I always say that the most important person in your success, your future is yourself and believing in yourself and taking a chance on yourself and not being shy about giving yourself the opportunity and undertaking whatever it might be that's going to put you in a position to be seen. People aren't going to believe in you unless you believe in yourself first.
Welcome to a special remastered edition of the Corporate Competitor Podcast presented by Forbes Books. We're bringing back one of our most popular episodes this time in a brand new way. Originally released as audio only, this conversation is now available on video for the very first time, giving you a fresh perspective on one of our greatest interviews. This is part of a new series we're calling the Corporate Competitor Classics, where we revisit powerful, timeless leadership lessons from the archives and bring them to life on screen. Today's episode features Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian. He leads a team of more than 100,000 employees. And I have to tell you, I am used to listening to him sitting on the screen on an airplane seat in front of me as a Delta passenger. But unlike the scripted airplane welcome video, this conversation reveals the heart that drives Ed Bastian. You will feel the truth of his story through the mist in his eyes. Enjoy this conversation and do me a favor. If you like what you hear, subscribe to our channel.
Ed, thanks so much for joining us.
It's great to be with you, Don. I look forward to this.
You know, I loved learning more about your upbringing because I'm so fascinated by CEOs who are able to manage themselves and manage major organizations through challenging periods of time and what it is that gave them the foundation that made them special. And I know that growing up in Poughkeepsie, your parents ran a dental practice out of their home while raising nine children, right? As the oldest of those nine, what lessons did you learn watching leadership and management and family and all of those elements come together just right there in a single household?
Well, probably prepared me for the airline world well because there was always some crisis going on. The crisis over who wasn't going to get a shower or go to the bathroom. You know, we had one and a half baths for the 12 of us, including my grandmother who lived with us in the house. And I don't want it to sound like we were underprivileged in any way. It was a wonderful house. It was a great family. We all learned to share a lot. We learned the importance of teamwork. I know that's something we'll be talking about today. And how to get along, how to influence when you don't necessarily have authority, which is a key life lesson. And I think we all learned, and I probably more than the rest of them, the importance of being a great role model. You know, my parents drilled it into me time and time again. You've got eight little ones looking at you, and you've got to make sure that you're always setting the right tone and temperament. And so inadvertently kind of thrust me into a position of feeling somehow responsible for my own grades and my behaviors and my ambitions. I have to say I got out of the house as quick as I could and went to college far away in a small town in upstate New York and never really lived home after that, but it was a wonderful upbringing.
You know, I love that influence without title, right? I mean, that you had to try to figure out how to weave people together or to find opportunities even in a household to be able to get where you were trying to get. Even though you, other than being the oldest, you wouldn't necessarily have a title. How did you watch that modeled? I mean, were you able to see some of that from your parents? Was there some way that you saw in them the kinds of thoughtful leaders, thoughtful givers that you would want ultimately to be like?
Yeah. My parents were wonderful role models for me. My dad, as you may know, he ran a dental practice in the house also, which so on top of 12 people, there was also a dental practice with people coming and going at all times of day or night as well happening. My dad was really stern when he would hear noise coming from the house, you know, because my sister's bedroom was right above the office and every now and then somebody would jump on a bed or decide to wrestle on the floor or whatever and there'd be a big boom and things would fall, plaster would fall from the ceiling on his patients. He wasn't too happy or he'd catch us giving rides to our little sisters up and down in the dental chair, you know, whatnot, and occasionally breaking the thing. So, but we learned the importance of respect. It was a very strong Christian home. Learned the importance of our family responsibilities, our community responsibilities. I think I was always amazed by my mom. Unfortunately, I lost her last year. I lost my dad very early. He died when he was 52. But my mom particularly had much more influence as a result of that on me over then and still until she died was her constant engagement in the community about giving back. And you know, you would think with nine kids and she was a dental hygienist so she assisted him in the office and taking care of all of us, she was as involved in the community, whether it was in the church, whether it was in the nursing home down the street, the Meals on Wheels. Or she'd bring food every single week to people who didn't have and constantly baking and doing things for others was really remarkable and was servant leadership at its finest.
Yeah. Yeah. He really, I got a firsthand glimpse at servant leadership and how you know, those, the responsibility of the blessings that we have in this world to be passed along and given back and how you get so much more from it.
So there in Poughkeepsie with nine kids you could have fielded a baseball team, right? You had your own team.
Now, I did read a piece in which you talked about you had a dream of being a major league baseball player when you were a kid. But growing up there, upstate New York, Yankees or Mets?
Yankees. There was no Yankees.
There was one of my brothers, unfortunately, fell in the dark side. He became a Mets fan, I think, just out of rebellion.
There's always that rebellious. I was a Yankee fan since I was, I remember I was 6 years old and my dad, we hardly ever went in New York City. We grew up, it was only a couple hours north of the city but we hardly ever went in but he took me to a Yankees game at Yankee Stadium and I got a chance to see Mickey Mantle.
