Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, ExxonMobil
Rex Tillerson on Leadership and the Next Century of Scouting
Chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation Rex Tillerson speaks about how the Boy Scouts of America prepares America's youth to be tomorrow's leaders.
About Rex Tillerson
Rex Tillerson served as U.S. Secretary of State from February 2017 to March 2018. During his tenure, he described the administration's approach to North Korea as a "peaceful pressure campaign," which he said was the same as what President Donald Trump called the "maximum pressure campaign." Tillerson stated that the re-designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism in November 2017 was a step to hold the country accountable for actions including assassinations and the use of banned chemical weapons. He said the sanctions were having an effect, citing fuel shortages and reduced revenues, and expressed hope that the pressure would lead Kim Jong Un to reverse the nuclear weapons program. Tillerson was fired by President Trump on March 13, 2018, and announced he would delegate his responsibilities to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan to ensure a smooth transition. In his farewell address to State Department staff, he said the department had "exceeded the expectations of almost everyone" with the North Korea pressure campaign and noted accomplishments including ceasefires in Syria and the adoption of a South Asia strategy. He also said Russia must "assess carefully" its actions, warning that continuing on its current trajectory could lead to "greater isolation." In his final remarks, Tillerson told staff that Washington "can be a very mean-spirited town" but that "you don't have to choose to participate in that."
Transcript (22 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Rex Tillerson0:16
Thank you, Robert, and thank you, Rich, and thanks to Lumber J, a great business partner of ours but also a great partner in scouting as well. It really is my pleasure to be with you today. There's nothing that I'd rather spend my discretionary time on than talking about the Boy Scouts. I think all of you are here, I can make the case for you of why scouting is so important, why it is so necessary and needed. I'll make a couple of comments, but I suspect everyone in this room is pretty familiar with our situations in our society today and the challenges that confront our youth in today's world that most of us did not grow up with.
As all of you know, I think you know a third of American children grow up in a home where there is no father. Many of the traditional family structures are changing in our society. An absence of male role models for so many of our young boys, young men. If you look in public school systems, young men and young boys are struggling and they're falling behind girls. And again, part of that is just the societal structure we have. And so I think, you know, we could talk about a lot of statistics as to why scouting is important. And so I'm going to talk to you about what scouting does, I want to talk to you a little bit about what it did for me, and I'm going to talk to you about why it's going to be so important in terms of what we do in the future.
As you heard, I'm an Eagle Scout. I'm actually the middle of three generations of Eagle Scouts. My father's an Eagle Scout, I'm an Eagle Scout, my youngest son's an Eagle Scout. And once you're an Eagle Scout, you're always an Eagle Scout. You're never a former Eagle Scout, you stay an Eagle Scout forever. I grew up in scouting, it was really in our life. My father was a professional with the Boy Scouts of America after he gave up driving a bread truck and selling bread. He took a cut in pay to go work for the Boy Scouts. He finished up his career right here in the Sam Houston Area Council, some of you know that I'm sure. He's retired and living in Colorado and now celebrated his 87th birthday and he's doing well, live and kicking as they say.
So scouting for me was just always there, it was always a part of my life. But I've often commented and when asked in interviews or talking to particularly groups of young people, scouting and my church were the most influential parts of my life growing up. And not uncommon to any of you that have a scouting background, the two were interconnected because my church was the sponsoring organization for my Cub Scout Den, my Boy Scout Troop, and my Explorer Post. So a very natural part of where I spent most of my time growing up as a young person. But everything that I learned about leadership and about the values that made me who I am are all grounded in that scouting experience. And that's really what we're trying to do with the young people today is convey those same types of values that not just by memorization but that they become internalized in terms of who they will become and what they will become. And it's all grounded right there in the Scout Oath and the Scout Law.
