Leadership is not just Bill George's strong suit; it's his raison d'etre. Named one of the Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years by PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), George teaches the subject at the Harvard Business School, where he is a professor of management practice.

Under his leadership as former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, the world's leading medical technology company, the company's market capitalization grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion under his leadership. But given his focus on helping others, he is prouder of the fact that the company went from serving 300,000 to 8 million people a year.

His book, True North, called by some a leadership tour de force, is based on research and first-person interviews with 125 of today's top leaders including Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, frequent political commentator David Gergen, Avon CEO Andrea Jung, financial entrepreneur Charles Schwab, and celebrity interviewer Oprah Winfrey. Sure, the profiles focus on success; but the book also dissects professional setbacks, emotional challenges, personal tragedies, and regrets - and the impact they have had on the way these leaders lead others.

Everyone is born with a capacity to lead, George says. He rejects the premise that some are born leaders and others are not. What successful leaders have in common, he says, is substance and integrity, not just style and image.

George offers the following thumbnail sketch of "authentic" leaders: They are more interested in empowering the people they lead to make a difference than they are in power, money, or prestige for themselves. They've developed a leadership style true to their personality, character, strengths, and weaknesses. They inspire colleagues and bring them together around a shared purpose and a common set of values.

"Successful leaders lead with the heart, not just the head," George says. "They possess qualities like empathy, compassion, and courage. They also have the ability to establish deep, long-term, and genuine relationships where others trust them."

George writes that there are few better examples of leading with heart than Marilyn Carlson Nelson. When she took over the travel-and-leisure conglomerate Carlson Companies from her 84-year-old father, Marilyn inherited a demoralized organization suffering from decades of top-down rule. She immediately set about changing things, expressing empathy for her employees and compassion for her customers. The result: a remarkable turnaround with record levels of growth and new heights in employee and customer satisfaction.

A New Generation of Leaders
At 64, George feels many leaders of his generation were lacking, but he's encouraged when he looks ahead.

"There's a whole new generation of CEO leaders who are stepping up to lead for whom I have enormous respect: people like Andrea Jung from Avon, Jeff Immelt from GE, Howard Schultz from Starbucks, and Anne Mulcahy from Xerox. This is a new generation of leaders who are really leading in a different way than my generation did and I'm very encouraged by that. I have a lot of respect for younger leaders, people like Wendy Kopp from Teach for America. She started with no management or leadership training at all. I have great admiration for her commitment and passion."

In True North, the leaders interviewed said that gaining self-awareness was central to becoming authentic leaders. When asked about his authentic self, George answered, "I would like to think I'm a person who is trying to help others make a difference in their lives, through the work I do, my family, and the community organizations I serve. But there is always the other side of it. Sometimes you get pulled away from your authentic self, get caught up in your ego, success, and things like that. This is a lifelong struggle."

Someone's "true north" is not static, but is constantly evolving. "Since I was a teenager, I had this idea of being a values-based leader who could impact the lives of people inside the company and the customers it served," he says. "But I also had the idea of having some influence on other leaders in my generation. I realized I had accomplished my first goal but did not have the opportunity to influence other people, and that's what I'm trying to do now. Young leaders, people coming out of college, even CEOs, maybe I can have some modest influence on their leadership and help them become better and more authentic leaders."

True North doesn't just offer examples of leadership; it invites readers to assess their own capacity for leadership. There are more than 20 pages of self-reflective questions, such as: "Thinking back over all your leadership experiences in your lifetime, which ones are you proudest of?" and, "Do you feel that you are more effective as a leader when you are authentic, or does being authentic constrain your leadership effectiveness?"

"This is not a book of six easy answers to leadership," said George. "It is a guide to developing yourself as a leader."

It's a journey that's often not a straight line to the top but a series of rises and descents. Transformation for many leaders results from going through a crucible - an experience that tests a leader to his or her limits.

In George's case, he experienced a series of crucibles that ultimately transformed him. For as long as he can remember, his father, Wallace E. George, a management consultant, encouraged him to be a leader to make up for his own perceived failures. He wanted his son, an only child, to be the leader he never became. But as hard as young Bill tried, he was not successful.

"I lost seven elections in a row in high school and college because no one saw me as a leader. Remember, I was supposed to be the leader my father never was and I became fearful that the ghosts of his leadership were chasing me. I didn't realize it at the time but I was far too selfish and self-centered and busy chasing my own objectives and not nearly as concerned with other people and their goals as I should be."

A turning point came during his time at Georgia Tech, when a group of seniors sat him down and gave him their advice. They mapped out what they felt his shortcomings were. "This was one of the most important things that has ever happened to me in my life," George states adamantly. He worked hard to improve the leadership skills they felt he was lacking.

Eventually, he was selected as fraternity president, a title that eluded him earlier, as well as to a slew of other leadership positions.

A few years later, in his mid-20s, in rapid succession, he experienced the most significant crucibles of his life. "An only child, I was extremely close to my mother. She died suddenly of a heart attack and I never got to say goodbye," he said. "My mother was a leader although I didn't recognize it during her lifetime. From a standpoint of values, of being grounded and centered, she had the greatest impact on me." Eighteen months later, only three weeks away from their wedding, his fiancée died suddenly of a malignant brain tumor.

"These two back-to-back devastating events in my life caused me to think as deeply as I could about what I wanted out of life, how fragile life is, and what a short time we have," he said. "They were certainly transformative."

Not long after that, he met his present wife, Penny. She was extremely empathetic about his experiences and a year later, they were married. They have been married for 38 years. They live in Minneapolis and also have a condo in Cambridge for when Harvard is session.

