The higher up you are, some people start to forget who they are because once you get into a position of power, people are always going to tell you you're doing well. Aren't you fantastic? You have to have truth tellers around you and you have to be willing to listen. And so I think as leaders, it's our job to understand when is it time to go? When do we need another leader in this role?
Last year I spoke to Melinda French Gates, who has faced a lot of change in her life. And it's not just in her personal life. Her charitable work is also dedicated to change. French Gates began her career in tech. Often the only woman in the room. She joined Microsoft as one of the few female managers in the company. She rises quickly, meets Bill Gates. They marry, and she becomes one of the wealthiest and most influential women in the world. And then she walks away. In her new book The Next Day, she reflects on making that choice to change everything.
I'm Francine Lacqua and this is Leaders, the series that explores what drives the world's most influential people. Melinda French Gates, thank you so much for joining us. Now, you wrote a book Next Day, which is inspiring. Why did you call it The Next Day?
Well, I turned 60 last year, and so the book came out right around the time of my 60th birthday. And in writing it, as I approached that birthday, I realized I had been through a lot of transitions in life by then. And I thought, you know, I've got something I'd like to say about this because we learn a lot through transitions. If we pause and if we give ourselves time to learn, we can actually grow tremendously during those transitions, whether they're easy or whether they're hard.
But the next day is almost harder, which is what you explain because you make a decision to do something. It's either leave a job, leave someone, reinvent yourself, but then it's after you do that that you have to look in the mirror and that's it. That's the next day.
Yeah. Like and say, okay, now what? I even tell college graduates, university graduates these days. Okay. You think the transition is when you go through graduation? No, it's when you wake up the next day and you're saying, Am I really on the way to where I want to go?
Right. When do you have to think about that? The transition, when you make the decision to leave something, I think when you make the decision. But I think sometimes so hard to get through the transition that's to come. Let's say you're leaving a job or in my case, I was leaving a marriage or even okay, I was pregnant and having my first child wasn't till after she was born that the next day I could say, Oh my gosh, this is what I'm into.
So I don't think it's until you kind of get to the next day that you can really, at least for me, start to process the transition in where you are. And this is really the heart of what leadership is also like.
What does leadership mean to you? Leadership means, you know, are you getting the people that are following you on the path that you think is right? Are we on the same page about where we're trying to go with either business or life or society? What's the right way actually to be a leader?
Well, I don't think there's one right way to be a leader. Let me make that clear. I think there are many ways to be a good leader. But I will tell you, for me, it means living my values and having integrity everywhere I go. So that what I'm saying is also then how I'm living my life. And I think if we can show up as a values based leader, it's easier for people to follow us over the long term.
I think sometimes we have leaders in business, I've seen many of them or in society where they want you to charge the hill, and then as soon as you're done charging that hill, charge the next hill, and then by the time you get to the third hill or the third mountain and you're pushing that rock up the hill, it feels like, No, wait a minute, can I do this again? Do I want to do this again? So to me, leadership is if you can be very values based going in, I think you can get people to follow you for a long period of time.
I hope it feels like it's hard at the moment because of things, you know, changing so quickly because of disruption. When did you decide that that was going to be what you stood for?
So I worked at Microsoft for nine years. I came right out of computer science and business school, and I started working at the company. There weren't very many women at the time, and it was a rough and tumble world. And I think tech is still pretty tough. And it was the boys debate society. And I thought, okay, I can rise up, I can play this game. And I did play the game and I did quite well. I was moving up the ranks in the company, but then about two years in, so I would have been about 25 at the time. I realized I didn't like myself. I didn't like how I was treating people outside of work because I was treating them the same way I was treating people inside of work, which was the game we had to play. And I thought, No, no, no, this isn't right for me. And so I actually thought I would leave. But instead I thought, okay, before I leave, I will try on inside this company being who I truly am. And to my surprise, I did not. I thought I would fall flat on my face. To my surprise, I actually rose in the company and people came to work under me in my division who wanted to have that type of leadership. And I thought, Oh, this can work. There's no reason for me to be somebody else, be myself.
And you have said that you don't mind conflict?
I don't. I don't mind conflict. That's almost a superpower. Yes. If you use it for the right things. That's right. And I also believe that in conflict, you can also still be yourself. I say to people, being clear is kind because I'm giving them feedback so they can actually grow and become better. Right? So I don't actually mind conflict, but I also think it's the way you do it. It's the tone you take, it's the precedents you set. I learned to do it in a way for me that maintained my integrity and hopefully, even though the feedback might be hard, kind to the other person.
So how do you have to be gracious, gracious, thoughtful before you go into it?
One of my mantras that I started to live by and I told directly my employees then and now, if I'm unhappy with work you have done, you will hear from me within 48 hours. I'm not going to tell you right away because I need time to think it through. If I'm angry about something to calm down, that's on me. But I also am telling you you're not going to get to your performance review and have a surprise. So if they pass the 48 hour mark, they can be confident that the job they did was a good job.
