Finding Your Perfect Place with Bill Lesner

Today on the Servant Leadership Podcast for our 100th episode, we welcome my dad, Bill Lesner. Bill is a retired General Motors executive and longtime corporate board director. Over a 37-year career at General Motors spanning the United States, Japan, Australia, and Germany, Bill helped lead the team that won Cadillac the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award — the country's highest quality honor, presented by President George H.W. Bush. Since retiring, he's served on multiple corporate boards, mentored more than a thousand students, and spent the last decade helping build PWI behind the scenes. Join us for this special 100th episode where Bill talks about the calling that took our family to Japan, the three questions he uses to help people find what he calls their perfect place, and the lessons his own father taught him about putting faith, family, and friends first.

Timestamps:

00:00 Opening

00:39 Bill Lesner Intro

01:45 Welcome Bill Lesner

02:21 Bill's Journey - Early Years In Table Tennis

03:46 Beginnings At General Motors

06:37 Table Tennis At The Highest Level

09:50 The Great Comeback And The Waxed Floor

12:18 27-Year-Old Thrown Into Leadership

15:24 Being In Over Your Head

17:29 The Baldrige National Quality Award

21:02 Servant Leadership - Going Against The Grain

22:59 Expert On All Things Quality

26:14 The Japan Position

32:50 A Nightmarish Accident And Doubts

37:48 Servant Leadership - Being Called To Something

41:24 A Note To Change A Life

45:33 Leadership Abroad

48:33 Moving To Australia

56:28 Being Pushed To Move To Germany

1:02:02 Early Retirement And "What's Next"

1:07:53 Evolution Of Servant Leadership Over The Decades

1:09:48 The Birth Of PWI

1:17:08 Finding Your Perfect Place

1:21:57 The 3 Questions To Find Your Perfect Place

1:29:31 Father-Son Relationships

1:34:42 Focusing On The Whole Rather Than The Holes

1:38:50 Leadership Lessons For The Next Generations

1:44:42 Ten Rapid-Fire Questions

1:54:09 Importance Of A Servant Leadership Podcast

1:56:27 Closing

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Guest Intro Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/stan-town/clear-skies-ahead

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