condoleezza Rice 3:09 

That's right, it's certainly,

David Novak 3:11 

you know, I know you were once a competitive figure skater. And now you're an avid golfer, what's the most impactful story you have fun playing sports that shape the way you lead?

Condoleezza Rice 3:21 

Well, I think sports is an absolutely great gives you a great set of life's lessons, life's experiences that help you in almost any circumstance. And the one that I always point to when I was a skater is that not to put too fine a point on it, I was a quite mediocre skater. But I loved it. And I worked really hard at it. And then you go and you go out, and maybe the performance doesn't quite live up to what you expected, or to your own sense of the time and effort that you've put into it. And you have to get up the next day. And you have to keep going and you have to resolve to work harder, and you have to resolve to work on whatever the weakness is worth that you had demonstrated and not having that great performance. And I've always thought that leading and life are a little bit like that, that you can't be knocked off your blade, so to speak, by a bad set of circumstances, maybe something just didn't work out. And then you have to go back to the drawing board. How are we going to turn this around? That's what leaders do. And I think sports has been great in in teaching me how to do that. And David, I watch a lot of Stanford athletics, as you know, and these student athletes are great at time management. They're great at knowing that they have to get better at the things in their game that they're not particularly good at doing. And they have great resilience. I think those are all really important if you're going to be successful in life and especially if you're going to lead others.

David Novak 4:58 

You know, Connie, that all makes total sense to me. And it's been fun doing research on you, because you're an amazing person. You're also an outstanding concert pianist you've played before the late Queen Elizabeth, with great musicians like cellos yo, yo, Ma, and even Aretha Franklin, you know, how do you prepare for the big stage? Those big moments like that? And can you tell us a fun behind the scenes story from one of those performances?

Condoleezza Rice 5:26 

The first thing that I will say about preparing for a piano performance, is that as a piano teacher of mine once said, you have to know the piece 190% so that when you lose 90%, from nerves, and anxiety, there's 100% left. And so the preparation, someone asked me the other day, you know, if you're going to perform a new piece, how long do you work at it a year? Wow. Because I really want to know it cold. And if something goes wrong, which I was performing with the Omaha symphony, and I was performing the first book, The shoe on a Minor Piano Concerto. And there's a big entry for the piano. And about halfway down this entry, because you're playing from memory, you don't have a score in front of you. About halfway down, I thought I actually don't know where I am. Now, this is all going on contemporaneously. And I remember thinking, just get back to a minor get back to A minor, and they'll know where you are yet. So all of this is going on while you're playing, you have to know the piece really well to be able to do that. Because the great Glenn Gould once said, when you're performing, it's not a matter of whether something will go wrong. It's a matter of when, if I'm going to perform, I spend a lot of time so a couple quick little stories. One involves the performance with Yo Yo Ma, he was getting the National Medal of the arts and he wanted to play a piece with me, we're performing 2500 people at 530. And at three o'clock, I had a national secure because I was National Security Adviser at the time, I had a National Security Council meeting that I had to chair and I chaired the meeting. We were over about 445 and Steve Hadley, who was my Deputy National Security visor looked at me and said, Do you realize that you're playing before the President of the United States and about 45 minutes here? And I said, Yes, Steve. But first, I had to finish this National Security Council meeting. So talk about right brain, left brain. That's it. The other funny story I'll tell you is I did end up playing for the late Queen Elizabeth, who was a wonderful woman. But the way that it happened was that I was supposed to be just doing a little informal concert with the wife of the then foreign secretary David Miliband, before dinner, and it was my last trip to London as secretary. So David called he said, you know, Louise and his wife were thinking that maybe you and her friends could play in this room in Buckingham Palace, where Eldar played. Would you like to do that? I said, Sure. That sounds fantastic. Cause a couple of days before I'm supposed to leave, and he says her Majesty would like to attend. And I thought, Okay, this is taken off. But she did come, David, she brought her Corgi with her. And she in the car, he sat through the whole thing.

David Novak 8:20 

And it was a great storage. Thanks for sharing them, you know, and I understand when you were just 10 years old, you wanted to quit playing the piano. And your mother said no way. Tell us about that. And what it taught you?

