Lead With Purpose, Not Power

What are the core tenets of leading people well?

Terry Fossum joins Richard Lowe (The Writing King) on Leaders and Their Stories for a high-energy, tenet-by-tenet conversation on leading people.

A Wall Street Journal number one bestselling author and former B-52 executive officer, Terry lays out his leadership tenets: purpose over power, believing in others, giving credit, and letting people fail so they can grow.

Terry Fossum is a Wall Street Journal number one bestselling author, a former executive officer over nuclear B-52 bombers during the Cold War, and a survival show winner. He teaches purpose-driven, people-first leadership.

For more conversations like this one, see the Leaders Hub.

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Full transcript of the interview follows.

Richard: It’s okay. Hello. This is Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghostwriting, Guru and I’m here in the leaders and their stories. Podcast. I’m with Terry L. Fossum, who was the executive officer for an entire group of nuclear B 52 bombers during the Cold War and Gulf War, one in business.

He built sales teams around the world and became part of the top fraction of 1% in the world. In the philanthropic world he earned numerous local and national awards. He’s the number one bestselling author in Wall Street Journal gave the number 2. Ted Talk in the world. Wow!

Is Los Angeles Magazine’s person of the year for 2024, and inside Success magazine’s the most impactful and visionary personality to look for in 2025 he’s head. He heads up the world class speakers helping people take their books or ideas to stages around the world, whether it’s Ted Talks or paid speaking gigs. Terry, that’s quite impressive.

A Bestselling Author With a Different Energy

Terry Fossum: I just can’t. I can’t. Can’t say sitting down long. That’s all, Richard. I gotta keep on moving. How you doing today.

Terry: Fantastic man. We’re having a lot of fun. We’re building a lot of cool stuff and kind of helping some people in the process. Hopefully.

Purpose Beats Any Mission Statement

Terry: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we were talking about what? What do we want to chat about today? You know, with leadership, there’s a lot of different directions. We can go. Pat Sitkins. He’s an author. really great businessman.

Great guy is coming out with a book this year. Just got a publisher and everything that I thought was a brilliant idea it’s called.

There are 2 types of people. and that’s it. And then he reached out to several of us and said, Would you write a chapter? And all they gave us was the title like, Sure you know, that’s a fun opportunity. So mine was. There are 2 types of leaders, those who develop followers which we think leadership is, or those who develop leaders.

And in that I’ve got for a book that I’m writing very, very slowly. And then another keynote. I developed my 10 points of how you develop leaders, and I thought that might be for the short time we’ve got here today. It might be really helpful for your audience to listen to 5 of the 1st points, because there are 5 things that seem intuitively obvious, and yet they’re screwed up so often. So would that be a good thing to talk about today? Would that be fun?

Why does purpose matter more than a mission statement?

Terry: Well, good, good. Because that’s what I was really hoping to talk about today. So let’s do it. Okay, again, it’s all about developing leaders, and all too often we think of the leader. He’s the one up on the top of the hill, or she, mind you, up on top of the hill.

You know. It’s all about them. They’re the leader, they’re our leader. Yes, I’m your leader. That’s not a leader. That’s a figurehead at best, that’s a boss, that’s a taskmaster. A true leader develops other leaders. And if you really want to build anything significant.

That’s exactly what you do. If you want to be a great parent, that’s what you do. You try to build leaders. If you want to be the head of any organization, any philanthropic organization, any business, any anything. If you want what’s really best for the organization and the people involved, you need to build leaders.

It ain’t about you. It’s not about your ego, it’s about them, and it’s about the organization. So let’s talk about them. And I know we’ve got about 15 min. I’ll watch the clock here out of respect for everybody’s time. The 1st one number one on the Creating Leaders list put the focus where it belongs.

And what do I mean by that? It’s not about you as the leader get this. And this is gonna hurt some feelings. And I’m okay with that. It’s not about Kpis. It’s not about mission statements. Nobody gives a rat’s patootie about your mission statement, your vision statement, all that crap.

Except for the people that wrote them, I guarantee to you the people who are the workers. They’re making it happen. They don’t care. You know what I’m talking about, Richard.

Terry: All these pillars. And yeah, Kpis, and we’re going to do charts and graphs. Nobody gives a rip. Okay. here’s the deal. People don’t care about that. Believe it or not, they’ll only work so hard for a paycheck, you know we when somebody gets hired, the 1st thing is well, how much does it pay?

