Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart

I recently interviewed Joe Lockhart on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today was the White House press secretary during President Clinton's impeachment. Joe Lockhart is a partner at the strategic communications firm, Rational 360, a contributor to CNN, and a former executive leading communications efforts for Facebook and for the NFL. Joe, thank you for joining us.

Joe: Glad to be here.

Adam: It seems like a lifetime ago, given that there have been two subsequent impeachments, involving far more consequential issues. But when you consider that the only other time in US history that a president was impeached was in 1866 and 1998. Doesn't seem all that long ago. Can you take listeners back to that historic period? October of ‘98, you become the White House press secretary. December of ‘98 the house approves two articles of impeachment. What are your sharpest memories and best lessons from that experience?

Joe: Well, hey, you know, I have to look at the entire year. I was the Deputy Press Secretary in January when this story broke, the Monica Lewinsky story and Bill Clinton's relationship with her. And it put us in, you know, a lot of people think they're in a crisis. This was a crisis, we had several points during the year that we thought democrats would abandon us. And, you know, it was possible the President could be driven from office. So it was high stakes. You know, the biggest lesson that I try to impart, you know, to my clients now, if they're in a crisis is you've got to have an overall strategy, you have to have an alternative narrative while dealing with the underlying problems in order to survive. You know, during the Clinton impeachment, our strategy was simple, which was the president wasn't going to focus on himself and his troubles, he was going to focus on the American people and trying to help them. And it's a strategy that resonated with the American public. Things were going reasonably well, for the country. And the majority of the country felt that what the President had done was wrong. And they got no disagreement from any of us at the White House. But they understood that there were bigger issues involved. And the president focusing on those allowed him the room to get through, you know, what was a tumultuous year.

Adam: So to that end, and you referenced that this is your best advice that you're providing to executives on crisis management, what is your playbook for leaders on what to do when a crisis hits? This is your bread and butter, and this is applicable whether you're leading in the world of politics, or whether you're leading in the world of business. What do you do?

Joe: Yeah, I think first of all, you've got to recognize what is a crisis and what isn't. The example I always use is, and I always pick on a different airline every time. I have nothing against Delta Airlines, it's just their turn to tell the story. You know, if they have some computer software problem, and 3,000 flights are canceled in a day, that's not a crisis, people are used to delays, it doesn't go to the unique value of their brand or their product. Now, if a plane crashes, that does, because the most single most important attribute of their brand is safety. Convenience comes after safety, everything begins and ends with safety. So you have to understand, you know, what really is threatening your brand? And what is it? So once you know if you've got a place where it is legitimately a crisis, the first thing I'd say is, you've got to have prepared for it before it hits. The value of practicing is you cannot overestimate and to understand who makes decisions when and, you know, what is the sequencing and flow of the work. One of the real lessons out of the White House, which goes to our overall strategy, was 99% of the people at the White House did not work on the crisis. 99% of the people the White House wanted to work on the crisis, but we're not allowed. Keeping the group small, keeping the group nimble, and most importantly, either authorizing a decision maker below the CEO, or having the CEO available at all times to make decisions. Most communications fails in a crisis, not because the communications people are not competent. You know, there's a lot of competent professionals there. The most often failure is they can't get a decision or authorization to do something in a timely manner. And the way the news cycle works now, you need to be able to react very quickly. And you know, waiting six hours is generally a recipe for disaster.

Adam: Effective communication is essential to effective leadership and your career has really centered around communication strategy. And I wanted to know if you could share with listeners your best tips for leaders on the topic of communications?

Joe: Well, you know, I don't view it as narrowly as communications, I view that, you know, every issue that a corporation, nonprofit, a university deals you will have to deal with any challenges they have, requires a holistic approach, I call it political strategy. And I don't mean people running for office or, you know, trying to get more votes than the other guy. But understanding how you take all the different elements and workflows at an organization, whether they be legal marketing, internal communications, and make them all work together, and make them all driven by a coherent and consistent and a deliverable and repeatable strategy. So no matter what the crisis is, if you are only on defense, you are destined to hurt your brand in that process. So it's very much like, based on my background, it looks very much like a political campaign, where you have everything cross-disciplinary, you know, the normal playbook of an organization is different from, you know, what it will look like in a crisis. And hopefully, the process is much more responsive and nimble, as I said before, than the normal decision-making process in any, you know, any organization, whether it be corporate or nonprofit.

