Welcome to Howl 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. Today's guest is Oscar Munoz, the former CEO and chairman of United Airlines. Now Oscar led United Airlines through a massive turnaround and you're going to love hearing how it happened because boy, Oscar has a ton of insight and great stories. When you hear the story of this turnaround and what Oscar did, it's clear. As a leader, you've got to do more than just run smart strategy and solve technical problems. The real challenge is how do you do all that while also reaching the hearts of the people you lead? That was the driving force of the turnaround at United and it's true for whatever challenges you're facing to. To make big things happen, you need to appeal to both the mind and the heart and Oscar does both beautifully. So let's get into this great conversation with my friend and soon to be yours, Oscar Munoz. Oscar, one of the things I love about your book is you really learn a lot about the airline industry and you say that if you like solving puzzles, there's nothing more fascinating than the airline business. Explain what you mean by that. I think most of us who fly a lot, which is everyone, we appreciate the time being on time and having a nice meal and having a clean seat. Most people don't quite comprehend the level of complexity. It's a very complicated world and dance of choreography, of the pilots and the flight attendants and the meals and the gates you're coming into flying internationally to the time when I was there 70 plus countries, 180 million customers a year. It's just a complicated logistical effort that is coupling with the need to have a human level of interaction that you're comfortable with to drinking a cup of coffee that you enjoy. So the puzzle is how do you get all of that together? How do you put the business end of it, manage the cost, take care of humans, deal with all the regulatory and compliance issues and again, remaining true to the friendly skies moniker that United has been so proud to fly for so many years. And you have technology being such a big issue that you got to be all over too and you also say there's no grander stage than an airport. What do you mean by that? You have written books and sometimes you take a little poetic license and a lot of TV shows, movies, there's always a grand setting either the finale of Die Hard or many of the romantic love stories about the parting of ways and it's just a grand stage because it connotes so much movement, right? It's a moving along, a separation or a reunion. There's just so much emotion tied to it and I also find that our customers, right, they fly a lot. So it's very personal to them and the concept of the emotion that you have towards your favorite airline or your least favorite airline is very high. And there's no conversation I can go anywhere that somebody doesn't learn what you do or what you've done that inevitably there isn't something. Let me tell you about this one flight or this one period of time. So there's a lot of a lot of human emotion tied into this business. So the puzzle piece is trying to manage all of those constituents and you mentioned technology which is a whole chapter on itself but equally as important. Now I understand you always try to be the last person to board a flight. What was your rationale for that? Simple. And the world has changed and everybody's watching and the optics of the leader of a corporation getting in front of everyone else, getting seated first, just wasn 't my style or my brand. And frankly, someone always took my carry on and so I would stick around and talk to people, both customers and then walk on the plane at the last second. It was just a way of being able to say hello to a lot of different people, engage with the pilots, engage with the flight attendants, see customers as I was sitting down or outside. It was just something that was important for me to not be perceived as that imperial person that needs special treatment or I didn't travel with anyone necessarily. And so that was important to me. You know when you become CEO you know people always want to protect you and shield you and do things for you and make sure that no one does this or no one does that. You know how did you break that down so people really knew hey I want to be a human being like everybody else. Well a funny story. I initially came in and I was like no I'll rent a car, you know at the airport my first day of the work and you know where do I park and a very person close to me who became my first chief of staff K.G. Vaux pulled me aside in the room one day and she says you know what? Knock it off. Just trying to help you and by you trying to be whatever you're trying to be like a normal human being is killing us. Just go with it alright. We're going to have a car for you. We're going to do these things. You need to stick to the schedule and quit making it hard for us. And so there's a balance there where you do have to get to a lot of places and a lot of times a lot of people are waiting for you. You have to acknowledge that just part of the gig and so I'm trying to balance the imperial nature with just not being counter productive. The people's work and effort is how I begin to balance that. You know I want to go deep on the United Airlines turnaround that you orchestrated and how you leave it first. Understand you were born in Mexico. You're the oldest of nine siblings and I understand growing up you had first and second lunch shifts because you couldn't fit everyone around the same table. Is this where you earned your reputation for being great at conflict resolution ? Because I know you had a great reputation working with the unions. Well you know we are all parts of people we've met along the way I think and certainly my upbringing with the eight brothers and sisters certainly had a lot to do with that. Yeah the first and second lunch was a funny thing. And in addition when mom and dad came home from the grocery store all the neighborhood kids had to come and help with the bags because there was multiple bags of groceries that we had to do. And so yeah it's you know I think my conflict resolution to be just a tad serious came from my heritage and my upbringing. I grew up predominantly with my maternal grandmother for many years while I was living in Mexico before I came to the United States. And we traveled to many homes. She didn't have her own home but she was never homeless you know the concept of familia and Spanish is a more deeply resonant word. And so we always had a place to stay. And just you know going around the country with her for so long and my memories of you know not feeling unsafe. I always had her course in town you know just you know as I was walking on dusty trail sort of speak and she was always there. And how she managed things she never had a bad word for anyone was always upbeat was always friendly. And that's your formative years and you learn that that's an important part. And so I've carried that over into many of the contentious issues you have in business of course and difficult decisions you have. I often find that truly listening to both sides of the story inevitably somebody's facts are incorrect or somebody's premise is not entirely on point. And if you can begin to fix and nicate those things you begin to solve contentious problems. So I credit that to my mother my heritage and a lot to you know the experience of the people I've met along the way. You're