Melinda French Gates on Tech, Billionaire Wealth and Why She Worries About the Truth

The higher up you are, some people start to forget who they are. Because once you get into a position of power, people are always going to tell you, you're doing well, aren't you fantastic. You have to have truth tellers around you, and you have to be willing to listen. And so I think as leaders, it's our job to understand when is it time to go? When do we need another leader in this role? Last year, I spoke to Melinda French Gates, who has faced a lot of change in her life. And it's not just in her personal life. Her charitable work is also dedicated to change. French Gates began her career in tech, often the only woman in the room. She joined Microsoft as one of the few female managers in the company. She rises quickly, meets Bill Gates, they marry, and she becomes one of the wealthiest and most influential women in the world. And then she walks away. In her new book, The Next Day, she reflects on making that choice to change everything. I'm Francine Lacqua, and this is Leaders, the series that explores what drives the world's most influential people. Melinda French Gates, thank you so much for joining us. Now, you wrote a book, Next Day, which is inspiring. Why? And why did you call it The Next Day? Well, I turned 60 last year. And so the book came out right around the time of my 60th birthday. And in writing it, as I approached that birthday, I realized I had been through a lot of transitions in life by then. And I thought, you know, I've got something I'd like to say about this, because we learn a lot through transitions. If we pause, and if we give ourselves time to learn, we can actually grow tremendously during those transitions, whether they're easy or whether they're hard. But The Next Day is almost harder, which is what you explain, because you make a decision to do something. It's either leave a job, leave someone, reinvent yourself. But then it's after you do that, that you have to look in the mirror, and that's it. That's the next day. Yeah. And say, okay, now what? I even tell college graduates, university graduates these days, okay, you think the transition is when you go through graduation. No, it's when you wake up the next day, and you're saying, am I really on the way to where I want to go? Right? When do you have to think about that, the transition? When you make the decision to leave something? I think when you make the decision, but I think sometimes it's so hard to get through the transition that's to come. Let's say you're leaving a job, or in my case, I was leaving a marriage, or even, okay, I was pregnant and having my first child. It wasn't until after she was born that the next day I could say, oh my gosh, this is what I'm into. So I don't think it's until you kind of get to the next day that you can really, at least for me, start to process the transition and where you are. And this is really the heart of what leadership is also like. So what does leadership mean to you? Leadership means, you know, are you getting the people that are following you on the path that you think is right? Are we on the same page about where we're trying to go with either their business or life or society? What's the right way actually to be a leader? Well, I don't think there's one right way to be a leader. Let me make that clear. I think there are many ways to be a good leader, but I will tell you, for me, it means living my values and having integrity everywhere I go so that what I'm saying is also then how I'm living my life. And I think if we can show up as a values-based leader, it's easier for people to follow us over the long term. I think sometimes we have leaders in business, I've seen many of them, or in society where they want you to charge the hill. And then as soon as you're done charging that hill, it's charge the next hill. And then by the time you get to the third hill or the third mountain and you're pushing that rock up the hill, it feels like, no, wait a minute. Can I do this again? Do I want to do this again? So to me, leadership is, if you can be very values-based going in, I think you can get people to follow you for a long period of time, I hope. It feels like it's hard at the moment because of things changing so quickly, because of disruption. When did you decide that that was going to be what you stood for? So I worked at Microsoft for nine years. I came right out of computer science and business school and I started working at the company. There weren't very many women at the time, and it was a rough and tumble world. And I think tech is still pretty tough. And it was the boys' debate society. And I thought, okay, I can rise up. I can play this game. And I did play the game and I did quite well. I was moving up the ranks in the company. But then about two years in, so I would have been about 25 at the time, I realized I didn't like myself. I didn't like how I was treating people outside of work because I was treating them the same way I was treating people inside of work, which is the game we had to play. And I thought, no, no, no, this isn't right for me. And so I actually thought I would leave. But instead, I thought, okay, before I leave, I will try on inside this company being who I truly am. And to my surprise, I did not. I thought I was falling flat on my face. To my surprise, I actually rose in the company and people came to work under me in my division who wanted to have that type of leadership. And I thought, oh, this can work. There's no reason for me to be somebody else, be myself. And you have said that you're, you don't mind conflict. I don't. I don't mind conflict. That's almost a superpower. Yes. If you use it for the right things. That's right. And I