The accolades are nice, but it's totally irrelevant. It's really what you do today and tomorrow. That matters. And you gotta go out and prove it and do it better every single day. - Ever catch yourself coasting after a big win? If so, you do not want to miss today's episode. Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm David Novak and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. My guest today is Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Airlines. They've earned a reputation as the most awarded airline in the United States and they've done it while serving more than 200 million customers every single year. Ed himself has gotten some acclaim recently, having just been named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people right alongside Mark Zuckerberg and Snoop Dogg, no less. But here's what I love about Ed. The accolades really don't mean that much to him. In a super competitive industry like the airline business, you can't rest on that reputation. You've got to prove it again and again every single day. And that's how Ed goes to work every single day. And that mentality to never stop improving is something you got to have if you want to stay sharp and stay ahead. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Ed Bastian. You know, when I was doing my research, I learned that you didn't get on a plane until you were 25 years old. Now you're running one of the world's biggest airlines. That's quite the journey yet. What do you remember about that very first flight? I got to ask you that. I do remember. I think everyone probably remembers their first flight. It was a business trip from LaGuardia to Chicago. Oh, hair. I was working. I was working for Price Waterhouse at the time. And my account was J. Walter Thompson, one of the big ad agencies. Don't remember a whole lot about it other than I was probably apprehensive and excited at the same time and going on your first trip as a business individual. And I think I was going by myself too. So it was pretty cool. Yeah. I know what that's like 'cause I didn't go on a plane until I was out of college too. So that's really funny. You know, and here you are, full circle. And you know, recently you brought thousands of Delta employees together at the sphere in Las Vegas to celebrate your 100th anniversary. And what's something about that event, Ed, that reinforces how you lead the company? Well, we were honored to be able to do one of the opening keynotes for the consumer electronics show. And as you know, it's the biggest show Vegas puts on all year long and a couple hundred thousand people. And I think we had about 15,000 people in attendance at the sphere. I'd never been to a show at the sphere until I saw my own or participated in my own self. That in itself is probably a story. But we were celebrating the future of flight. The first 100 years, first US airline to get to 100, which is pretty crazy, given how turbulent our industry tends to be. But importantly, where we're going next, you know, one of the things that we touched on is we take your travel as a given here in the United States. It's ubiquitous. You can jump on a plane, almost anywhere you want to go at any time of day. However, only one in five people in the world have ever even been on an airplane. So that tells you about where our future is. It's not a mature industry by any means. It's about going global. It's about making travel, air travel more accessible, more affordable, more sustainable, and going to parts of the world where we need to bring the Delta Love and Magic. - And you know, you're a great communicator and I know you view it as a very important thing in leadership. You know, what do you think the role of the leader is to really communicate? - I think one of the most important things we do in running these companies is that we cast vision and we all have planning departments and we all set strategy and we have a probably team of people that works on that with us. But I think only the CEO can think, has the responsibility and also the ability to think further out. You know, I try myself to try to stay at least five years ahead of my team, of the company, maybe 10 years. You know, thinking about where we can go and stretching the possibility so that, you know, people throughout the organization have a pretty good idea where we want to go and be able to pivot when we need to pivot soon enough and get far enough out so that we're not necessarily tied in to those decisions, but strategically have a pretty good mindset. And that's where communication comes in 'cause you have to be doing it over and over and over. Delta, we have 100,000 employees. And I speak all the time and I'm in front of them in so many different formats, but you gotta be consistent. You gotta be inspiring in terms of what that vision lays out 'cause you're gonna have people given their very best to make sure it comes into fruition. And, you know, my years of CEO, I think that's one of the things I've learned. I didn't really fully appreciate it before I became a CEO. But, you know, no one can do it but the CEO at that level. - Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you also have the day-to-day grind of competition. And, you know, recently in one new article, I saw this headline where it said Delta Airlines, Lures Southwest Airline Fliers with the status offer. You know, how do you think about competition and how do you build competitive urgency into your organization? - Well, we are a fiercely competitive industry. You know, unlike maybe your old company where you put up a store and you had that street corner, they couldn't take it away from you. Our factories fly. So when we see something that works, guess what? The rest of the industry takes their factories and they fly and try to sit right on top of us. Could you imagine a street corner with eight corners to it? You know, different restaurants trying to serve different things. And so the dynamics of that environment and the ability for consumers to check online, you know, pricing, you know, real time, all the time, where they want to go, it's right in front of them. There's a whole industry of online travel agencies and expedias and price lines that are geared to give consumers, you know, their very best value out of trying to compete one against the next. We're born of that. We've gotten a lot better, a lot as retailers and as merchandisers over time, but we're born for competition and I love it 'cause it's what makes us great. - I can't wait to hear more about how you're leading Delta, but first I want to take you back. You know, what's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today? - Well, to know my childhood knows I was one of nine kids, growing up in a small town in Poughkeepsie, New York, and I was the oldest of the nine. And my dad, it was a dentist, he had his practice rate in our house. My mom worked for him and my grandmother