a leader who seems to appreciate very direct feedback and you just are very straightforward and honest and was there a particular bit of coaching you got earlier on in your career that was really instrumental for you. Because I'm sure you were a high flyer coming up. Yeah no there was there's been several. Because I think it's an important part of I have a friend who's always said that sharing is caring and I've always found that to be so true because if somebody truly cares they will share with you and as you drive them to a point where they don't care they 'll just let you go on your way. I think probably the most the most interesting story to your question was when I had moved from I had been a young hot shot at Pepsi and at a relatively young age moved to Coke probably skipping a couple levels of the normal you know sort of career hierarchy and so I was feeling pretty good about myself and walked into this new environment and Coke and Pepsi cultures are probably as different as the City of New York and the City of Atlanta. Right just you can follow you everyone's traveled to both and ones and more of a gentle southern culture New York is of course New York and I think the culture in both companies were that way. I came from this high charging high flying up or out you know constantly looking around to see who might be you know looking out for like looking for your job and such to this much more quiet genteel and in generally older community and so again as a young person I think I was 26 at the time I learned the hard lesson you can never judge a book by its cover because I saw people that were much more senior than I am and I immediately assumed gosh you know this is places full of ancient dinosaurs or whatever term you might want to use and my boss back to your question at my sort of mid-year performance review of something you know he does all that stuff and he's telling me all these great things about the work we're doing and then he did this magical thing he took the HR document folds it and pushes to the side I remember this vividly and he says not if I could Oscar just as friends share a couple of things so I'm thinking yeah he probably wants me to date his daughter or something kind of you know I'm thinking that's the way my thinking was and he said magic the magic words that I remember this now I remember all of these things he said you know you're really good at what you do and if there's one bit of feedback I would give you he said you're not yet as good as you think you are and I'm like wait that didn't sound like either dating your daughter or compliment and clearly what he said is I was way ahead of myself right that today's term of slow your role listen and learn which is a common premise in the book and I all came from that little bit of the conversation because what he said you know hey you're really good at what you do just slow down and let others catch up with you learn to involve others in the decisions that you make and back to the judging a book by its cover the people you know that one woman in particular that I remember vividly she kind of looked like my grandmother and now as you got to listen to her understand her background she was a Harvard MBA not 24 25 years before but a Harvard MBA nonetheless with all the intellect and all the drive and all the experience which I think is the thing that I teach and you probably do the same thing David with people younger not because where experience does lend a lot to us and one of the things that you learn is that experience is valuable and if you just slow down a little bit and listen to the people above you who are wanting who do care about you and want to share it's a really meaningful point so that that comment you're not yet as good as you think you are felt like a spear coming across the you know the the the office just been p aling me because I was angry I went through all those seven stages of grief and oh that's good I 'm doing this but it helped me immensely began to appreciate and genuinely listen to the people around me. Yeah it makes sense and let me ask you what's a one-on-one session like with Oscar Munas and when you're giving someone some coaching I have found that waiting for that particular time frame when you have this this tense situation right we're doing reviews and I've got to tell you how you're doing is usually not the best time to give any unless it's graded by hey these are going great David just as we've talked all along the way you 're hitting on these marks I see this and you know it's great keep it up that's an easy one but I find that the first time you have to have a tough conversation with somebody in that heightened pressure of a performance review is it doesn't work as much because it implies my performance my performance measurement what goes in my records potentially my compensation are going to be affected by that and there's a degree of anger and resentment that why the hell are you just telling me that now and you have all those things so I tried to talk to people on a fairly regular basis every time I observe something that maybe isn't flowing the right way and so to kind of get a basis for a conversation about something that might be a good development probably my most famous structure when I do have a meaningful conversation because you find that people do not get good feedback throughout the course of their career and especially when you get to be a CEO in those higher levels a lot of your senior folks have gotten to where they are on their merits and their performance but I don't know that if everyone's ever touched on the more personal nature of performance how you act how you make others feel is a lot of my my phrase it's like hey you're incredibly smart and you know where you're headed but you're leaving everyone behind so being right does not mean everything's going to get done so phrases like that and working with folks and and when I have those conversations whatever they might be here's how you emote here's what you show in your face here's your body language all those little personal things you don 't appear open I would say maybe David and then of course there's there's kind of a push back from the individual and I always say you know listen go home talk to your loved one just go home and just say this is crazy new guy at work and he told me a sign he told me all this crap about this or that and just watch your loved one and how they react and David to this day I've had that conversation I had hundreds of times probably I've never had one person come back and say yeah my spouse disagrees with you it's always less kind of sheep ish yeah you know I talked to my wife and she kind of said well honey maybe you could be and I think that's the most meaningful right it just share things that you observe in your opinion have them double check with someone else that's closer to them and and it's amazing what that happens and and then there's of course a hundred other tactics that you know so well but I think that level of human interaction it's personal that let someone know that you genuinely care about them which is why you're sharing is an important thing and I don't think the performance reviews a good time to do that yeah if that's performance reviews a surprise that's a that's a problem no question about that you know I know you were president of CSX a great railroad company and you were slated to be the next CEO there tell us how you made the decision to