Adam: Joe, you ticked off some of the highlights of your resume; press secretary under Bill Clinton, leading communication efforts for Facebook for the NFL. But what were the experiences that allowed you to become White House press secretary? You mentioned you were deputy White House press secretary, but what were the experiences and skills that prepared you to not only land those jobs, but ultimately perform on the highest stages?

Joe: Well, I think simply it was working my way up the ladder. I did my first campaign when I was 20. And by the time I was 25, I'd done five, and mostly, you know, doing just communications, but doing whatever needed to be done on any given day, which is, you know, one of the things that you'll learn in a campaign, which is you get thrown into things that you don't have any experience with, but you get it very quickly. I also spent some time working as a journalist, which was extraordinarily helpful for me, as I, you know, finally made my career choice after bouncing around a little that I wanted to be in communications and in political communications. I had both the knowledge about how the news and media industry worked, and an ability to speak the language of journalists, which was, you know, just honestly helped a lot. But I had a low level job at 20 on the presidential campaign, and every campaign I worked, you know, over the next 10 years, I'd go up to the next level. So by the time I got to the White House, you know, I’d done almost every job in the White House Press Office, but even then, I worked under Mike McCurry, the press secretary at the time, for two years preparing in my mind to take his place when he was ready to leave. Nobody told me I was going to get that job. But I spent every day of those two years preparing myself to.

Adam: You talk a little bit more about that relationship and some of the other relationships you've had with mentors throughout your career? And in your experience, what makes a great mentor and how can anyone develop a relationship with a great mentor and ultimately become a great mentor?

Joe: Yeah, I've had, you know, several over my career, again, I started as a young PR, 20 years old, I think, to me, as a young person working in their craft, working in their career. And over the years, I've had, you know, two or three people who've been critical to my success, both in helping me do the job that I had and then, because campaigns are finite, they always end and you're always looking for something else. Now helping me figure out, you know, what's the next step? And, you know, the value to me, of having these mentors was really having a sounding board for decisions that you make in your career. And these things, they may not seem monumental at the time, but they have a big impact. Do you go to this campaign or do you go to that campaign? Do you get out of campaigns and get into corporate work? And I had, you know, two or three people. And this goes to the second question, what makes them good mentors and what makes a good mentor? The ability to listen. I think there are a lot of people- and I was this way, when I was younger, which is I didn't really think people who'd been in the business longer had much to offer me. And, you know, I probably learned the hard way that that's not true. So I think the ability, you know, to listen, understand, what your mentees strengths and weaknesses are, and feeling like you have a stake in his or her success over their career.

Adam: Joe, I love that you brought that point out, because something that I tell audiences all the time, and I'm sure listeners of this podcast are probably tired of me saying it by now is great leaders are great listeners, and you've worked for and with some of the most prominent leaders in American politics. Over the last 50 years, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Walter Mondale, Paul Simon, John Kerry, just to name a few. You've also worked closely for and with some of the most prominent leaders in American business, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Roger Goodell. In your experience, what are the key characteristics of a great leader? And what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Joe: Yeah, I'll go, particularly to Facebook, because I learned a lot there about leadership, and you know, how to be an effective leader. And, you know, you can't find two people more different than Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg based on their background, you know, and before they met, you know, their interests. They both taught me a lot. Sheryl, among many things, but probably the most important thing was the importance of honest feedback. She would tell you, well, you know, she would never hold back on if you made a mistake, or you could have done better. But it never was something that seemed punitive or something that felt like was being held against you. All of these moments were, how do I get better? How do I get better doing this? And she was, you know, without a doubt, one of the most impactful bosses I ever had, because I was not used to that, you know, in politics, you don't take the time to figure out how you how you're doing, you just, you're in it. And the same is true when you're doing sort of crisis communications. So you know, her ability to give the kind of feedback that she did, I think, you know, made me a lot smarter. Mark, on the other hand, is a completely different person, but I will never forget the first meeting I had with him. After I'd set the job I had interviewed with him, obviously, I found you know, on my second day, I found out my schedule that I had an hour long meeting with him. And I had no idea what it was about. But, you know, I was going to show up. And I got there and it became clear that Mark didn't know what it was about either. And, you know, it was just one of those things that Sheryl put on the calendar for the two of us to get to know each other a little better. But neither one of us are the small talk kind of people. So, you know, after about a minute of, I don't know what this meeting is about, or do you know what this meeting is about? Mark said something that will never leave me, which is that he looked at me and said, the things that I worry about engineering building products, that writing code, you can't help me with if you don't have the experience to do it. And I thought, this isn't going to go well. But his second sentence was, and the things that you are experienced at and can help me with, I don't have any experience with and I don't have that much interest in. And I thought, yeah, this is not going well. And then it went well with the third line, which was, so don't ever judge your value to this organization by how often you're in this office talking to me. And in three sentences, he freed me up to do my job. I didn't have to like, learn how to write code, I didn't have to spend a lot of time building my credibility with the engineers. He knew what he wanted for me, he knew that he didn't know a whole lot about it. And it allowed me to focus on the job I was hired for and understand that that had real value in the company.

