Speaker 1: Pushkin. When you first think of what constitutes a leader,
Speaker 1: you might picture presidents, generals, and CEOs. But if you
Speaker 1: reflect a bit, it quickly becomes clear that many of
Speaker 1: us occupy some sort of leadership role. Parents and caregivers
Speaker 1: they're leaders. So are college professors and coaches. Even if
Speaker 1: you're not officially a manager on your job, you're probably
Speaker 1: more experienced than at least one of your coworkers. And
Speaker 1: if that less senior person looks to you for guidance
Speaker 1: and guess what, you're a leader to. Given that so
Speaker 1: many of us are being looked up to in at
Speaker 1: least some capacity, we should probably put more thought into
Speaker 1: becoming the best leaders we can be, which is why
Speaker 1: today's episode will be exploring how to inspire the people
Speaker 1: around you, and I've lined up a particularly inspiring guest.
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Adam Glinsky. I'm a professor Columbia Business School,
Speaker 2: and I'm the author of an Inspire, The Universal Path
Speaker 2: for Leading Yourself and Others.
Speaker 1: Adam is one of the top business school professors in
Speaker 1: the world. His research has inspired the bosses of huge
Speaker 1: corporations and fast global organizations. But Adam has argued that
Speaker 1: the lessons that applied to folks leading tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of employees equally applied to the rest of us, and
Speaker 1: so Adam is passionate about making all of us more
Speaker 1: inspiring leaders. But what sparked his interest in this topic.
Speaker 2: Partially, it started because I was teaching at a business
Speaker 2: school and I was asked to start teaching the Leadership
Speaker 2: and Organizations class and just really loved teaching the class
Speaker 2: and sort of thinking about leadership and the skills that
Speaker 2: leaders needed. And I got a lot of opportunities also
Speaker 2: interact with leaders, CEOs, presidents, a variety of different members
Speaker 2: of organizations, nonprofits, and just started learning a little bit
Speaker 2: more about their stories but also the type of challenges
Speaker 2: they faced as a leader, and that I think really
Speaker 2: got me engaged.
Speaker 1: And one of the challenges you talk about in your
Speaker 1: new book is this importance of being inspired. Why does
Speaker 1: inspiration matter so much for leaders?
Speaker 2: The key sort of empirical foundation of all the research
Speaker 2: I've done on leadership is just asking thousands of people
Speaker 2: across the globe a very simple question, which is, tell
Speaker 2: me about a leader that inspired you. And then also
Speaker 2: I asked people to tell me about another type of
Speaker 2: leader that also changed you inside, but instead of filling
Speaker 2: you with this well spring of hope and possibility, they
Speaker 2: filled you with a seething cauldron of rage and infuriation.
Speaker 2: And I think that asking that question all over the
Speaker 2: world about a leader that inspired you and infuriating you know,
Speaker 2: really led me to have I think, three really profound
Speaker 2: and fundamental insights about leadership and why this topic of
Speaker 2: inspiration is so important. The first thing I discovered very
Speaker 2: quickly and starting to ask these people is that the
Speaker 2: inspiring leader and the inferiting leader are mirror images of
Speaker 2: each other, courageous versus cowardly, generous versus selfish. Right, They're
Speaker 2: almost the exact opposites of each other. So they kind
Speaker 2: of exist on this continuum. Now, this continual itself is
Speaker 2: made up of three universal factors, and so one of
Speaker 2: the most striking things about my research is that there's
Speaker 2: not a single characteristic of an inspiring leader that isn't
Speaker 2: mentioned in every single country in the world. And so
Speaker 2: one of the things about being this universal, and going
Speaker 2: back to your original question, like why does this matter,
Speaker 2: is it's like it's really embedded in the human brain.