go to United I always like to get inside of the heads of how leaders really make these big career shifts what I know about myself is that I bridge the gaps between people always been able to do that I always do it with logic and reasoning I always do it you know if I need to with a little force but mostly I will listen to you and hear and understand our journey at CSX for the time I was there which was a long time and ascended from CFO to eventually CEO and then president I learned a lot about that company I knew what the future held we had turned it around we were a seven billion market cap company when I started probably over close to 60 billion by the time I left so we had had a lot of success knowing myself what I had been able to do with the team at CSX was bring all that together the next few years as CEO we're going to be more of the same and that's just really planning for my succession with a great team that we built behind us again nothing wrong with that I earned that thing but then you're then you get this this option right of a company that's broken disenfranchised diseng aged disillusioned employees on industry that I know a little bit about but not a lot and I was a conversation with myself it's like you know what you do best you know the people there you know you can bridge a lot of those gaps and do you have the energy and desire to have another turnaround in your career and it wasn't the title because the title was coming one way or the other it wasn't money or adulation because frankly the airline industry pays less than what we were able to earn in a company that has such high margins and high equity value but it became about my abilities knowledge of contribution knowing what I could do and a desire to lead my own rather than be part of a team was the concept now it's infinitely more complicated than that David and there's a lot of decisions because there's the people that brought you to the first company and how do you deal and interact with them they trusted you in giving you these opportunities and now you're in essence turning your back on them and then of course the dread and trepidation of walking into another business that you don't know a lot about and then of course all the things that happened subsequent with that were were not easy and we went through a lot of issues but I'm but again the leadership aspect is if you know who you are and what you know what you can do well you're going to be successful because as good and bad as the things when it united the thing my special skill in bridging the gaps between all these large voids and evidently proved to be a little bit of the secret sauce. You were on the board of united so you at least had a little bit of information about what the company was like you had a good sense there was a transportation industry a different kind obviously than real load so that was something that gave you some some some knowledge expertise to take into the role but you touched on it a little bit what did you inherit in 2015 you know I you know I've learned it was called disunited airlines or divided airlines or you know but anything then united tell us tell us what you walked into. Yeah anything but united I think my first my first interview was with the Wall Street Journal and they asked me the same question and I was very direct in Frank it's like you know I find that our workforce is disengaged disenfranchised and disillusioned and I am I am embarrassed to say that as a board member I did not see this early on and we should have and the task at hand is going to be a formidable one and that's what I learned and that's what I said and and so promptly made the decision that I needed to learn a lot more. Again leadership is lessons or when you have a turnaround situation it means that a lot of things are broken which of those many things that are broken you do first is the platform for the eventual success and change that you have to do so how do you find that one thing and by the way there's no shortage of people telling you what's wrong but you know you have to figure out for yourself and and my decision based on my my heritage my upbringing my experience and I was I need to get to the front lines and I need to hear from them what they think as circuitous and as mixed and as broad conversations I'm going to have across the system I'm going to get a sense of something I don't know what that is but give me some time and I'm going to go figure that out. So it's what I said of course the street reacted like what the hell does that mean right that's like sounds expensive sounds time consuming customer like hey what about us and so on and so that was the the first that's the things that I found and then my initial instinct on how to fix it. So you went on this listing tour and you wanted to find that first right thing to go after how did you define that when you did the listing what was your net impression that you had that this was going to be the primary focus. In my initial sort of tour of different places you could you could almost you know again part of listening being a good listener and having an intuitive sense about people around you is I could feel people as they smiled and took pictures or congratulated me that there was something deeper behind there there was a desire to speak kind of almost to help me kind of concept there was a there's just something that I couldn't that I couldn't tell and so that was my instinct that was my first to go out there so there was no process that just put me out there every moment of every day night time you know we worked 24 by 7 and so we went to I went to them in the places they worked and the process was simply just asking you know hey tell me about you know just getting whether it's a large room of maintenance folks to you know to flight attendants walking by to gate agents we know in the rest area it was just a function of trying to get a sense of what they were thinking and what they were feeling and what was broken and I wish I could tell you that in that conversation I cleaned it all it actually confused me even more because they were so so many things that were broken and a couple weeks into this listening tour I was beginning to worry it's like you know I'm getting a lot but I'm not getting a common thread or not that I not that I could discern and it took what is probably a seminal moment and the United turn around story is on a flight me asking a flight attendant that was there just walking up to her Amy Sue is her name and asking her you know just hey I'm Oscar and I'm just you know kind of walking around trying to get a sense and her emotion her strong desire to not speak to me was evident but as I kind of began to walk away and I touched her gently she broke down and said they know what our magic words inside of United she says Oscar I'm just tired of always having to say I'm sorry and and what that means is I'm you know she had to every day I 'm sorry your coffee sucks I'm sorry you were late I'm sorry we can't you know see you next year oh and and as a human being constantly having to apologize for things and policies and procedures and processes that you have nothing to do with and having that be your everyday existence having no input or value makes you become me that's where the term disengaged disenfranchised and disillusioned came from it's like it's almost hopeless I'm just going to come and do my work and I've lost and when you have a brand like the friendly