Adam: That's such a great lesson. Great leaders understand their strengths, they understand their weaknesses, and they understand that they should be focused on areas in which they're the strongest, and should be hiring people around them to fill whatever gaps they're not especially strong and bring in great people and trust them, if you're hiring people who are the best at what they do. If you trust them, empower them, let them do what they do best. And get out of the way. I think that's a great example of it.

Joe: Yeah, and I think both of those leaders, in very different ways, demonstrated that Mark was, through I guess I'd call it benevolent neglect. Most of the issues that he was working on, I wasn't working closely on. There were a few. And, you know, I worked very closely with Sheryl, because there was a lot of overlap in the things that she cared about and she worried about. And there definitely was this idea that, you know, at Facebook, that we're going to hire the best person, it's a little bit like sports, which is you hire the best athlete available. And then you trust them to work within the system, you know, to be as productive as they can be. And that's what they did. And it's no accident that the company is as successful as it is. And it really is a credit to both Mark and Sheryl, but for very different reasons. You know, it's not that Mark did not want to clone, he did not want someone who thought like him and he knew it. He knew he wanted Sheryl because, you know, they were sort of the great opposites that made both of them smarter and better.

Adam: What is the single best leadership lesson you learned either directly from or just through osmosis, by virtue of being around President Clinton?

Joe: Wow. You know, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about our leader and listening. You know, President Clinton 99 million times out of 99,000,001 was the smartest person in the room. And often when you know you're the smartest person in the room, you feel the need to demonstrate that that was never the case with them. And I learned a lot about why he was the smartest person in the room. Because he viewed every conversation, every person he came in touch with, as a person, he could learn from it. You know what, I'll give you an example. He and I had a lot of mutual interests and on most subjects, particularly on politics and policy. He knew more than me, but I remember talking to him one day, about where we were on the phone, congratulating, you know, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls for winning a championship. And we were waiting for Michael to come to the phone. And we started talking about the NBA. And it, you know, turns out he didn't know who I met in the NBA, he was a college basketball fan. And it was like he was a sponge. You know, he and it was like, well, what about this? What about that, who is that? It's a silly way to make a silly story to make a broader point that he was a sponge, and that every person meant something to him, because every person was an opportunity to learn something he didn't know. And that's how he got so smart.

Adam: Yeah, that's such interesting and important advice for anyone listening, because one of the key themes of this podcast is the importance of lifelong learning. I think that something that I've learned by virtue of doing 30 Minute Mentors is that the most successful leaders in the country- and clearly President Clinton is an example of this- are individuals who are dedicated to lifelong learning, they recognize that no matter how much you know, you never know enough. And you're always on a quest to learn as much as possible. And the anecdote you share clearly underscores that

Joe: I agree, I agree completely.

Adam: You work for a president who was under a unique level of pressure, not only the pressure of being commander in chief and leader of the free world, but the legal, political, and personal pressures that came with impeachment. And your job working for President Clinton, White House press secretary isn't exactly a low stress job. You're the spokesperson for the administration and the country. And literally, every single word that comes out of your mouth is consequential. What are your best tips for listeners on how to manage and perform effectively under pressure?

