Paul is the man responsible for inspiring my bone-deep commitment to authentic leadership, he was my first boss back in Wales in the early ’80s as he modeled authentic leadership with every fiber of his being and this was well before the term “authentic” became a thing. Paul has experienced tremendous success in his career and now runs a significant portion of a $25Billion+ company and he hasn’t changed a bit from those early days back in Wales. It’s my honor and privilege to share with you the leadership insights from one of the most down to earth, real and authentic leaders the corporate world has ever seen.

In this episode, we share personal stories from the early days, screw-ups, vision, innovation, attracting talent, and much more.

00:00 – Paul’s story

07:14 – Screw ups

11:47 – Learning to fail

13:23 -  Innovation

18:17 – Attracting talent

21:17 – Vision & purpose

33:25 – Giving back

36:32 – Advice to my 25yr old self

40:18 – The legacy

[Transcript]

[00:00:26] Join your podcast, host Jan Griffis, that passionate rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales entrepreneur leadership, coach keynote speaker, one of the top 100 leading women in the automotive industry as she interviews some of the finest leadership minds in the quest for gravity.

[00:00:50] Jan: [00:00:50] My guest today sits on the executive leadership team of flex a $25 billion company with over [00:01:00] 150,000 employees. Globally. Flex is a supply chain solutions company, encompassing design, manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain solutions. My guest is Paul Humphreys group, president of the high reliability solutions business for flax covering both automotive, medical and industrial.

[00:02:07] Paul, welcome to the show.

[00:02:12] Jan: [00:02:12] Can you believe that we're sitting? No, it's incredible. Isn't it? Detroit, Michigan.

[00:02:20] Jan: [00:02:20] I know, I know sending telexes and BorgWarner in the purchasing department. Right.

[00:02:31] Paul: [00:02:31] So as you know, I grew up in Wales in a working class towns and actually, which is known for its steelworks and its rugby teams. And, uh, my father was an electrician in the steelworks and my mother actually stayed at home and looked after us as kids. And I wasn't the best student.

[00:03:10] And so I had this view that I needed to leverage that capability, but not as a social worker, I always had an interest in business. And so I thought probably the most obvious career would be getting into HR. Um, so that essentially was sort of a direction of my career, but actually my first job was with Ford in supply chain.

[00:03:48] Uh, I was in human resources will Warner from 1979 to something like 1983. And then I took on additional responsibility for purchasing. And then I took on [00:04:00] responsibility for some of the technical departments and I moved into operations and eventually a program management before moving to the States in 89.

[00:04:31] Um, you know, moved on, went out and tried to be an entrepreneur. And I say trade cause I failed miserably. I moved out to Oregon and then eventually moved back to the UK, worked for allied signal, um, in automotive, uh, and eventually, you know, transition back. To the U S working for flex. And I've been out with flex 20 years.

[00:05:11] So it was quite a step up, but I basically had the chance to. To create an HR function at flex. Um, and then after doing that for six years, moved into the role I'm in now, which is running a business for medical automotive. And more recently I've taken on the industrial business. So it's about a 10 and a half billion dollar business.

[00:05:52] This year. She's tolerated me that long. Uh, and hopefully we'll see a few more years beyond that too. So living in living in, uh, San [00:06:00] Jose in the Silicon Valley, having a whale of a time. That's great.

[00:06:14] You have a reputation for being an authentic leader, but that's such a broad term. What does that really mean to you? What is authentic leadership to you, Paul? Yeah.

[00:06:41] Um, and I always used to say, you know, if I can't be myself and succeed being myself, then I don't want to succeed. Um, and so for me, it's just being, it's really about being yourself, being who you are being true to yourself, and also other people seeing who you are, and you're true to them as well. And so for me, authentic leadership is not [00:07:00] about.

[00:07:25] And if you are making decisions, if you're not making a mistake often enough, then you're probably not making enough decisions. So it's being open to being critic, critique, criticized, being challenged. And, and admitting when you're wrong, you're wrong. And being able to do that without, you know, fear of embarrassment or fear of seeing to be weak or exposing yourself.

[00:08:06] And there's nothing wrong with making decisions and making mistakes, but at least own up to them. And don't try and cover up.

[00:08:35] Um, what advice would you give a young leader coming up in automotive today? How to embrace this idea of vulnerability?

[00:08:56] You're not actually fooling anyone else. And so what happens is, is you may [00:09:00] not be talking to them about it, but that talking to each other about it. So there's no harm in it. Knowledging that, that you know, that you're not perfect, that you have your vulnerabilities, you have your weaknesses. And if you're honest with the people that work for you and share them, I think they respect you more.