also believe that in conflict, you can also still be yourself. I say to people, being clear is kind because I'm giving them feedback so they can actually grow and become better, right? So I don't actually mind conflict, but I also think it's the way you do it. It's the tone you take. It's the precedence you set. I learned to do it in a way for me that maintained my integrity. And hopefully, even though the feedback might be hard, kind to the other person. So how? Do you have to be gracious? Gracious, thoughtful before you go into it. One of my mantras that I started to live by, and I told directly my employees then and now, if I'm unhappy with work you have done, you will hear from me within 48 hours. I'm not going to tell you right away because I need time to think it through. If I'm angry about something to calm down, that's on me. But I also am telling you, you're not going to get to your performance review and have a surprise. So if they pass the 48 hour mark, they can be confident that the job they did was a good job. When I was speaking to Melinda French-Gates, we kept circling back to one idea, how much being a woman shaped her leadership journey. She talked about little moments from childhood that defined her voice, and the very real internal biases she's had to confront, not just in boardrooms, but around her own kitchen table. Listening to her, it struck me that for her story, it seemed there was no separating the two. You have three children? I do. Two daughters, one son? Yes. Did you raise them differently? I tried not to. So I have a daughter, a son, and a daughter, and I had to look at my own bias. I say that because I tried really hard to raise them the same, but I'll give you an example of where I had to look at my own bias. After dinner, I had a rule in the house that nobody leaves the kitchen till mom leaves the kitchen, which meant I wasn't doing the last minute duties. We were all doing dishes together and cleaning up and putting the food away. But I realized that the tasks I was asking my son to do were different than the tasks I was asking my daughters to do. And I had to look at that and say, why do I think he should be the one to put out the garbage? The girls could put out the garbage. Why do I think they should be the ones to put the dishes in the dishwasher? He can do that. So I had to look at all those roles and say, let them decide who's going to do what, right? I say that because I think we all have bias inside of us. When I was at the foundation and I would sit at the head of the table with a co-chair sitting next to me, my former husband, we would have a group of men and women, often about two dozen or 30, sitting around the table. And I had to even look at myself and say, am I helping make sure that both the men and the women speak equally? If I see a man talk on top of a woman, I can say, just a minute, she was about to make a point. Or, oh, she made a point. You don't need to repeat it, right? Or if a woman did it to another woman, I needed to say, hey, not okay, right? Were you always like this? No. Oh my gosh, no. These are all lessons of a lifetime, right? But growing up, you had a great dad. I did. That tried to also show you women in the space world. That was quite difficult because there weren't that many because he worked for the Apollo missions. That's right. He was an aerospace engineer and both of my parents believed that all four of their children should be educated, all the way through university and educated equally. And my father knew to go the extra mile, which is amazing with his two daughters. I'm the second of two daughters. He pointed out to us that as an aerospace engineer, we'd go watch those Apollo missions. We'd watch the rocket leave the launch pad. But he always said to us, look, my teams are better when I have female leaders on them, when I can find female mathematicians and pull them on the team. What did you learn from your parents on leadership that then you brought to Microsoft and then the foundation? I learned from my parents that you should use your voice. So we grew up Catholic, but even when my parents had things they didn't believe that the Catholic church was saying to the congregation, my parents were okay pushing back and even would write a petition to the priests in our parish saying, we don't believe in that. And so I learned that one person's voice gathering with others, they got 300 signatures, could push back on an institution. So I had those leadership skills, honestly, even going, which was amazing for me, even going into computer science in college, because even in college, there were very few women. And I started realizing I could lead teams of young men to program and get projects done. The corporate world seems to have changed, at least in most industries. Do you think your leadership would have been different if you had started working a decade or two decades afterwards? Well, tell me how you think the corporate leadership has changed in the last two decades. Are you saying it's changed for the positive or the negative? I think so. Changed for the positive. There's been a consciousness about putting more women in leadership roles, and that means more emotional intelligence than maybe in the early 2000s. Yes, I agree with that. I don't know whether we're regressing now. Yes. That's why I'm asking you the question. I can't play exactly the script of had I started a decade later or two decades later, but I think it would have been easier on me. And look, I questioned myself. I had a lot of doubt. I think women in general tend to carry a little bit more doubt because of what society has told us for so long. I see it less, for instance, now in my 23-year-old daughter than I do even a little bit in my older