lived with us. And it wasn't that big a house. I think we had one and a half bathrooms in the house. (laughs) So you can imagine, you know, today, I tell my kids that story, they think I grew up in the medieval age or something, like that, how in the world did you do? But, you know, honestly, and I know you can relate to us, you know, things seem easier, things seem simpler. I think we were all maybe a little happier even to live life together. But what I learned is I had to get out for a lot of reasons, but once I wanted to make sure I had to get an example from my younger siblings in which my parents emphasized Ami repeatedly that we had to set the pace. And we did. And so you learn a lot about teamwork, you learn a lot about working, collaborating, you learn a lot about, you know, understanding, you know, in a tight knit community, you know, the importance one can have of being a leader. - Well, you know, with nine kids and one and a half bathrooms, you probably had to learn a little bit about how to manage chaos as well. Did you go? - Oh, yeah. My sisters ran the bathroom, so we had to, we had to negotiate for our two-minute slots. (laughs) - You know, you started your career as an accountant at Price Waterhouse, and as I understand it, you helped them cover at one point in your career, $50 million in fraud. You got to tell us that story. - Yeah, so this is back in, gosh, I don't know, the early '80s and, you know, $50 million, it's a lot of money, but it was a whole lot of money back then. And it was a front page Wall Street Journal article for years. And I was working on this ad agency, which I mentioned, J. Walter Thompson, and I stumbled upon something that just didn't make sense to me in terms of how the company was reconciling its books, and it had this manual reconciliation of one account to the next that went on for, gosh, it must have been like 25 or 30 manual pages and went on for years. It just kept adding and adding and adding to the point where no one had a clue as to what it was. And so, you know, people just kind of accept it, well, if it was good enough last year, it's pretty consistent with it, just kind of keep the thing rolling. And I dug in and made it, because it was such a big number of my pursuit to try to figure out what exactly was this difference. And as it turned out, it was all fraudulent. They were covering up the fact that they weren't able to cover a certain advertising. There was a show that they were producing that was being used on barter. And there was a long, long way of saying, I dug in so much that the company wound up, you know, acknowledging and figuring out that it was fraud. And there was an SEC investigation and people went to jail and gosh, I was like 24 years old at the time. And, you know, I was scared out of my mind. But, you know, I realized that you got to trust your instincts and you got to, you got to, curiosity plays such an important role in leadership and in life and trying to figure things out until you can and don't let it go, be tenacious. - Yeah, 24 years old and take on a problem like that. That had to, you know, take you up the scale in a hurry. And, you know, something that we have in common that I didn't know was that we both had 10 years at PepsiCo and working with Free to Lay. What was the biggest leadership lesson you picked up in your seven years you spent with that great company? - I loved my time at PepsiCo. I got out of school and went to work, went to St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York and went to Price Waterhouse. I didn't have any real graduate learning and came in accountant with them, but I knew I didn't want to do that forever. And I needed to find a way to get a broader business degree. But I didn't want to stop working 'cause I didn't want to have to pay for it. So the next best thing is get hired by PepsiCo and you're surrounded by amazing leaders. I know you spent time with Enrico. I spent a lot of time with Roger and Steve Reinemann and I worked on the international side of the business. So we could get on the Chester Cheeto plane out of Plano and fly around the world. And, you know, you'd be with six, seven, eight people for a week at a time and they bring you back home. And you just sit at the hands of some of the real business giants. I learned a lot about sales. I learned a lot about such an up, the direct to store business, the up and down the street, you know, you're out on the street corner and you're talking to real people about, you know, what you have to do to be successful in life and all different parts of the world. I was there for seven years. I probably got two or three X that in terms of valuable expertise to the point when Delta called and offered me an opportunity to become work and be my own leader in the finance organization at Delta. I've felt truly, truly prepared for it. - And you became the chief financial officer of Delta in 2005. And as I understand it, not long after the airline had to file for bankruptcy. How did that season make you a better leader? - Well, I'd left the company. I joined originally in '98 and left the company because it was in the aftermath of 9/11 and the industry was just hurting and travel was changed and international was different. And I saw the company making a lot of decisions that were inconsistent with the values that I knew it held, you know, pay cuts and job losses and customer comeback. Your travel was really hard. Talk about it as a lost decade from 2000 to 2010. Anyone out there out there is a real worry that back, you know, during that period can commiserate with that. And I wound up leaving the company 'cause I wasn't able to get some of my concerns properly addressed. And a few months after I left, the CO came running back after me and said, "What do we need to do to get you to come back?" And I told them several things, one of which was unusual is that this company needed to file for bankruptcy and kind of get a reset and start over again. And I talked to CO into agreeing to do that. If I came back, it wasn't a matter, if we were gonna file bankruptcy, it was just when. And we wanted to make sure we went into bankruptcy with a real plan rather than stumbling into it and actually getting broken up. You know, our industry, David, CO at the time when I was in the courtroom filing it, 180 airlines had filed for bankruptcy at that point in time. You think about all the disruption in our industry. And at that time, only four had ever made it out. So he wished me well and said, "I hope to see you on the other side." And we did. And you think about all the airlines from the past from Pan Am to DWA to Eastern to Braniff to Hughes. And you go on and on and people express on and on and on. Yet Delta is the airline that made it to 100. - Yeah, what did you do as a leader during that period that made that happen? Because like you said, not everybody did it. I mean, what did you