On my honor. Words you just don't hear today. If you look out there and you read what's in the print today, you read the books that are written today, there's a real decline in the use of certain words. On my honor is one of them. You just don't hear people say that. On my honor, what does that mean? On my honor, I will do my duty to God and my country. Duty, not a word you hear a lot. Duty to God and country. On my honor, I will do my duty to help other people at all times. Duty to others. What does that mean to a young person? And finally, a duty to myself to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight so that I can meet those other two duties. If I don't take care of myself, I can't very well meet my other two duties.
Now, how do you learn that? I didn't learn as an adult. I learned it when I was 11 to 12 years old. I didn't know I was learning when I was 11 to 12 years old. It never came into my consciousness that I had learned it until I was probably in my mid-30s and becoming a father myself. And you start thinking about these things and you realize who you are and you realize how you turned out. You say, how in the world did I turn out this way? And then you start looking backwards in the rearview mirror and all of these things start coming back to you about where did that happen? Where did I get the self-confidence? Where did I get the discipline? Where did I learn that no matter how tough things get out there, if you'll just call on your inner strength and you'll call on the big guy upstairs because you have a duty, you'll get through it. You'll get through it.
I can remember exactly when that happened for me. I was 12 years old. I'd been tapped out to be in the Order of the Arrow, the camping service organization that young men who excel in their leadership in their troop are asked to join. The first thing you do, you get tapped out of a campfire at summer camp and then they put a code of silence on you. You're not allowed to speak a word to anyone. They blindfold you, they tell you to get a little knapsack with your bedroll in it, and they take you out blindfolded into the wilderness and they leave you. And they say, now you stay right in this spot, do not leave this spot no matter what happens till sunup and find your way back to the main camp. And while you're out here by yourself, we want you to think about who you are, we want you to think about what's important, and we want you to think about the man upstairs. And that's what they told me.
So you're out there and I remember it was a cloudy night, no moon, no starlight. So they drop you off, you get to take the blindfold off and they tell you, find you a place to sleep here and when the sun comes up, come back. And you're still under silence until noon the next day. Well, sometime during the night, a horrendous thunderstorm broke out. I mean a frog strangler. And I realized it because I was in a low spot and water was running over the top of me in my sleeping bag and into my sleeping bag. I mean I literally was just, water was rushing over me. 12 years old, dark as it can be, torrential rainstorm, I'm soaking wet. And at that moment, I didn't know whether to cry for my mama or what. But I got out of my sleeping bag, soaking wet, and I sat on a log and just let it pour down rain on me for about the next three hours. And then it finally stopped and then the sun finally came up and I made my way back to camp.
Sun came up, I realized where they'd left me, made my way back to camp, stayed silent with all the other 20 guys who were soaking wet too. And then we worked a service project all morning long in silence. And during that service project, you couldn't talk to one another, so you had to go over and tap somebody on the shoulder if you needed something and motion. And so you needed help, you had to go ask for help. If somebody needed help, they had to come ask you for help. And you just did it without saying a word. Now, as a 12-year-old, and I look back on that, there were so many impactful lessons in that. I did contemplate my mortality in that pouring down rainstorm, sitting on that log and the water was running across my feet halfway up my calves, my boots were sitting in water. But I got through it. You know, I got through it. I survived. No matter how bad it was, I just, you know, we got through it. Went to work the next day in service, in silent service where I had to go ask people for help in silence and I had to give them help in silence without asking them why they needed it or why should I do it. I just did it.
Service. Those are the lessons that the Boy Scouts deliver to young men. Duty to God and country, duty to others, duty to self. And then we wrap them around the Scout Law. And I talk to a lot of business groups and I tell them, you know, if you need a template for a business practices policy, a business conduct policy, start with Scout Law. Trustworthy, every business wants that. Loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. And you got a business model where everybody does that, you're not going to fail. You are not going to fail. So you get people that buy into that business model, you got to win.