When I was speaking to Melinda French Gates, we kept circling back to one idea: how much being a woman shaped her leadership journey. She talked about little moments from childhood that defined her voice and the very real internal biases she's had to confront, not just in boardrooms, but around her own kitchen table. Listening to her, it struck me that for her story, it seemed there was no separating the two. You have three children?
I do. Two daughters, one son.
Yes. Did you raise them differently?
I tried not to. So I have a daughter, a son and a daughter. And I had to look at my own bias. I say that because I tried really hard to raise them the same. But I'll give you an example of where I had to look at my own bias. After dinner, I had a rule in the house that nobody leaves the kitchen until Mom leaves the kitchen, which meant I wasn't doing the last minute duties. We were all doing dishes together and cleaning up and putting the food away. But I realized that the tasks I was asking my son to do were different than the tasks I was asking my daughters to do. And I had to look at that and say, Why do I think he should be the one to put out the garbage? The girls could put out the garbage. Why do I think they should be the ones put the dishes in the dishwasher? He can do that. So I had to look at all those roles and say, Let them decide who's going to do what, right? I say that because I think we all have bias inside of us.
When I was at the Foundation and I would sit at the head of the table with, you know, a co-chair sitting next to me, my former husband, you know, we would have a group of men and women, often about two dozen or 30 sitting around the table. And I had to even look at myself and say, am I helping make sure that both the men and the women speak equally? If I see a man talk on top of a woman, I can say just a minute. She was about to make a point or Oh, she made a point. You don't need to repeat it. Right? Or if a woman did it to another woman, I needed to say, Hey, not okay. Right.
Were you always like this?
No. Oh, my gosh. No. These are all lessons of a lifetime.
But growing up, you had. You had a great dad.
That tried to also show you women in the space world that that was quite difficult because there weren't that many. Because he worked for the Apollo missions.
That's right. He was an aerospace engineer, and both of my parents believe that all four of their children should be educated all the way to university and educated equally. And my father knew to go the extra mile, which is amazing with his two daughters. I'm the second of two daughters. He pointed out to us that as an aerospace engineer, you know, we go watch those Apollo missions. We'd watch the rocket leave the launch pad. But he always said to us, Look, my teams are better when I have female leaders on them. When I can find female mathematicians and pull them on the team.
What did you learn from your parents on leadership that you brought to Microsoft and then the foundation?
I learned from my parents that you should use your voice. So we grew up Catholic, but even when my parents had things, they didn't believe that the Catholic Church was saying to the congregation, my parents were okay pushing back and even would write a petition to the priests in our parish saying we don't believe in that. And so I learned that one person's voice gathering with others, they got 300 signatures, could push back on an institution. So I had those leadership skills, honestly, even going, which was amazing for me, even going into computer science in college, because even in college there were very few women and I started realizing I could lead teams of young men to program and get projects done.
The corporate world seems to have changed, at least in most industries. Do you think your leadership would have been different if you had started working a decade or two decades afterwards?
Well, tell me how you think the corporate leadership has changed in the last two decades. Are you saying it's changed for the positive or the negative?
I think so. Change for the positive. There's been a consciousness about putting more women in leadership roles, and that means more emotional intelligence. Then maybe in the early 2000s.
Yes, I agree with that. I don't know whether we're regressing now. Yes. That's why I'm asking you the question. You know, I can't play exactly the script of had I started a decade later or two decades later, but I think it would have been easier on me. And look, I question myself. I had a lot of doubt. I think women in general tend to carry a little bit more doubt because of what society has told us for so long. I see it less, for instance, now in my 23 year old daughter than I do even a little bit in my older daughter. But what I do know is that I want for the next four generations that come behind me. I want fewer barriers for women. I want the workforce to be easier for them. I want them to know that they can find allies in the workforce. I want them to know that they have the same opportunities men do when they come out of university and there are natural networks to step into. I think some of the barriers have come down, but I don't think all of them have come down. And I think it's our job as female leaders and other male leaders to make sure we continue to lower those barriers.
How do you think about the men?
I think of them as allies. They need to be allies in this. Right. I know so many men that say, gosh, I educated my son and my daughter equally. They get out in the workforce. And now I see it. Now I see what my daughter is up against, my adult daughter versus my son. And so I think it takes because many corporations are run by men. It takes them to say, we're going to create a different culture here. We are going to make sure that not just the males, but the females in our company lead.
When you speak to chief executives, world leaders, I know we think a lot about people just staying too long, staying too long and in either positions of power or in places where, you know, they should have moved on. How do you think about that?
I think sometimes people stay too long because their ego is attached to the job or because they're too afraid to make the transition and they may not even realize they are free, but it does take courage to make a transition. And so I try to say to them, look, there's something beautiful on the other side, but when you make the transition, you're also making way, making room for what might come next for both you and whomever is to come behind you. Right. And so I think as leaders, it's our job to understand when is it time to go? When do we need another leader in this role?