learn from that experience? - We learned to kind of go back to our roots, to go back to our people. It's this, you know, this is a tough business, but the differentiation about Delta is about a service that our people provide. We all fly the same planes. We all have a lot of the same airports. We go to the same destinations. The only thing about our service, our brand, that is truly distinctive, cannot be replicated as the quality of the service of our people and the relationship we have with our people and the service, the heart that they deploy. And travel is hard. And our people do amazing things, not just to have the most reliable service, but to have the most distinctive. And that's why I felt our people were being let down. And so we got that heart and soul back. And we started a program back then, almost 20 years ago to this day that I continue today where I get six, seven, 800 of our frontline employees from all over the world together. We do it 15 different times a year. And we spend a couple of days of them talking about the business, kind of networking, learning, inspiring, motivating, casting that vision that we talked about and having fun and celebrating at the same time. But that's what the heart of teamwork is, is getting people together and really appreciating the magic that we get to create a Delta. - Well, and then just two years later, you get out of bankruptcy, you get promoted to president. You know, so many times when you're a functional leader in finance, you get pigeonholed as this numbers guy. You know, how did you demonstrate that you were more than just a numbers guy? And you knew what it really took to run the business day to day. - Well, one of the things about the airlines is that they are, as I said earlier, really dynamic animals. You know, you gotta be on top of your numbers to be able to make decisions. 'Cause those, you know, whether it's, every, you know, 5,000 flights a day that we have in every condition and things are moving around, fuel prices are moving around, heavy, heavy labor, intensity, you know, high cost utilization. So you really have to understand where your levers are to drive, to drive success. You need to understand your pricing. You need to understand where the value proposition sits. You need to understand where your capital is gonna go. And so having that analytical depth, which I think finance teaches it as great a discipline as there is, is something that I think is key to being a successful leader in the airline space. Historically, it had come through labor, it had come with lawyers. And now if you look at the most successful airlines in the world, many of us have kind of financial backgrounds and analytical skills. And it used to be an industry with people with huge egos and wanting to go conquer the globe, real swashbuckling heroes. Now we tend to be business people with, we wear suits and we have finance degrees, 'cause that's what it takes to succeed in this industry. - But still you had to get this customer orientation. When did you get that in your bones? - I learned, I had a lot of people taught me. I learned that a PepsiCo, you know, seven, eight years. I was an audit partner at Press Waterhouse. I had a lot of big accounts. I was out serving them and leading them. I had a lot of people here at Delta that taught me about that prior mentors and CEOs here that I learned from. And what they taught me is it's all about people, about service. If you can get your people pulling in the same direction and you get them behind you, they'll do amazing things for you. And you take good care of them, you treat them well, you pay them great. And you know that they know you always have their back. They can do magic. I think too many of our leaders over time feel like they have to give too much direction, too much micromanaging, too much taking away their ability to create their own leadership mantras. And that's where I think you get in trouble. - Hey everyone, it's Kula from Hal Leaders Lead. And we have a brand new playlist available in the Hal Leaders Lead app and I wanna tell you about it. It's all about how you can fuel yourself up to show up in the very best way as a leader. The playlist is called Wellness and the Workplace and it'll inspire you to do the things that you need to do on a daily basis so that you show up mentally sharp, physically sharp and emotionally sharp and so that you can lead your people in the way that they deserve to be led. Grab access to the playlist. You can either click this link or download the Hal Leaders Lead app, tap playlists and listen to the wellness in the workplace playlist. You can literally just listen to it like you would a Spotify playlist tapping the first track and then letting it play all the way through. I hope this playlist will inspire you to do those things that you know, fuel yourself and fill your cup so that you can show up in the very best way for your people. Get access to this playlist today. - When did you first start to think that you could become the CEO, Ed? - Oh, I'm still learning 10 years later. I'd say it was about that time about 20 years ago. I was working hard, we were in bankruptcy. I took a week off to my family. We went on a vacation someplace and I came back in town and there was a big, big fuss going on in the local community. So the fellow who was the CEO, Jerry Grinstein, the name rings a bell, was my boss. And he had given an interview to the local land and newspaper and they were, 'cause Jerry had said when he left and retired from Delta, after the bankruptcy, he was gonna try to pick someone from within the company and they were giving a couple names and one of the names he highlighted was me to be a successor. He never said that once in his life to me, once in his life and I come back and I've got all the people in the company looking at me like what are you doing to kiss up? Or how did you, how did you garner his favor? So I went in to see him. I said, Jerry, do you have something to tell me? And I had this article in hand, they said, well, you should be the CEO and you can be the CEO and question is do you wanna be the CEO? And I said, well, I'm not sure I had to think about that. And I came back to him at some point and said, yeah, I would really like to have that honor someday. And as a result, eventually it came about. - And you did become the ninth CEO for Delta and that was in May of 2016. You know, I can tell when you talk about people, you know, culture has to be really important to you. And you know, as a CEO, what are you trying to bring the culture today that maybe wasn't there a few years ago because, you know, your culture can't evolve. Is there some behavior that you think is gonna be necessary for you to be better in the future? - You know, culture is something that, you know, people sometimes think it's just, it's an intangible, it's out there, it's the end product of a lot of things that you do. I