Challenges of the C-Suite with Brigadier General Bernard (Bernie) Banks, Episode 5w

All right, we are now live. That's perfect timing. We're really— I'm really starting to get into the swing of this whole thing. Well, audience, I want to welcome you today for a really special guest who I have a unique tie to through the military, so stay tuned to hear about that. This is CB Bowman live with Workplace Racial Equality Thursday. And today our special guest is Brigadier General Bernie Banks, and it's actually Brigadier General Dr. Bernie Banks. And I just said to him, I left out the doctor part because I have a strong affiliation with the Brigadier General. If you look up over my shoulder, you'll see the hat from my dad, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Army and is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. So I want to welcome you, Brigadier General, with all due respect. So tell us, what are you doing these days and how did you get to where you are now from the military?

Wow, that's a great question. So first, thank you for affording me the opportunity to engage with you and your audience. In terms of what I do today, so currently I am the Associate Dean for Leadership Development and Inclusion at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

That's a mouthful.

It is a mouthful, absolutely. So, so what does that mean in Laban's terms? I oversee our leader development activities for the institution. I also oversee our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for the institution. So I think about building leaders, and I think about fostering inclusion. And so the two actually go together, because you want to create leaders who behave inclusively, And are committed to building inclusive environments. So I arrived at Kellogg in 2016. Prior to that, I had the great privilege of serving in the United States Armed Forces as a commissioned officer for a period of almost 3 decades. So I graduated from West Point, entered the Army in 1987, and worked my way through a series of leadership roles, ultimately culminating with my serving as the Head of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point. So essentially, my job there was, I was the dean of one of the colleges within the university. And the college that I oversaw housed our management psychology, sociology, and engineering psychology programs. A wonderful job, getting to work with the future of the Army. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Decided to transition to the military because of the opportunities I wanted to afford some members of my team.

Yeah.

if you hire great team members, the only way they can move up within the organization is if somebody moves out. And so when I had taken the role as the dean, I had told them that start o'clock, 5 years, no matter how much fun I was having in the role, I would depart the role because I want to provide them opportunities for advancement. And so I left the academy, true to my word, not because of dissatisfaction, but because of intense loyalty to those I had the privilege of serving alongside, and also wanting to invest in the future of the organization by bringing new perspectives to the table.

Wow. Okay. That's a leadership model in itself. And I think I'm going to have to have you come back on my other show, which is on Tuesdays called The Challenges of the C-Suite. But, you know, I want to go— this is a little bit off the side of what I said we were going to talk about, but I'm famous for that. So there is a group out there called the Arnoff Foundation.

Yes.

And their role is to help military people move from their military role into private citizenship role. And it's exclusively for Navy SEALs.

Mm-hmm.

And what I find surprising, and maybe not so much, and I heard what you did, is you really marshaled your career while you were in the military. And so when you left, you were primed for private, you know, outside the military opportunities. Do you see that this is a problem within our military? Is that military folks are not looking for what's next?

I absolutely believe it's a challenge. Is it a problem? I don't know if I'd characterize it that way. Is it a reality? Absolutely. And it's because the military has such a strong culture that prizes what you're currently doing on behalf of the nation and doesn't really celebrate all of the things you'll do on behalf of the nation, to include the time that you spend in the private sector. And so even for that individual who's getting out of the military after serving just a brief period of time, the military has lots of programs designed to help with the transition. But in terms of leaders within the organizations putting an emphasis on, hey, you need to start thinking well in advance about what you might want to do in the future. Instead, many times culturally, we'll work them on their current military task right up until the day they depart. And then say, OK, once you're gone, then you can think about what's next. And one of the things that I always tried to help young leaders understand when I was in the military was everyone gets thrown out of the military at some point, to include the 4-star general who runs the military. That person cannot stay forever. There are actual laws that mandate when they have to retire.

I didn't know that.

Absolutely. There's a maximum age that you can be in the military. There's a maximum amount of time you can serve in the military based on whatever rank you achieve. So everyone gets thrown out at some point. Given that reality that you cannot pursue the military as your occupation for life, you need to think about what's the life you're committed to building after the military. And so I encourage my folks to always think about what are you doing to create opportunity inside the military? What are you doing to create opportunities post-military? And to try to run those things in parallel. It's possible to do one thing for multiple reasons. I can pursue a certain assignment in the military that's career-enhancing, but that, that assignment also affords me the opportunity to build skills that are valued external to the military. And so you have some organizational leaders that are really good at helping their people to understand how to maximize Both short and long-term opportunities. And you have many others that don't even want to bring it up. They view it as a sign of disloyalty that, you know, somebody's thinking about life after the military. They automatically assume, well, that means you're not committed to the current organization. And, you know, the military is a volunteer organization. And so whether somebody chooses to be there for a day or for 30 years, We should celebrate the fact that they volunteered to be a part of the organization and to help them think intently about how can we honor that volunteer service by helping them to prepare for what comes after that volunteer service.

