Lessons - Fixing the Leadership Crisis That's Destroying Companies | Klaus Kleinfeld - Former Fortune 500 CEO

In this lessons episode, discover how top performers avoid burnout by managing energy instead of time. Learn how small recharge habits like walking or breathing can quickly restore focus. Learn how recognizing your energy zones helps you return from survival mode to peak performance and learn how having a clear purpose turns scattered effort into focused, meaningful action. I mean, you've been working and you've been building for so long. I guess you see a significant difference for me at 34. So I see all the same people burning out, but it just seems like my peers, it seems like almost like a prerequisite for building a successful career. So many of them are doing it. I know it's not, but it just seems to be the norm, right? And if you look at your entire career, nobody can look at you and say that you didn't basically accomplish what most people would dream to accomplish running, running publicly traded Fortune 500 companies is pretty much the the extreme of stress and performance and whatever you want to accomplish. That's that's right up there. But even coming from you, it's interesting you're saying that people are still not the way that people work right now is not a healthy way for people to work, even though you come from an environment of running one of the largest companies in the world. But the interesting thing is many people think, oh, this is great advice, but I don't have the time for it. And what they don't realize is that many of the energy practices do not need much time. You have to have a conceptual understanding. And I give you the extreme example of this. I mean, if you look at top tennis players, you know, the average top games last about one and two hours, you know, so and they cannot just say, I go, I have 20 minutes of time, I recharge, you know, even though it's a hot day and I'm playing in Australia, you know, so the tennis association allows you only 20 seconds between the serves, you know, 20 seconds. That's your kind of relaxation time. But what they have learned is how to condition themselves, you know, in such a way that in these 20 seconds, they can fully recharge, fully recharge. I mean, not fully, but maximum recharge. And there are techniques around how you do that. And what you see it today when you watch a tennis game, they all have their routines and when they get the new ball, they do something with it, something odd. You know, everybody has an odd strange routine. They squeeze it, take three balls with it, throw two away, get another one. Why do they do that? You know, they have a movie going through their hat, you know, that completely recharges them. This is a learned routine. And these are things that pretty much all of the kind of top notch pros, you know, used today, you know, including all so special forces. I mean, everybody uses that, you know, breathing plays a big important role. Yes, you have to have physical fitness. Yes, no doubt, helps, you know, but I think the discovery of saying, if I reach recharge as part of performance, you know, I mean, downtime is productive time, but it doesn't mean that you have to have equal downtime to the productive time. That's not necessary. You have to, you can develop micro habits, you know, a good friend of mine, he works in Hong Kong at a high rise, you know, his micro routine is, he gives his cell phone to his assistant, you know, and then drives down on the elevator, you know, takes a few minutes walk around the block, fresh air goes up again, you know, and if somebody calls him, his assistant is right there and says, wait a second, he will come back in the next 10 minutes, I call you back, you know, that's easy, easy, and everybody can do that, you know, and there's a ton of stuff like that that I also wanted to put out and put into the box very practical things, you know, to recharge. I think that's important to you. I think that even those small things can really help somebody reframe the worst thing you can do is just sit with your thoughts and stress for hours on end and now because of a virtual, I mean, myself included, we don't even leave the house if we don't force ourselves to leave the house. So you just end up sitting with your own thoughts, you have a really good story in the book about the miracle on the Hudson and why this illustrates it. Explain to me why this, you can walk through the story, but explain why it sort of ties back to this concept. Well, this now comes to the dynamics of energy and what happened, Sadi Sullivan is the captain, you know, it's a nice day and cold, like today it's cold, it's sunny, it's blue sky, and they are going down south, you know, and they are talking to each other, the copilot and him and then a flock of geese. They hit a flock of geese while they are ascending, you know, and first one engine goes off, then the other engine goes off and those who know, known New York, he comes from LaGuardia, he turns to the left, it's where the great, the George Washington, which is over the George Washington, which goes off. There's an airport right there, he thinks he can get there, you know, but then he realizes it won't get him there, you know, and then he basically turns left and goes and lands in the Hudson, you know. So the likelihood of landing a plane safely on water is close to zero, you know, so the guys kind of crazy, you know, but when you when you see what's been happening as he goes obviously from he's relaxed, he's in basic almost like in relaxation, it's a beautiful day, they're going home, we had a great time in New York, you know, so his colleague is a good friend, blah, blah, blah, they are talking to each other about what's happening in New York, bomb these geese come on, he goes from basically redexation, you know, and and and to perform a performance zone to survival zone, chup, survival zone, you know, what happens in survival zone, you know, Adrenaline, this beautiful thing of Adrenaline kicks in, you know, hormones and Adrenaline is apt, extremely good, it makes us superhuman, you know, so you are focused, your focus shifts, you know, all other body functions get reduced, you're completely focused on the task, you know, and you are literally superhuman, but then if you stay in that too long, you burn out, boom, you know, so but what he does, he then switches back to performance zone, you know, he basically, you can see it in the transcript, you know, he first asks the tower, you know, can I land there in New Jersey, they give him permission to land, then he turns around, doesn't even talk to the tower anymore, picks up the microphone and says, you know, prepare for impact to the cabin, you know, and then he lands, you know, so how can somebody do this, you know, he did it purely in performance zone, you know, and why, why was he able to go with two engines off, you know, landing on that and to go back into performance zone, because he has trained as an assimilator thousands of times, not only has he traded in his training, but he was a trainer from the airline, you know, so obviously, obviously experience helps, you know, if you can move into into into a pattern where you say, I know what's going on here, I know how to handle this, and now we're going to land that plane. So he managed to go back between those patterns, you know, extremely well, extremely well, you know, that's it's interesting and you're if you're talking to an entrepreneur or somebody's