Bill George is a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. He is the author of: Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Fieldbook, Authentic Leadership, True North, Finding Your True North, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis and True North Groups.
Mr. George is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic. He joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. Earlier in his career, he was a senior executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the U.S. Department of Defense.
Mr. George currently serves as a director of Goldman Sachs. He has served recently on the boards of ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target Corporation, Minnesota’s Destination Medical Center Corporation and the World Economic Forum USA. Bill is currently a trustee of the Mayo Clinic, and has served as board chair for Allina Health System, Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, United Way of the Greater Twin Cities, and Advamed.
In 2018, Bill was presented with the Larry Foster Award for Integrity in Public Communication by the Arthur W. Page Center. In 2014, the Franklin Institute awarded him the Bower Award for Business Leadership. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2012. He has been named one of “Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years” by PBS; “Executive of the Year-2001” by the Academy of Management; and “Director of the Year-2001-02” by the National Association of Corporate Directors. Mr. George is a CNBC Contributor and has made frequent appearances on television and radio.
He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College and Bryant University. During 2002-03 he was professor at IMD International and Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland, and executive-in-residence at Yale School of Management.
He and his wife Penny reside in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Session length: 45 minutes
This session will focus on how leaders are changing today and what coaches need to do to help them become more authentic, starting with their life stories and their crucibles, and how coaches can help them discover their True North. It will then focus on the areas of coaching and development required for them to become authentic leaders: Self-awareness/EQ, practicing your values, finding your Sweet Spot, building a support team, leading an integrative life, the journey from I to We, and knowing your leadership purpose.
1. To become an authentic leader, you must develop yourself through who you are, not what you are. This means avoiding the pressures and seductions of the external world by grounding yourself in your authenticity and your True North.
2. Helping leaders understand the meaning of their life stories and framing their crucibles to find the positive aspects of them is essential for coaches to enable them to lead through crises, failures and disappointments while maintaining their authentic selves.
3. Ultimately, the coach’s most important role is to enable leaders to discover their True North, find their Sweet Spot and discern the purpose of their leadership.