Speaker 2: It's really part of the cognitive architecture of the mind
Speaker 2: to really be sensitive to leaders on the one hand,
Speaker 2: and how leaders impact us on the other. The second
Speaker 2: big insight, besides being sort of these three universal factors
Speaker 2: along this continuum, is those three are the universal factors
Speaker 2: because they each satisfy a fundamental human need. One of
Speaker 2: the factors is what I call visionary sort of how
Speaker 2: we see the world, and that satisfies the fundamental human
Speaker 2: need for meaning and understanding. And then another factor which
Speaker 2: I call exemplar sort of how we are in the
Speaker 2: world right that really satisfies the fundamental human need for
Speaker 2: protection and passion. And the third factors being a great
Speaker 2: mentor how we interact with others, and that satisfies the
Speaker 2: fundamental human needs for a sense of belonging and a
Speaker 2: sense of status or feeling respected by others. And then
Speaker 2: the third insight is that we're not born as inspiring
Speaker 2: people or inferiting people. It's our current behavior that inspires
Speaker 2: or infuriates. That means that each and every one of
Speaker 2: us can learn to be more inspiring, to impact people
Speaker 2: in a positive rather than a negative infuriting way by
Speaker 2: learning those characteristics, by nurturing them, by developing them, by
Speaker 2: practicing them.
Speaker 1: This was one of the insights that I found most
Speaker 1: striking when I read your book, because even I knowing
Speaker 1: some of the social science research, just had the sense
Speaker 1: that there's some people out there that are just kind
Speaker 1: of naturally inspiring, and there's some, you know, the flip side,
Speaker 1: which I think is maybe relevant for some of us,
Speaker 1: there's some people out there that just seem like, deeply
Speaker 1: but very naturally infuriating. And what I loved about your
Speaker 1: book is that you're saying, no, like, we actually can
Speaker 1: get better at becoming inspiring ourselves, and maybe if we
Speaker 1: kind of have tendencies towards the not so inspiring side,
Speaker 1: there are things we can do to do better.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and there's some things. I mean, obviously there's certain
Speaker 2: sometimes physical constraints that we experience in the world, but
Speaker 2: we can still train ourselves to present ourselves in a
Speaker 2: way that impacts people more positively. One example is Margaret Thatcher.
Speaker 2: When she became Prime Minister of England, her voice was
Speaker 2: a little annoying and she actually, with a voice coach,
Speaker 2: learned to train her voice to be more effective. Now
Speaker 2: later on, you know, twenty years later, I was doing
Speaker 2: research on how power affected people's voices, And what we
Speaker 2: found is that when we put people into positions of power,
Speaker 2: their voice actually became similar to what Margaret Thatcher's voice
Speaker 2: was trained to be, which was sort of a constant pitch.
Speaker 2: So that means that your voice is kind of steady,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not going like this or this, you know,
Speaker 2: but also being dynamic in volume, so that you sort
Speaker 2: of talk softly, but then you raise your voice without
Speaker 2: losing the pitch. And so this dynamic, steady voice is
Speaker 2: something that Margaret Thatcher learned to produce, and that naturally
Speaker 2: occurs when we think about times when we were powerful,
Speaker 2: for example, but we can also learn to develop that
Speaker 2: voice directly.
Speaker 1: Also, I love this example of these moments where you
Speaker 1: happen to have been powerful, because I think sometimes when
Speaker 1: folks are learning about your work or hearing about the book,
Speaker 1: they could kind of think like this is for leaders, right.
Speaker 1: Adam works with CEOs and kind of you know, heads
Speaker 1: of big nonprofits and things like that. But in the
Speaker 1: book you argue there's times when we all need to
Speaker 1: think about being a leader. So give me a sense
Speaker 1: of like why everybody listening right now has probably been
Speaker 1: a leader in some context in their lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean absolutely. I mean when we're a leader,
Speaker 2: people are looking up to us and they're looking for
Speaker 2: something from us, right, And it could be guidance, it
Speaker 2: could be support, could be protection. And so whenever there's
Speaker 2: someone that's looking towards us, we are in a sense
Speaker 2: a position of leadership for them. So sometimes we look
Speaker 2: to our spouse, right, Sometimes we look to a friend.
Speaker 2: Sometimes kids look to their parents. We're often in these
Speaker 2: positions where people are looking up to us to help
Speaker 2: them in some way and guide them and protect them
Speaker 2: or nurture them in some sort of important way. And
Speaker 2: sometimes it's to help us see the world differently, right.
Speaker 2: That's where visionary comes in. And so if they help
Speaker 2: the person see the world in a broader and more
Speaker 2: creative or more insightful way, you've actually been their leader
Speaker 2: essentially and helping them see a different vision. And so
Speaker 2: I think leadership is really about the positions we're in,
Speaker 2: but also the behaviors that we're engaging in.
