The Trillion Dollar Coach, gives detailed stories from people who worked with Bill Campbell and these bring alive how Bill pushed, prodded and pulled the leaders of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit. Bill gave time and built trust which allowed the burgeoning of deep relationships with Silicon Valley visionaries, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. Bill spent long walks every Sunday with Jobs, for example, confirming to me the power of how to use a coach for your sounding board and weekly planning.. Bill also used truthful feedback, delivered privately but with a hug to lessen the sting. Hopefully, one day we can get back to that physical style of support.

The chapter on boards was particularly useful to me. If you are a board director who does not read the materials prior to a meeting, asks superfluous questions and likes the sound of your own voice, you would not last with Bill Campbell. There were a great many more concepts generously shared by Eric Schmidt and others which I valued. Bill can be seen on many YouTube videos too, but this book was well worth the time to dig into details about Bill’s coaching, and to think about how you would have listened and applied his gruff guidance.