It actually doesn’t mean that much to them. But listen, this is important. They’ll die for a cause. They’ll only work so much for a paycheck, but they’ll die for a cause. I’m prior military. Had some buddies do it. I tried to do it myself a couple of times.

Happily it didn’t work out so well for the enemy, but people will die for a cause. So what your job is, as the leader is to equate their job, their profession, your business to a cause. I was that I was keynoting at this this conference one business Leaders conference, and I asked the people there beforehand, What what does your company do.

and it was fascinating the answers I’d get. Well, we make aircraft parts, you know. We make shoes, we do groceries. We have the biggest conglomerate of blah blah. Nobody cares. Okay. Richard. Patagonia’s mission statement that people do care about. We’re in business to save our home planet.

It’s not. We make really cool outdoor gear, or anything like we are. Do you think that their people can get on board with that.

Richard: I think so. I think so. I think they’d enjoy that.

What can leaders learn from Harley-Davidson’s purpose statement?

Terry: Harley Davidson more than building machines. We stand for the timeless pursuit of adventure and their key phrase, freedom for the soul. Now, that’s something people get on board with right.

Richard: Well, I’m a ghostwriter, and what I do is I say I write a book that’s from your heart and your passion. I don’t write just a normal book. I’m not one of those by the numbers books. It’s not going to be all techy.

It’s going to be from your heart. and it’s that’s what I do. And it’s the same kind of thing.

Terry: Yeah, absolutely. And if a boss can understand the building, that passion inside of somebody, a leader can understand building that passion inside of somebody. If you light a fire under somebody, they’re going to stomp it out. The second you walk away, but if you build a fire inside of them it’ll burn forever in scouting.

I’m a big boy Scouter now. They call it scouting America. Been all my life I’ve been a leader president of the Board of directors for our area, and what I did is I took all these Kpis and mission statements and pillars and all that, and I threw them away.

So we have one job. We turn boys and girls into honorable men and women. That’s all we do. That’s what we do period. That’s our bottom line. And when I went out there to fire people up, I said, kids need scouting. and our community needs leaders. It’s all you need to know. And son of a gun. We grew funny how that works, isn’t it?

Richard: It’s all right. Well, that’s number one. What’s number 2?

Why should leaders believe in their people?

Terry: Number 2 on your creating leaders. Dial believe in others so they can believe in themselves. You know it’s amazing to me how many theoretical leaders smash people down. You’re not doing this right. You’re so stupid. You’re terrible. You can’t do this. I don’t even know why I’m paying you. It happened. It happens all the time, doesn’t it, Richard?

Terry: And and and so, therefore you performed like merely an employee, didn’t you.

The Power of Being Seen

Terry: Bingo Bingo! I’ve been absolutely amazed at looking somebody in the eyes, and it might be somebody I just met for the 1st time ever. That’s part of one of my companies, or something like that. I look in the eyes and go. You know what.

I just want to make sure you understand something. I believe in you. I believe in you.

Terry: Suddenly their world changes because somebody believes in them. I was on a survival show, actually representing all the Boy Scouts of America, and we’re all. It was 10 survival experts teamed up against each other while dragging along a complete novice, and we’d never even camped out in their backyard before.

Terry: Right. And mine was a online video gamer. We’ll just leave it at that great gal, sharp gal, strong gal, but novice. And what I did is I just looked for reasons to praise. That’s a big one. Guys write it down. Look for reasons to praise anytime. She did anything right.

I jumped on it. You know there’s a lot of fears out there for a non survivalist when you’re in the flipping jungle, and things aren’t so nice. So I just man, I’m really impressed with how you’re overcoming your fears. It’s really amazing to me. She overcame more of her fears.

I love how hard you work. I think you’re one of the hardest working partners out here. She works harder, I said. We don’t have any novices in camp anymore. We’re all survivalists now on international TV. You see her expression change. You see her change. Believe in other people so they can believe in themselves. That’s number 2. Anything to add on to that, Richard.

Richard: Yeah, I think that. Well, that’s 1 reason why I like alliances. And another group called Metal. So much is they’re very supportive, and they believe in their members, and well, like I was out last Tuesday. I was there for a little while, and I had to leave.

A friend of mine passed away over the weekend, and David, the leader of alliances, sent me an email saying, What’s up? I didn’t see you. I was worried about you so I told him. Nobody does that.

Why do employees crave recognition at work?