[00:09:39] Paul: [00:09:39] You know, I think the, the most important thing for me about leadership is being inclusive, being engaging, being supportive. And you know, me pretty well also being humorous, but at the same time, holding people accountable, so people know. That when you ask them to [00:10:00] do something, it's something that you're going to help them to be successful at doing.

[00:10:20] You give them clarity, give them purpose, but then you hold them accountable for doing it. But they know that you support them in the event that they're failing.

[00:10:49] And you said, yes, you need to go and work in third shift. It was a 20 something young girl, and you threw me out there. And back then, you know, that was in the [00:11:00] eighties. It was a different world other than the shop floor than it is today. But I always knew, even though sometimes. I couldn't see where you were going or why you were doing it.

[00:11:36] And it was a developmental move and it was, you know, I learned a lot, some. Good things. Some not so good things, but yes, I would agree. It's getting this idea of, of safety is

[00:11:57] Yeah, bordering on insane, some respects. [00:12:00] Uh, but he was able to get out of people when nobody else was able to accomplish. And he was able to get people to perform at levels higher than they ever thought was possible. And that was including me, but I also knew that while he was expecting me to perform a riddles, he was there.

[00:12:34] Be willing to put yourself out there, be willing to take a risk. And if you failure this you've learned from it. You haven't. Failed in the true sense, because you're going to be a better person for doing that. And if you had not done it, so that's the way I think about it. And I think of Gary, to me as something that really, you know, gave me that capability probably more than anybody.

[00:13:14] Now, you know, you have a history with automotive, but you also know the Silicon Valley kind of culture. How do you create an innovation type of environment?

[00:13:32] Excuse me. There's a lot of structure and discipline needed around innovation. You know, first of all, you need an idea. Obviously you need the idea. Uh, but then you've got to decide how we actually going to cultivate the idea and make that theater a reality. And how do you actually execute on it? And so to do that, You'll have to turn that idea into a strategy.

[00:14:11] But what we didn't do is really understand what that source of competence needed to be. We didn't understand what expectations those customers had. We didn't understand the level of rigor that we traditionally expected to get from, from suppliers or customers, and that, that wasn't available from them. W, you know, we didn't have the right contracts in place because they didn't have lawyers to review contracts were 13, 14 pages long, right.

[00:14:50] Uh, one was a software startup that we incubated inside. Uh, that we ultimately spun off called bright insight. That literally started with an idea of how would you [00:15:00] provide, uh, a, um, uh, medical grade IOT platform for healthcare devices. So you can actually can connect any device that provides data back either to the patient, to the caregiver or even to the pharma companies.

[00:15:33] And obviously the next key is making sure that you select the right leadership team. Uh, and the right leadership team is committed to accomplish that, but also is committed to following the processes you've put in place.

[00:15:51] Some understand it at a very deep level and deepen meaningful level and realize that it's more than just creating the next widget. There's a lot more to [00:16:00] it than that, but others still see it as a well, I'm just going to give it to my VP of R and D or engineering and you handle innovation, but it's, it's, uh, Part of your culture, it has to be for you to succeed.

[00:16:23] Paul: [00:16:23] one of the big challenges for, excuse me, for existing companies with innovation is what takes us in called the innovator's dilemma.

[00:16:55] Because existing customers and shareholders I'm often faced with a conflict. So I think [00:17:00] you really have to take a step back and say, look, how do I actually find a way to do both? How do I find a way to sustain the current business? Because I got to protect the core, but at the same time, continue to invest in new areas of growth and you have to be pretty selective.

[00:17:36] So if you're going to focus on the hardware, focus on the hardware, if you're going to focus on the software, Focus on the software. Don't try and be all things to all people. And I think as you're seeing some companies trying to do everything. They're struggling with the financial capability to be able to support that as well as being able to hire and retain the talent that's needed to do that.

[00:18:02] Jan: [00:18:02] good advice. So let's talk about the talent aspect for a moment. We hear the term millennials, which is a broad term, and now of course we have gen Z coming into the workplace.

[00:18:17] Paul: [00:18:17] So, you know, I actually, sometimes I think we pumper millennials too much, uh, and I worry less about how do we attract, uh, gen Z or how do we attract millennials? How do we retain, uh, millennials or gen Z is about really, how do we actually attract and retain the best talent regardless of what generation they're from?

[00:18:58] You have a commitment to ethics and [00:19:00] governance. Uh, you know, you have a commitment to the environment that you're really focused, not just. On serving the shareholders, but you're focused on, on protecting and, um, serving all stakeholders. Uh, and I think that again has to be authentic. They have to be examples of where you've done that it's not just a marketing campaign.

[00:19:51] Uh, but I think people generally want to work for an ethical company that. Sees that objectives being more than just making money for shareholders. And I think if you do that, [00:20:00] whether it's millennials or gen Z or any other generation you will attract and retain the right people.