Yeah.

So culturally, we just don't do a good job of it, even though we have lots of programs designed to help people make that transition out of the service.

It's usually after they're out of the service.

Yeah.

And in this—

so it's— so some of the programs provide opportunities while you're in the service to do like a 3-month internship or something like that. Some folks take advantage of those programs. Many do not. A lot of the programs, you know, it's easier for an officer to transition out of the military than it generally is a noncommissioned officer or an enlisted soldier. For a variety of reasons: the nature of the managerial roles they held, the fact that the officers all have college degrees, that many times they've had responsibility for large teams. So for the commissioned officers, that challenge is a little easier than it is for your noncommissioned and your enlisted soldiers. However, we have programs targeted at all 3. We have programs for people who are departing the commissioned officer ranks, the noncommissioned officer ranks, the enlisted ranks, and we bring a variety of services to bear on behalf of each of those groups as they think about what they're going to do post-military. So if you're an enlisted soldier who was a mechanic, we have programs that will try to help you obtain your mechanic certification prior to leaving the military so it makes the transition a little easier. But once again, depending upon the organization you're in, you might have some folks that make it a point to say, hey, you need to do this, and they give them the time to do it. And you have others that are like, well, you could do that on your free time. We don't have time to waste on what you're gonna do outside the military. It's just about what you're doing right now. So it really does come down to the quality of leadership in the organization more so than does the organization have the resources to help somebody with that process. You know, one of the biggest challenges you have coming out of special operations, the SEALs, for example, is that you're part of such a tight-knit, high-performing elite group that finding a similar environment in the private sector is not easy.

Yes.

When you're used to jumping out of planes and you will put your life in the hands of another, and you've trained to such a high standard, It can be very difficult to then go, oh, well, I'm moving into this analyst role at an investment bank. And yeah, it's a fast pace. But the way we think about team, the amount of responsibility I'm accorded, the, the level of ambiguity that I previously was supposed to navigate Relative to what I have to deal with now, just very, very different. And so they come out of this community where everyone is handpicked, had to meet a very high standard, was accorded a lot of responsibility. And now they find themselves where they don't have any direct reports. The nature of the work is not nearly as collaborative. It can just be a very difficult transition. But once they get there and they figure out what the new culture looks like and And they start to develop their own roadmap, once they make it through that period of turbulence, they usually just take off.

Yes.

And do extraordinarily well.

Yeah, I see. You know, you brought up so many good points. Number one is that thinking of ownership in terms of your contribution being myopic, it really reminds me of the sports industry. Right? You're out. You have a certain period of time to shine, and then you're out.

Yeah, absolutely.

Focus on that period, and it's, it's little time to look elsewhere. It also reminds me, sadly, of when you talk about, um, uh, depending upon the leader whether or not you'll get the opportunities to look for your future. and to be able to take advantage of the training that'll prepare you for the future. I hate to say it, but it really does remind me of racism in the workplace or social injustice in the workplace. Because what we're struggling with when you think about equality, whether you call it equality or equity, and I have a very unique perspective on the difference between the two, It's really all about who your mentors are, who your leader was, who your manager was, and the opportunities that were afforded of you for developing— afforded to you of developing special relationships and gaining extra skill sets to prepare you for the future.

Yes.

And that's what we don't see enough of, and that's why we have this I like to call it workplace social injustice.

Yeah, yeah. I was on a conference call recently with some individuals talking about this topic and said many times what happens in organizations, we create mentorship programs, and the mentorship program at its core is designed to help the underrepresented minority learn how to acculturate And mentorship is not what we need. You need sponsors, people that help you to learn how to navigate, that help get you access to opportunities, that are willing to extol your virtues and to, you know, really push you forward as a candidate. And so these mentorship programs are great, but they don't really drive significant efforts if you don't have people saying, that's the person you want on your team. That's the person I'm willing to take the risk on. Understanding there's a difference between sponsorship and mentorship. We have lots of mentorship programs, but we need more sponsorship to transpire.

But even within the mentorship programs, they're not designed correctly. I love what you're saying about sponsorship because it's those back-of-the-door conversations that make a difference in terms of your ability to incorporate, your ability to access, the ability to move up in the organization. It's those people that are willing to take a risk or to say, hey, have you talked to Bob Jones over there? He's good people. Right, that expression, he's good people. In other words, get him on your team. That's code for let's do it.

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. You have to, uh, you have to have those sponsors. So, you know, one of the interesting things about the Army— so the Army has a promotion system that operates at the corporate level, and you get looked at for promotion within certain windows. And you don't get to interview as part of that process. So all that goes in front of the individuals who will be selecting those who get promoted are your performance evaluations, your photograph, and your list of awards and accomplishments. And they make a determination based off those items whether or not you're going to get promoted. But when it comes to promotions for general officer, It changes. So for general officer, they'll take all those who've met the basic qualifications. They'll then do an initial screen by performance and say, okay, half of them go away in terms of the eligible pool. This is the half that's really performed highly enough that they're worthy of consideration. And then for the individuals part of the process, For any one of the candidates who's in that final pool, they can bat around, well, what do you think about this person? But they can only talk about somebody if they have first-person experience with them. So they can't talk about somebody based on reputation. It's like, I've worked with so-and-so, so-and-so, and it becomes horse trading, if you would. And it behooves somebody to have the broadest set, because you don't know who's going to be part of that process.