Terry: That leads us right into the next one which the tenant is, give credit where credit’s due, but it also goes into. We all crave recognition, whether you believe it or not. We all. But he just recognized you. He didn’t say you’re great here.

You’re the employee of the month, and he kind of that certificate suitable for? No, no, he showed you that you matter, and that mattered to you, didn’t it?

Terry: Yeah, yeah, absolutely give credit where credit’s due. We all crave recognition.

Richard: Shoot. So I’m I’m in the military. And I was, yeah. I was the.

What happens when a boss takes credit for the team’s work?

Terry: I was the executive officer for an entire group of nuclear B 52 bombers during the Cold War at this period of time. and I had been the adjutant for this squadron. 325th Bombardment Squadron.

Somebody took over from me when I moved up into the the headquarters building, and I heard from one of the guys who used to work for me, man Terry, this guy’s taking all the credit for what we’re doing, and of course they’re all feeling like crap now, my boss, the Colonel was a let’s just say he was a really tough man.

He’s a really tough man, so I told my sergeant. You know the type.

Terry: Yeah, he’s he’s kind of a he’s kind of a screamer. People were afraid of him. now. So I told my sergeant, who had called me up and said, Man, this guy’s really, you know, taking all the credits. Tell you what I got this. Come up to come up to the office 4 o’clock today, 1,600.

So he gets in there. and then I call up image that took my place. I said, All right, Lieutenant. Colonel C. Is pissed. He’s pissed. You need to get up here right now, right now, I mean, what’s he pissed about? You? Get up here right now, and he comes up there.

Okay, he’s waiting for you in his office. So the lieutenant knocks on the door. Command. marches straight ahead, cuts a left corner toward the desk, stops right in front of the desk, salutes smartly. Sir lieutenant X. Reporting is ordered, sir. and he just hears laughing from behind the desk, and he looks down, and it’s the sergeant it’s the sergeant that he was taking credit from, and I walked in and said, Lieutenant, never take credit for anybody else’s work again.

That lieutenant’s a full bird, Colonel, now, and he still tells that exact same story that’s never take credit. Give credit where it’s due.

Richard: Yeah, I had. I had a boss who was I started in the company. It was a startup, and he said. I said, I’m putting in all these hours, you know. And he said, Well, keep putting in the hours and support us, and we’re growing now.

And when we finally, if you bring in some big business, you know we you’ll get stock, and you’ll get promoted and all that kind of stuff. Well, I brought in our $100,000 client, I mean, we were.

Richard: And I went to my boss and said, Well, you know, a year ago you promised this, and my boss said, No, you get a salary.

Richard: Do you think I worked 80 HA week after that.

Richard: Basically taking credit for everything. And he was getting the stock options. He was getting all this. It was implied that he was taking credit. He he never got anything extra for me after that again, unless it was an emergency or something. I mean, I was done.

Richard: That was the end of that, and he never even knew, because I wasn’t going to tell him.

Terry: No, no, you didn’t have the respect for him to tell him.

Richard: Totally totally lost. Respect. Keeping your word is vital.

Should you delegate authority along with responsibility?

Terry: Yeah, yeah, I give credit where it’s due, or you tear people down. It’s all about building people up number 4. If you delegate responsibility, delegate authority.

Richard: Oh, I’ve so I had a boss who he! We had to go to him to get the $5 book approved, you know, purchasing a book. I mean he had to approve everything. and it was just infuriating, because I was at a level where I mean I was at a level where I should have had the authority. I was a Vp.

Let Them Fail

Terry: Yeah. But it’s hard to stick to sometimes as a boss, because you need to understand. That means they’re going to make decisions that are different than yours, but you gave them the responsibility. You have to give them the authority they might screw up sometimes. That’s okay. That’s part of their development as a leader.

You’ve got to let them do it. It’s too easy as the the boss to take that back. Oh, no, no, no, no! But I mean, you need to do it like that. Nope, you just show that you’re not a person of your word, and you tore them down instead of building them up. You’re you’re developing followers. You’ve got to develop leaders.

Why should leaders let employees fail?

Richard: Them fail, you have to let them fail. That’s the same thing with kids. When you have kids, you have today’s mindset of having a participation awards. It just drives me bad. like, oh, you were there? Yeah, big deal. Did you actually do the work?

Did you? Did you run the race, or do the wrestling match, or do the baseball, or whatever it is? You know the science experiments.

Richard: Didn’t do those. Why are you getting an award? Yeah. participation awards are the most ridiculous thing. Well, not the most ridiculous thing. But they’re there, high up in the list.