skies and you want to be customer centric and you want to do the wonderful smiley face things that we want to do you're not going to be able to do that with a work group that is in that stage and that was my my learning of that conversation now it would take time for me to convince my senior leaders my board and inevitably investors that that was what we're going to do first which was in essence regain the trust of our employees before we could do anything else yeah that's a really simple concept that's very hard to do in my business I I've worked with unions and franchisees and and sometimes the personal attacks when you're out on this listening tour can be you know pretty tough you know tell us about one of yours and how did you handle it there was many there was there's the ones that are one-on-one when our general counsel was with me and somebody just jumped out of a seat looming large over me and we thought that was going to result in some physical activity that did not but probably the most one the one that I tell is going into a Houston hangar where we repair aircraft so a very large workspace mechanics are a rare breed unto themselves you know they know they repair airplanes and they know how to do that and they're very professional at that process but at that time we hadn't solved their contract and so they hadn't been paid up to industry standards so you can imagine that emotion in addition work rules we still had the merger where you know united repaired aircraft in one way and continental for repair them in a different way and trying to sink those things all of that so everything was and these are sold to the earth people like give me a plane give me the parts give me the time to fix it and I'll fix your airplane you do none of those things you 're going to have trouble so I walk into this room and again it's you know one o'clock two o 'clock in the morning and it's a large group it's because aircrafts get repaired overnight not during the day so it's the largest work group and so an angry crowd for sure and are all not wanting to be gathered to have some punk come in that they don't know who I am they know I don't come from the industry and although they have some inkling from my previous unions that he's not that much of a jerk sort of backdrop but standing there trying to talk with them while they're all yelling and screaming like get out of here you need to fire all the you know just the very emotion and letting me get out of the system me dropping the crummy little mic that we had jumping on a picnic table with you know few hundred people surrounding me and just screaming you know in order to talk and then and confronting the conversation particularly the question yeah yeah yeah BS we've heard all this stuff before and my pushback was you have the CEO of the corporation has been here at two o'clock in the morning top of a picnic table at this hanger asking you a very simple question how can I help what can I do and what you're screaming and yelling me as an action able fire everyone get away get out of here go you know go home whatever that none of that is actionable and so there was a particular leader Arnie is his name that I've come to know who was one of the more vocal and we ended up being a one-on-one engagement we're back and forth for probably an uncomfortable amount of time for others but not for me because I knew you had to break through with this stuff and turning tail and running and letting them win and that it wasn't even a win-lose situation it was I need to hear from you give me some things and that proved to be very pivotal because as we saw that particular union Arnie and some of his folks were were there who would say in the room when you're not there I like this guy he's actually different he does want to work and listen we can trust him and again in these podcasts I hear lots of things and one of the hurts I've heard recently is that trust travels at the at the speed of vulnerability so to your question standing there listening and taking it all in and knowing that I don't know what they're talking about necessary but I'm willing to help was a sense of vulnerability that they eventually grew to be a level of trust and ability to work together and that was a big deal why we solved some of our union contracts in those early days. A people first rebuild the trust with employees mandate you know that sounds great but it sounds a little soft it sounds a little fluffy you know how did you go about first of all just getting alignment with your senior team so that you knew that they were going to be committed and all in on this strategy was there a lot of pushback there was you know it was foreign right they all had their ideas of what we should be fixed first and again no there's no shortage of things to be fixed I had a little health aspect that I had to step away for a little bit but when I came back right when I came back when the first things we did was gather that thing and continue the project that I was on I was going to go out listen come back gather the team share my information and data get everybody involved and then let us collectively determine what our first big thing where it was going to be and so there was a lot of conversation a lot of consternation about the things that we should do in a lot of disagreement but you know in a world where magic happens on a day where I get a call from my doctors that there's a new heart waiting for me it is the you know kind of the final day where we're determining kind of what our next big step is and since I didn't have to be at the hospital to later that afternoon I went to our off-site hotel and that morning as a group there was a unanimous vote that after all the the concept of regaining the trust of our employees was going to be the first collective mission and it was important for me to get that done because I did not know what would happen to me obviously going in for a hard transplant and all those little things and and that's how that came about so yeah it took a lot of effort it didn't take it wasn't a coercion it wasn't me being the c.l. said you have to do it this way it was recognizing the value and telling them in that room and having them call us on what was an important first step and again that's how united's turn around got started now you listen to this podcast so you know how much I love learning about leadership from some of the world's greatest leaders we make it a priority to break down the insights from our guests into practical steps so you can apply what you learn from our episodes into your own leadership style a lot of times though it can be easy to listen to an episode and forget what you learn that is exactly why I created the weekly leadership plan every sunday I send out a weekly leadership plan that lays out in three simple steps the key learnings from that week's podcast it only takes about five minutes to read and it gives you practical steps you can apply to your leadership process for that week like everything we do at how leaders lead it's completely free and you can sign up for it at howleaderslead.com right now this weekly leadership plan is a great way to prepare for your week each sunday evening and I hope you'll sign up today at howleaderslead.com/plan 1 of the big problems that you had at united is that the company seemed to try to you know save its way to success you know reduce the number of routes that you know get smaller so you could be more efficient