Course Correction

The Red Cross has hundreds of thousands of volunteers all over the country. You have to build trust with them. And you also have to build trust with the people you help often during times of great stress in their minds during crisis, what are the three most important things that you would say leaders can do to build trust?

Well, I would say the first thing, and I've learned this over time is if you're going to embrace change and you are going to lay bets betting on what you think is in the future, you're going to make mistakes. It's impossible to get it right all the time. And if you want people to trust you, you admit your mistake and you course correct quickly. I have seen great leaders fail because they refuse to change their strategy. And so I think that's probably the most important thing that will get people to trust you.

Can you give me a specific example to help illustrate that? Were there mistakes made at the Red Cross and you did a quick course correct?

So I'll tell you this happened back in either 2008 or 2009, when everybody was sort of getting used to me being the CEO and still not sure. And I said, okay guys, we need to find new forms of revenue. And since every chapter did whatever the heck they wanted back then, there'd be one chapter that was charging 25 bucks for a first aid and CPR course. And another one, like right next to it charging 70 bucks. So I said, let's just raise the price to 70 bucks and we'll get all this revenue. It will be great. So they were pushing back. We're in a big meeting, they're pushing back saying, I think we’ll lose enrollments. And I was like, nah, no, you won't. No, you won't. And I foisted it on them. And lo and behold, after about two weeks, I could see everybody who was going to American Heart to get first aid... So I go, that didn't work. So, we were meeting fairly regularly back then. So I got up and I was going to kind of give them a state of the Red Cross. And I opened up my mouth and they're all yelling, the enrollments are going down, the enrollments are going down. And I said, stop, stop, stop. I know, I know the enrollments are going down. It was a dumb idea. We're going to bring the prices back down. You could have heard a pin drop. Really. It was like, they just couldn't believe it. And I later said, when they asked me, I give talks about leadership internally to our promising new leaders. And I always say the same thing, great leaders admit their mistakes and then course correct. And if you course correct quickly enough, it's like you didn’t make the mistake.