How do you get employees to make their own decisions?

Terry: Just like, you know. And that’s funny, because you say that because that leads us into the final one, push them out of the nest, and adults are nothing but old children.

Terry: Yeah, yes. adults, we all are. We all whine, we all cry. We all want to get our way. We’re nothing but old children, and especially men when we’re sick. Let’s face it. It’s true. Sorry if you get emails about that. Just forward them on to not forward them on to me. I don’t want to hear, but.

Push Them Out of the Nest

Terry: Yeah, there you go. But here’s the deal, folks. You’ve got to push them out of the nest. People will want to follow you. They’re going to want to ask you what they should do. What I do is I don’t answer them. I answer them with a question. Well, what do you think you ought to do here?

I want them to at least come up with some potential solutions, and I’m going to keep asking questions. So here’s 1 of the big tenets of leadership is, ask questions of them. Well, I was wondering about this, then how would that work out? Well, this would happen, and then what?

And so keep asking the questions. So they learn they can come up with the solutions, and often what I’ll do is if they keep doing that man. I can’t wait to find out what you do about that. That’s going to be awesome.

Terry: Yeah. And the only time I’m going to come down on them is if they keep making the same mistake, or if they don’t try. you know, and to begin with, I’ll do velvet hammer, you know.

But if they keep making the same mistake and they’re not learning, yeah, we’re going to have to have a discussion at that point.

It’s still going to be a discussion about why didn’t you? What’s going on? Okay, you need to cut that out. And then that’s a whole different podcast for different time.

Give People Room to Grow

Terry: Yeah, give them the opportunity to go out and screw up, which is another one of the tenants, actually. But I think we’re about out of time.

Richard: Oh, we can go a little bit further. If you don’t mind. Sure. Yeah. When I was my 1st job I worked for a World war. 2. Nazi, Hardcore, Nazi, U-boat, commander.

Richard: He was brought in with by operation paperclip, which was, they brought in a whole bunch of Germans, like 80,000 of them, to resell them in the United States, and he became the owner of the liquor store. and I stayed there for 2 years. and I stayed there.

Everybody else was less than a month, and I asked my boss just before he closed the store.

Why was it here so long? And he said, Because you’re competent. and that was a big lesson, being competent trumps everything. Now, what’s competence? And 1st of all, incompetence isn’t necessarily an insult. We’re all incompetent things. If I’m if I’m going to go, do brain surgery, I’m going to be incompetent as hell about it.

I’m not going to do a good brain surgery. I’m an incompetent brain surgeon. Don’t give me a knife and expect me to carve. Open your head, but you know, give me an assembly language program because I’m an Assembly language programmer. I can code that like you don’t. Tomorrow give me something to write.

I can write like No. Tomorrow I’m competent at what I’m competent at. So when I hire somebody to do something, I expect them to be competent at their job. Now, if they’re incompetent at their job. I’m going to talk to them and figure out. Why do they need more schooling?

Do? Was it over their head? Did they not get enough support from me. Do they not have enough budget? You know what was the underlying problem? And let’s fix that. It’s not attack, saying, Oh, my God, you’re an incompetent idiot it right which might be true.

Terry: But I don’t know if that’s exactly true. But yeah.

Why should you surround yourself with people more successful than you?

Richard: There’s a guy named Larry Winget. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He’s a coach.

Richard: From back in the nineties, and 2 thousands, he wrote a book called People are Idiots, and I can prove it.

Richard: Great title, and the book has that tone through it. He says, right in the beginning, if you don’t like being spoken to. you know in this way. You don’t read this book, and one of the things he says. That’s why I like alliances so much. And my other group metal is.

The 2 groups I’m in is. if you want to succeed, hang out with people who are higher up the ladder than you, who are better than you because they’ll pull you up.

Richard: Don’t hang out with people who are the same, or less than you on whatever judgments you’re using. So if you want to quit smoking. Don’t hang out with smokers.

Richard: Let’s put it real, simply because they’re going to drag you right back in. If you’re trying to quit drinking, don’t hang, go and go to the bars. Yeah. And if you’re trying to get rich, don’t hang out with poor people. Hang out with rich people. Guess what they’re going to try and make you rich.

Surround Yourself With the Right People

Terry: I think that goes for ethics as well, you know. If you want to be an ethical person, don’t don’t hang out with unethical people.