Right.

And so you want to have the broadest set of relationships so that more people can talk about you from a first-person perspective. And so some individuals will have excelled, but when it comes time to be looked at for potential entry into the C-suite in the military, if they don't have the right people in that room saying, Bob's a good person, this is somebody want to join the club, if you would.

Yeah, yeah.

Then it doesn't matter how well you've performed, you will not get over the hump. It's really interesting, and it doesn't start until you're being evaluated for general officer, C-suite equivalent.

But, but, but here's the thing, that same philosophy is used throughout corporate America, regardless of the level you are currently in. Right? It's— oh, I love hearing your little poop. That's probably gonna set mine off.

Yeah, no, another reality of working out of home.

I love it. You're real people. I love it. But as I was saying, you know, here's, here's the thing that is so upsetting to me. We as a race do not realize the significance and the criticality of knowing as many people as possible and letting them understand what our superpowers are. We hide that unintentionally, but it's there. And I'll give you a real good example. I was talking to a colleague a couple of weeks ago. We were doing a speech together, and this was sort of behind-the-door conversation. And he said to me, when he was in at university, Harvard, he had a Black roommate. He himself was Black. And no, sorry, his roommate was white. And so he had a friend on campus who was Black. And he noticed that every once in a while, like once a week at a certain time, his white roommate would disappear, and they had a really close relationship. And finally he said to him, hey, you know, Guy, where are you disappearing to? And the roommate said, oh, you know, a group of, group of us get together and just shoot the breeze. What do you mean shoot the breeze? We talk about what's going on at school and, you know, what we're going to do later and, you know, just get to know each other. So the Black guy says, wow, that's fabulous. I didn't know that that was going on. So he goes and he talks to his Black colleague and he said, you know, this is, this is what's going on and we're not included in that club. And so his friend's response was, listen, I don't— I need to focus on my studies. I don't need to be with a group of white guys just shooting the breeze. That was a critical juncture because what he didn't understand was that these same people could be part of his cohort for after he graduates and could, even if they're not in the same field, not the same company, could support him in moving up in an organization. Because the chatter is not only within the organization, it's outside too. Who do you know outside? We don't do that. We don't join associations. Now, you can argue that there's good reason because of the financial cost for joining associations when we just have enough money to survive because we're not being paid on the same pay scale. But the issue is then you don't meet the right people that can help you move up to make the money that your colleagues have. It's such a vicious cycle.

Absolutely, absolutely. Um, and it doesn't have to be transactional in nature. You know, a lot of folks feel as if, well, I shouldn't have to do that. You know, like, the fact that you shouldn't have to doesn't mean that you don't need to. Those relationships matter. And the earlier you build them, the more benefit you can derive from them over time. And so it's like when people say, you know, networking, you know, got to network, got to network. And I actually hate the term network.

I do too.

Yeah, I'm a big believer in no, you should always seek to build positive, enduring relationships that are not about simple give and take. It's about building something that's organic in nature, that survives the test of time, and that when somebody is afforded the opportunity to serve as an advocate on your behalf, they don't feel as if they owe you something, but because you did something for them. They feel as if they have an obligation to champion you because of the value you've added to their life. Yeah, and so huge, you know, I— every time they say networking event, I'm like, I hate the word networking. You know, that's something for computers. When it comes to people, it's about relationships, and we should strive to build positive, enduring relationships always. And I most certainly agree with you in that some people view that as distasteful somehow. Why should I go and have to spend time, you know, with these guys just talking about X, Y, or Z? And like, you have to build a foundation, and it's a skill you have to develop.

Yes. Oh yes, absolutely. I'm so on that because, you know, Not to talk about me all the time, but I had a situation recently where I was put into a networking group of 5 white men. And the idea was to present what are you currently working on and how can we help? And I went in, you know, and I'm presenting my program and it got trounced by a couple of the men. And I was so upset. My husband took my side. God bless him, right? What are those men doing to you? And he's an Italian guy. And I'm like, and I'm like, okay, stop, stop whining. So when they each had a turn to present, I didn't say anything. But I called them after. And I had a one-on-one heart-to-heart discussion with them. And all of a sudden, the buzz around the group was, CB has some superpowers. We need to let her in, right? And so it was a very interesting exercise for me because I had to come out of my anger, out of my upset, and say, okay, do I help these guys Because I could see they're going down a road that I would not take. And so should I give them a choice of roads, or should I just stay in my anger zone? And I decided to give the choice. And did I develop some incredible relationships, because I reached out through my anger to help them first. And we just have to Figure out how to do that. And it's not easy. Oh, goodness. It was tough. I did not want to say— I wanted to say happy birthday. And you know what I mean by that. So how do we— oh, we're getting in some interesting questions. Chris Simmons, my colleague, said, my son is 2018 West Point grad. Bernie is so impressive, the kind of person I would want mentoring my son. Well, Chris, you owe me a call so we can chat. Peter says, excellent. Networking is all about providing value. Isabel says, sponsors are advocates who mentor, coach, and develop potential. I'm not sure what your question is there, Isabelle, so write us in again. You know, I want to talk to you also about mentor programs that are set up incorrectly. My colleague who's going to be on, I think, next week, Dr. Julianne Haynes, wrote a book called Leading on Purpose. And in this—