[00:20:09] People connect with purpose more now than ever before. There seems to be a real shift in consciousness, and it's much more than just the metrics as much more than just an ROI. And that puts more. On the leader to be able to articulate a vision like never before. Uh, certainly when I grew up in the automotive industry, I couldn't care less about purpose.

[00:20:57] What advice would you give [00:21:00] leaders that are out there? Whether they're a CEO. Looking at their entire leadership team or just maybe a mid-level director or manager, trying to connect a team, a group of people around their vision and really inspire this team. Any thoughts, any pieces, pieces of advice that you could give them?

[00:21:18] Paul: [00:21:18] think, and I can give an example. I think a lot of it is. Creating a vision and a purpose that's beyond just what you're doing every day at work. Um, so if you think of the automotive industry, um, you know, you, we could make anything in automotive. Uh, but we chose to focus on three areas in particular, autonomy, connectivity, and electrification.

[00:21:58] Right. So you're going to get more pollution. [00:22:00] You can get more accidents. Um, you know, you've, you've got a concern with, uh, the environment and global warming. So how'd you connect your automotive strategy. With those larger global problems. So when you're talking to people about, yeah, we're going to make, you know, battery backup systems, are we going to make DCDC converters or we're actually going to focus on developing autonomous compute solutions?

[00:22:45] And then when you start to think about how do you actually. Address the best possible solutions, you know, that you're doing it with an impact beyond just the impact. As I said to shareholders, you're doing it a much broader impact of the community, um, you know, [00:23:00] to the employees and to your commitment, to, you know, improve the world.

[00:23:28] The reason I asked you this very specific question, I just had a conversation with some of the other day said, you know, nobody talks about this and I think they do. Um, Gary Vanyerchuk course a lot about it. I follow him from a marketing perspective on social media and he says, you know, you just do not tolerate.

[00:24:02] Paul: [00:24:02] Yeah, Suzanne, I was saying it's all about results. And I became, began to realize it's not just all about the results. It's also how you accomplish those results. So the behavior, particularly of leadership is incredibly critical and actually. Affects the behavior of the rest of the employees. So if you can't lead by example, you have leaders on your team, the can't lead by example.

[00:24:41] Right. So you actually lose the focus on the benefit from having values driven, not a purpose driven organization in the first place. So, but, you know, do, are you going to fire that person straight away? The answer is, I don't think so. What I think you do is you sit down with them, you explain to them what it is about that behavior that needs to change.

[00:25:21] And so to me, in a, whether that's the style of leadership or whether it's being collaborative of being a team player, it doesn't matter how smart you are. And it doesn't matter how competent you are. If you can't operate as a member of a team, if you can't collaborate, if you can't engage with others in actually have no value to the organization whatsoever.

[00:25:43] Jan: [00:25:43] I see a lot of people struggle with that, but I've learned certainly over the last, you know, several years that you have to deal with it. And when you deal with it, The respect level shoots up. You know, people really respect the fact that as a leader, you, you made a [00:26:00] difficult decision and you took some action.

[00:26:21] And that goes back to, you know, authentic leadership, I guess.

[00:26:46] You know, you often see that, right. Some guy will say, well, yeah, I've only taken two days of my four weeks this year. Right. And somehow that's a badge of honor. And, um, of course we all want to work hard and we're all proud of the work that we do. [00:27:00] But that's not really the way to lead and to lead your life.

[00:27:09] Paul: [00:27:09] that? Work-life balance means different things to different people than you. As an individual have to decide what that work-life balances and, and, you know, that may work in some organizations and it may not work in others.

[00:27:41] Right. So, yeah. You know, I'll take myself as an example. I worked long. I was, I work hard. I traveled a lot. Uh, but I try and, and, you know, spend the time that's needed to take care of my health. Just take care of my family. Uh, you know, I like, I like to race cars. Um, you know, I like to have fun with my [00:28:00] friends.

[00:28:18] Um, I may even take, take a call from the gym, right. So, you know, I'm, I'm, again, I'm combining the time that I need to take care of my health also with the time to take care of my role. Um, and you know, maybe I leave work at five in the evening cause I've got. Got an appointment or a commitment, but then I'm doing emails at nine, 10 o'clock in the night because I want to make sure that I can get done what I needed to do that day before, uh, before I go to bed.

[00:29:00] [00:28:59] Yeah. So the other day in a work-life balance is, is a personal choice and you can't dictate for people what their choice is. They have to decide that for themselves. And then they have to decide whether the environment they're working in suits and fits with that need.

[00:29:15] That there's this some magical balance or number, and sometimes you, people are chasing this or, you know, I have better work-life balance at this company cause I'd have to work X hours a day. And I think that those choices change at different phases in your life. Too. I know that as a working mother, as a single mother with a very intense automotive job in my last corporate role with a heavy travel schedule.