etc etc. How did you instill a growth mindset? Everything I've ever done every career I've been off has been about growth if you look at the CSX history initially at least when I arrived it was a big cost issue it was also it was a growth issue but at any cost you know and nobody said you should grow at any cost never you know you need to grow but you need to be mindful of your margins so businesses as you know do not thrive on being static and so growth is key the problem with being that being the solution at united at that time is we weren't ready for it we had gone through all these cost saving initiatives that had crippled people while we didn't have the customer mindset to grow to all these places and so we needed to start with the trust first but the growth thing came shortly thereafter we began to hire the right people for the for the team the united um the global network has always been defined as one of the more complex puzzles they need to be solved and anybody that can solve that puzzle is really going to be you know it's really going to make it work and so we need to set out and the solution to that puzzle was growth we had an amazing level of capacity to fly to so many places we didn't have the aircraft we didn't have the team customer spirit and we didn't really have the money or the conviction internally and we didn't have the support of Wall Street growth in our industry is verbotent because too much capacity brings down price and that's the endless history of this airline we were able to build a strategy and put it into place where we not only grew but we grew at ridiculous levels beyond what norms are in that company while growing our margins and when we first announced that we were on the floor of the stock exchange and i was on tv and our stock to drop 15% that day when we announced this this growth plan and oh my god oh my god and as i tend to be somewhat flippant sometimes because we had strong conviction about our strategy and i said yeah i know what it has dropped a lot it's probably a really good buying opportunity and by November that year our stock had increased dramatically we delivered that through your plan a year early and so again everything comes into places you know and you know this you know how leaders lead there is no prescription there's no template it has to start with something that is important to you and for me it was this listening and learn understanding when they need it to be done first and once you have that platform then you go to town on all the strategic things that because you're right the softness and the cute little fuzzy stuff if that's all i did at united we wouldn't be where it's at the fact that we were able to use that as a propellant to get our strategic efforts and the growth that you see now at united is the key measure that i think is made it successful so you go in this listening tour you 're all fired up and you're ready to execute the strategy that you you're putting together and then on the 37th day now listen to this listeners the 37th day as a new ceo you have a heart attack you know tell us about it yeah it was a it was a mother of all heart attacks by the way it really blew up that heart this is probably a little bit of a psa and i think it's important heart disease is the biggest killer in america by far and it's the biggest killer because the symptoms are many and varied and they're different for men and women and we often don't know that we have the issue people perceive that you know as somebody that's overweight or eats badly is a you know as akin to a walking heart attack that couldn't be further from the truth heart disease is so genetic in nature i have a good friend who's a cardiologist who would always say things like you know you be surprised at how relatively young and fit are the people that die on my operating table and i remember the those dramatic moments and then he'd always tell us things you know if you ever feel anything weird call 911 because you know the worst you can be as embarrassed that you have indigestion or something and so i was an avid runner and biker i was a vegan on top of this so i was not a walking heart attack kind of issue but on a fateful morning on october 15th of 20 straight 37 days into the job after coming back from moron i hear my phone buzzing across the room and as i walk to get it my legs begin to feel a little wobbly another step i actually fall to my knees i feel a little clammy and his words came rushing back it's like okay this feels weird so he also had said you know call 911 immediately as i said but he added something that was you know i thought pretty dramatic he said and when you reach 911 immediately tell him where you are which duh right makes sense but then he added because you may not make it past the phone call and i remember exactly where i was and exactly his facial expression when he said it because i remember thinking okay it's a little dramatic but fast forward to my situation i'm walking i'm crawling i see my my cell phone and i see my landline you'll remember what a landline is and because i'm in the 50th floor of an apartment building in chicago and i find i need somebody to find me i need to tell him because i may not make it past his phone call so crawl the phone call 911 tell him where i am crawl some out of the front door to unlock it and 37 minutes from my it's not 37 days into the job 37 minutes i am in the hospital at northwestern on echmo which is a heart lung machine so art you know i i'm on life support in essence because my heart had blown up muttering things like i don't have time for this i don't have time for this which is particularly on brand for me but that's the story that's i mean you know and you know inevitably inevitably led to a heart transplant because the heart was pretty blown up but you know the the story there is one for all your listeners to just remember that it is important for you your loved ones heart disease is a serious thing and you never know when it hits you but if you get treatment pretty quickly it is absolutely survival because you look at this ugly mug you know that that's the case now not everyone requires a transplant um but there's a lot of things that they can fix if indeed you catch it on time yeah you had as you said you had the mother of all heart attacks basically your heart was destroyed you had to have a heart transplant and i understand you turned down the first heart that uh you had the opportunity to have what was the logic flow on that and you know tell us how that story ended your process for acquiring an organ is uh is very complicated and uh you know very fair no one can buy their way on total line you have to you know there's a lot of different things you have to get into the right place and in the right hospital and get on the list and then wait for things so it's a very tense period because you're waiting for in essence someone to perish so you can take their organs so it's not like an exciting period where you're like hey i can't wait for someone to die so i can get their organ right so there's a couple things that happen hearts now can be transplanted even if they have some level of of medical history that may not be the best thing you want to do there's a sense of illness addiction possible you know aids there's just a host of things that can happen they can fix a lot of those things now but they have to tell you it's like hey david we have a we have an organ for you but we