Condoleezza Rice 8:32 

Well, I started playing when I was three years old, my grandmother taught piano lessons. And so I stayed at her house while my parents worked. And she taught me to play from the age of three. So at about 10, I said to my mother, because my grandmother had stopped teaching. And so my mother was now trying to teach me the piano that wasn't working very well. And so I said to my mother, I'm tired of the piano, I'm quitting. And my mother said, You're not old enough or good enough to make that decision. And so I kept playing. It was a little bit of a parenting lesson. You know, these days parents say, Oh, well, if you know if Johnny doesn't want to do it, I that was not the way my parents parented, they were loving and encouraging. But there were certain expectations and continuing to play was one of those expectations. And I'll tell you, David, when I was playing with Yo Yo Ma are playing for the lake Queen Elizabeth, I was really glad my mother didn't let me quit. And that's

David Novak 9:26 

a great leadership lesson. And, and you know, you also you grew up in segregated Alabama, and how did that impact you as a leader?

Condoleezza Rice 9:35 

I always say something that's maybe a little bit ironic or paradoxical, which is that I'm actually glad I grew up in segregated Birmingham. Now, I was eight, nine years old when the Civil Rights Act passed, and life was different. But in those years before, you couldn't go to a movie theater, couldn't go to a restaurant. But our parents in my little community, which was a community, I think, David, everybody in that community taught school think we had one lawyer, one doctor, everybody else taught school. And they would say, you know, you're just going to have to be twice as good to survive in a segregated environment. So we went around trying to be twice as good. I tell my students to this day, if you're trying to be twice as good, you will work twice as hard, you will therefore be twice as confident and twice as prepared. And then they said, there are no victims, you may not be able to control your circumstances, but you can control your response to your circumstances. And if you consider yourself a victim, then you have given control of your life to somebody else. Those two lessons I took with me that it was a kind of armor in their way of preparing us for what they thought was likely to be a very hostile world for a long time to come. Now, as it turned out, we had the great civil rights legislation, we've made a lot of progress. But still that if there's a barrier, you go around it over it or through it, but you don't let it stop you. I learned that in circumstances of segregated Birmingham and I'm grateful because I took those lessons into life with me. You don't

David Novak 11:08 

Conde? It's interesting. You've been the first in so many different ways, you know, the first woman to do this the first African American to do this, you know, what's it like being the only only in the room, you know, when you're when you're the first person like yourself and in these new big situations?

Condoleezza Rice 11:25 

Well, David, the first thing I'd say is, first, don't set out to be first. It just turns out that way, I remember talking to my great friend, the late astronaut, Sally Ride. And she said, I don't want to be the first woman in space, I just wanted to be in space. So if you keep thinking yourself as the first, then you put a lot of pressure on yourself, you know that you're the first but you're mostly there, because you want it to do that. And you were prepared to do it. Therefore, when you walk into the room, and I was a young Soviet specialist who worked on the Soviet military, and yeah, I'd walk into the room and people look like are you in the right meeting, and you said yourself, within a few minutes here, you're going to know that I'm in the right meeting. And I'm not going to let your prejudice be my problem. This was another lesson that my father taught me. We moved to Denver when I was 12. And it was interestingly, in Denver that I encountered having gone from completely segregated Birmingham to integrated Denver, that someone didn't want to sit next to me at a school event because I was black. And I told my father this and he said, Well, you know, that's just fine, as long as they move. Now, what was he saying to me, he was saying, Don't let somebody else's prejudice be your problem. And I think when you're the only you have to steel yourself for the fact that there might be somebody who is kind of a jerk or a turkey, but you're not going to let them ruin your opportunities. But the other thing I'll say about it, David is, you know, we talk a lot these days about inclusion. And, yes, we want in diverse communities, whether you are a corporate CEO, or a university official, you want the diversity to be a positive, you want everybody to feel they've got a chance for success. But I often say to people who are different in those circumstances, this can be a two way street. You don't have to wait for them to make you feel comfortable or included. How about you work to help them with the inclusion. So I was a young academic young professor, and I got a one year fellowship to work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So I worked for the strategic nuclear Planning Division. These were the guys who planned the employment of nuclear weapons. I was three things they had never seen. female, black and civilian. Now, I walked in and the first day they said the rookie makes the coffee. Now I could have said, I'm a professor at Stanford, I don't make coffee, I made the coffee. The truth is I make coffee so strong, nobody can drink it. So they did ask me again to make it lowered the temperature. And then the next week, I won the football pool. Now we had something to talk about on Monday mornings, and pretty soon, I was just real comfortable with them, and they were real comfortable with me. So it's a two way street inclusion. It's a two way street, having an environment in which everybody can be successful. And if you just make yourself an object, as the person who's different, you have to make me comfortable. It's going to be kind of a tough ride and it's going to be stressful for everybody. So I just try in those circumstances take the stress out of the room for everybody.