Sprint to the Top
George graduated from Georgia Tech in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering. He worked for IBM for a summer, and then went on to Harvard Business School where he received his MBA with high honors in 1966. After several positions with the U.S. government that included working for the assistant secretary of defense and as a special assistant to the secretary of the Navy, he joined Litton Industries. By the age of 30, he became president of Litton Microwave, the pioneer and leader in the emerging U.S. consumer microwave oven industry.

He left Litton and joined Honeywell, with the opportunity to lead a global corporation. It seemed the leadership path he was on was an unbroken sprint to the top, he said, to becoming CEO of this global corporation.

But that sprint came to a screeching halt. "One day I was driving home and I looked myself in the mirror and realized I was miserable. I'd been so engaged in turnarounds and trying to get ahead in Honeywell I didn't realize Honeywell was changing me more than I was changing Honeywell."

He spoke to his wife, whom he calls the best counselor he could ask for. "She is always there to support me, helping me stay grounded, guiding me. I couldn't have been nearly as successful without her," he said.

Penny has the credentials for the role: With a doctorate in psychology, she was a psychologist until she contracted breast cancer, a life-changing experience. She now puts her energies into changing the world of medicine to bring a more holistic approach to disease; one which encompasses the mind, heart, and spirit, as well as the body. She has organized 30 foundations across the United States that focus on more integrated treatment emphasizing the whole person.

George also sought advice from the men's group he has been a part of since 1975. From 7:15 to 8:30 a.m. every Wednesday, the eight men meet in a church in Minneapolis. "We talk about important issues of life, our goals, our aspirations," George says. "Just last week we were talking about spiritual intelligence, what it means and how it relates to the philosophies we have grown up with."

With some outside advice and some reflection, George says, "I realized I was once again chasing my own ego as I had been earlier in my life. I lost sight of what I wanted the purpose of my leadership to be: to benefit the lives of others."

He had turned down the opportunity to become president and CEO of Medtronic, the creator of the pacemaker, three times. At this point in his life, he called them back and asked if the job was still open. "I realized when I went there that this was the company I should have been at all along … the company that has the values, the caring, the place where I could be authentic, be myself, not try to be something different. The best thing that ever happened to me in my professional life is when I joined Medtronic," he said.

That he has been able to pass down these values to his family is a source of satisfaction to George.

"I'm proud to have a family where everyone is value-centered and is trying to make a difference through their own work," he said. He and his wife have two sons, 33-year-old Jeff, who works for the vaccine division of Novartis in Switzerland, and 31-year-old Jon who is in his final year of medical school at Duke University and is married to a doctor. Jeff and his wife recently had their first child, a girl named Dylan, making George a grandfather.

But this is no retiring grandfather. Traveling the globe, giving speeches, promoting his book, and teaching, it may seem that George is off in every direction. But for those who know him, he is always heading "true north."

Meetings Should Touch the Heart

As chairman and CEO of Medtronic, Bill George was helping plan a meeting that he hoped would reach his team's hearts. He turned to acclaimed poet David Whyte for help. Whyte encouraged the group to ask questions about the nature of one's existence and happiness. He used his poetry as well as other poets' works to try to bring an understanding of the process of change and the importance of individual and organizational creativity.

"Many thought I was crazy. 'What does a poet have to do with business?' I was asked. But he [Whyte] reached people at the heart level. He talked about feelings in the context of poetry," said George.

A meeting that touches people's hearts is a successful meeting, according to George. "It reaches people where they are, reaches them at a deeper level. If it's all about intellectual content, you lose a great opportunity. Meetings are a big investment. Not just in terms of money but in the cost of people's time. They must have an experience that resonates with them and goes deeper than just intellectual knowledge. If it's just intellectual, it can be done online."

George referred to Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar, who coined the phrase, "The medium is the message."

"The meeting is the message and how do we use that time effectively" is the challenge, George said. At Medtronic, actual patients were brought to meetings to explain how the company's products made a difference in their lives. "This had so much more of an impact than a doctor telling the story in clinical terms. A patient tells his or her story personally, in a way everyone can relate to. These meetings touch you at the heart level and help you understand what your work is all about."

He is totally against meeting formats that he calls, "perch and preach." These are meetings where "you hear from all the guys in suits giving their speeches. These are all about the ego of the management. These meetings are not really changing people, not really impacting attitudes, not tapping into their motivation, their passions. Any good meeting should do that."

Today, George speaks to groups all the time, especially with the release of his book, True North. In the process, he's learned what works and what doesn't. "I will never give a talk with the lights down," he says. "I did that once and will never do it again. If the audience is sitting back and watching the speaker like a movie, you are not going to reach them. I'm a big believer in keeping the lights on. I want to see how the group is responding. Am I reaching them? Is this meaningful to them?"

He has also found how powerful having fun and loosening people up can be. He is a proponent of breaking up into smaller groups so people can truly interact. Games, activities, improvisation - anything that breaks the ice.

"If it's an association meeting, there should be the opportunity for people from other organizations to get to know each other and learn how they operate. If there's no time for that kind of networking and relationship-building, then the meeting has missed a great opportunity. The bottom line is that we have taken people away from their regular jobs and if we're going to spend that time and money the meeting ought to have depth and richness and not become routine."

° Andrea Doyle is Convene's senior writer. The Leading by Example series is sponsored by the Canadian Tourism Commission. Visit its Web site at www.CanadaMeetings.com.