Hello everyone and welcome. I'm Glenda McNeal, president of Enterprise Strategic Partnerships at American Express. I'm excited to continue conversations with our strategic partners on the topic of modern leadership as part of our in partnership with series. I'm thrilled to be here with Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Airlines. Ed, thank you for joining me today.
Glenda, thanks for being with me.
I thought we would start out with a couple of rapid-fire questions.
So, you were 25 years old when you first boarded a plane.
People think I was a dinosaur.
Yes, exactly. I was not that much younger, believe it or not. I grew up in a small town. We'll talk a little bit about that. Where did you go when you first boarded the plane?
It was a trip, I still remember to this day, from LaGuardia to Chicago O'Hare. It was my very first business trip also. I was 25 years old. I was an accountant with Price Waterhouse. I was going on a client trip and I was excited.
How did you feel about being on the plane for the first time? I recall my first trip. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience because I just never had anything like that to experience.
Yeah, it was unique. It was exciting. Obviously, got dressed up. I was wearing a suit to go on this business trip, so I was feeling rather official. But, you know, it was a wonderful opportunity and over 40 years later, I still remember that to this day, what that felt like.
Yes, I understand that. You fly Delta when you travel. Window or aisle seat?
Today I do window more often. I used to be a big aisle guy because I'm tall and get a little more leg space. Can stick my legs out into the aisles and some many times in coach. But I've come to, and this is probably something that developed during COVID, get more interested in what's going on outside the plane than inside the plane a little bit. Getting a little different view.
Yeah. I am sure people who are watching this are surprised to hear that you fly commercial with course Delta.
And that you would ride coach.
It's more interesting back there. You know, we try to reserve. I don't always fly coach. I'm sometimes in first. You have to try all the different products that we have, but I like to reserve the best seats on our planes for our best customers and given that I don't pay much for my seat, I probably am happy to have a seat.
That's very generous. I know you love to travel and you can go anywhere as CEO particularly of an airline. What is on your bucket list that where you haven't been and want to go?
I've been there. I hear it's beautiful. We will be launching service to Auckland later this year.
So that may be why it's on my bucket list. But I've heard wonderful things about it. It's a great place to be. Beautiful scenery, great people. Probably almost as far away as you can get from the states. And I look forward to going there someday.
Well, it's on my bucket list, too. So hopefully I'll fly Delta of course.
So you have some questions for me.
Yeah, I've got some questions for you. I think it's turn around is fair play.
Turn around is fair play. So Glenda, what's the last book you read?
Trust by Hernan Diaz. It's about the illusion of wealth and power and how that plays out in relationships. One of the best written books that I've actually enjoyed.
Trust. And what was the lesson you walked away with?
That there is an illusion around power and wealth and if not used appropriately, it can break families and hearts and bring a lot of things down.
I'll have to look into that.
Yeah, but I recommend it. I highly recommend it.
Will do that. Put it on my summer reading list. Glenda, your job's about building relationships and you're very good at it by the way. What's the most important trait of a good partnership?
Just happens to be trust. I think relationships are built on the words that we exchange and the credibility that we create for the other party to make a bet on and I believe that if I can trust you or we can trust each other, it will extend into some very powerful things and I think our relationship is an example of that.
Absolutely. No question about it. And if you could spend your time doing anything, what would you be doing?
I would be traveling. I love the opportunity to discover new places, to experience new cultures, to meet new people. I get a lot of energy from building new relationships. Part of my job I suppose, but I like to do it in my personal life as well.
All right, so let's get started. In addition to our shared love of travel, I did a little bit of research and there are a few other things we have in common. You come from a large family. You grew up in a small town. You studied at a small university, and you worked as an accountant at one of what used to be called a big eight firm.
All of those things are true for me as well.
I know you grew up in Poughkeepsie. I grew up in a little town called Eunice, Louisiana. You're the oldest of nine, and I'm the youngest of eight.
I was the baby, and I don't know how your siblings mixed up, but I am one of seven girls and one brother.
Yeah, no, the poor us, but that's a story for another day. But I will say to you that so much of who I am today is based on family, and I'm sure that is true for you, but what did you love most about growing up in this large family, and what did you take away from that?
It was fun. There was always something going on. You know, you didn't have to look too far to get in trouble, you know, because trouble was always a brewing. We grew up in a relatively small house. My dad was a dentist, and he had his practice right in our house as well. And my mom worked for him as his hygienist, and my grandmother lived with us. So there was a lot going on in that house. And while it was always fun to be close, you know, we all had our chores, we all had our responsibilities, we all knew what the expectations were. Life was a lot simpler then, too. You know, I look back and think then how in the world we did it. I don't quite know. But it's, yeah, you're right. It's part of who you are. It's where you learn to deal with other people, you learn to resolve conflict, and you learn to lead.
Yes. And how do you feel your family life shaped your ambition and your career?