David Novak 15:04 

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Unknown Speaker 15:55 

You know, Connie,

David Novak 15:56 

what drove your passion for Foreign Affairs? And what was your thought process that made you become an expert on the Soviet Union?

Condoleezza Rice 16:04 

Well, I hate to tell you this, and I tell this to my students, you know, it was that failed piano major thing. So you felt I went to college to be a piano performance major. And the end of my sophomore year, I was at the Aspen Music Festival school. It's a great honor to be selected for that summer program. And I met these 12 year olds who could play from sight everything, it took me all year to learn. And I thought I'm going to end up teaching 13 year olds to murder Beethoven for a living, or maybe playing piano bar someplace. But I'm not going to Carnegie Hall. And it was a class, I walked into a class in my junior year spring quarter, taught by a man named Joseph kohrville. He was Madeleine Albright 's father. And all of a sudden, he opened up the world to me of things diplomatic things, international, the Soviet Union. And I knew what I wanted to do, I knew I was going to be passionate about understanding international politics, and in particular, communism and Eastern European countries. And from there, it was, frankly, a bit experimentation that got me to where I ended up because didn't quite know what I was going to do with the degree and International Politics and International Economics. But as it unfolded, the big decision for me was that I probably wanted to be an academic as the base of what I would do. I had opportunities to go work for defense corporations and the like, but Stanford wanted to hire me after being here on a one year fellowship, I took the Stanford job. And from then on, I was trying to be the best academic expert that I could possibly be. And the other story about that for leaders is I had great mentors, Joseph Cobell was one. But also I met Brent Scowcroft, who came out to give a talk at Stanford. And he had gotten to know my work a little bit, he started taking me to things and, you know, to conferences in the like, and then when George HW Bush asked him to be a national security adviser, he called me up and said, the President needs a Soviet specialist Do you want to come along? So for young people, I always say, try to be really good at what you're doing. But also find people who will advocate for you, people who have high expectations for you, maybe even who see things in you that you don't see in yourself. We call them mentors.

David Novak 18:32 

You know, I know that you're fluent in Russian, and you've met with Putin several times. What was that like? And how would you describe his strengths and weaknesses as a leader?

Condoleezza Rice 18:43 

He was one tough guy. And I did spend a lot of time with him. We would chit chat in Russian on the sidelines. But if you're a diplomat, you're probably better off to negotiate in your own language. Because as good as my Russian was at that time, it was never going to be as good as my English. And so we negotiated but I never listened to the translation of him in English, because his translators would soften the edges of what he was saying. And by listening to him in the Russian, you could tell how really harsh he could be. He liked to intimidate he, he kind of had to modes, intimidate and you know, and he would try to outflank you in the way that he you negotiate it, but we had a pretty good relationship actually, in those those years. He liked the fact that I was the rationalist. But you could even see them elements of what's gotten us to where we are. He told me once in a conversation, he's a candy. You know, us. Russia has only been great when it's been ruled by great men, like Peter the Great and Alexander the second. And I thought, okay, that's really quite something. He's going after these czars. For whom it was the greatest expanse of the Russian Empire. And I realized at that point that this was a true Russian nationalist. And that's what we're seeing in Ukraine, we're seeing who somebody who believes that Russia isn't only going to be great again, if the Russian Empire is recreated.