So we teach them those three points of the Scout Oath, on my honor, what that means, and then we teach them to use this law. And I have a scoutmaster minute I deliver to young scouts all the time. And I tell them, you take those three pillars of the Scout Oath, duty to God and country, duty to others, duty to self, you make you a three-legged stool and you climb up on that stool. And then you take that Scout Law, those 12 points, and you make you a handrail around you and you grab that thing. Because as you start growing up as a young teen and as a young adult, you are going to get a lot of things thrown at you that are not good by your peers, by older boys, by the rest of the world. I promise you, it's coming. You might as well get ready. You stand on that stool, you hang on to that handrail, and you do everything in accordance with what you're standing on and holding on to. And I promise you, things will work out and you're going to be just fine. And that's what we tell them.
Now, how do you get them to believe all that? You know, nobody signs up, a kid never signs up for scouting to have his character built. Never had a single kid come in and say, I want to have my character built. So we got to sneak up on them like they snuck up on me. So we have to have great programs, we got to have things that are fun, we got to have things that are relevant. And so a lot of what the Boy Scouting organization is constantly doing is trying to understand the youth of the current times, what excites them, what interests them, how do we keep them engaged. And so yes, we're adopting a lot of the new tools and the technologies and we're developing new merit badges, particularly promoting a lot of areas of science, technology, engineering, math. We have a new robotics merit badge, we've got an engineering merit badge now. We want to have things that are exciting to kids and that's important.
But what we know from over a hundred years of doing this now is that all of that good stuff I was talking about, that happens in the outdoor experience. It happens when you get a young man, a young person, in the outdoors with their peers, their leaders, and they themselves in a leadership position with their peers. And they come in contact with the world around them. And we have them recite these, we have them recite the oath and we have them recite the law. And we talk about a lot of these things and we teach them some wonderful songs that stay with them the rest of their lives. And somewhere in that process of that outdoor experience, these values start creeping into their DNA and they become who they're going to be.
And what I know from having been involved in scouting now myself, I'm a 50, this is 53 years I've been a registered Boy Scout, joined when I was 8 years old. What I know from my own experience as a scout, my experience as a cubmaster, my experience as assistant scoutmaster, and all the times that I've worked in this program from many different angles, is that if we can capture a young person, we don't have to make them all Eagle Scouts. You know, we're proud as we can be of those who make it, rightly so. If we can just capture a young person in those critical years of their life, the age of seven or eight to the age of about 15, 16, that's the sweet spot. They are wide open to being made into something and they're going to be made into something good or they're going to be made into something not so good. And we're in the making into good business. That's what we do.
If we can just capture them for only two years of that crucial time of their growing up young lives, we will change who they're going to be. We hope we capture them from the time they're seven till they're 18, you know, we love that. But if we can just get them in there for two or three years, we're going to change them. Because I've seen it and I've talked to so many adults all over this country. Some of them, they say, well, I was in Cub Scouts a couple years and then we got moved, or I was in Boy Scouts a couple years and then I started playing sports. But they still can remember their den mother, they remember their scoutmaster, and they can tell you a whole host of stories even if they were only in for a couple of years. That's the kind of impact it has and they're different than they would have been had they not been in scouting. I know that as sure as I stand here.
So the business really is taking the young citizens of this country, embedding them with these values, giving them the opportunities to internalize them and weave them into their own DNA. And what we know, we know as a matter of fact, is it doesn't matter whether they grow up to be carpenters, painters, school teachers, bus drivers, policemen, firefighters, teachers, mayors, governors, CEOs of companies, or presidents, they're going to be better Americans. They're going to be better citizens of our country. They're going to be better fathers. They're going to be better family members. We're going to have a better country just because people have had this experience growing up. That's the business.
It takes a lot of resources to do that. First of all, it takes enormous human capital and all of the people who serve in voluntary roles here, whether it's on the council board or the most critical person we have in the room sitting over here in his red flannel jacket, because this program is delivered at the unit level. It's those den mothers, it's those scoutmasters, it's those venturing organization leaders. That's where the interface with the customer is, right there. That's where it happens. And every one of these people do it for nothing. We don't pay them a dime. They volunteer their time. Most of the unit leaders I know are reaching in their own pockets, and many of them don't have a lot to reach in there and get, but they pull it out and they give it to scouting because they see what it does. They know what it does. And that's how important it is.