Well, I never had this in mind since first I never was on an airplane when I was leaving home and I got out of the house when I was 18, went off to college, never really came back to live there any after that point because there always was so much commotion going on. But I probably, as I mentioned, learned some leadership lessons from my mom particularly and my dad but mostly my mom because my dad did his work and my mom was responsible for helping him with his work but then all the rest of us at the same time. And had a wonderful way of being focused not just on family or not just on work but on the community and being an important part of and being present for all that we did, all nine of us. And I learned that there's ways to strike balance, there's priorities that are important, there's responsibility and accountability that matter and showing up is a big deal and making certain that you're heard and you're seen. So I think those are all lessons I walked away with.
I share a lot about the heard and seen because you can imagine being the last of eight finding my voice, knowing where I could influence. And every now and then because everyone wanted to parent me as opposed to letting me kind of move through and explore, and I think that played a big part in terms of my ability to communicate as effectively as I think I do. And I think family life gave a very strong sense of security and confidence. And so being the last, you know, played a big role in that for me and it seems as though similarly.
I tell people that I probably should have known I was going into the travel business growing up because the one trip we did take every year was not in a plane, but it was a station wagon. And it was, you know, all nine of us we'd drive from New York to Florida for spring break for Easter every year. It'd be about 10 days and there were all nine of us plus my dad plus my mom plus my grandmother and we were allowed to carry anything that we could fit in our pillow case and that was it. And there were no seat belts then. We were kids sprawled all over the place. My dad would get in the car and he wouldn't stop unless it was for gas and I had to know at that time there was a better way to travel.
I think you're right and I think you've arrived.
So, let's talk a little bit about leadership. Your ambitions obviously paid off. You became successful very early. I think if I'm not mistaken, you made partner at Price Waterhouse Coopers at the age of 31. You've been at Delta since 1999. You became CFO in 2004 and CEO in 2016. As you think about your career and all the experiences you had, was there a moment when you decided you wanted to be CEO?
You know, it never was on my bucket list. I was the first in our family to even explore corporate life. You know, small town, didn't really know what that was like. When I went off to school, I wasn't quite sure what I should even major in and my dad said you're better with numbers than people. You're good with math. So why don't you be a tax accountant? I'm glad. So that's where the accounting part came from. But, thankfully, I never did follow up on the tax side of that. But I learned early on that numbers are the language of business. And having a career as an accounting grad, as you can probably relate to yourself, gives you a lot of confidence. You learn different businesses. You learn the language of business. You pick up a set of financial statements or read an investor report. You kind of navigate your way through at a pretty early age and understand different commonalities in terms of what it means to be successful and how to make progress in a business. And so, when I did make partner at a young age, I knew there was much more for me to do at a very young age, and didn't want to stay doing that same thing then for another 30 years to come. And so, I did go to Pepsi. I was recruited by PepsiCo and spent a number of years there at both Pepsi-Cola as well as Frito-Lay. And was traveling an exhausting amount of time, primarily internationally. Someone said to me, 'You should work for an airline. You travel so much.' And I thought that'd be actually an interesting idea because I thought I already understood how airlines operated. Certainly as a customer I did, but when you get behind the curtain, it's a lot more complicated and challenging than anything any of our customers could begin to understand. And I found it fascinating, and I haven't put it down since.
That's great. When did you realize, based on all of your experiences, 'Hey, I can do this. I can be a CEO, and I want it.' Were there things that.
Probably different junctures. You know, we've been through a lot of challenge in our industry, 9/11, bankruptcy, large merger with Northwest, recessions, now the pandemic, the ultimate of all calamities. And along that time, you know, you learn a lot about yourself. You learn about what you're good at. You learn about what you like. And one of the things I saw that I liked was dealing with crisis. I was, interestingly, more calm in it maybe than when crisis isn't occurring. And maybe I connect back to growing up in my house. I was very comfortable with always a lot of stuff around me and constant movement. And early on, when I was a CFO, I was leading the restructuring, going through the bankruptcy. I remember going away on a short vacation like a weekend. And I didn't get many breaks. And I came back to find an article in the newspaper that was printed that weekend where my boss, our CEO Jerry Grinstein, was getting to the point where people were asking about succession for him. And he mentioned my name as a potential successor, which he never said to me ever. So reading that in the paper for the first time was interesting. And I wasn't the only one. There were several other names mentioned. And I remember going in to him a few weeks after that and asking him what he meant. And he told me, 'You've got what it takes if you're willing to continue to focus on the development and the leadership opportunity and continue to expand the impact that you had.' And I told him I never thought of myself like that. I was just happy to do a great job with the job I had and then if opportunities came. And ever since that discussion, which gosh, today's probably, I don't know, 15 years ago, I was certainly grateful for him having more confidence in myself and belief in myself than maybe I had in my own self in terms of what my capabilities were.