David Novak 20:19 

You've been through so many historic situations and none ever greater than the 911. Can you tell us what you learned about leadership in managing that crisis?

Condoleezza Rice 20:31 

Well, it is still the most searing event, if you were in a position of authority on September 11. But your determination was to never let it happen again, because to this day, David, I have remorse for the fact that we didn't somehow see it coming. Look, I think we did everything we knew how to do. We didn't have a system of intelligence warnings that put together what was happening outside the country with what was happening inside the country, we, we had a wall between what the FBI did, which was inside the country, and what the CIA did, which was outside the country for very good civil liberties reasons. But that meant that cues that the FBI might have been getting, and cues that the CIA might have been getting weren't unified. So after it happened, you know, on the day that it happened, you just operate on instinct. I remember when the first plane went into the World Trade Center. And frankly, we thought it was some kind of accident. And then when the second plane went into the World Trade Center, we knew that it was a terrorist attack, I was trying to reach the national security principles. Colin Powell was in Peru, Don Rumsfeld, they couldn't reach him, his phone was just ringing, ringing ringing, we look behind us on television, a plane, it hit the Pentagon, the Secret Service came in and they said, You've got to get to a bunker planes are flying into buildings all over DC. And under those circumstances, they don't kind of escort you, they pick you up, they kind of carry you towards this bunker, and then stopping the call, first by family saying I was okay. You have to know the Rice's and raised, they would have found a way to DC because those pictures were awful. And then calling the President saying you can't come back here. And from that moment on, you're just dealing with the consequences. But once you try to get your bearings, the next day or so, it becomes all about not letting it happen again. And we had to really kind of merge what the FBI was seeing with what the CIA was saying, by having George Tenet, the director of the CIA, and Bob Muller, the FBI director in the oval office every morning sharing information, later on, we would have better systems through what today is called the National terrorist threat center. But at that time, we literally had to merge it right there in front of the President of the United States. And you suddenly realized the United States of America has not been attacked on its territory since the War of 1812. And so we have none of those systems for internal security. And the good news is, I think we've built them out. We're not safe, but we are way safer today than we were on September 11. And if I'm grateful for one thing, it's that there wasn't another attack. During our time in office,

David Novak 23:25 

you then rise to become the Secretary of State, which you're renowned for just the great job that you did in that role. What was the biggest skill that set you up to be so successful in that position?

Condoleezza Rice 23:38 

On the first thing is a very close relationship with the President, the Secretary state's going to be out all over the world trying to represent the United States of America. And if people don't know that you fully and completely represent the President of the United States, you can't get anything done. People knew I was very close to George W. Bush, and that I spoke for him. So you didn't have countries trying to go around your back to see if he could get something from the president that couldn't get from the Secretary of State? And, in fact, the President, I would laugh that I do it just the opposite. I would say, Well, you know, I might be willing to do this. But you know, the president, he probably won't go for this. And so I'll try to take it back to him. So you know, it was kind of frankly, you remember how car dealers would do that? Well, I'll take it to my manager. Well, I spend a lot of time saying I'd take it to my president. So and we worked hard at being on this thing. Before I would leave Washington to go to some negotiation, we'd have dinner. And I would say, Here's how far we're gonna go. Are you comfortable with this? And he would say fine, I'd say if I'm gonna go further, I'll I'll give you a call. And so my negotiation I was I could be flexible. I didn't have to keep calling back to Washington. That was one thing that was important. Secondly, I had a great staff. Like any leader, you had better have good managers at that next level, because the important thing in leadership is to recognize leadership characteristics in other people. And I had a great set of assistant secretaries who were respected in their various fields, Africa, Latin America, they could go out ahead of me and lay the groundwork, which was very important, but probably the most important skill that you need as a diplomat is to be able to listen well. Because you need to be able to hear whether there's an interest overlap that maybe you didn't know going into the room. And, as Americans, we do have a tendency to broadcast, we have a tendency to walk in and say, RPS. And by the way, when you go out there, people want the American Secretary of State to set the tone or to set the parameters. And I would often just say, you know, let's hear first from the German Foreign Minister, or let's hear first from the Brazilian Foreign Minister, so that I could read the room a little bit, and then know how to use the considerable power, that the United States of America has lots of

David Novak 26:01 

great lessons there. And another thing that you talk about, which I really loved, is the difficulty of making what you describe as unpalatable decisions. Can you give us an example of how you thought through such a tough decision?

