.GinniRometty, author of Good Power, shares her strategies for managing conflict, finding growth in discomfort, and remaining grounded in ambition to make you proud of not only what you do, but how you do it in this interview with raju of McKinsey
, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with Ginni Rometty, former chairman and CEO at IBM, about her new book,. Rometty recounts her journey from childhood poverty to the Fortune 500 C-suite and shares the most important lessons she learned along the way—like the diversifying impact of hiring for skills over degrees, and her own surefire tricks for developing a resilient mindset. An edited version of the conversation follows.I actually never set out to write a book.
That’s what my journey taught me, that I could do really meaningful things in a positive way—so that the ‘how’ it was done was maybe even more important than the ‘what’.—so that the “how” it was done was maybe even more important than the “what.” The desire to drive change and actually do it is a choice. It’s available to all of us. In the end, this turned out to be a book of stories at different parts of our lives.
At a really early age, I started to learn by watching that aptitude and access are two different things. My mom wasn’t dumb—she was smart, but she didn’t have access to things for most of her life. With a little bit of access to education, she changed her circumstances. All of these ideas converged in my mind to something that said, “Wait a second, we’ve got to move the whole country to a skills-view, not just degree-view, of jobs, and then hire for that and reward for that.” This accomplishes many things. First, as an employer, I need more people with the right skills. Second, there are so many people left out of economic opportunity. This brings more people back into our workforce.
. That crystallization made it much easier for me to take on risky changes in different jobs that were really difficult. I realized that when I put myself in those circumstances, even though it didn’t feel right on the inside, I learned a lot. I also learned that just because I may feel uncomfortable inside, it doesn’t mean I have to tell everyone that at the same time.
That opened my eyes to be willing to ask for help. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness, because you’re acknowledging what you or the organization know or don’t know. I then became very comfortable and confident with what we had to do. There is no problem with saying to others, “I need help in this area. I’m not sure why this isn’t working. I can’t get it to work.”
I will always remember one client I worked with. My team had worked night and day preparing a big report. We went into the CEO’s office, sat down, and gave him his [report]. I have mine. The decks are very detailed. We’re going through the first page, and he’s looking over at my deck. Mine, of course, is highlighted and has notes on the side. He says, “Well, give me yours.” I said, “I’m not going to give you mine.” He said, “I don’t have time to go through all this.
.” Doing it respectfully is like being a velvet hammer: it’s telling people things in a way where they can take the bad medicine. It can be confrontational, but a velvet hammer is something that—if you can develop it for the long term—is always the better way to deal with conflict.When I look for leaders, I think of a few things. I look at their curiosity, for sure.
As an example, people have always wondered why I wear headbands. It’s not for fashion, because I wear them in and out of style. I don’t care. It’s because I can’t see. I have glasses, and I can’t see with hair in my eyes, so I wear a headband. I can control that—boom, get it off the table. You cannot be what you cannot see, and we each have to accept the responsibility that if we’re blessed with moving on in these roles,and embrace it to a large degree. In the book, I do speak a bit about being a woman in those times and now, which are things I never spoke of, but I realized they’re important to another generation, another group of people who want to be inspired and believe that they can be this.
If I prepared, it was a bit of a shield. My knowledge was my confidence. Over time, preparation yielded knowledge which yielded confidence and my ability to take on another risk. That is a cycle that continues to this day for me. I see with many women that they feel they have to be the most prepared because what they do does stand out. And it’s not just women—I see this with other underrepresented groups.
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