Move slowly.

In this, she talks about The differences that white men in corporate America have in supporting— no, I said that wrong. She talks about how Black women in corporate America have white mentors, and those white mentors mentor them as though they're mentoring a white woman. And while that's Sounds like it's diversity at its best. It's not really.

That's the acculturation piece I told you about.

Yes.

It's, it's, you know, we get mentors and then it's like, we're going to help you to understand how to play the game the way I play it, as opposed to saying, how do we take your unique superpowers, insight, gifts, etc., and learn how to apply those in a way That once again adds value but allows you to remain authentic to who you are.

Yes, exactly, exactly. And, and a lot of the programs are set up on, um, if you want to be promoted, you'll be a mentor. Well, that's not the right incentive. Money alone doesn't cut it and doesn't foster true relationships. Right? The other thing that we tend to do, and I think— I don't know that this is a Black issue, but looking at people who we might not celebrate to see what diamonds are there.

Yes.

I will give you an example. When I was at my first consumer products company, there was a woman there who was feared by most. and disliked by the rest. I said to myself, what the heck is going on? And she was pretty senior. And I was like, obviously she knows something that the other women don't know. And so I went to her one day and I said to her, what's your secret to success? And I was trembling, right? And she looked at me and she said, And a very stern look. The time to rise is during chaos. And I went, whoa, what does that mean?

And I—

yet this was like 40 years ago. I still remember it because she was so right. And so what is it that prevents us? Let's take it as though it's a Black issue. What is it within us that prevents us from seeing a diamond and going for it within all the coal and all the craziness?

Well, that's a difficult one to address in a, in a concise way because I think it differs for every person. So it kind of goes to this notion, why do we select flawed leaders? Many times because we, we Engage in cloning. And we think some surface-level attributes are what's highly correlated with leadership effectiveness. And so we look for people who remind us of ourselves. We look for individuals who've done the same jobs we've done— name your thing. We look for people who have certain traits, like they're naturally gregarious or extroverted. And many of those things can aid in the process of being successful, but they're not essential to be successful. And so, you know, I saw this when I was running organizations, you know, and I saw it specifically when I was running the, that college at West Point. I'm an extrovert. I'm also a Type A, like, show me the biggest challenge, that's what I want to go handle. I love that. You know, like, I just, I want to jump into that. But I also knew that the research is quite clear that heterogeneous teams outperform homogeneous teams when addressing complex challenges. And so it's important to bring a diverse set of people together, but then to allow those diverse people to inject the difference that they represent Into the process, and so if somebody was interviewing, the extroverted person would naturally. I'd be like, "Ah yeah, I love the energy." But but I had to temper that knowing that that was my bias, and say, "Now let's take a look at this candidate over here." Not nearly as gregarious, super bright. Outstanding performance record. And I'd have to say, now, the fact that I know I'm going to naturally be attracted to the more gregarious person, I have to control for that. And so I'd have to help others go, hey, account for my blind spot. What am I not seeing here about this person? What should we be taking into account? And by bringing others into the process and also Being very cognizant of the biases I had, we were able to select a far more diverse faculty and then to celebrate the difference that those faculty members possessed. And so I had one individual, Zach, West Point graduate, MBA from University of Chicago, very, very low-key individual, but wicked smart. But he was not the individual that you're going to see like, you know, rah-rah and, you know, running. Just very cerebral.

Introverted.

Yeah. And, and so I'd sit there and I knew that to get Zach's best, it was don't wait for Zach to inject. It was invite Zach to share his perspective. You know, and it's just things like that, knowing that that difference exists, knowing your own bias, and then seeking to commit— bias is okay. We all have it. It's just how do you confront the bias you have? And so, you know, finding those diamonds in the rough many times starts with knowing your own bias that makes them look rough to you.

Okay, so let's get down to the gritty here. How do you get to know your own bias?

