Podcast: Greg Boyce
Sharon Fiehler
Hello everyone. I'm Sharon Fiehler with ABC to CEO. Thank you for joining us for another podcast in the Preparing for the Possibility series. Today with us is Greg Boyce. Greg has had a very amazing career and has a lot of advice on becoming a CEO. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Greg's career spanned 40 years. A great majority of it was with the company Kennecott Mining in Rio Tinto. In 2003, Greg was in the London office of Rio Tinto and changed companies, taking a position with Peabody Energy. He moved back to the US and in a few years became CEO and shortly thereafter chairman of the board. Greg retired in 2015, but has been working on several boards, including the multibillion dollar international boards of Marathon Oil and Newmont Mining. Welcome Greg, thanks for being with us!
Greg Boyce
Thank you, Sharon. It's good to be here.
Sharon Fiehler
A lot of people who listen to us are interested in whether or not you ever thought you were going to be a CEO when you were growing up or early in your career. When did you think, maybe I'm going to go after that role?
Greg Boyce
That's an interesting question. I have to reflect on it a little bit, but I would say that I knew at an early age that I wanted to have a successful career. At that point, I didn't know exactly what that meant. It wasn't until I got into the first five years of my mining career that I began to envision the possibility that I could continue to progress through these organizations. Ultimately, I began to think I could run a company like this one of these days. I would say it was probably early to mid career before it really cemented in my mind that the CEO goal, running the company, being the chief executive, was something that I really wanted to pursue. I wanted to see if I could put my own imprint on the organization, both in terms of strategy as well as the people and its success.
Sharon Fiehler
We’re trying to have young women think about this early in their career. Do you feel things would have been different if you had thought about this when you were in high school or college?
Greg Boyce
Back when I got out of college, as a young new employee, you really didn't participate in the development of your career path. That's completely different today. Today, companies and new employees have a much better collaboration around what their career path is going to be and what some of their future jobs are going to be. That wasn't the case back then. I think if I had really set my sights before I started working on being a CEO, I might have derailed myself. I may not have accepted some of the opportunities that were offered to me that, at the time, didn't seem like they were the CEO track. But what I didn't know was this: Think about a successful CEO. They really know a little bit about everything, but they're not really experts at anything. The more variety of roles I got, the better preparation I had to become a CEO. If I had originally thought I was designing my career, I probably wouldn't have taken a lot of those roles, and that would have been a mistake.
Sharon Fiehler
So really, one piece of advice is: If somebody you trust suggests you take a role, you should take it.
Greg Boyce
Absolutely. I can think of a number of roles I was offered and ultimately took. In every circumstance, it was way out of my line. I'm a mining engineer, but at one point in time, they asked me to be the director of public and government affairs. What does that have to do with being an engineer? I had absolutely no training for it. Ultimately, we'll get to another point I want to talk about, which is how you approach roles, particularly when they seem like they're coming out of left field.
Sharon Fiehler
That's good advice for people to think about. Not every role may seem like the role you had in mind, but you don't always know how it might be helpful later.
Greg Boyce
In the first four years of my career, I think I had over 18 different positions. Was I not good enough to hold a position? Well, that wasn't the case. Their philosophy was to move all of their young talent around so they could have this diverse set of exposures. And then, of course, as you started to move up in the organization, you were in roles longer. You could learn from your experiences, and, in some cases, learn from your mistakes, but hopefully see the positive changes from your impact in that role. That continued with your progression up through the organization.
Sharon Fiehler
One thing you experienced was that you had to be open to relocations.
Greg Boyce
You had to be open to relocations, and at the end of the day, you had to value the experience of people you were working with. I graduated with a lot of engineers. We all started at the same operation, and within about a year, 75% of them were no longer there. One of their fatal flaws was to think, I've got a degree. Mr. Miner has been here for 20 years, and you don't know anything, but you’re going to tell him how to do it. In any work environment, that's a recipe for disaster. You have to recognize that your degree only gives you the ability to get your foot in the door and get started. It gives you some technical background and some training. That is going to be invaluable, but you have to rely on people for the rest of your career. Think about a CEO. The CEO is not doing things. The CEO is relying on people in the net and the team that they build around them to help drive the strategy and the success of the enterprise. Whether it's their direct reports or all the way down the organization to what we call the front line in the mining industry. It's that ability to blend your educational experience with those leadership skills of being able to learn from and rely on all the talent that's in your organization.
Sharon Fiehler
When I talk to people but being a leader, one of the most important things to remember is to look behind you. Is anybody following? You have to be attentive to realize that you don't know everything and depend on a lot of people. When they feel like you've got their best interest and the company's best interest in mind, they follow because they trust you.
