Here is a brief excerpt from an interview of Bill George by Rick Tetzeli for the McKinsey & Com-any’s Blog .

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Former Medtronic CEO Bill George guides emerging business leaders through the management transition of a lifetime.

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Rick Tetzeli chats with Bill George, Harvard professor and former Medtronic CEO, about his new book, True North: Leading Authentically in Today’s Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition (Wiley, August 2022), co-written by Zach Clayton. In this follow-up to his original best seller, George issues new advice for maintaining what you stand for, your “true north,” amid the most disruptive era in recent history. To survive compounding crises and create long-term shareholder value, he says businesses need emotionally intelligent leaders who don’t just uphold their stakeholders’ principles but truly share them. An edited version of the conversation follows.

Why did you write this book now?

The reason is that we’re seeing a massive change in leadership from the baby boomers to the Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Zers. It’s a very different leadership style, moving away from command and control to authentic leadership, from self-interest to being focused on purpose, making a difference, and having an impact—managing not just with the head but, if you will, with the heart as well.

It’s kind of a shift from IQ leaders to EQ [emotional intelligence] leaders. You still need to be very smart, but it’s a combination of the two: head and heart. This is, I think, the largest shift we’ve ever seen in my lifetime by far, maybe all the way back to the Greatest Generation. It’s a big shift.

Today’s crises are demanding a different kind of leader. Many of the baby boomer leaders were trained in fairly stable times, relatively speaking, in the ‘60s through the ‘90s. The last 20 years have been one crisis after another, from 9/11 to COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and now high inflation, which we haven’t seen for 40 years—just massive changes. We need leaders who can adapt to that rapid rate of change and lead differently with people. The demands of people are totally different today. Employees now have agency.

Are today’s emerging leaders truly more authentic than leaders from the past?

You never can speak too generally about leaders, but I think today’s leaders are more authentic. I saw a lot of it in my “growing up” era: leaders leading with charisma—more for show—and with how they dressed.

People don’t care about that now; they want to know who you are. Are you the real deal? Can I trust you? If I can’t trust you, I’m not going to work with you, much less follow you. Millennials are very discerning about this. They’re quite rejecting of phonies.

Do you feel like the millennial search for authenticity is part of the reason we’re seeing so much job turnover right now?

Millennials today are trying to lead with a sense of purpose. If there’s no deeper purpose, and there’s no clarity about the values that are expected, they’re going to leave and find someplace where they can align their personal purpose with the company’s.

Millennials today are trying to lead with a sense of purpose. If there’s no deeper purpose, and there’s no clarity about the values that are expected, they’re going to leave and find someplace where they can align their personal purpose with the company’s.

Many baby boomers have dismissed the millennials and say, “Oh, they can’t handle this.” Well, the reason they’re leaving is that you haven’t given them clarity over how their purpose aligns with the company’s purpose. The companies that do that well are flourishing.

What is the relationship between developing your sense of purpose as a leader and developing your company’s purpose?

Before you can become an authentic leader, you have to know who you are. That’s your true north: your most deeply held beliefs, your values, the principles you lead by, and what inspires you. Where do you find fulfillment? Until you define your true north, you won’t know what your purpose is.

Your purpose is your “North Star”—that’s that constant point in your life that your true north points you to. You carry that purpose throughout your life, and you want to find a company where you can align with that, where you feel a sense of purpose inside the company. Today, emerging leaders are looking for a place where they can carry out their purpose with a company that’s also committed to purpose.

How have crises taught emerging leaders lessons on what not to do?

Crises are teaching leaders today that you can’t just rely on what you learned in business school, that everything is going to be long-range planning and process controls. Those things are important, but you have to be able to adapt very rapidly to changing conditions as a leader today.

I tell young leaders, ‘Go put yourself in a situation where you learn how to lead in crisis. Don’t just lead in stable times, because you’ll never know what to do when the big crisis comes along.’

I tell young leaders, “Go put yourself in a situation where you learn how to lead in crisis. Don’t just lead in stable times, because you’ll never know what to do when the big crisis comes along—like COVID-19, where everything shut down, and you had to adapt your entire business model like Corie Barry did at Best Buy.” When that happens, you have to change everything, so if you don’t have that sense of adaptability, if you’re just waiting for the stable times to return, you’re not going to get there.

Looking back over your career, does this seem like an extraordinarily unpredictable time to you?

There’s no question that this is a very disruptive and unpredictable time. I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire lifetime, where all these crises are converging and interacting.

You have to be clear about where you’re going. You never want to lose sight of your organization’s vision or its values, but you need to bring people in very close with you and have contingency plans and adapt rapidly to what’s happening in the marketplace. Today, it requires us to be much closer to the market on a rapid-change basis so that we know what our customers are thinking, we know what consumers are thinking, and we have a sense of their needs so we can tailor our goods, services, and offerings to their needs.

That takes a very different kind of leader. For the emerging leaders that I wrote this book for, it’s both a guide and an inspiration of how you lead through a crisis and how you stay true to what you believe and have the moral courage not to back off.

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Here is a direct link to the complete conversation.