Lessons in Leadership from Alan Mulally, Former CEO of Boeing and Ford

Leaving cynicism behind, tapping into old wisdom, are keys to modern success  

He’s the man who saved Ford, the engineer who developed the Boeing 777—recognized as among the finest chief executives of his generation. But if you ask Alan Mulally about the secret to his success as a leader, he’ll modestly tell you it’s all about love.

Fortune magazine in 2014 may have placed Mulally at No. 3 on its World’s Greatest Leaders list, calling him the “miracle worker” who saved America’s iconic auto brand from bankruptcy. But Mulally deflects the compliment, noting that his miracle-working skills pale next to the No. 1 leader that year—Pope Francis.

I recently spent time with Mulally, who rose from being a hands-on engineer to become chief executive at Boeing, to discuss leadership and his approach to success. I was struck by his take, which left me feeling re-energized and centered, reminded (yet again!) of what truly matters as a leader at work.

Here are four takeaways:

It’s all about love, humility, and service.  

Ask Mulally how leaders should treat employees, and he’ll tell you: “Love ‘em up!”

In his view, cynicism has no place at work, even at large, complex, publicly traded, global enterprises such as Boeing and Ford. In fact, he was known in his corporate career for drawing hearts on upbeat, handwritten notes to staff, praising their victories.

He learned to lead with his heart in his youth, when his mother taught him that life is about love. His father added “humility and service.” I always find it interesting how universal and timeless principles remain foundational to success, no matter how sophisticated our world becomes. It’s a reminder that as leaders, even as we face an uneven economy, socially disruptive technologies such as Generative AI, and  policy shifts and polarization in our workforce, we need to begin with these tried and tested human foundations.

At FranklinCovey, we often help companies with complicated issues—hypergrowth, merger integrations, flailing performance … the list goes on. The solution, nearly universally, is to work with the people inside the companies to build up character and collaboration. This may come across as reductive, but it’s actually foundational to success. Company leaders often recognize they will win or lose on their culture, but miss the simple and age-old underpinnings of strong teams. After all, how do you systemize something like love?

In the cutthroat business world of today, concepts such as Win-Win, or “Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” can feel anachronistic or overly kind. But they are actually the building blocks for the sort of outsized performance Mulally consistently delivered over a lifetime.

In fact, the bumpier things are, the more we need principled leadership, trust and character.

Expect the unexpected. And expect to deal with it, positively.  

Mulally believes leaders are hired to solve challenges constructively. As an executive, he hosted weekly meetings where team members were asked to highlight green, yellow and red issues. Green indicated goals that were on target/on budget, yellow was for ongoing issues where a solution had been identified, and red issues were problems with no solution yet identified. Success demanded that staff openly discuss issues, allowing themselves to be vulnerable. Going into a senior meeting and saying, “I have a big problem and do not know how to solve it,” is something that requires trust. When teams show up for each other and solve problems together, trust builds. Culture improves over subsequent meetings as red items turned yellow and eventually green.

In our FranklinCovey shop, we often promote the concepts of trust, with Stephen M.R. Covey’s The Speed of Trust and Trust and Inspire as the centerpieces. And then we also often speak about the habit of being proactive, the first of The 7 Habits of Effective People, in which we need to take responsibility and ownership of the things we can control.

Problems won’t be solved if teams are hiding the fact that those problems exist in the first place. Mulally’s way of thinking, to “expect the unexpected, and expect to deal with it, positively,” is a great proactive mindset. We just need to make it safe for our teams to do so.

Never demean someone else. And if you witness it, put an end to it.  

Mulally is a straight talker. He believes colleagues should have each other’s backs. He discourages workplace sarcasm because it can kill a collaborative culture. He likes to praise people in public and have tough conversations in smaller settings. When he hears someone being spoken down to, he leads by example and stops it.

At a time where our public conversation in social media, and in life generally, has become coarse, this is a great reminder. We look for how to create Win-Win cultures, and how to empower each team to operate as a whole that exceeds the sum of its parts—embodied in the habit we refer to as Synergize. These things can’t happen without trust, without a culture in which team members feel safe opening up without fear of being ridiculed or treated with the contempt that sarcasm often conveys.

Be the same person in all aspects of your life.  

Mulally practiced Habit 7—Sharpen Your Saw—striking the right work-life balance and staying motivated, by being the same person at home and at work. Indeed, he held modified versions of his work meetings at home with his family, over laundry. He asked his wife and children to each preview their week ahead, and he would block time on his calendar for their important events. Then he’d leave work to show up when and where his family needed him.

By living and leading by these principles, Mulally created an opportunity for renewal, where his family life was strengthened, and that in turn empowered his work life, too.

I appreciated the time I spent with Alan. It reaffirmed what we do, and my own commitment to stay on track building a culture in which trust and synergy, and yes—love!—can enable higher performance levels. If I ever find that cynicism or jaded business thinking seeping in, I’ll remember what Alan was able to do at Ford and Boeing by leading with heart.

Written by Paul Walker.
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