Speaker 1: And when we wind up in those positions we have
Speaker 1: eyes on us in a different way. We're sort of
Speaker 1: on this metaphorical stage. You've talked a lot about this
Speaker 1: idea of the leader amplification effect.
Speaker 2: What's that? So, yeah, the leader amplification effect is, you know,
Speaker 2: whenever we're in a position of leadership, and again you
Speaker 2: don't have to be in that hierarchical position, it could
Speaker 2: be worse. Again, people are looking up to looking for
Speaker 2: you for guidance, protection, nurturance, whatever it is. That people
Speaker 2: are paying attention to us. And you're a cognitive psychologist,
Speaker 2: so you know that, like attention is really the province
Speaker 2: of intensification, Like anything that we pay attention to, and
Speaker 2: we have more intensified reactions to and those get amplified
Speaker 2: inside of us and impact us more. And so the
Speaker 2: leader amplification effect is essentially that when we're on a
Speaker 2: stage and there's more eyes on us and that attention
Speaker 2: is on us, everything we do is sending a signal
Speaker 2: that is impacting people, and those signals get amplified. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the examples I like to give is sort
Speaker 2: of you know, maybe a casual, constructive comment becomes humiliating
Speaker 2: criticism when it comes from a leader, but also maybe
Speaker 2: an offhand compliment becomes glorious praise, you know, in the
Speaker 2: hands of a leader. And so one of the things
Speaker 2: that I've discovered is that all of my behavior is
Speaker 2: impactful for people, even if I'm not aware of it, right,
Speaker 2: And so whenever we're in this position of leadership, we
Speaker 2: really see how our behavior affects others.
Speaker 1: You shared one example of this from another leadership context.
Speaker 1: I think so many people are in but we don't
Speaker 1: think of it often. Is this idea of being a
Speaker 1: parent as a leader. You had a story of parent
Speaker 1: amplification effects with your son that I found quite common
Speaker 1: but also quite disturbing if you don't get it right,
Speaker 1: Would you share that here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, so you know, I would say that maybe
Speaker 2: one of my single greatest joys that I've ever had
Speaker 2: in the world is my older son has for almost
Speaker 2: an entire life, when he wakes up, he comes into
Speaker 2: our bedroom and he crawls into bed and he just
Speaker 2: wraps his body around mine and then sort of goes
Speaker 2: back to sleep. You know, for years and years we've
Speaker 2: had these snuggle moments in the morning, and it just
Speaker 2: fills me with joy. But one morning he came in
Speaker 2: much earlier than usual, let's say, five am instead of
Speaker 2: like six thirty, and I was working on the book,
Speaker 2: and I had gone to sleep much later than usual,
Speaker 2: like one am, and when he snuggles, he also moves
Speaker 2: around him, so it's hard to go back to sleep,
Speaker 2: and so normally I just lay there and enjoy the experience,
Speaker 2: but this time I just need to get some sleep,
Speaker 2: and so I got out of bed and I went
Speaker 2: to the couch and slept for like another hour and
Speaker 2: a half. And then a few days later I just
Speaker 2: noticed that he wasn't snuggling with me. He'd come into
Speaker 2: the bed, but it kind of goes almost like to
Speaker 2: the end of the bed, like where a dog would sleep.
Speaker 2: So after like two days, I said, Asher, why aren't
Speaker 2: you snuggling with me? And he said, because you don't
Speaker 2: want to snuggle with me. And I was like that's
Speaker 2: not true. He's like, yes, it is. And I tried
Speaker 2: to convince some otherwise. And then later that afternoon I
Speaker 2: put two and two together and I was like, ah ah,
Speaker 2: So when I got out of bed the other day,
Speaker 2: So I went to him that night and I said, hey, Asher,
Speaker 2: were you upset when I got out of bed the
Speaker 2: other day? And he said yes, And I said, is
Speaker 2: that why you think I don't want to smuggle with you?
