The ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’ Who Mentored Steve Jobs and the Google Guys Showed Them a Simple, Powerful Communication Tactic
Silicon Valley's most successful leaders start meetings this way to build rapport
Source | www.inc.com |
The leadership playbook of Silicon Valley’s most influential business coach has been opened to the public in a new book, The Trillion Dollar Coach. It’s about Bill Campbell, who wasn’t a household name but who coached entrepreneurs whose companies impact our lives.
Campbell worked side-by-side with Steve Jobs and with Google co-founder Larry Page. He coached the current CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, as well as CEOs of Twitter, Flipboard, eBay, and many other companies. Campbell also coached former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, one of book’s three co-authors.
“A trillion dollars underestimates the value he created,” Schmidt writes. “Bill was the greatest executive coach the world has ever seen.”
After Campbell passed away in 2016, Google started to teach his principles to emerging leaders within the company. One of those principles is easy for any leader to adopt and might dramatically improve your team’s rapport and success.
Start meetings with trip reports.
Eric Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011. For a decade, he held weekly staff meetings at 1:00 p.m. on Mondays. In many ways, the meetings were typical–agenda, check-ins, updates, etc. He did one thing differently, though, thanks to a tactic Bill Campbell taught him.