think it's something you have to manage. I think it's something that can be formed and can be cultivated and can be, needs to be invested in or else you can lose it. And you know, as the word says, it's cult. You know, part of it is there has to be a dedication to something. There has to be a consistent application of it. There has to be a pouring of investment into it. For us, it is our people. And over, I'd say the last 10 years, my duration here, Delta, the main thing that we've invested in is differentiation. As a higher end airline, as a higher premium airline, as a more international, we've 14 years running, been named the number one business airline by Business Travel News for Corporate America. All those things are things that we set out 20 years ago to create. And we've been investing in them and the reliability of the product and the service. You know, the airline business is tough. And the most important thing you can do as an airline leader is to invest in the quality and the reliability of your product in minimizing your cancellations, making sure your on time arrival rates are the best in business. And over time, your own employees realize you're doing this and giving them then the platform to succeed, giving them the workplace. 'Cause our flight attendants, we have 25,000 flight attendants. They're awesome at hospitality. The one thing I know they're awful at is apologizing. 'Cause they get more upset than anyone their customers do, if we're not on time, or if we're not meeting our commitments to the brand promise. And so serving them by making sure they have the very best airline reliability and the very best tools and technologies to deliver, then we set them free to go deliver and put an exclamation point on service with a smile. That's different. And over time, that's then yielded premium quality service. That's delivering higher quality. Today, Delta generates about 20% more per ticket for per flight seat per seat than our competition does. And that's because people are valuing the quality of that brand. - And is there anything going forward that you're trying to do differently with the culture or it's more of the same old, same old? - There was a big pivot during COVID. We hired, we had a lot of people voluntarily retire, and we had to grow once travel came back. So we've had 40,000 new team members just over the last several years. And so getting them into the culture is something we've been spending a lot of time in. But the next step in our journey is growing our international business. And we do that with partners. We don't want to just do the flying ourselves. So we're investors. We own stakes in Air France and KLM and Virgin Atlantic and Korean Air and Aeromexico and the TAM and several others so that we continue to grow the larger ecosystem and getting our people comfortable to travel on an international basis. 'Cause international travel is very different than domestic travel. And that's where the value creation is gonna come up in time. - You know, Ed, one of the things that I've heard you talk about one quality that you look for in people you hire, you talk about this heart of service. Say more. - Well, you know, when we interview people, I appreciate there's a lot of technical aspects to this job. We can teach you how to be a pilot. We can teach you how to fix a plane. We can teach you how to print a boarding pass, whatever it is. The one thing you can't teach is a heart. Either you have a heart of service or you don't. And what I'd like love to do when I interview people and we talk to people coming into the business is understand how they've demonstrated that in their past careers. So I believe you can have the highest level proficiency in technical depth, but it's your service that will set you apart, your heart for service. That's the thing that I think just kind of feeds that culture. It's putting that servant leadership right into the middle of the requirements. - You obviously have this great appreciation for people and you recognize them. How do you think about recognition on a day-to-day basis? How much of a part of that is the way you lead? - Oh, I spent a lot of time with my people and I take lots of selfies. I take, you know, I mean, you don't want to be in an airplane with me because our customers and employees all know who I am. And I spend time just kind of roaming the plane and in the galley and in the cockpit and spending time with people, just trying to understand them better and what we can continue to do to take good care of them. Over time, and I do it, I travel almost every day and I'm on a plane somewhere and doing something in community. You'd be surprised to have even with 100,000 employees. More often than not, I've already met the individual AO before and they'll say, "Hey, I want to show you something." It'll be a picture I took with them 12 years ago or they're marked by the fact that they get a chance to spend some personal time with the CEO. And, you know, some people kind of show me, we take eight pictures together and they want to show you all the pictures. What it tells me is that, you know, how important these roles are, you know, that they may never get a chance. In fact, a lot of people say, you know, I've never met the CEO of my company before and I've been here 30 years and it's great to finally meet you or meet whoever that individual is. They'll tell people. And so that impression that you make every single time is critical. It's important, you know, their form of opinion on you. That's their moment of choice. And no matter what your reputation is, they'll get a chance to make their own decision about you. One of the things that my predecessor told me when I took the job, David, was that I was too public. I needed to close myself a bit off. I needed to get a private email. I needed to get a private phone and text so that people can't reach me. 'Cause I only have one email and one cell phone and I'll walk around with any kind of hidden identity. And I said, thank you very much, but I never deployed that, his recommendation. Because I want people to be able to reach me and I get hundreds if not thousands of emails a day. And I have no, they all go to the same device. They all go to me. My, I've got a team that sits behind me that can help, helps me take care of getting people where they need to go. And, you know, somebody needs help with something. I tell them, just email me and it's really easy to find. What that has done is it's allowed, it's not just customers, it's employees, it's people in the community to feel that, you know, there's someone that they could talk to at any point in time and get a response, that people really do care about their relationship with you. And that identity of accessibility is something that, you know, people are actually surprised that they can get that level of relationship. And you know, sometimes it'll be on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday night and somebody will, they'll get a response back for me in maybe two minutes. 