Joe: Well, the biggest one is to prepare. I know that sounds simple, but I used to prepare, I'd be in at six in the morning, and my briefing would be at one and I spent- what is that seven hours preparing for every briefing. Because you don't get knowledge all in one bite. You accrue knowledge over time. And when you go through figuring out what you want to say at an issue for the fourth day in a row, on the fourth day, you’ll do much better than you did on the first day. So it's just doing the work. I found in communications that my preparation was divided into two categories. One was passive, which was just reading, and, you know, consuming as much information as I could, so that I had a better knowledge base than most of the reporters asking me questions, which is the key to being successful. If the reporters know more than you, you're dead in the water. The second way was being involved in the process of governing, and in the work of the White House- so I would say of that seven hours, three and a half of it was being in meetings where decisions were made about what the President wishes for this and that, and being an active participant, not just a fly on the wall. And then the second half was just doing an enormous amount of reading and studying. The second thing that I'd say, and it's not as important, but it is important, which is to always try to get as many points of view on any issue as you can because it gives you a sense to fully understand the dynamics. For me, it was within the White House, but you can put that to any organization, and the nuances of any particular issue. The third is- and I think this, in some ways, was the most valuable- was being able to think while you're talking. I know that sounds simple, but it's a very difficult thing to do- to be standing there with cameras rolling, and talking but not paying attention too much to what you're talking about and thinking about where to go. I think the single most important quality for someone to succeed at that job is to not understand what the question is to them, but to understand why that question, and what the question is setting up. It’s trying to stay ahead. Okay, I understand what that question is, but that the answer is setting up to more questions. And you've got to make sure that you don't do anything in the first answer that boxes you in knowing what's coming next. And that just comes from a little bit of instinct and a lot of practice. When you watch these briefings, they're a little bit their way. It's a little bit like a fencing match, where sometimes you're backing up, sometimes you're going forward, but you need to be successful. You have to understand, you know, what your opponent's going to do and, and figure out how you're going to both counter that. Again, it's something that's hard to explain, but it is definitely necessary.

Adam: You use the word opponent, and I thought that that was interesting, because as someone observing these press conferences, my perspective is that it seems like some of the relationships are adversarial, some of the relationships are friendly, and some of the relationships are somewhere in between. And I'd be curious to get your perspective on, number one, what the relationships are really like, and number two, your best advice for listeners on the topic of building winning relationships. How do you build relationships with friends that become even better relationships and how do you win over adversaries and make them become more friendly to you?

Joe: Yeah, well, you're exactly right on the relationships there. There are some that are very friendly, personally or ideologically. I guess, some that are very bad, and some that are in the middle, you know, good days, bad days. But when I say opponent, I don't mean you're opposed to the people in the room. When I say an opponent it is a bit of a briefing as a contest. The administration, and the President has something that they want to communicate to the public, the reporters often have a different opinion on what should be communicated that day. And that back and forth is what sort of decides what the news of the day is. So as a press secretary, I'm trying to stay on the issues that I think are important to us. And the press are trying to get me to open up on the issues that they think are important. That's what I mean by opponent. Some days you lose some days you win. In the business of communications, the single most important quality to build relationships with reporters is being honest. There is nothing that will kill a relationship, and then ultimately your reputation, more than being dishonest. And that means sometimes taking your lumps and sometimes understanding that a bad story will get written, even sometimes an undeserved bad story. Because you are stuck telling the truth and telling the truth every day. And in government, oftentimes, you just can't engage fully because things haven't developed enough, particularly around issues of national security. And you have to let a story pass that is not flattering or not good for your agenda, rather than lying about it. And paying, you know, a much higher price later.

Adam: On the topic of relationships, some of us have good relationships with tenants and with landlords, some are friendly, some are adversarial. But I don't think too many of us have had tenants or landlords who are former presidents and President Obama used to be your tenant, and you ultimately sold your house to them. So I wanted to know, firstly, what it was like to have former President Obama as a tenant and what it was like to ultimately do a deal with not only a former US president, but specifically with an icon like President Obama.

Joe: Yeah, that's a little bit of a funny story. The renting the house happened through intermediaries. We were getting ready to sell our house and somebody had the idea that they might want to buy it. So my wife contacted them and the staff, and a lot of staff people were involved. And then one Saturday morning, the First Lady and the two children came over and looked at it, they liked it. And you know, making a deal on the rental was very easy. It didn't involve any direct conversations with the President. When he decided he wanted to buy it, apparently, he tried to call me three or four times and I didn't recognize the number, so I didn't take the call. So I eventually got a call from a staff person saying, hey, the President's trying to reach you, would you please answer the phone? So the next time I did, and, you know, we had a really nice conversation. And then, you know, he said, the magic words, which were, you know, we don't really need real estate people, why don't you and I just come up with this, you know, we'll both save some money and, you know, every alarm went off in my head. And I basically said to him, you know, Mr. President, you are way smarter than me. I need real estate people here. And I didn't want to negotiate with him. And he got that. So his real estate person worked it out with my real estate person. And I think at the end of the day, everybody was happy.

Adam: Your people call my people and we'll make it work.

Joe: Yeah, I don't really have people but in this case, I was going to get them because there was no way I was going to negotiate, negotiate this person. As I knew that would cost me that would cost me a lot of money.

Adam: Joe, thank you for all of your great advice. And thank you for being part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Joe: Thanks for having me.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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