Ah, that's a great question. So one, it requires a lot of self-reflection. But also, it requires a lot of feedback from others to help you understand the impact you have on them, or how they see you walk through the world. Because prime example, many times we're, we're, we're convinced that we always have to Think about the why. There's research from a woman named Tasha Urich. She's trained as a psychologist, and she wrote the book Insight. And in the book, what she highlights is that one of the biggest misconceptions we have is that the question we should always ask is why, but that what the research finds is that when you ask the why, you can create a comparative, a compelling narrative that's actually false, to address your cognitive dissonance. That to get at your why, you have to ask what questions. What questions ultimately reveal the why? And so, you know, why don't I like this candidate? You know, well, clearly, it's because they don't— the other thing should be, what is it that I'm seeing about the candidate that I'd like? What is it I'm experiencing about the candidate that's giving me pause? What is it that's giving me pause? You know, the what questions ultimately get to the why. And so you have to do the self-inventory, but you have to do what questions to understand yourself better? But you have to invite others' perspectives as well. So if you're, if you sit there and say, oh, I don't have any, I don't have any issues with women on my team. Well, do you invite the perspective of others to say, in the interactions you see me have with my female team members, what do you observe? And what's my impact? When you start to do a true multi-rater assessment on self, because of you doing your own rating and bringing in the perspective of others, then you're going to get a far greater understanding of how you're behaving. And that's the key, you know, to do a deep dive on self, you can't just do it yourself. You have to invite others into that process.

Let me ask you the harder question. As Black Americans, we are used to— we are used to having feedback that might— that we would consider detrimental, negative critiquing. How do we separate out excellent feedback from Negative critiquing?

Yeah, no, it's a great question because that's the— that's, that's not just a Black American thing. So whenever we receive feedback, you have to say, okay, is there a story written between the actual words that are on the paper, for example? And many times there is, and you can start to disentangle, oh, that's code for this.

Yes.

Or, you know, the thing they're not saying They're actually saying something very loudly.

Yes, how do we separate that out?

And so what we see in organizations to do that well is you have to have individuals who understand the language of the organization and the language being employed by the managers around you. So that they say, oh, you don't have any issues? Like somebody, somebody gets that feedback, oh, you're doing fine. And so you tell that to somebody who goes, hey, you know, I asked for some feedback; they said I was doing fine. And they go, oh, well, they said you're doing fine? Well, that's really their way of saying they view you as average. You go, well, what kind of feedback do they provide to somebody who's crushing it? Oh, they'll say the following things. Like the Army had this. The Army has language that's very coded. So when you're writing a performance evaluation, if you say, individual successfully accomplished all their assigned tasks, What you're saying is they suck. That if you want to show that somebody was great, you showed unlimited potential, phenomenal superstar. You use this very powerful language. But if you simply said, yeah, they're doing everything they're supposed to, on a person who doesn't know the coded language goes, well, it says I'm doing everything I'm supposed to. But the coded language, when you decipher it, is, oh, you're doing terrible. Oh my God. And this is what happens to a lot of minority officers in the military. They get these performance evaluations that doesn't say you're doing poorly. It says, hey, you're doing what you're supposed to do. And then they get enough of those that when it comes time for promotion, they're like, I didn't get promoted. Why? Oh, well, because you didn't understand the coded language.

Oh my God. I wish I had met you when I was in corporate America, just starting my career. Because the exact same thing happens in corporate America, and it happened to me. Oh yeah, you did that successfully. Oh good, I did it successfully. Pat on the back. But did I excel at doing it?

Yeah, so, you know, it was one of the things that I spent a lot of time with all my officers, but especially with my minority officers, to say You have to learn the coded language of the Army on your performance evaluations. Like there's, if you want to get a good evaluation, there's 4 things that should always be present. And when it's not, don't think, oh, they just forgot. It was a choice. So on a good evaluation, you always had to say, what's their promotion potential? What's their potential for being selected for higher schooling? What's their potential for selection for command? And you know where do they rank relative to their peers? Four things: performance, potential, schooling, command. And so I see young officers to go, "Hey, I just got my report card." I'm like, "Have you signed this already?" They're like, "Yes." I'm like, "Ah." And they're like, "Why are you groaning? It doesn't. It doesn't." Look bad to me. I'm like, I want you to read it and tell me how you think you did. Individual performed successfully, you know, blah blah blah. Possesses the, you know, possess potential to be promoted to captain, blah blah blah. I go, so you look at it and go, I want you to give me zero to a hundred what you think you did on this report card. I'd give myself a ninety, and then I'd read it and go, let me decipher this for you. Boom boom boom boom boom! You just got a report card that says you're a sixty-five. And they're like, what? And I'm like, yeah, because they didn't say this, they didn't say this, they didn't say this. This word here is a word we use when talking about somebody who's an average to below average performer. This omission here is something that's going to catch up to you probably 4 years down the road when it comes time to be looked at for promotion. And so I read it and I go, yeah, you just got dealt a setback and you don't even know it.

But who do we— who do people go to To decipher the code?

It is, it's a great question. And so that's why building the broad set of relationships matters. Because if you're not getting the right things you need inside the organization, you have to be able to find somebody external that you can go to and say, help me to make sense of this. And, you know, some people excel at that, and others never pick up on it till it's too late. And so you always have to find cultural ambassadors.