daughter. But what I do know is that I want for the next four generations that come behind me, I want fewer barriers for women. I want the workforce to be easier for them. I want them to know that they can find allies in the workforce. I want them to know that they have the same opportunities men do when they come out of university and there are natural networks to step into. I think some of the barriers have come down, but I don't think all of them have come down. And I think it's our job as female leaders and other male leaders to make sure we continue to lower those barriers. How do you think about the men? I think of them as allies. They need to be allies in this, right? I know so many men that say, gosh, I educated my son and my daughter equally. They get out in the workforce and now I see it. Now I see what my daughter is up against, my adult daughter versus my son. And so I think it takes, because many corporations are run by men, it takes them to say, we're going to create a different culture here. We are going to make sure that not just the males, but the females in our company lead. When you speak to chief executives, world leaders, I know we think a lot about people just staying too long, staying too long in either positions of power or in places where they should have moved on. How do you think about that? I think sometimes people stay too long because their ego's attached to the job or because they're too afraid to make the transition. And they may not even realize they are afraid, but it does take courage to make a transition. And so I try to say to them, look, there's something beautiful on the other side, but when you make the transition, you're also making way, making room for what might come next for both you and whomever's to come behind you, right? And so I think as leaders, it's our job to understand when is it time to go? When do we need another leader in this role? How would you advise? Is it up to the people that surround them to say like, look, hold on, think about what you're doing, or is there something that they need to think about from day one? I think it's both. I think they need to lay out for day one, what are they trying to accomplish? What happens if they don't get there? How will, what is their exit ramp for themselves? You know, do they have a time limit? Like if I get X done by year five or, but if I don't, will I leave? So having a plan going in and then they have to surround themselves with people who are truth tellers and who they will truly listen to, right? Because once you get into a position of power, people are always going to tell you, you're doing well. You're, you're doing great at this. Aren't you fantastic? You have to have truth tellers around you and you have to be willing to listen. I feel like that's the hardest thing. It's making sure that you're not in an ivory tower where people say you're wonderful. And actually you're doing things that are wrong. Absolutely. I worry about that for myself. I worried about that at the foundation, like who's not telling me the truth. And I knew there were a lot of people who weren't, but you know what? I could find the two or three that would tell me the truth about my leadership or something they didn't think was right about the organization. And so I had to make that safe for them. I also outside of that have, I'm very close to my family. And so my two younger brothers, my older sister, they will tell me the truth and they never, ever let me think that I'm all that, you know, especially my brothers. I couldn't sit down with Melinda French Gates without asking about the challenge of navigating her identity when it's easy for people to define her by her billionaire status and famous ex-husband. But she was quick to acknowledge her privilege and explain that privilege isn't the thing that makes you special. Being special is something you have to work for. You faced criticism because you're a billionaire. Yes. How do you push back and saying, actually, I have values and I care about everyone, despite my great wealth? Well, I think first I say, I make sure I acknowledge I have privilege. There is no doubt I have privilege, but I'm a human being. And part of me even writing this book was for people hopefully who choose to pick it up and read it or listen to this podcast, feel like, I understand a little bit better where she's coming from. She came from a middle class family. She's trying to live those values out in the world. So yes, she may be surrounded in great wealth, but maybe she's not like some of the other big billionaires I see in the news because we're not all the same. Just like not all people who make a hundred thousand dollar salary are all the same, not even close. And you chose actually from a quite early age on how to use your wealth, but also how to educate your children. Absolutely. I had this phrase in the house, just because I can, or just because we can, doesn't mean we should. And so I had from my kids, each of them had an allowance. It went up as they got older to help them manage money, but there were many things they wanted to buy. My oldest daughter in particular, I remember there was a purse she saw in a store window she had to have when we went by. She said, but you can buy it for me. Of course I could buy it for it. But I said, but if I did, what would that be saying to the other girls in your middle school? Wouldn't it separate you? But was that also a reaction to people that you saw use money in a wasteful way? It wasn't because I saw people wasting money. It's because I went through universities with some other peers who had come from great wealth. They threw their privilege around as if they were special, just because they came from wealth. And what I knew was they weren't