Condoleezza Rice 26:16 

Oh, you often don't have all that much time to make the decision. You know, as an academic, your, your desire is to be really expert, and to go very, very deep. I once knew more about Soviet General Staff than they knew about themselves. And I know that because I was talking to the former Chief of General Staff, martial Academy of once, and I said Marshall Goldsmith, how many people work for the General Staff? He said, Oh, I don't know. 5000. I thought I said, Yeah, I think that's right. He said, How did you know that? Well, I stood in Moscow and counted the windows in the Ministry of Defense. So that's how much you want to know, details. If you're an academic. When you're in a leadership position, you're not going to have that kind of expertise. You have to learn how to ask questions, how to ask the second order question, who to trust, how to really probe. I have a little experience, I was provost of Stanford and therefore budget officer for Stanford, I was not going to when the the physics department wanted their $17 million telescope, I wasn't going to debate the physics with the three Nobel laureates that they sent to convince me, but I still had to make a decision. So you have to get comfortable with how you ask questions how you mobilize data, and then ultimately, you have to make a decision. For me one of the hardest one was during the war in Lebanon in 2006. We had a very pro Western democratic new government in Lebanon, and Hezbollah had attacked across what was called the blue line and killed some Israeli soldiers. And not surprisingly, the Israelis then launched military operations against Lebanon. But of course, Hezbollah wasn't the one being punished. It was this new young Lebanese Government. And I had to go and say that we weren't going to try to get a ceasefire. We weren't going to tell the Israelis they had to stop until they had destroyed Hezbollah's nests and Hezbollah's infrastructure in the south of the country. But that was a hard thing to say to flots in Euro who was the Western leading Prime Minister of Lebanon who was watching his country be destroyed. And I felt that that was a real Hobson's choice for us. But we had sometimes you can't stop a war, when conditions on the ground have favor the adversary. I think, David, that's going to probably be less than we're going to learn with Ukraine. These days. People talk about a ceasefire. But until the Ukrainians are in a position where that ceasefire is going to advantage them visibly, the Russians, it's not wise to talk about it, even though the devastating damage that is going on. We'll be

David Novak 29:07 

back with the rest of my conversation with Condoleezza Rice in just a moment. As an athlete, Conde understands the power of learning from failures is something almost every great leader embraces, myself included, just asked me about Crystal Pepsi. But you know, we can learn from our successes as well. And it's an opportunity a lot of leaders overlook. That's the big idea. I learned from another legend, Jack Nicklaus. During his episode of how leaders lead,

Jack Nicklaus 29:35 

I think you have to learn why you lose if learn why you win. You have to learn how to do both. And I think businesses exactly the same way. You know, everybody makes mistakes as they're growing up trying to learn and grow a business, and you and you should learn from those mistakes, but you also when you do them, well, you learn from that to

David Novak 29:52 

check out my entire conversation with Jack, Episode 21 here on how leaders lead

Unknown Speaker 30:06 

Shifting gears here

David Novak 30:07 

a little bit. You know, I understand you've given motivational speeches to football teams. Tell us about your most memorable one. And what was the key message?

Condoleezza Rice 30:16 

I was the honorary captain for Stanford's Rose Bowl game in 2015. against Iowa. By the way, Christian McCaffrey was the runningback for Stanford at that time. So I told Coach Shaw, I said, So David, I'm not speaking to them right before they go out. I said, I was an athlete. I didn't want anybody in my ear just before I went out. So I'll speak to him at breakfast. So I gave this motivational speech about trust, trusting the person next to you to do his job about finishing every play. And afterwards, the one of our safeties came up to me and he said, Professor rice, thank you, that was so inspirational. I want to go hit somebody. And I thought, well, that's not usually the reaction of people to my speeches. But you know, I'm glad to inspire him to go get somebody. So that was that was probably my greatest motivational speech. We actually, by the way, went on to destroy Iowa in in that game.