I love that term. I'm writing it down. It's the title of a new book.

I don't know about all that, but oh my Lord, it is good. You've got to find cultural ambassadors. Same thing was true when I was coming out of the Army. People were scared when I showed up at Northwestern Kellogg, even though I was a Kellogg graduate. They're like, oh, we're getting this new guy, he's coming out of the Army, he was a general officer. They thought I was going to walk in and like start commanding people and stuff. And so people would say, ah, and I was like— and they'd meet me and they're like, well, he doesn't seem that, you know, militaristic. I'm like, oh, what do you mean by militaristic? And people would want to call me general, and I'm like, that term doesn't serve me well here. You can call me Bernie, you can call me professor, you can call me dean. You can call me El Jefe. Don't call me General, because General here will activate a bunch of stereotypes that aren't accurate and will not serve me well here. And so learning how to navigate the culture that is Northwestern, I had to find people that I could talk to and say, hey, you know, how do we do decision-making around here? How does somebody get noticed in a good way? What are some landmines that people step on? You know, and, and just have lots of conversations to figure out the mores of the organization so that I could then be afforded the opportunity to achieve my full potential. And so now I've built a reputation within the school that people know, hey, the fact that he was in the military, don't get it twisted. He doesn't walk around acting like he's still in the military.

Yeah.

That's just Bernie. And so, you know, but if you're not knowledgeable of the need to do that, if you come in and you're still hanging your hat on what you did in the past, as opposed to thinking intently about what you're committed to doing in the present and the future and what it will take to do those things well, then you can step on some landmines that. You know, you might recover from, but then again, you might not. And it's really important. It's really important. And so it's incumbent upon you to be proactive about that process, not to hope that someone's going to grab you by— say, hey, let me talk to you. Let me pull you aside. Let me tell you some things I wish I had known. Now, sometimes you're going to be fortunate. You'll have somebody who will do that for you. But many times you won't. But knowing it's important Do you put an emphasis on, I need to go build that set of relationships that allows me to really understand how things get done here? What's it take to advance here? Who do I need on my side if I want to advance here? What are the things that there's no coming back from? And I'll give you an example of this. In the United States Army—

I want you to know, I'm riveted. This is like a Robert Ludlum novel.

So, so in the United States Army, you can wear a mustache by regulation. You can wear a mustache. It has to, you know, not extend beyond the sides of your corners of your lips, can't go over your— go over your top of your lip, but you can wear a mustache. And many enlisted and noncommissioned officers do, but commissioned officers do not. It's highly frowned upon for a commissioned officer to have a mustache, but yet If you're coming from the African American community and you're a male, a mustache or facial hair is viewed as a sign of having made the transition from boyhood to manhood. You know, as my uncle once said, don't trust a white guy with one and don't trust a Black one without. You know, like, it's, it's part of the culture. And so I saw a lot of young minority officers would come in They're a member of Black fraternities. They wore college mustaches. They want to still wear a mustache in the Army. And I'd grab them and I'm like, take a look around. Do you see any of your white colleagues with a mustache? I go, yes, the regulation says you can wear one, but if you don't see one on any of the senior officers, I'd venture to say you probably shouldn't wear one. And some guys would get bent out of shape. Then why do they say I can wear one if they can't? Why can't I? I'm like, Yeah, yeah. I'm just telling you the way it is. You can sit there and lament about whether or not that's fair, but if you want to get ahead, I highly encourage you to shave that thing off your lip because it's not serving you well at all, period.

I love it.

Now you've been told, you're gonna do what you want. But don't say no one ever told you. And you can't look around and go, well, that guy's got one. I go, is that guy a commissioned officer? No, he's a noncommissioned officer. Well, that guy's got one. I go, yep, he's a junior enlisted soldier. Does your boss have one? And does his boss have one? And does her boss have one? No, none of them have them. So don't have it.

I love it.

And so that's just one of those, you know, things that there's a difference between what you can do and what's culturally rewarded.

So powerful. I, I mean, this, this recording has to go to every college and every high school. I love what you're saying. Hey, I want— we've got, you know, about 15 minutes left, and there's something I really want you to talk about. Which I, I was blown away during our prep discussion, which actually wasn't even a prep discussion. It was just us getting to know each other. I asked you, how do you prepare your children? Because you've got boys or young men for the world of racism, for being pulled over. by the police? What— I mean, you had such powerful insight to how you raised them. Please share with the audience.

