From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

Alex Gorsky on building diverse and inclusive teams

From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

Alex Gorsky on building diverse and inclusive teams

- You came up through sales. So when people come to you for career advice, do you recommend going down that path? - Absolutely. I rather than a specific role, what I tend to recommend are experiences for people. And I think having a customer facing experience at some point in your career is a great way to prepare you for general management. So that's number one. Number two, I'll always encourage people to get people management experience. As you move through an organization, it's much less about the individual contributions that you make as a solitary leader, it's more about what are you doing to bring a team of diverse, inclusive people together that make one plus one plus one add up to 17. And can you do that in a way where people feel cared about. They feel challenged but they feel engaged. And frankly at the end of the day, they feel like you really give a damn. And when you can create that dynamic on a team, I'll tell you what, it enables them to do things that they could never have imagined doing on their own. And so but doing that it's not easy. Giving feedback to people, recruiting, developing, hiring, training, teams, bringing people together, it's probably one of the most difficult aspects of the job so I always encourage people to do that. Another aspect in today's world is be and go global. As early in your career as possible. If you can get a global experience, I think it's critical. And you think about how connected we are around the world. And I know for me, I had the chance to live abroad a couple of times. Once in Europe very early in my career when I was in the Army and another time in Europe later in my career. And just learning the benefit and the beauty of different cultures, of different languages, different ways of thinking and doing things, it's made me I think a better and different leader.

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