David Novak 31:14 

So somebody hits somebody for sure. You know, candy. This has been so much fun. And before we wrap this up, I want to have some more fun with you with my lightning round of questions. And are you ready for this? I'm ready. Okay. What's one word others would use to describe you determined? What would you say is the one word that best describes you committed? What's the first word or phrase that comes to mind when I say George W. Bush?

Speaker 1 31:43 

Resilient. Colin Powell. Elegant. Madeleine Albright?

David Novak 31:49 

Tough. Donald Trump

Condoleezza Rice 31:53 

irascible.

David Novak 31:55 

If you could be one person besides yourself for a day. Who would it be and why?

Condoleezza Rice 32:01 

Jackie Joyner? Kersee. I'd like to be one of the greatest athletes ever for just one day.

David Novak 32:07 

What's your biggest pet peeve?

Condoleezza Rice 32:10 

People who don't listen.

David Novak 32:13 

Favorite piece to play on the piano? Chopin F minor Bilad. I know that called favorite football player of all time.

Condoleezza Rice 32:23 

Johnny Unitas

David Novak 32:25 

number of hold on one's you've made two. Now if we got in your car and turn on the radio, what would we hear?

Condoleezza Rice 32:33 

ESPN Sports Radio? Get up? Greenie. Colin Cowherd.

David Novak 32:41 

What's something about you? Few people would know.

Condoleezza Rice 32:44 

I love hard rock music. Led Zeppelin. It's my favorite band.

David Novak 32:49 

I wouldn't have figured that. What's the greatest gift you've ever received? The parents God gave me. That's the end of the lightning round. And I just have a few questions. And we'll wrap this up because I know you got more to do this day. But first of all, I got to ask you what is the day like for Condi Rice today?

Condoleezza Rice 33:07 

Well, I'm director of the Hoover Institution now. So I decided to go back into an inbox job. I'm academic administrator again. So it's the things that I actually like to do budgets and hiring and trying to motivate are really outstanding senior fellows here to take on some of the world's biggest problems. And so you know, just yesterday, I was at a an event that we did on K 12, education reform and school choice. The day before that I was looking to help people develop a better program on state local government. So I'm a full time academic administrator these days, but I do have these other things that I have to do like meeting some hiring a Denver Broncos coach and traveling to interview coaches. So my days are pretty full. I love being back at the university. Once in a while, I'll be in a classroom teaching. So there's a lot of variety. I do some consulting for a few companies through a firm that I formed with Bob Gates and Steve Hadley and annual on your manual that keeps us into the private sector. So I've got a lot of irons in the fire. But I've always been a pretty good juggler. And since I'm easily bored, I have to have variety in life. You know,

David Novak 34:27 

you've been around all the top leaders in the world and what are the traits you've seen the best leaders and what are you looking for in this coach that you're going to hire for the Denver Broncos?

Condoleezza Rice 34:38 

Well, the best leaders are first and foremost people who the people that they're leading, they trust them. If you violate trust, you can never get it back. And you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say am I asking somebody to do something I myself wouldn't do. George Shultz great friend who died at 100 years old, used to say trust is the coin of the realm and I really do believe that you Certainly as a leader, you have to be able to motivate people. But you know, not just with great motivational speakers, motivating people means motivating others to take on their leadership task, you know, seeing leadership characteristics and others. Now, when we talk to great coaches, they talk about the locker room and the leaders who emerge within the locker room. Well, it's the same on any team, it's, it's the same if you're a CEO, it's the same. If you're a university leader, it's the same if you're in government, you have to inspire others to lead. And then finally, I think you have to have to help people have a sense of where they're going. People like to know what is expected of them. But not just what is expected of them today, what's expected of them on the pathway to getting where we all want to go. And so I sometimes try to be pretty specific with people about what are we doing today? To end up where we want to be at the end of this path?

David Novak 35:57 

You know, Kanye, I've got to ask you the question. Everybody always asks you, but I'm gonna keep asking you because maybe someday you'll you'll do it. Why haven't you run for president United States? We need you.