'Cause I don't like to see the stuff accumulate either. And they say, this, you have an amazing AI agent or a robot or somebody and I'll say, "No, no, it's me." It's out of board here. I'm just trying to knock things out. But that builds the identity with people, that you're very involved. And when I think about my role with so many things going on, I can be pretty peaceful about it all. 'Cause I don't have to go hunting around, seeing what's going on. People tell me, you know, 24/7 what's happening. And I'll find out many times before our leaders will find out what's going on. 'Cause I get them, my phone blows up. First thing for the people being impacted. So it's an interesting way to use technology to keep yourself engaged and in the game. - And you know, you've been recognized yourself as well. Many times and you always accepted on behalf of the team, which I like that. And you were recently announced as one of Time Magazine's most influential people 2025. And as a part of the announcement, you know, our friend Ken Chanal did a write up of you and he said, "While Ed is the epitome of the service leader, make no mistake, he is a tough-minded business executive." Tell me a story, Ed, when you demonstrated that tough-minded characteristic. - Oh, I'll tell you a funny story about Ken, how's that? So Ken, Ken's a dear friend for, as he is with you, for many, many years. And American Express is our top partner. We, the credit card that the American Express has, the Delta credit card, that's the top performing card American Express has by a factor or two of any other card in the entire AMX system. In fact, 10% of the worldwide buildings go through on the Delta American Express credit card. So it's huge, they pay us, so pay us this year, about $8 billion for that credit card. That's how big it is in the relationship. Well, back when I mentioned we were struggling, we were having to go through bankruptcy. I went to American Express 'cause I needed to raise some money and they had invested in it, of course, the relation much, much smaller back then at that time. And I went to Ken and I think Ken loaned us the last $500 million that we needed to do to put the business plan together to eventually emerge 'cause they had a vested stake in Delta surviving as well. About five years after that, after we had come out and repaid the loan and did everything, we had a big leadership meeting and we invited Ken to come in and speak at the meeting. And he did a great job as he always does. And after he got done, I got up and spoke. And I thank Ken and told him that he's an amazing partner, great, great leader. But the thing I'll always remember about Ken is that $500 million that you loaned us, Ken, and Ken said, "Yeah, yeah, I put myself out there for you." And said, "You charge us 14% for that money. "I'm gonna make sure we get that 14% back for you "for many times over." And you think about how we've grown our relationship, we certainly have. So, you know, businesses, it's competition, it's good competition and you have fun with friends and he laughed and we all laugh. But yeah, I'll never forget Ken charged me 14% as we were on our deathbed. - Just a few minutes ago, you talked about the power of having this open email. Do you have a story of the best feedback you ever received from a customer that led to a good idea? - Oh, I get feedback all the time. The best feedback I get and I get it every single day is they catch our employees in action doing amazing, heroic work. And they know they can reach me. So, you can go on our website and fill out a form to give a compliment to an employee or you can give him a card or kind of an attaboy type thing. But those that are really in the know, realize just to email me and I'll personally thank the individual and there's so many, some of those people get credit through those vehicles. But I'll hear stories about, people's lives being changed by our people in terms of just their ability to make certain that whether somebody lost a really important possession on a plane and a mechanical three days later have taken a seat apart, still trying to find this thing and they'll recover something that employees like a wedding ring or something, amazing value or how we've created connections for people that have become lifelong friends or I can't tell you how many marriages and wedding proposals and people that met on Delta property or Delta flights, you know, wanna emanate it from that. I get lots of ideas, as you said, I mean, ideas about how to board, what food to serve on the planes. I know you're in the business of restaurants. I think we're one of the largest restaurants in the world. We serve 200 million people a year in our little restaurant. It's helping our languages and all the places. A lot of our business travelers or road warriors are on the road every week and they're always telling me or asking me, "Why can't we board this way or that way?" So I get a lot of great, great feedback. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Ed Bastian in just a moment. Now, as you heard, Ed's got some great stories about Ken Chanel, the former chairman and CEO of American Express. Ken was kind enough to join me on a How Leaders Lead podcast where he shared some of my favorite insights about the importance of feedback for leaders. - One of the things that I talk to founders about very directly is eliciting and receiving direct feedback. And so this concept that I used in management of constructive confrontation, do it respectfully, but at the end of the day, what you want with your people and what you're gonna get with me is I'm gonna tell you how I feel, what my concerns are, what areas you need to develop. Let's talk about it. But then let's put a game plan together because one of the things that's important that I really stress to founders or anyone that I'm mentoring is we're all judged by our actions. And so take me through the outcomes, behaviors that you engage in. Let's understand what the impacts are. Let's understand what the results are because we all gotta be outcome driven, but again, if we wanna do something that's really lasting and meaningful, it's gotta be motivated by values and principles. - So catch my entire conversation with Ken, episode 68 here on How Leaders Lead. - You know, you managed Delta through one of the toughest times in the airline industry level phase with COVID. But before we talk about that, I understand a few weeks prior to COVID, your mother passed away. You know, when life happens like that, and you know, I know how tough that is myself, you know? And when you have so much responsibility at work, Ed, how do you manage that? - That was tough. I think we all have our own COVID, you know, recollections as to the craziness that was going on. 2019 for Delta was our best year