Interview with Former Secretary of State, George Shultz

Today, we got the privilege of interviewing Secretary George Shultz. Although the call started with some technical difficulties, the interview ended up being inspiring. He answered our questions with stories and talked about many different experiences that he had had throughout his life. What really stood out to me was when he talked about the importance of reflection. He talked about how it is very important to have experiences, but it is even more important to reflect and learn from them. He said that there are two kinds of people, those who learn from their experiences and those who don’t. Those who learn end up creating a view of the world that can only be created from these experiences. I found this idea to be inspiring and it is something I want to remind myself of in the future. Before the interview, I was nervous to see how it would work out, but now that the first one is over, I can’t wait to see how the other ones go.

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“Trust is the coin of the realm” – Secretary George Shultz

Secretary Shultz referred to this quote many times throughout our interview and it really stuck with me. The idea behind it is that if you can develop trust with someone then you can achieve whatever you want with them. Secretary Shultz connected all sorts of aspects of his life back to trust. He discussed instances in his career where he needed to be able to trust that someone would follow through when they made a promise or a deal because if he couldn’t then it was effectively useless for him to participate.

Secretary Shultz’s application of trust to his whole life was very inspiring for me as I was able to think about how I might personally apply trust to my own life. I reflected on different areas where if I could completely trust those around me it would have helped me and them both work more effectively to achieve our goals. Looking forward, it seems that trust will begin to play a bigger and bigger role in my life. When I eventually go to work at a job I will have a boss and coworkers, and being able to tell them that I am having some issue, or that I need something from them, will depend on them being able to trust me and vice versa. From a goal oriented mindset, trust is really the key to achieve and complete things as it allows you to be sure about what you are doing instead of just hoping that something gets done.