earlier on in their career, what would be the advice to manage these different energy zones for sort of peak performance, you don't burn out? Well, the first one is, I mean, relaxation time is productive time. I mean, you don't go into the fall and think of an ultra marathon, you know, where you push, you push, you push, you push, and eventually, and forget to recharge, you know, eventually, you hit the wall, and that's it, no, no, find a way how you can, you know, get into your performance zone and when you feel, yeah, you know, what, do some recharging, again, recharging can be very short, like my friend in Hong Kong, get down on the elevator, go out, you know, do, listen to a piece of music, you know, or whatever, whatever you like that gives you energy, you know, there's thousands of things, listen to a painting, you know, or whatever, or call a friend for four, four, five minutes, you know, write a nice email or whatever, whatever gives you energy, and then get back in it, just get back in it or close your eyes to a breathing exercise, you know, you know, gets you, gets you back, gets you back into it, that's one thing. Secondly, you know, whenever you feel you're going from performance zone into survival zone, you know, understand that that has a positive one because you're now a superhuman, it has also a positive one because you're expanding your comfort zone. So it's good if you do that once in a while, but the moment this goes on is like you're on a clock, you know, now you have to make sure that you are relatively quickly going back to your performance zone. So in reality, you have to find a way how you, how you frame the situation differently, you know, so that you are able to go back into your performance zone, right? So take an action that gets you out of the survival zone into your performance zone, or train this in a controlled environment, you know, like study has done, he's been in a simulator, in a controlled environment, on smaller, I mean, I've done restructurings many, many times, when we started with small restructurings, and they got big, and then they got very big, and I got giant, giant, gigantic, big, you know, but if I had done the gigantic, big one, I probably would have died, you know, so, but as I knew going into it, I had a pattern recognition and said, oh, this is happening, oh, this is happening. So, you know, you know, how to handle it, you know? You know, you mentioned something, so I want to move on to, I want to move on to some of the restructurings and sort of some transformation, the leadership stories that you've been a part of, because I think that, I mean, you have some, you have some incredible stories, you can pick which ones, I mean, you think are most relevant to the audience, but one that in particular I found interesting was the, I mean, you manage the, the Siemens X-Rated Vision turnaround, you managed Alkoa from 2008, 2009, there were some crises that you dealt with. So, talk to me about, I mean, now we understand sort of the playbook for what is optimal leadership, what is optimal, what is optimal leadership for yourself, for your team, for your company, now you apply this very successfully. So, let's talk about how a leader operating in the right mind actually sort of executes. Well, I mean, I think it brings us to the pinnacle that connects us, because on the energy side, the one thing we didn't talk about was purpose, you know, we haven't talked about purpose and purpose is what, what a laser does to light, you know, when, when light is normally as diffuse, you know, you put it, you turn it into laser, it brings it into a beam that can literally go through any material, destroy anything, you know, and that's what purpose does to energy, energy is diffuse, you have it, but the moment you say, this is my purpose or these are my purposes, you suddenly have something where the energy goes into tune, you know, so, so this is important. Now, purpose on the business side, if you want to translate your own purpose or the purpose of the business into the people who work for you, we would need a vision, you know, we need a vision that makes them understand, I'm doing something that has a higher value than just putting together extreme machines, you know, and, or angiography machines, you know, and the problem there was at Siemens, it was the longest standing division and medical super successful, super, super simple birthplace of Siemens medical, but it has kind of been put into the shadow by the more modern ones like ultrasound, computer tomography, magnetic resonance, and, and it was also not making money, so many people had tried to turn it around and then they, they gave it to me kind of, another guy trying it out, you know, and I asked them, asked them to be able to go to hospitals to see how the equipment is used and that was, I was the moment when my aha moment, because I realized when I saw the patient and talked to the doctor, is that we had something that nobody else had, we actually could use the x-ray for not just a diagnosis, but also for the intervention for the cure, and you may remember your two young brothers, remember, but many other might remember, there was a time when surgery was the thing, these days, fortunately, you can do a lot, you could call it minimally invasive, you know, so we're literally not even in a teacher, it's needed for this, and that needs image guidance in most cases, you know, so you need an extra machine to see where is this thing in your body that they are pushing through, you know, so I had this idea, then I invited, I invited a young woman to our all-hands meeting, who I knew whose life was safe, you know, by, by exactly that, the right diagnosis with our equipment and then also treatment, and didn't tell anybody, she told her story, and I gave her in the medical environment, you have stringent regulation, so you have to document who worked on what machines, so I gave her the list of all people who had worked on the machines that she was diagnosed, and treated with, she read out this, this names, and brought the people on stage. Wow, I mean, these are people in the northern part of Bavaria, who cannot easily be moved, you know, they've seen a lot in their lives, you know, but on that day, there were a lot of people with tears in their eyes, you know, so now that, and that, I mean, in the evening, the, the head of the labor union basically told me, Klaus, you brought our soul back, you know, so, because before they saw themselves as a restructuring case, and I completely forgotten, it's completely forgotten what great things they have been doing, and when I mean, when, I mean, I told some of the people on the shop floor, you know, who are late with their equipment, I said, do you understand that this equipment goes to the US, you know, to that little village, the village has just taken the old machine out, and now in the radius of about 100 miles, you know, people cannot be diagnosed, are you aware that this is what's happening because we cannot get this machine shipped on time, you know, and the moment people understand this, this is one thing, but the moment they see a patient and realize, this could be me, this could be my mother, this could be my sister, you know, that makes all the difference. I mean, so from that on, motivational, I don't think we had it, we had an issue, and business wise, we did the right things. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode, and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.