in our history. I think it was the best year any airline it ever had. So we were at the highest of heights. Then when it hit in February of that year, people started to figure out something was going wrong. My mother had somewhat shockingly mysteriously died. And she had an infection and she went to the hospital and a couple of weeks later, she was gone. And she had been in great health to that point. And my mom was my role model, and my dad died very, very young. And so she raised the nine kids and she was something, someone that was always my rock. Then a week later, right after we buried her, you know, COVID pandemic was declared and all of our revenue went away, all of our business. In fact, we not only had no revenues, we were negative revenues 'cause people had deposits that we had refund monies, you know, for trips. We had like six billion dollars on the books for trips people were to be taking into the spring and summer that they had put on deposit. And these people wanted their money back. I mean, so as a Christian man, I really thought I was kind of jobing the Bible a little bit. You know, kind of lost my mom, I lost my business, what's gonna come next? And so what I did, David, is I gave myself about a week to feel really sorry for myself. I mean, I was like, for a few days, I was just pretty, pretty depressed. I came through that week at the end of it and I spent a lot of time and thought and prayer and other things. And I realized, boy, this isn't a burden, this is a blessing. I mean, in the 100 year history of Delta Airlines, there's never been a more important time to be the CEO of this company. Never, this will be the role that I'll make my life on, my career highlight of my life saving this company and getting it through. It's a privilege, it wasn't a burden, it was a blessing. I had to tell you, I did that pep talk with myself every day for a lot of days. Just to remind myself of not just the responsibility but the opportunity that are born and the tens of thousands of people that were counting on the decisions we were taking. And I realized, boy, there's no other place I'd rather be and in that job at that time. And so, I had a moment, I had to kind of dig into my own humanity and be vulnerable and realize when I got out the other side, no, no, this is my time to stand up and that's what my mom would've wanted me to do and that's what my family needed and that's my Delta family, 100,000 strong needed. - You know, speaking of stepping up, Ed, you said this ambitious goal, not to furlough a single employee during COVID. How'd you get the entire company to rally behind that and make it a reality? 'Cause that seems to me like one hell of a leadership task. - Yeah, I thought it would be impossible. Yeah, we did a lot of these video things. Back then, we had a video service meta, or face back then, I guess, that's something that we use for internal trust. So fortunately, we had the communication vehicle and I talk on that several times a week to tens of thousands of people just for an hour a day, just letting them know what was going on 'cause no one knew what was happening. And people just needed to see you, they needed to look at your face, they needed to see how much, you know, if you were comfortable, if you were confident, if you were worried and it just vulnerability, I think was one of the key things we all learned during COVID and that's where a connection was born. And people can tell pretty quickly if you were being true and straight with them or not. And one day early on, I said, I was thinking that day that boy, wouldn't it be amazing? Now, all our revenue is gone. If we could get through this crisis without furloughing a single person, I basically set it out loud for the first time. And like tens of thousands of people are hearing me say this and I'm having this kind of open-ended conversation with myself and I said, you know, it's probably impossible, but why not try? Let's see if there's any way to get this done. And I had a few things going for me. One thing we haven't talked about is how we reward our people. One of the things that Delta is famous for, we implemented 20 years ago, is a profit sharing arrangement where 15% of the profits of our company go to our people and the management doesn't participate in that. That's just all frontline people. And the prior year, we just had the best year in our history and we distributed, and we always just drove on Valentine's Day, we had distributed $1.7 billion to our people on that Valentine's Day, just the month earlier. So I knew they had money, right? I knew there was money. It was like two months worth of pay. And I knew a lot of people were nervous about being out in public and flying and I knew people were a lot of people, whether it was their second job or people that could take time off. And I knew they kept saying, "What can we do for our company?" And I said, "If you want to make this a reality, we need it as many of you to take time off without pay for as long as you could afford to." We kept their benefits alive and we gave them some travel privileges. And we had 50,000 people, more than half of the company at the time, take up to a year or more off without pay. And we grew this high, what people would consider to be a fixed cost base. We shrunk it down to maybe half its size. And then on top of that, we did a voluntary retirement arrangement for people that were willing to go at that point. And then we got down further. So we only have a third of our size within a few months. And that's our people are our biggest cost. It's not fuel, it's not the planes, it's people. It's a heavy, heavy people business. And our people did it for each other. And as a result of that, people were so proud of the fact that we didn't have to furlough. Every other airline in the world furlough tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, we didn't. And we wanted to make that a real point of differentiation. - Yeah, and I love how you light up when you talk about that because you have that pride too. And that's such an amazing accomplishment. And you worked your way through COVID very successfully. - Can I tell you one other really quick story in COVID? - Absolutely. - So the other thing I did was we blocked the middle seats on our planes and we blocked them all through COVID. And of course, the known is flying, it's easy to block the middle seats, but when people started flying again, but they still weren't comfortable that COVID was over. We kept blocking the middle seats. We blocked the middle seats for up to two years. And our brand just took off like a rocket ship. Our brand was already on a cent and just took off like a rocket ship and customers still thank me to this day, say, "Hey, I didn't wanna have to travel. "I needed to get to the bedside of a loved one "or I had to do something for work." Delta's the only airline that I fly because all the other airlines