Greg Boyce
If you just break it down and you think to yourself, if you stay in every role until you are a master of that universe, you're going to run out of time before becoming a CEO. You have to get what you can, whether it's in six months, a year, two years, and then you have to be ready for that next opportunity.
Sharon Fiehler
Do you think anything back in high school and college prepared you in any way? Not that you were thinking of becoming a CEO back then, but were there things that you did experience as you had roles you took on?
Greg Boyce
I think beyond the classroom, it was sports and/or club activities, particularly in high school. If you can develop and work yourself into leadership positions, whether it's on the student council or vice chair of a club, you see what it is to work with a diverse set of personalities and to bring people together for a common objective. That's leadership, and that's something you can begin to learn. Kids can learn it on the playground at that early age. It's not just formal learning. Once I got to college, it was a bit more of the same. In my case, I joined a fraternity and got into some of the leadership in the fraternity. In my college discipline, there were opportunities to always raise your hand and pick a new assignment, whether it was a short term team activity or a formal club to be involved with. All of those things build up leadership talents. They don't really teach those skill sets purely in an academic setting.
Sharon Fiehler
Sometimes it is learning by experience. Until you've been there, done it, you really don't even understand the words if you read them in a textbook.
Greg Boyce
In all of life, you're going to make mistakes. The question is, what do you learn in any particular situation to be able to reflect and say, I could have handled that a little differently, or, I might have approached it in a different way, or, if I had brought somebody else in earlier on, the outcome might have been different? Those are invaluable experiences. It's better to learn them in school than once you're on the job.
Sharon Fiehler
Good point. If you look back, what kind of experience do you wish you had that could have possibly better prepared you for becoming a CEO? Is there something where you think, if I could have only done this, I would have been more comfortable? It wasn't like you were lacking variety.
Greg Boyce
I was fortunate to have a tremendous amount of variety. Every time I went into a role, I became a student of that role. I would bring in people that helped me understand what the role should be and what the aspects are, both technical and leadership-wise, of critical success around those roles. That was a great experience. Areas where you don't naturally get to do that, at least for me, are the financial arena and the legal arena, because those are pretty specific fields. But if I had had the opportunity to spend more time and learn more of it – the 101 of legal or the 101 of finance – that would have helped as well.
Sharon Fiehler
What about young women starting their careers? What might you suggest they be attentive to early in their careers?
Greg Boyce
A couple of things. First, be careful not to get locked into a particular role or typecast in any role for too long a period of time. That would be a bit of a red flag for me. We always tried to make sure that all of our employees, particularly our female employees, had opportunities to get a diverse set of experiences. The second part: My experience was that the women in our organizations and in other organizations were a bit more perfectionists than their male counterparts. They'll go into a role and as they see an opportunity to move, it's their innate desire to be able to say that they absolutely have the abilities to successfully do that role before they'll raise their hand and say they want it. Men just raise their hand no matter what, whether they actually have the experience and the capability or not.
Sharon Fiehler
I wonder if it has to do with risk taking?
Greg Boyce
It might be risk taking. It might be their experiences early on where they feel like they didn't do a role justice because maybe they didn't feel like they were prepared. I can't put my finger on it other than to say, my experience is that women would raise their hands less, in general, for a different role or the next level up. What I heard in conversations was: You know, I don't have any experience there. Well, that's the point, we want you to get that experience. As long as you go into that role knowing that you don't have any experience and you surround yourself with people that do, you'll learn what the role entails, and then you use your leadership skills to make that role a success.
Sharon Fiehler
That's very good advice, I think that's probably true. In the spirit of full disclosure, I worked for you. When I talked to many women at an early point in their career, they would say: I want to get ahead, I want to get ahead. And the men were the same, but as they got a little bit more experienced, the men would start saying, I want to be in that role. And the women would still be saying, I want to get ahead. It's this whole idea of believing that you can move ahead and can get something that's much bigger than maybe I'm thinking of right now.
Greg Boyce
Yes, you have to go into it with a fundamental belief that there is no role out there that you can't take on, learn how to do it, learn how to do it well, and leave a positive imprint. And as long as you carry that confidence and that belief in your skill sets, raise your hand. You're going to go out and promote yourself as the person that ought to have this next opportunity you want. That'll keep you from getting stuck for any long period of time in a role that's not really giving you the development.
Sharon Fiehler
That's great advice. What about advice to adults who are involved in the lives of young girls, I'm even talking about preteen girls. Are there things that you believe can be helpful to get the right kind of mindset started at a young age?
