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No leader can be a success without a support team around them. I think that support team’s got to start with somebody in your life with whom you can be totally intimate and open and honest. For me, it’s my wife, Penny, I tell her everything, she tells me everything, we share everything. If you have a spouse like that, great, or a partner or a significant other. If you don’t, have a best friend, a mentor, or hire a therapist, but somebody you can tell everything to.
It’s also really important to have mentors, and mentors change over time as your jobs change and your stage in life. A number of my mentors, people like Warren Bennis, have passed away, so you look for new mentors, but you’re never too old to have mentors. Right now I have a number of mentors who are in their 20s and 30s, Millennials, who are coaching me about what it’s like today. And so it’s a two-way street. All mentoring is a two-way street, but you need mentors in your life.
And then the thing I found the most valuable, in addition to those two things, is having a support group. I’ve had a men’s group now that’s been meeting on Wednesday mornings from 7:15 to 8:30 for the last 40 years. I’m not always there, because I travel a lot. But that’s really important to have that group. And so when I was going through difficult times at Honeywell, I could go in and talk to them and get their counsel and advice. Or when my wife had breast cancer and I was in denial about the risks, I could talk to them. Also, we have a couples group we’ve been meeting with for 32 years, four couples, eight people. And we share everything in each other’s lives, we get together once a month, and we travel together. And so we’re there for each other. And so who’s there for you, if you lost your job, if you had a terminal illness, if your child was having real problems, or if you’re on the verge of losing your marriage. Who’s going to be there for you? I can guarantee it’s not all the superficial friends, it’s people in your support teams, and they’re the ones that help you stay on track.
Think about who is on your support team, and how are you going to build it. Because you don’t wait until bad times–you have to build it in good times. So they’ll be there for you when things aren’t so good. And always thinking of it as a two-way street, how you can help them while they’re helping you.