started selling those mils so you didn't sell either in first class or in the coach section of the airplane, playing the middle seats. And I always say, "Thank you very much." But the truth to that story is the reason we blocked those middle seats, I had made that decision 'cause I knew our own people didn't wanna work on a crowded plane anymore and our customers wanted to sit on a crowded plane. So I really did it for our own people. So when you talk about putting people first and having that people's interest in, you know, COVID, we had to make these things up. You know, we didn't have a playbook for any of this stuff as it was going on. That brand still sits with us today, but our people know the real reason we did it was for them. - You know, you're obviously a big believer if you do the right things, the right things happen and they certainly have happened for you. And post COVID, the travel industry is booming right now. And, you know, how are you taking advantage of this rebound period that you're obviously in? Because your results are pretty amazing. - We've grown, we've expanded. All demographics are traveling. All, you know, our younger people are traveling at levels never before seen. The Gen Z population actually has more wealth than any of the previous generational cohorts. And they're using it on travel. Baby boomers, guys like ourselves are outgoing. So many people were sitting home for a couple of years wondering whether they were ever gonna get out again and watching life, you know, pass them by. And whether you're older or younger, it did matter. I think COVID was a marking period for them. So we're now in a period of, you know, with tariffs and all the economic uncertainty and questions about a recession, a recession coming or not for our country. Yet our people are traveling like crazy. And they're going internationally, they're going premium, they're going on all the higher end products that we have to offer. They're selling out our credit card business and their expresses growing double digits. I think people are prioritizing where they spend their money and they're really not buying things, but they're investing in themselves and they're going to Turkey and they're going to Australia and they're going to Riyadh and, you know, all the places in the world that they spent time and again, they're going younger, they're going older. And that's our business model is to connect and bring them to meet their life's life streams. - You know, this go-go environment that you're in right now, you know, what do you see as your biggest leadership challenge? - Well, I think it's continuing to keep our people, you know, kind of focused on every single day, you know, that driving that great, that great example. You know, we've been on top of our industry for a lot of years and I know all the other airlines are sick and tired about hearing about Delta this and Delta that and they just can't wait to take us down and try to beat us and which I love because I'm a very competitive guy. But what I want our people to always know is that the most important thing is the awards, the accolades are nice, but they don't, it's totally irrelevant. It's really what you do today and tomorrow, that matters. And you got to go out and prove it and do it better every single day. Keep climbing is our model. We've been using it for years. And every single day we can make the world better. A number of years ago, my marketing team came to me and you'd love this story. And they said, you know, keep climbing. We adopted that coming out of bankruptcy. And, you know, it was a great, it was a great honest statement about where we were, weren't very good, but stay with us, we're going to get better and sure enough, we've gotten better. They wanted to come out with a new model, a bolder statement about, you know, not that we've arrived, but you know, there's a different experience you should expect on Delta. And I said, thank you very much and threw them out and said, I'm never, never changing. 'Cause keep climbing. It's honest, it's humble. It recognizes that we can always do better and we want to get better. And as long as I'm here, we're never taking that model off. - That's another great example of being tough minded. That's a really good one right there. You know, speaking of keep climbing, you know, how are you sharpening your axis as a leader? I mean, what are you working on right now so that you become better and better? - Well, I think for myself personally, 'cause I've been doing this for a while, you know, I try to make certain that I continue to get fed. I continue to listen. I think listening is such an important part of leadership that's understated, you know, as leaders. We don't, you know, people look to us for direction or for vision or for guidance. And sometimes we can get almost to accustomed to given direction and not spending enough time, you know, thinking and listening and taking in advice and being curious and kind of pushing the envelope a little bit differently. So I'm trying to do my best to kind of keep my focus on what I can learn, what we can learn as a team from so many different people. You know, we're a very public facing business, making certain that we never really, you know, stop learning. And Morgan, I've been working with guy, you know, well, Tom Brady and Tom's a good friend and been doing working together for a few years. Since he came out of the league, he wanted to work with a company and he talked to a bunch of companies, he called me, he said, "I really want to do this with Delta." And that's what I wanted to do with him too because you think about who has excelled at the highest levels in the world consistently for such a long duration period of time. And I wanted to hold him up as a leadership example for our team to continue to get better. And, you know, one of the things that Tom has, and you know this, he's incredibly humble, even though he's confident, he's still humble, he wants to learn and he's curious. And he's always prepared. And, you know, every single day is a new opportunity texted me this morning on some things he was thinking about for us. And that's what we have to be. You know, we can never get accustomed to the seats that we're in. We have to go continue finding a way to make that seat better for somebody else. - That's great. You know, this has been so much fun, Ed. And I want to have a little bit more with you. I have this lightning round of questions. So are you ready for this? - Yeah, I'm ready. - Okay. The three words that best describe you. People, service, and spirit. - If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? - Well, I'll tell you, growing up who I'd want it to be, I want it to be Mickey Mantle. - Me too. What's your biggest pet peeve? - Of noxious behaviors. - Who would play you in a movie? - Well, it's funny. So Will Ferrell just came out with a new movie. And at the closing scene