It's probably my earliest memory of sitting in the old Yankee Stadium and seeing Mickey Mantle at bat and yeah, from that point forward I was a Yankee fan. So I have to ask you, you know, I know you're an Atlanta business icon, right? Yankees, Braves played just recently, and they do occasionally. Where does your heart go? I was at the game last week when they came into town, and I was rooting for the Braves.
I love the Yankees. They're my American League team, but the Braves, that's my hometown now. I've actually lived longer in Atlanta than any place I've ever lived. I've been here for 22 years. I know the organization really well. I'm friends with the team, some of the players. So I'm a Braves guy now. But you know, when the Yankees beat them a couple times, it didn't break my heart.
Okay. Well, we'll play that as you managed to play politics completely. You went right down the middle. That's pretty impressive.
And I would say, Don, that also has nothing to do with me. But we're major sponsors of both the Yankees and the Braves. And you'll see the signage in Yankee Stadium. It almost looks like Delta Stadium, you know, with the big Delta sign on the top of the stadium. And we have a similar type of sign down here in Truist Park in Atlanta. It almost looks like Delta Stadium. So we've made our mark.
You got it. You're perfect. So besides rooting for the Yankees, what role did athletics play in your childhood? What did you know with that many kids with that much activity in the house and everything else? Tell me about Ed Bastian, young athlete, young lover of athletics.
Oh, we played every sport if it was a ball and whatever. The only thing we didn't play was soccer. I never figured out soccer. I never tried. My kids played it when they were little, but that's probably the only sport I never tried. We tried hockey. We would flood our backyard and try to create a little ice rink in the winter. We played basketball. I played CYO basketball since I was a kid growing up and great teams and so a lot of energy there. Little League baseball and played that into high school and football.
Was there a favorite sport? Was there a favorite?
My favorite sport was baseball, but I also love basketball too.
Oh, awesome. And basketball, the beauty of the sport of basketball is obviously it's a small team in many ways, right? You got five on the floor but it's so integral, right? I mean, you really do have to have movement among. Was there something that you learned as a youngster playing basketball that you would find would become valuable to you as you grew and as you especially as you grew as a leader?
Yeah, I think the thing about basketball that I learned, Don, is that everyone has a specific role to play on that team. There's five people and a little smaller, you know, extra people on the bench. But, you know, everyone got designated a role, whether you were the shooting guard or the guy that was going to bring the point guard the ball up or you were the center. I was a tallish kid. Not real tall, but I'm 6'3. So I was always usually a forward or a center. So, my job was to get on the boards and rebounding. And we all, when we played our best is when we all played our roles together in harmony and the strength of that team, that collection of the different talents. You know, individually we were maybe not, we played teams that maybe we weren't as talented, but we played as a team better because we respected our roles and we relied on each other.
Boy, that's what John Wooden used to say. I'd rather have five players that play well together than the five best players, right? So true. So, while attending Our Lady of Lourdes High School, I know you were constantly working, right? Work was a part of your DNA for many, many years. And you had a pretty tough job working as part of the crew for the county highway department cleaning up garbage and paving roads. When you worked in all of these different ways, when a young person's asking you for guidance saying, you know, Mr. Bastian, tell me what do I need to do if I want one day to be successful? Where do you guide that young person? Is it into that idea that they need to constantly be industrious and finding work or what kind of guidance do you give?
Well, the real value of those jobs, very manual. I worked whether it's cleaning highways on hot summer days, worked in a rock quarry for a couple of summers out on a hot roof and cement crushing and asphalt making. And the value that had to me was selfishly I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life.
You wanted to make... You're knocking things off the list, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I said, and then I'd feel bad because I'd worked with guys that are, you know, lifelong 20, 30, 40 years doing that and I'd get to know them and of course they would take advantage of the young kid and they'd have me do all the hard stuff and they'd sit in their truck or whatever as they're watching. But I felt kind of bad for them that that was, you know, they never had the opportunity to do anything more. And what a tough way to make a living and support their family. And these are jobs, they're important jobs, they're good jobs in certain ways. But I wanted to make sure I pursued my education and I did well and not take a risk with my future. So I already had that urge kind of embedded within me to do my very best whether it was in college with my education, the jobs I pursued, the opportunities I put my hand up for. And to this day when people do ask me that, they ask me that a lot, Don, I always say that the most important person in your success, your future is yourself and believing in yourself and taking a chance on yourself and not being shy about giving yourself the opportunity and undertaking whatever it might be that's going to put you in a position to be seen and bet on. And you know, people aren't going to believe in you unless you believe in yourself first.
Yeah. You know, we interviewed the CEO of Disney, Bob Iger, a few weeks ago and Bob actually said, 'The greatest power is willpower,' right? Is that if you can have that, if you're willing to marshal all those forces you just talked about, put them together, there's nothing quite like it. You know, in one of the stories that I read about you that really stood out was that you began in your 50s running marathons, right? But I want to learn a little more about it because I understand you promised your team of employees in New York that if your operation there became profitable that you would run the New York City Marathon. Tell me about the dare. I mean, how does this come up? And how do you find yourself staring at the starting line of the New York City Marathon?
Well, another sport I skipped over. Probably my best sport in high school was track. And I was a track runner. I wasn't a long-distance runner. I didn't like long distances.