have to tell you that it comes from a donor that you know died with them with a needle in her arm which is the case with my first call and so you have this decision to make because you don't know when the next call is coming you don't know if you're ever going to get the call do you want to take the risk of taking a possibly infected organ to put into your body for the rest of your life and you have to make that decision so it was um it was traumatic and emotional at the time trying to make the term and then they only give you 20 minutes because you know there's somebody behind you that's waiting in line so uh my wife and i were driving around looking for homes in chicago and called uh called our children and everybody had a good cry and and laugh and basically say well dad it's up to you um so i didn't know i get on the phone call and i don't know what prompted me to ask this but i said hey the next person in line for this heart you know what situation are they in and there was a woman's voice in the background that probably shouldn't have said this necessarily she said something to the effect he's going to take it immediately meaning clearly the next person in line was at a point where they did not they were not going to have a choice and that made my decision very simple it's like let them have it they oh they clearly in a in a worse situation i can wait i think i have plenty and then just you know four days later on my birthday i get a call with my heart that i have now wow you know that's that's a powerful story and and you describe yourself as a storyteller and in fact you really believe that the storytelling skill is an very important trait for a leader to have you know why is that i think we forget as leaders and you strike me as the same david we can get caught up in ourselves our intellect our strategic mindset our education and learning and how to present things logically and and and attack the mind and trying to solve issues and trying to prove to people how intelligent your path is we also learn over time that the path to true engagement and true release of someone's discretionary effort is not only capturing the mind but the heart as well and that story telling you know we can all you and i can sit and give a very technical transportation improve mathematically historically empirically anything but to get the people that work in our business and you had the same kind of uh people in yours uh these are salt of the earth humans who come to work or in a paycheck have lots of issues at home they don't have a lot of money necessarily and what they do have in their life is the place they work and how they feel about that and and for me capturing both of those things is important and i have found that the best way to capture those is to tell stories or be part of a story we'll be back with the rest of my conversations with oscar muenos in just a moment but you know the turnaround at united started by regaining the trust of employees and it's true your people have to know that you care about them if they're going to get on board with bigger strategies and ideas and kathy anglebert the commissioner of the women's national basketball association has a unique way of building trust with the people she works with so i come into the wmba go into that meeting four days in i'm like the players don't trust us so we did some small things a symbolic value through the fall of 19 and then the players were like oh kathy gets us for instance and for the wmba you know they don't fly charter like the men's leagues do yet we had a playoff game where the two teams in the playoffs had to fly you know west to east with virtually no days rest they were gonna have to take red eyes or they had to play that night and so i basically approved a charter flight for them doesn't sound like a huge thing was a big deal to those players because they said kathy gets it she's about our health and safety so that was something little that i did you know that built trust go back and listen to my entire conversation with kathy anglebert episode 39 here on how leaders lead you're obviously a great communicator but but leaders aren't always perfect and and tell us the story of flight three four one one and what may have been your biggest communications mistake oh my god it was maybe my biggest sort of mistake ever uh so flight 34 11 that was the the dragging of that customer dr dau is his name the story is is complicated only because first of all social media back at that time in early 2017 as prominent as it is today and as many things that go viral or everyday kind of initiative we've been looking at researching we may have been the first global corporation to get hit by this viral sort of twitter backlash in fact there were uh between 400 and 800 million i've gotten different views of way bowl watches in china when dr dau said he was chinese he was actually viet namese but nevertheless china got very involved very quickly so i became globally infamous for two reasons one the circumstances of the environment which are always this is the key key thing circumstances were really important and really truthful maybe completely irrelevant in a world where a human being is getting the holy crap beat out of him right and it was basically drug off the plane yeah that's that's that's the part that that i missed horribly right i the facts were that he wasn't a particularly good actor in a lot of ways he had a history uh it was the chicago police not united it was united express not united airline in fact there was only one united employee in the vicinity and it was a supervisor who was watching like the rest of us a gas with what was happening so those were the facts um and uh and so the initial response was hey our employees were trying to help um and and you know and this this person is a bad person which you know clearly was the wrong thing to say i also used a term this is back to twitter um our initial response by somebody on staff it said that we had been overbooked and had to remove customers in order to make room for other people the term overbooked in our industry is a regulatory a huge regulatory you know bug a boo it's like you know just you just don't want to use that term because regulators were coming to play and so the thought was let's get rid of that word and so the word reaccomitated came into play which doesn't sound like overbooking but when a human is being dragged and beaten off an aircraft the word reaccomitation is a awful awful choice of words i am sure you'll agree as do the rest of the world that was my gaff i let that happen on my watch there's no one because it way you should have had people around it's like doesn't matter um you know that mistake is yours um but you also learned that it's never too late to do the right thing and so a couple days later everybody said you got to go you got to go on tv nationally and you got to talk about this and of course the coaching that you get is to how to tell and and not spin but hey this wasn't united it was this it was this you know all of the different circumstances um and somewhere in the middle of the night uh before that session that morning i i literally got out of bed and fell to my knees not being a pious person necessarily but uh kind of looking above for some level of of of of direction and i remembered i i i talk a lot in the book about my maternal grandmother who i grew up with and uh she was an incredible human who never complained never