Condoleezza Rice 36:08 

Yeah, thank you, David. But I do not have that DNA. I've been around campaigns, I've been around presidents. I don't have the DNA, you know, I would go out campaigning with George W. Bush. And at the end of the day, I just wanted to go back to the hotel, he was still raring to go. They have something special, I have great admiration for those who do want to run for office. I'm not one of them. I love policy. I don't love politics. And I like being able to affect where we're going as a country. But I'll leave it to those who who have the right DNA to actually run for office.

David Novak 36:42 

Last question. You're very young, and you've got a lot more living to do. But what do you see as your big unfinished business?

Condoleezza Rice 36:50 

Oh, well, I'm not that young anymore, David. But I've never really thought about where I'd like to be at the end of this journey. I've always more thought about what the next chapter is. And, and right now I'm right in the middle of that chapter, which is being here at the Hoover Institution helping people to answer some of the hardest policy questions that we have from a basis of really strong academics, really strong data, really strong evidentiary based research and using the perch here to be able to influence the next generation. I love being in a university. My students are what makes me optimistic, because this generation gets a lot of bad press for a lot of reasons. It is true that they think if they've Googled it, they've researched it, it is true that they're in a hurry to, to solve all the world's problems when maybe they don't quite have the knowledge to do that. But they are the most public minded generation that I've taught. And if we can slow them down a little bit, and make sure that they have the tools, they're going to make a difference going forward. And so that's the chapter that I'm in right now and loving it. And aside from the fact that I'm looking forward to maybe knocking a couple of points off my my golf handicap, I think I'm lucky enough to be right in the middle of a great chapter.

David Novak 38:12 

You know, candy, I want to end where I started, I want to thank you for your service to our country and what you continue to do. You know, we have a lot of mutual friends. And I have a lot of people who you don't know, and whenever I've mentioned your name, the only thing that is linked up to your name is respect and admiration. And just the fact that you are one great American, and I want to thank you for everything you're doing and have done. And thank you for taking this time out. Because I don't know there's too many people more busy than you. I really, really appreciate you.

Condoleezza Rice 38:43 

Well, thank you very much, David, and I look forward to seeing you at golf sometime soon.

David Novak 38:48 

Absolutely. Maybe you'll win the big tournament this year. Ah,

Condoleezza Rice 38:51 

I'll just try to keep it in the fairway. Thanks a lot.

Unknown Speaker 38:55 

Okay, thanks.

David Novak 39:06 

I alluded to this at the end of the interview, but all week as I've been talking with friends and preparing for this interview, the universal reaction I got from people when I mentioned Condoleezza Rice is just admiration and respect, is clear that she has just flat out earned her place as an iconic American leader. We need more leaders like Condoleezza Rice, which is why I'm delighted you took the time to learn from her today. Honestly, you've probably already got a lot of takeaways in your head after that conversation. I know I do. But one of the things I really want to call out is how Condi has played to her strengths over the years. I love how she handled Putin. She knew to listen to him in Russian and pick up all his nuances, but she negotiated in English where she could communicate the best. As Secretary of State she clearly understood The strength of her position representing the President of the United States, and she used it to her advantage to get more done at the table. So I got to ask you, what are your unique strengths? Now, they may not be speaking fluid, Russian or managing an international crisis. But as a leader, you've got to understand what you do well, in what situations do you really shine? What comes naturally to you? Where do you have insight that seems obvious to you, but surprises other people. Take a look at your strengths this week. Then consider a problem you're facing and how your unique strengths could help you navigate it better. It's natural to want to improve on our weaknesses, that's important. But we can really multiply our effectiveness when we double down on our strengths. The more you can play to your strengths, the more likely you are to get the outcome you want, and the more effectively you can lead those around you. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders play to their strengths. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Bill Rhodes, the CEO of AutoZone.

Bill Rhodes 41:11 

No individual builds a business, the individual builds an organization and the organization builds a business. And we had to motivate and inspire and engage and get people excited about what we could do together.

David Novak 41:24 

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday, you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be