of the movie, he was with some woman and she said, do you actually have a job? He says, yeah, I'm the CEO of Delta Airlines. (laughs) - So it'd have to be Will Ferrell. - Imagine you're going on a trip, but all you get to take with you is what you can fit in your pillowcase. What's going inside? - Oh, I used to do that from my, that's my mom, 'cause you have grown up with nine kids, we go to Florida and our station wagon, and all you could bring was what your plug is. I have a lot of experience there. I'd bring probably some comfortable clothes, maybe something that could golf in, some golf shoes and some running shoes. And I just, I'd wanna make sure I was going someplace warm. (laughs) - What was the hardest thing for a New York kid to learn about life in the South? - For them to understand me. (laughs) - What's the learning, learning how to say y'all? - What's the one thing you do just for you? - Each morning, when I wake up, I spend about 15 minutes in trying to try and just isolate, and that's my reflection time. - Besides your family, what's your most prized possession? - The Atlanta Braves gave me World Series Ring a few years ago when they won the World Series. - And that ring, I've seen it from Terry McGurk, that's got some bling to it, no question about that. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? - You'd hear classic rock. - What's something about you few people would know? - When I was my early years at Price Waterhouse, I was an auditor, but you know, the award shows that people would come out on, MTV, used to have the video music awards, the VMAs, and there was an account and that would come out with a balance, I was the account with a balance. - Trust up in the talk. - From out of MTV, I love it. - And I'd be given out the balloting to the great stories there. - Well, that's the end of the light, you're around, great job Ed. Just a few more questions, I'm gonna let you go. Ed, you have four kids. You know, how do you lead at home? - Four something to wanna be, you know, anything that they don't wanna be. So, and each of them are doing totally separate things, which I'm so proud of. I mean, none of them are following me in the airline businesses, which is great, 'cause I didn't want necessarily that. I make certain, as busy as I am, they all know that my most important job is to be dad and father, not as CEO. And you know, that comes in conflict a lot of times. You gotta make trade-offs and it's hard. But they all, we stay very, very close and technology allows us to do that easier than ever. - And I know your wife Deborah is a very close partner of yours, you know, how do you interact in the business or do you? - Oh, she's got more opinions than anybody. (laughing) I practice my listening skills when I'm home. (laughing) - That's good, that's good. - All right, Ed, when you look out, okay, what do you see as you're unfinished business? - Oh, I got a few more years to run here. And really what I want is, you know, we're in a tough business, the airlines are tough. And they make progress and, you know, some economic crisis or COVID or some war breaks out or some calamity occurs. And so, you know, the performance of the company continues to get better, but it's always up and down. There's a lot of volatility. I want us to get to a place where we kind of immune ourselves as best we can from the risks, getting our debts paid off. We still have some debt we want to get paid down and our balance sheet and say, I've left, you know, the top brand in the airline industry with the fortress balance sheet that is unassailable and people with the greatest heart of service. I mean, that's, I mean, you're always working towards that, but I think in the next few years, we can actually attain that. - Last question, Ed. What's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? - One piece of advice. You know, it really, it's about the people you surround yourself with. You know, it's your mentors, it's your community. It's, you know, just, you know, we all learned that as kids. My parents always told us, you know, the people you hang out with, just make sure those are people that lift you up and that that will bring you places you want to go. 'Cause they're going to bring you places. You may not want to land. And I remember as a young leader, I did a lot of reading on leadership. I always wanted to be, you know, I'd attend sessions sometimes. I'd always want to be a curious learner about leadership. And one of the great joys I've had in my life, I've met many of the leaders I used to grow up, you know, reading about and learning from and seeing, wow, I mean, they're humans after all, but, you know, but, you know, just being able to relate to them. And, you know, just make a certain, you're in a circle of your colleagues, of your community, your friends, who take you places you want to go. - And Anna, I know that anyone that has the opportunity to be with you would consider it an honor. And they love hanging with you because the kind of leader you are, the kind of person you are, the kind of father you are, and your passion for people. And I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be on how leaders lead with me. And for setting such a good example for all leaders, because I can tell from this conversation, this is, you know, this is stuff that you believe with your heart and soul, and you put it into practice. So thank you very much. - Thank you, David. The leadership is also about sharing, right? And it's about, you know, what we can do to grow our next generation of leaders. And that's the real testament for you, me, for others, that, you know, it's what we leave behind. That's really gonna make a difference. - Great. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. (silence) Ed combined so many great qualities of a strong leader, a tough-mindedness, a heart for people, and a humble spirit. I mean, with him at the helm, it's easy to see why delts as the industry leader. But Ed knows that being the best isn't a finish line. It's a standard you have to keep meeting day after day after day, and that kind of consistency doesn't happen by accident. It takes focus. It takes humility. And it takes a deep belief that it's always possible to get better. So here's something to try this week. Look at the areas where your team is winning right now and ask yourself, how do we keep the edge? How do we keep getting better and better? Because I hate to say it, but I know you'll agree with this if you think about it. If you're not improving, you're going to get beaten by someone who is. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders never stop improving. Coming up next on How Leaders Lead is Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon. So be sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast so that you don't miss it. 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 very best leader you can be.