So it takes human capacity, and we have an enormous cast of volunteers, more than a million out there across the country working to serve youth. It takes financial resources to develop the programs, but importantly to create that outdoor environment. One that Rich is sharing with you about this tremendous opportunity that the Sam Houston Area Council has to not just better serve the 51,000 youth that's serving today, but to serve 51,000 plus in the next 100 years. So you're coming up on a 100-year celebration. It's a great time to celebrate and it's a great time to be reflective on everything that's been accomplished by those of you here and those who served in this council in the years before you to serve the youth of the Greater Houston area for 100 years now. But the really important question is, what are you going to do about the next 100? That's the really important question.
And so a lot of what I see going on in the Sam Houston Area Council is some very thoughtful people are spending a lot of their time thinking about that very important question and what do we have to put in place to ensure that we can continue to fulfill our mission to serve more youth. And that's really the only reason we're all here. You know, I had somebody ask me when I became president, national president of Boy Scouts, they said, man, you're a busy guy, you got a lot of things you could be working on, why are you doing this? And I used to give him the rote answer, you know, well, you know, I was a scout and it's important and I had good talking points. They were actually, they were good. But I never really understood why I chose to commit myself so heavily at this stage of my life and career.
At the first national annual meeting where I was inducted as president, we always have a duty to God breakfast. So we have a spiritual leader come up and speak. And we had a fellow named Will Willimon who was a retired bishop of the Methodist Church and he's also an Eagle Scout. I had been reading Will Willimon's books for 10 years. I thought he was dead. I didn't know he was alive. But turns out he's very much alive and there he is on the stage and I'm sitting down here. And he's speaking about scouting. And Will Willimon told this great story about some of his early recollections when he was a brand new Boy Scout and he was going out his first overnight campout with his troop. And scoutmaster said, now boys, we're going to leave right after school on Friday. And so we get out there, sun's going to go down pretty quick, we got to be really ready to bed down. So we always make Friday night supper something pretty simple, so you know, just like some beans and weenies or stew or something like that that's easy because we're going to have to get our tent set up and go to bed.
So Will Willimon and his other group of brand new 11-year-old Tenderfoot Scouts, they all got together, their patrol, they went out, they're setting their camp up, they build their fire, they had their cans of stew, their cans of beans and weenies, and they put them all in the fire. In a few minutes, cans of beans and weenies and stew were exploding everywhere. Scoutmaster runs over to these young 11-year-old boys, boys, you got to open the cans first! And of course now he's scared to death, they're shrieking, all probably all of them. He's got his handkerchief out, he's wiping the beans and weenies off their faces. And are you all right? Well, Will Willimon said, I remember I was 11 years old, I looked at my scoutmaster and I said, boy, you know, being scoutmaster is a really hard job. They must pay you a lot of money to do this. He said, my scoutmaster looked down at me, he said, son, they can't pay you enough money to do this. He said, and no one would volunteer to do this. He said, son, I was put here to do this. I was put here to do this.
And that's when the light went on for me. And that's why I spend all my discretionary time on behalf of the Boy Scouts. I was put here to do this. And some of you sitting in this room were put here today for a reason. You may think you just showed up to have lunch, but you'll figure it out. You were put here. And these scoutmasters and these den leaders and people that work with these youth, they do it for one reason. There's a coin that I was given when I was a scout, assistant scoutmaster, and on the back of that coin it says, 100 years from now, no one will remember how big my house was, they won't remember what kind of car I drove, and they won't even remember how much money I had. But the world may well be a different place because I was important in the life of one boy. That's why we're here, to serve that one boy and the next one and the next one and the next one. I thank all of you for your interest in scouting. I thank all of you for your support of this Sam Houston Area Council. And God bless you.