[00:30:01] Maybe I'm going to make a choice towards my family and I'm not going to put in that extra hour or two hours. So that, that PowerPoint presentation is perfect, but it's a choice that you make and it you're right. It's different for everyone. I think it changes at different parts at different points in your life.

[00:30:33] Paul: [00:30:33] My physical activity in the morning is getting out of bed.

[00:30:57] And inspiring environment [00:31:00] around you and a role that you enjoy and you're contributing and it's valuable, then work isn't really work, right? Work is part of your life. And you enjoy doing that as much as you enjoy spending time doing other things. You're

[00:31:23] I was attempt, I think, and. Um, I was working as a material control the expediter, and I wanted to get a handle on some schedules for a Marine industrial launch. And it was going to take time away from day-to-day production. I would have to focus. So I came into the plant because in those days you didn't have a laptop.

[00:32:06] And I was so excited about it, but that's because I was inspired by you and the leadership team at that. Company to want to do more. And that's really what it's all about. Right. It's connecting to the hearts and minds of people so that you really tap into that passion and energy. When I launched this business, I don't have the traditional, you know, uh, de Marcus, you know, that the agenda and the things that you do in a corporate role, right.

[00:32:51] I still get up at four 30 in the morning. I still like to go to the 5:00 AM, workout class, and I work in line with my energy flow. [00:33:00] So when my energy is really strong, I take on something big. But when my energy is sort of waning a little bit, I may run some errands or go to do something else or do some day to day, maybe some email.

[00:33:32] What's that?

[00:33:53] Um, it didn't start necessarily as a, as a personal, um, um, Ben showed was, it was [00:34:00] something that was related to work. Um, But what I found is, is, you know, we actually were making the big difference in the lives of a lot of young people. Um, so we focus on afterschool and summer school programs for underserved kids.

[00:34:39] Then we have follow-up programs during the school year. Uh, we train about 300 teachers every year, um, to actually deliver, um, the math. Uh, learning because a lot of teachers and particularly California that are master teachers don't necessarily have a math education, you know, they might be, um, you know, liberal arts students, et [00:35:00] cetera.

[00:35:31] Uh, we've trained over 30,000. Uh, we've, we've, uh, put about 30,000 students through the program over the last 10 years. And a lot of them are doing exceptionally well. Um, and so, you know, I've just recognized the value that we bring, not just to the community and to the students themselves, but also in terms of creating a pipeline of talent for the companies that are in Silicon Valley.

[00:36:16] And it's something I've gone to the point where I actually love doing it. Um, you know, I've learned a lot myself through this process. I've made a lot of good friends, but I also see the value that we're having, you know, particularly in certain areas of Silicon Valley that, that you know, are struggling socially, economically.

[00:36:32] Jan: [00:36:32] Okay. That's great. Um, looking back, what advice would you give to your 25 year old self in today's environment? Knowing what you know today?

[00:37:06] You know, don't think at 25 that you know it all while you have all the answers or that isn't, you know, I've been through university and I've got my undergrad and I got my master's and you know, now I can conquer the world. Um, you're going to be learning something every day, but you need to be open to that learning and you need to recognize that you're going to improve.

[00:37:48] It's how you work with people. It's, you know, having empathy, having, uh, the ability to inspire others, to be effective. Uh, being supportive of others, being [00:38:00] collaborative, being team-oriented, it's not necessarily about you, it's about how you work with others and how you relate to others and the contribution that you can make to a team.

[00:38:30] Jan: [00:38:30] Yes. I know that when I look back up. Uh, when I was 25, I was pretty sure I knew it all noodle. And you tried to help. We see that I didn't have very nicely, but one thing that I remember remember that stuck with me over all these years is that, you know, as a, as a, a young woman in automotive, all excited about a career and taking on all these different challenges that you would throw my way.

[00:39:26] To not, not run away from it. And not judge, but to really take a moment to understand the other person's position. And I see so many relationships today in the working environment that fall apart because people don't take the time to listen to the other person's position and find a solution. And you trained me to do that very, very early on.

[00:40:18] Paul: [00:40:18] You know, I think more than anything, um, is that I created a direction or a sense of purpose, um, for the people that work for me and, and for the organization that I work in.

[00:41:01] Um, and again, as I said, you know, improve upon it as appropriate. Yeah.

[00:41:23] but it has been an awesome honor and a pleasure to have Paul Humphreys on the show today. Uh, a man who has influenced my leadership style and my career. And as we said earlier, my very first boss. So Paul, thank you very much for your time today.

[00:41:42] Jan: [00:41:42] Thank

[00:41:45] Dietrich: [00:41:45] If you enjoyed listening to this podcast and you found something of value that will help you on your quest for your gravitas, then please share with your friends and colleagues and subscribe.