Greg Boyce
I think any time as children are growing up, you can appropriately get them out of their comfort zone. They have to learn from that. They have to begin to learn who they can rely on, and it may not be just their two or three friends. We moved around a bit, and one of our relocations was to London. We took our young daughters over there. They had to make all new friends. That's part of life's experience, but at that point, you're completely out of your comfort zone.
Sharon Fiehler
It may be the same language, but it's a different culture.
Greg Boyce
And completely new people. I'm not saying you have to pick families up and move them all around. I would say look for those experiences, whether it's where you travel on family vacations, the sports or social events that your kids are participating in when they're growing up. Of course, at the end of the day, it's being a role model. We all know that kids are like sponges. They watch and they see the dynamics. If parents emulate leadership characteristics in their own circle, their kids are going to see that. I remember being very young, and my uncle loved to work on cars. My mom and dad told me that of all the kids, I was the only one out there. He used to say that I used to pester him: What are you doing? What do you do in there? What's that for? It was not only curiosity, but at an early age realizing that somebody older than me had this experience that I could learn from. Those types of experiences kids can have growing up
Sharon Fiehler
So as a parent, kids asking you questions is a very thoughtful thing because they see you as somebody with answers.
Greg Boyce
That's exactly right, and of course, now that my daughters are much older, it's nice that they still ask questions every once in a while.
Sharon Fiehler
I'm sure that's true. What haven't we talked about that you'd like to add to our conversation here? We touched upon a number of things, but is there something else you would like to share with our audience here today?
Greg Boyce
Anything we can do to help young girls develop confidence at an early age is important: exposing them to these life experiences, really encouraging lifelong learning. Almost every time I went into a role, I had to learn. I had to rely on all this experience that was around me. If you really are going to move up in an organization, you would have experienced this yourself. A significant amount of the people you lead are older than you. So when you talk about leadership, it's not just leading your peers, but you're leading, in some cases, generational differences, and that's a different thing to learn as well. It's important to really teach kids the value of experiences, even though they may be uncomfortable. I talked earlier about being put into the public affairs department. I had to have media training. I'm a mining engineer, and I went down to the studio for media training. Then all of a sudden, I'm being interviewed on the nightly news. I was terrified, but it was the job they asked me to do.
Sharon Fiehler
It's just this whole idea, and some of it is stretching yourself. Sometimes you have to feel uncomfortable to know you're learning something new. It may not feel good, but it doesn't necessarily mean something's wrong if you're feeling uncomfortable. It just means you're learning.
Greg Boyce
Learn from all your mistakes, because that's a great way to learn. Don't beat yourself up over mistakes. Everybody makes them, and anybody you're working for or working with says, oh, I've never made a mistake – well, that's not really true. If you're afraid to make mistakes, then you're afraid to advance. You just have to be able to take that risk and move on.
Sharon Fiehler
You have a wealth of experiences, and I'm sure many people are going to enjoy what you had to say here.
Greg Boyce
Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it and look forward to maybe coming back.
Greg joined Peabody Energy in 2003 as Chief Operating Officer, assumed responsibility for the company as Chief Executive in 2006 and Chairman and CEO from 2007-2015. During his tenure, Peabody dramatically improved its U.S. safety performance and increased revenues and earnings. The company significantly expanded its global footprint and created a substantial Australian operating platform to serve higher-growth Asian markets. Recognition during his tenure included more than 225 major global safety, environmental and financial awards and the company was named the 2014 Global Energy Company of the year.
Boyce trained as a mining engineer and has extensive management, operating and engineering experience globally during a four-decade career in the mining and energy industry. Greg is the only CEO to be named among the top chief executives for both the energy and mining sectors, garnering recognition from the Institutional Investor magazine and the Global Energy Awards where he was named 2014 CEO of the Year. In addition, Boyce has been recognized as one of America’s Most Valuable CEOs by the Chief Executive magazine. In acknowledgment of his leadership in the global mining sector Greg was inducted into the Mining Foundation of the Southwest’s American Mining Hall of Fame in 2012.
Prior to joining Peabody he served as the Chief Executive Officer – Energy for the international mining company Rio Tinto with responsibility for a worldwide coal and uranium portfolio. Other prior positions include President and Chief Executive Office of Kennecott Energy Company and President of Kennecott Mineral Company.
Greg holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mining Engineering from the University of Arizona and an Advanced Management Program degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business. He served as the Chairman of the Coal Industry Advisory Board of the International Energy Agency and is a former Chairman of the National Mining Association. Greg served on the board of directors of the U.S.-China Business Council and was a member of The Business Council and Business Roundtable. He is a member of the board of directors of Marathon Oil Corporation and Newmont Mining Corporation. In addition he is the Chairman of the Board of The Lowell Institute for Mineral Resources at the University of Arizona and a board member of the Heard Museum in Phoenix Arizona.