I, I honestly can't remember what I said. Gosh, okay, I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure it changes all the time. But, uh, you know, there, there are basically some constructs I most certainly try to employ. Um, one, it's that they have to understand That there's a right way and there's a dangerous way to behave when they find themselves in those situations. Right way: hands on wheel, demonstrate respect, no fast movements, yes sir, yes ma'am. Don't let emotion cloud your judgment because in that moment, if you want to come combative— this shouldn't be happening to me— You can start to do things that actually can end up causing you harm because you find yourselves trying to argue about whether this is just or not. So I'm like, step one, be safe, follow the protocols, and then we can unpack it later. But you want to find yourself out of harm's way, and we can then talk about what transpired in that moment. Additionally, as you find yourself in the world, always understand that it's important that you conduct yourselves in accordance with our family's values, but that you're cognizant of the fact that not everybody holds the values that we hold as a family. So you should have to think about what, what would my family have me do? Wherever I am, you know, we believe in a variety of things that all stem from, you know, either a set of religious beliefs or, you know, basic morality constructs, name your thing. But then the last thing I'd say is, you know, in addition to helping them to understand what they're likely to encounter, and then helping them to understand the rubric by which they should evaluate their actions is always through the prism of the values that we've sought to instill in them. Is that they should always take pride in walking through the world in a way that says, I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have nothing to be apologetic for. My job is to be an upstanding citizen who always seeks to do the right thing and treat everyone with dignity and respect, and to accord myself with dignity and respect.

Yeah.

And I think that if you do that, you help them to understand who they are, what they represent, What's the right way to behave when you find yourself in an unfortunate set of circumstances? What you do to extricate yourself from the situation, because the unfortunate situation, it might happen simply tail lights out on your car. You were doing nothing wrong. Tail lights out on your car. You get pulled over. I'm like, in that moment, that is not the time to get indignant. Why'd you pull me over? Why are you? Why are you harassing me? Everything else.

No!

Follow the protocol. Remain impassive. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. Get out of the situation. We can do an after-action review after the fact. So those are just some of the things I always keep in mind. But, you know, I— having 2 African American sons, I don't live in a state of paralysis as they go around In the world, but I'm always cognizant of what the world might present to them. And my great hope is that I've equipped them to navigate that reality effectively. You know, I, I don't want to hope they respond well; I want to ensure they respond well because I've made the investments that are going to inform how they elect to respond.

You talk about values. What are some of the core values that you've instilled in your children?

Yeah, you know, one, that they should always strive for excellence. That sometimes we see in certain marginalized groups that people actually eschew the pursuit of excellence. So for example, you know, growing up I was in honors classes, always in honors classes. I would always be one of a handful of Blacks in those honor classes, and as I would speak, sometimes either white people would comment on, oh, you have such great diction, and Black people would say, you talk like you're white.

Yes, I've had that.

I'm like, I didn't know I was talking like this. Why? I thought I was being taught how to speak proper English. Yes. And now you're telling me that I should eschew that? And so now I've got to do code switching. So if I'm with you, I have to start using more slang. I'm— if I'm with them, then I'm okay. Um, and so I'm like— and you learn how to navigate that, but you know, whether it was, hey, why, why are you so nerdy? Why are you trying to get good grades? Why are you trying to go off and do X, Y, or Z? Name your thing. Instead of celebrating that, hey, I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to like, I'm trying to be like the Jeffersons. I'm trying to move on up. I'm just trying, I'm just trying to move on up.

Yes.

It's got nothing to do with you. It's not, you know, I don't think I'm better than you. It's got nothing to do with any of that. I'm just trying to fulfill the legacy of my grandparents. My grandparents on my father's side both had 6th grade educations. They grew up in the segregated South, Lynchburg, Virginia. So segregated South, 2 people with 6th grade educations raised a family of 6 kids, 5 boys, 1 girl. My father— my grandfather was a heavy equipment operator for the Mead Corporation. He ran a large machine that you could— a crane that you take the logs from one place, move them to another. And, you know, he was also a deacon in his church. He was an amazing human being, as was my grandmother. Both very, very religious. 6 kids, segregated South, 6th grade educations on both their halves. They put all 6 of their kids through college.

Wow.

All 6 of them. And so I remember being a young child sitting in my grandparents' kitchen, and whenever you'd get— went to the grandparents' home, all the uncles and aunts would be there, and all the cousins, when they'd come in, they'd sit you in a chair in the kitchen. and they'd start quizzing you on what you're doing with your life.

Wow.

And that chair came to be known as the bank's hot seat. So when you came home, you— hugs, hugs, hugs— but there was going to be a point they'd go, hey, you need to get in the hot seat, where they were going to start questioning what you were doing. And, you know, some of my cousins kind of lamented that. They're like, why do I have to go through this whole process and everything? And, and I always embraced it because I was like, They're just trying to make me better. And I am so thankful to this day that they did that, that, you know, they came from a home with parents who had a 6th grade education in the segregated South and put 6 kids through college, all 6 graduating. One became a federal judge, one became a colonel in the Army, one became an executive in technology, one became the head of social services for the city of Philadelphia. You know, Mike, My uncles, one's a very successful orthodontist. And, you know, so they instilled in me an understanding that you should pursue excellence. That was one value. Another is that family matters. There's the family you're born with, and then there are also the family that you elect to become part of or to invite into your family. So I have a number of West Point classmates that their children call me Uncle Bernie. You know, they're my nephews and nieces. Now, I wasn't an uncle by birth, but I'm an uncle by affiliation over time. So I'm a big believer in you make investments in your family and friends because that's the measure of one's life. Another value we extol the virtue of is integrity, that, you know, your integrity should be unquestioned. And that while there are many who are constantly seeking to take shortcuts in this world, the actual quickest way to get anywhere is just in a straight line.