Why do people only follow leaders they trust?

Terry: Right right, and people will only follow you as from the leadership standpoint, if they feel they can trust you, because if you’ll screw somebody else. You’ll screw them. It’s the way it is, man.

Why is the B-52 bomber still flying after seventy years?

Richard: Yep. So I wanted to ask you one more question looking over your your introduction. So you were the executive officer for an entire group of B 52 bombers. What do you think of the reset they’re doing now? I mean, I’d imagine this bombers over almost a century old.

Terry: Well, and even when when I was in there the bird itself was older than than many of the crew dogs. Yeah, you know. Yeah. But but it’s important to understand that. Yeah, the the airframe itself. But it’s been retooled so much. It’s different engines, different electronics, different everything.

What I love is that there are now all female crew, dogs, cruise. B, 52 crews. And again, you can send me emails if you want on that. And I just don’t care. I’ll stick by that. And then I’ve got all sorts of jokes, I could say. But you know the bottom line is.

it’s fantastic. It’s absolutely fantastic. What’s going on? Women, we’re switching completely. Women have been in combat for more years than the United States have been alive. So I’m okay with that. And again, somebody can’t be if they don’t want to be. But I’m excited about it. And yeah, it’s a great airframe.

There’s no doubt beautiful thing about 8 engines on 4 pods. So it’s 2 engines per pod, is it? And I, you know, of course, I stay away from classified information.

Terry: It can. It can take a lick and keep on ticking man, because most of the the missiles are going to be heat seekers, so they’re going to hit one of those pods.

The pod is away from the wing a bit so it can be taken out and still have a chance of coming on home or completing the mission.

Richard: It’s a wonderful airframe. I love it. Obviously it’s more of a standoff weapon than the stealth bombers that go in there in the thick of things, because it’s a little compared to modern bombers is a little slow, and you can see it like, Hey, there it is, you know, but.

Terry: And it’s it’s kind of funny that you say that, because again I’ve been on, you know, bombing runs with fighters simulated again. This is during war exercises in this case coming after us, and it’s amazing what those crew dogs can do with that airframe. But it’s a long range bomber.

And again, I’m just trying to talk. Make sure I’m not saying anything and missions different than when I was in. We’d gunners in in the buffs big, ugly, fat flyers when I was in, but they took those out during my period of time there. Because of that.

It’s going to be more of a standoff airframe. But when you can drop a whole lot of 500 pounders from way way up in the sky, or you can launch outcomes here, launch cruise missiles from a long distance away. Yeah, you don’t have to get that close, and the other birds can go in and play that.

But it’s also warfare is changing significantly even as we speak. It’s a whole different way of waging war than it was back back when I was in.

Terry: So I’ll tell you a quick story, and it doesn’t have that much to do with leadership for all the listeners. I’ll tell you that right now. But it’s a fun, interesting story, at least to me. It’s because I’m old and I tell stories. So we’re at the last ever strategic air command, bombing competition, the last one ever.

And so I was there at the end of sac and we come into the tarmac and we’re taxiing up. and we look over next to us to our taxi spot. and there’s a Russian bear bomber. This is our Nemesis. This is this is the airframe that we have studied.

And again, that that’s our entire Nemesis in the world. And we’re parking next to the flippant airplane. And we were having. We’re we’re all I mean. Our jaws were on the floor. We had no idea this was happening, and when we had the banquet for the last ever.

red flag exercise for strategic air command. We had our new comrades there that we’re all toasting a new friendship to, and I’ll just say that not everybody was on board with that. There we go. That’s just an old war story.

Is a leader always leading, even in small actions?

Terry: You know. Yeah, you’re leading. You’re absolutely leading every single day, every single action, every single word, every single subtle nuance. You’re leading. The question is, are you leading to the good? Or are you leading to the bad? Because everything you’re doing in front of anybody at all?

You’re leading them. They’re picking up on your cues. They’re watching you. So it comes as both encouragement. Whether you think you’re a leader or not, you are, you are. You’re influencing people. Therefore you’re a leader, but also words of warning. In that. Be careful.

because everything you say makes an impact everything you do makes an impact. Everybody that you’re anywhere near you’re impacting them. So take your perhaps new role. But take your role as a leader seriously, not just in business, not just in philanthropy, not just what you might think it’d be.

but with your children, with your family, with every single moment of your lives. That’s what I got for you, Richard.

Terry: Thank y’all. Thank you, Richard.

Quotable moments