that special, right? And so I didn't want my three children to grow up thinking they were special because they had a father with a certain name or we had wealth. They would become special if they lived out who they were and they figured out who they were and what values they had and what career they wanted to have. My oldest daughter, for instance, is in her medical residency program. I think she's going to become a pediatrician. I think she will be an incredibly special doctor because of her academic work, but because of how she cares for her patients in that clinic. That is what will make her special. Melinda, do you worry, I mean, when you were going through the divorce, did you worry about the children or did you worry that it was the right decision? I worried about both for sure, but I really worried about, is this the right decision? And once I knew it was the right decision for me, I knew I just had to do it. I just, I couldn't stay. If I couldn't live my values out in my home and in my marriage, how could I role model for my children or live my values out in society? Was it ever difficult to be the wife of? Did you have to work doubly hard to be Melinda French Gates? Of course it was hard. Yes, of course. I mean, first of all, I didn't even take on the last name at first when I first got married. Just the thought of having this big name that was quite well known, that was odd to me. But then as I talk about in the book too, as we went on to do our foundation work and we had the foundation with both our names on it on purpose, because I believed in equality. But, you know, even as I would go in to meet with prime ministers, I remember a particular meeting here with one of the prime ministers who will go unnamed. It was a he in the UK. You know, the two of us walked into the room and the first person that prime minister addressed after he met both of us was Bill with his question. But I had to learn to speak up early and often in the conversation for them to realize, oh, she really knows what she's talking about too when she comes in to speak to me about these global foundation issues. Is that leaning in? That's Sheryl Sandberg's words. I guess I call it, I tell my kids it's leaning forward in a conversation. So I learned that just as I was feeling a little bit diminished in the conversation or maybe even the person wanted me to feel diminished, right? I learned as soon as I had that feeling, instead of leaning back, I said to my kids, I learned to lean forward into that space. And I call it leaning forward into that uncomfortable space. And then you use your voice or you say what's right for you. Are you a trusting person? Absolutely. I sometimes over trust people, but I definitely trust people. And I'd rather walk through life trusting people than not trusting people. Because? Because you can be yourself. You can be more open. You can be more real. I've known a few people in life who just were more closed. And especially if you're in a position of privilege, if you don't trust people and don't know who you can turn to, boy, can you become very insular and your world becomes very small. But it's also quite rare to find a leader that can take criticism. Very. Right. And I don't know whether we're going in possibly the wrong direction because of technology, because your ideas are more siloed. Actually, you kind of go down the path of that being reinforced instead of open dialogue. I am quite concerned about that as well. I think with the advent of social media, while maybe we thought it was going to do certain positive things, I think the downstream consequences have been far worse than we imagined. So having these echo chambers of these polarized worlds where we don't walk in spaces where we have open dialogue and you just hear what you want to hear, or you hear just super negative things. We have to do better than that. Is that what you worry about the most, actually? Divisions within countries, within the US, and then at a global level? Yes. I believe we are far better off when we see the humanity in one another. I don't care if you live in Malawi or Britain or the United States or India, we are more alike as human beings than we are different. And yet I think social media and the polarization that has happened has made us feel more different. But I think we're better off moving society forward when we are more centered and when we can hear one another's points of view. And I'm telling you, when we're shouting at one another and throwing invictives around, we're not hearing one another. How do we get back to that space where actually you can have a disagreement but a polite disagreement? I think it starts in community. It starts at the grassroots levels. We have to have places where people feel they can have an open dialogue, smaller town halls, smaller group meetings. And once you start to build that trust, then I think you can start to maybe accept somebody has a different point of view than you do. Linda, thanks so much. I have three rapid fire questions for you. Great. Is that exciting? Oh, yeah. So here they are. Okay. What do people not know about you? Oh, probably that I have an absolute addiction to chocolate. It's very hard for me to go for a day without chocolate. I love that. What's the signature way you motivate people? I try to be positive. And I try to bring out a positive attribute that they have inside of them and hold that up for them so they can see it too. What's the craziest interview question you've ever been asked? People used to, when I was married, ask me questions about Bill. And I'm like, I'm not gonna answer that. Let him answer that. Melinda French Gates, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Francine. All right. Bye. Thanks, everybody.