Yeah, I like that.

And, and your integrity is a straight line. And so, you know, don't be seduced by those who like, oh, I tell this— I mean, like, I Highlight the research that shows over 85% of all people acknowledge cheating actively in their secondary education. The overwhelming majority of young people cheat and are encouraged to cheat. And we've seen that dynamic play out on the national political stage in the last couple of years to the point where people no longer actually call someone out for lying.

Yeah.

We just say it's just par for the course. It's just the way it is. Don't take it so serious. I'm like, okay, so let me understand that. So let's say it's your employee and the employee is routinely saying things that aren't true or stealing from you. Will you just then say, oh, it's, it's just, that's to be expected. I get, there's just a certain amount of graft I need to write off. You know, whatever. I'm like, no, no, I will never accept that. The truth has a place in this world, and it should be paramount to everything we do. There is no such thing as alternative facts, even though someone came up with the phrase, you know. And so I want my kids to be honest. I want them to have integrity. Um, you know, I also want them to understand they have an obligation to help improve the lives of those around them. It's not just a take, take, take, me, me, me kind of deal. You should look around and say, am I adding value that extends beyond the confines of my own body? Yes. You know, so those are just a few. You know, I'm also very, you know, wedded to, you know, the values that were instilled in me over 30 years in the Army: loyalty, duty, respect. Selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage. You know, there's there's a lot of what I've sought to instill in them that's reflective of what was instilled in me not just by my family but also by the organization that I was part of for such a long time. And so, you know, many times when my kids go like. They almost feel like they've heard a recorder, if you would. Like, I could say, play recording 36, Dad's going to say the following. And I'm like, yeah, great leaders are consistent. You don't have to guess what they're going to say because they've told you what they believe, and their say-do ratio is 1 to 1. If they say it, they do it. So yeah, I'm, you know, when you say you know what I'm going to say, that's exactly what I want you to know. Because you shouldn't have to guess about what I'm going to say. You know what values to me, what values I possess. You know the values that I want you to ascribe to. You know, great leaders are consistent. They're consistent. And I want my kids to be consistent. There shouldn't be a lot of variability in them born out of not knowing what right looks like. Some people don't have the privilege of that. I'm like, you don't get to opt out by going, no one ever told me, or I never got exposed. I'm like, yeah, you don't have that luxury.

I wish we had more time because I'd like to talk to you about your statement about great leaders being consistent versus agile.

So there's, there's a difference, and they're complementary. Consistent means you know the values they possess. Agile means that they can apply those values in changing context and stay relevant. You have to be both consistent and agile. That's not the same as static, which acts in contravention of being agile. Values are the filter for legitimacy for any action you take. So if I'm pivoting my business, That's agility. But as I do the pivot, if when I try to filter through my values, I find that it doesn't pass that litmus test, then I didn't do the right thing. I have to always have the ability to pivot my actions, but they still have to pass that test for legitimacy. And being agile is absolutely essential in a world that's characterized by change. And that pace of change is increasing. But you can never use the pace of change as an excuse for why you chose to ignore your core beliefs. Companies that do that and say, oh, we didn't have time to, you know, I'm like, hey, listen, that's a no-go. You can't say, well, we decided to take this shortcut in terms of how we reported things because we were compressed for time.

No.

That's not, that's not okay. So we should be agile, but we should always, always act in accordance with our stated beliefs.

So Bernie, can I quote you? Tomorrow I am giving a presentation to UC Berkeley Executive Coaches alumni about marketing their practice, and Your whole statement about values and filtering your organization through your values equaling incredible success. I want permission to use that tomorrow.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, sure. You know, I don't know that you realize how powerful your words are. I— this has been one of the best interviews I've ever done. I literally have been riveted to my seat, like reading the last pages of a Robert Ludlum book, and the whole book has been terrific, but you want to get to the ending to see what happens. Will you please come back on?

Oh, absolutely. Anything for you.

Oh, thank you. I'm so fortunate to know you, and we were introduced by our good friend Marshall Goldsmith, so thank you, Marshall.

Yes, thank you very much, Marshall.

So, and, and I'm going to rope you into my new organization, Workplace Racial Equality. I, I just need to figure out a blockbuster way to bring you in. You've committed already.

Yeah, always delighted to help.

Oh, thank you. So, audience, I hate to say goodbye today, but I want to wish you continued success. And thank Dr. Brigadier General Bernie Banks for being on today and talking to us about such important things in, in a way that we can absorb it into our system and maybe even call it our ideas, right? So we'll see you next Thursday. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is CB Bowman Live. Thank you.