blamed anyone and that's those that's my formative education as a human and something about that experience came back my heritage my my grandma and all those things and and i felt a calm i didn't know what i was going to say that you know in a couple hours that morning um but what i did say was not what anyone expected because when they asked the question waiting for me to start spinning um and i said you know it was horrible and it's my fault i let policies and procedures of running an airline get in the way of doing the right thing for another human and that should never happen and uh the funny side is the audible gasp in her ear and her ear from the producers like wait wait wait that 's not what he's supposed to say he's supposed to try to spin and we're gonna try to catch him in this but the louder gaff was my team behind me who's like wait that's not what he's supposed to say either uh but you know david and you know this because you faced many of these situations i knew that night that i would have to talk about this for the rest of my life and to recant this meandering blame somebody else story well no david you know what people don't understand it wasn't really it it doesn't fly so what we did what i did um was my call my call alone and the new cycle pass we put a lot of things into play that made things better for customers and um you know my my barometer is the business schools around the country who initially wrote it as a case of exactly what not to do to now the migration to those business cases actually be it you know what um it's never too late to do the right thing uh kind of as a premise and so it's a harsh and hard leadership lesson to do especially for a storyteller specialist but things move fast and we didn't understand i think at the time social media well good for you getting to the right answer in a hurry actually you know you also a few years later you had covid hit no there are a lot of industries that were affected by covid but your your sales went down 93 percent i mean how did you as a leader stay positive in a time like that i know you worked your way out of that and the industry's coming back now but when you go back and you think about that time you know how did you cast the right shadow of of leadership for the organization yeah several things uh and this is first hark ens with building a team that is so cohesive and so in touch with each other that as soon as we have you know again we face crises every day in the airliners there's always something going on so we are geared and we post dr dao certainly we are geared to react quickly and act accordingly um we first saw after the outbreak not only in south korea but in northern italy we saw our metrics our new bookings went to zero people weren't getting on airplanes and italy is a lot more proximate to the us than anywhere else so we immediately sensed that this was going to hit the united states and so on those on that day we began to cut everything we began to cut capital spending we immediately went to the markets we're in the market within two or three days and raised a bunch of money before anybody else even thought about it because what we did is simple math it's like what if this impacts our business 25 percent how about 50 we did a scenario at 75 as a push and you mentioned the number it ended up being 93 percent down and so we you immediately went to work on so many of those fronts to take your cash burned down and then began to plan for okay things are cyclical we know you have to believe that we're going to come out of it at some point in time but not anytime certain and so what we had to protect first was our employees because obviously with a 93 percent drop in revenue you got to take cost out and if you take cost out in the airline these are pilots and flight attendants and technicians all who require constant retraining time in the air as a pilot tech ops all your airplay need constant you know but you can't just put things away and you can't put humans aside because you cannot come back in the business so my conversation our conversation with president trump at the time and that administration if you want the economy to return you're going to need your airlines and you're not going to have your airlines if we're a lot if we are allowed to shut everything down because it'll take months months to get those things back and running at the same place so we were able to effectively sell that concept and again 50 billion dollars came the way of the industry through the cares act people often accuse us of of of being bailed out or taken a handout i can tell you that the state of the industry financially was never in its history in a better place than that early part of 2020 we had just delivered our numbers a year ahead of time so there was no bail out there and the the ramifications of the money that we took and grants and loans are still being paid off compensation for employees in the airline industry is still capped at a certain amount so there was no bail out there was no handout in any way shape or form but it did allow the industry while we were in that situation and certainly united to continue to invest in the business continue to train and keep people sort of current on their projections which allowed us to come back relatively quickly you know the job you did build in the culture beforehand and then the job you did during that crisis i think is is a case history for every leader to really look at because you did a fantastic job representing the industry and i remember that very well you know Oscar this has been so much fun and i want to have some more with my lightning round of q and a here are you ready for this sure what's one word others would use to describe you human what would you say is the one word that best describes you i 'm a knucklehead if you could be one person for a day beside yourself who would it be and why i 've always admired Abraham Lincoln and his team of rivals book and how i not that i would ever you know compare myself to him but i always love the way he worked or a very difficult situation and made it work aisle or window seat oh definitely aisle i get up and talk to people too often and people come to talk to me too often that it's unfair to the person in the aisle of them at the window your favorite travel destination uh you know i have four children and they always often ask who the favorite child is um is an airline exact that um that uh flies all over the world and has relationships all over the world i would never admit that there was one favorite they're so much great response what's something about mexico you'd only know if you live there i think the depth of of personal relationships that people hold dear it's it's it's a simple community with simple needs and and people that know you will go out of their way to do everything for you what's one of your daily rituals something you never miss i love tiktok at night it's just it helps it relieves the stress of my day i laugh i listen to music i you know whatever is on my little channel uh and uh that helps you you gotta sleep so that takes care of my question is what's something about you a few people would know uh your favorite rock band and lyric oh my god it's simple rolling stones can always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need if i were to turn on the radio in your car what would i hear you would hear a wild mix of from EDM which i've grown to like a little country certainly classic rock um and a combination of of of of jazz and classical and i just i love music and i have a zero musical ability but i love to listen to it yeah great that's the end of the lightning round here just a few more questions and we'll wrap this up you know uh you're and your wife Kathy you founded Pave It Forward which raised the scholarship funds for students who are also the the first in their family to attend a four-year university uh tell us about what drove that i think it's simple for me um when i was in high school a high school counselor approached me her name was mrs. Duckworth um and asked me where i was thinking of going to college at trustee and some of my preliminary scores in the SAT and uh again a true story given the environment and background that i had from a blue collar family uh mexican american um i asked what's a college um and i think uh it's telling for me because that's the issue that we have in america with underrepresented minorities they often aren't aware of the possibilities they're out there and without her catching me in the hallway i would have never i would have never gone to college possibly i would have gone on taking a job like my dad got married had children lived happily ever after but instead i had another choice that i was offered to me and so that kind of pave it forward is a a non-creative play on the the movie that was there once but um you know people with with promise if we can help them um we do and and send them to college that's fantastic and uh got to ask you this one what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader leadership is never about you it's always about the people that you lead and what they think we get so caught up and how did i present myself how did i say this thing i gave a great speech or whatever nothing to do with it people don't understand me i say people don't understand you or they don't get you that you did it wrong you should go to that immediately okay what gee this isn't working what have i done wrong i in my mind that's true leadership because it's easy to blame others or do anything but as a leader there's no one else that's in charge the other than you you know one of nine CEOs are Hispanic you know what do you think has to happen to change that game i know that's a complicated question but if you could wrap it up quickly what what what what has to happen i think it's a concept of recognizing the opportunity the Latino cohort is you know the largest minority now but it's not just a large size they're they're more affluent more educated they vote more they're incredibly a customer loyal they're digitally native and uh one of the things that that we do and a lot of my post uh work work has been done is about educating a lot of our our CEOs in the country about how how vibrant an economy this group is and why we don't market to them why we don't cater to them and recognize them for the value they prevent the gee if you measure by gdp the economic cohort the economic Latino court in america it would be the seventh largest nation in the world all in the united states you don't have to go anywhere to attack you just have to understand who they are and of course we're different right there's different nationalities but there's the concept of familia is a common thread that i think i so i don't ask to give i don't ask it i don't want you to hire anyone i just want you to recognize and be educated on this and market to them and i think your business will do great by that nature one quote that you have which i i love is that that is what i do but that's not who i am and you know there's some powerful wisdom in that and how would you describe what you think that is i think we get caught up in our resume and all the things that we do it's getting a Roberto goizueta they used to run coca cola that i think would get a chance to work that work with and he'd always ask me to look around and you see all these executives at coke and because you know what they all have in common is they really believe that they 're special because they work at the coca cola company and they've attained their level but they don't know is that at some point in time they will lose that title in that affiliation and they'll become a normal human and they'll see who they really are because don't ever let your guests yourself get to the point where you you walk around as to the person the thing that you've done and work the thing that people will remember is the human things that you've done and so i always say all the wonderful things that you know you've been able to do i don't i mean yes that's what's great the benefit the impact that you've had on humans for me the legacy that i 've left at united with a more caring and engaged culture and that's what i do and i did that on my with my own hard and decisions not through some strategic endeavor initiative and so i'm you know it's important to recognize that your titles and past titles are just that the person that people remember is you the human that's why i really am so pleased that you wrote your book because i think when you have a leader like yourself who's had success being human that spreads the gospel with the book like you've you've just written i think that that makes an even greater lasting impact so i want to thank you for talking to all the leaders that are on this show and for writing the book and i highly recommend it and it's been great uh great having this conversation so thanks well as i'm sure you can hear in this conversation oscar is a whip smart guy but he got that honest feedback early in his career that really helped him see there's more to great leadership than having all the right ideas and strategies you've got to bring people along with you if you want to make big things happen it's your job as a leader to appeal to people's minds and their hearts ultimately what makes you a leader isn't having a certain title or being super smart it's the people around you and the sooner you realize that leadership is about people the more successful you'll be now that's easy to say but i know it's a heck of a lot harder to do so this week i want you to grab a sticky note and a marker and write yourself a reminder jot down these three words hearts and minds and as you're making decisions and having conversations you'll remember it's not just about those ideas and strategies and technical puzzles that you've got to solve it's also about connecting with the humans around you because you can't really solve those other problems if you don't have their trust and commitment first so do you want to know how leaders lead what we learned today is that great leaders can appeal to both hearts and minds coming up next on how leaders lead is gill hants one of the world's most sought after golf architects you need to be in the field to make decisions and you need to either if you're not there then you have to have somebody who's empowered to make those decisions because every day something will happen on a golf course in construction i mean literally you put a bulldozer over the top of something and it disappears every day the sun is going to the angles and the shadows and the wind and there's always something to be observed and learned on site our guys our shapers we've empowered them to go ahead and make those types of decisions that maximize the site over maximizing something that's on a piece of paper 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 you you [ Silence ]