Speaker 2: And he said yeah, I said, and I explained to
Speaker 2: him that I had nothing new with him. I was
Speaker 2: just a little tired and I'm so sorry. And then
Speaker 2: the next day he came back and got into bed
Speaker 2: with me. But I had to tell you. One other
Speaker 2: story from the parent amplification effect, it's my favorite one
Speaker 2: that made me think about it is there's a doctoral student,
Speaker 2: Erica Bailey, who's now a professor at Berkeley, and she
Speaker 2: told me a story about when she was around twelve,
Speaker 2: her and her sister both played the piano, and she
Speaker 2: overheard her mom say to a friend, oh, both my
Speaker 2: girls are really good at piano, but Erica's sister has
Speaker 2: a real knack for it. And Erica was so incensed
Speaker 2: by this that she literally never played piano again. And
Speaker 2: what's crazy about this story is I met the mom
Speaker 2: and I mentioned the piano story and her mom's like,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? And I was like, do
Speaker 2: you not know why your daughter quit piano? And she's
Speaker 2: like no, it's just like with my son. I didn't
Speaker 2: know why he was mad, you know. And so we
Speaker 2: have these reactions and that's true as a leader, right,
Speaker 2: you could have the people have reactions that have no
Speaker 2: idea why they've turned on you, you know, and it could
Speaker 2: be just a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: And this is why I think figuring out how to
Speaker 1: become inspiring so important, right, because in all these kind
Speaker 1: of minor leader roles, it might be something we're totally
Speaker 1: inadvertently doing that we absolutely don't realize, but it's because
Speaker 1: of this sort of amplification effect gets perceived by somebody
Speaker 1: else as really horrible criticisms or just like your deep
Speaker 1: belief that somebody's not good at something. And honestly, if
Speaker 1: I had kind of terrifying, right just being in as
Speaker 1: many leadership positions as I am, both just like in
Speaker 1: my normal life as a friend and a good colleague,
Speaker 1: but also you know, being a podcast host and a professor,
Speaker 1: it's terrifying to think that my inadvertent actions that I
Speaker 1: don't even realize are that you know, visible or kind
Speaker 1: of big seeming wind up really deeply affecting somebody's lives
Speaker 1: in ways that I don't think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think a lot of times we don't
Speaker 2: recognize when we're in these roles. So just to give
Speaker 2: you one classic example would be a middle manager, right,
Speaker 2: or in my case, when I was an assistant professor,
Speaker 2: so an untended member of the faculty. I think of
Speaker 2: myself as a low power position, like I'm going to
Speaker 2: one day be voted on for tenure by the senior faculty.
Speaker 2: But to doctoral students, I'm in this credible high power position,
Speaker 2: like they depend on me for research resources, letters, recommendation opportunities.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that I realized over time
Speaker 2: is that even as like an assistant professor, my offhand
Speaker 2: comments could have big impact. One story that I didn't
Speaker 2: put in the book. I had a doctoral student and
Speaker 2: she came to me with a dissertation idea. I apparently
Speaker 2: I said to her, and I vaguely remember saying it,
Speaker 2: there's literally nothing interesting in your idea, like literally nothing interesting.
Speaker 2: And I was just trying to push her to get
Speaker 2: more interesting, but like that almost broke her. And then
Speaker 2: apparently she came back a month later and I said,
Speaker 2: there's something potentially interesting. And then, you know, a month
Speaker 2: later I actually told her, Wow, that's a really good idea,
Speaker 2: And apparently she called all of her friends and said,
Speaker 2: you know, we're going out getting drunk tonight because Adam
Speaker 2: finally liked my idea. That progression, to me, they were
Speaker 2: inconsequential you know they were just off hand comments, but
Speaker 2: for her each one was like deeply impact.
Speaker 1: So if mild criticism can prove more devastating than we think,
Speaker 1: what should inspiring leaders say to boost morale and performance. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out a kind word and compliment can help.
Speaker 1: Adam will Share has how to give praise one oh
Speaker 1: one when the happiness lab returns in a moment, we've
Speaker 1: all done it. We sit through a presentation or review
Speaker 1: a task someone's just completed, and even though it's basically fine,
Speaker 1: the first words out of our mouths are critical or
Speaker 1: some suggestion for improvement. Adam Golinski from Columbia Business School
Speaker 1: thinks this tragically misses what people actually need to hear
Speaker 1: from a leader. His first tip to better inspire those
Speaker 1: around you is to praise them more.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, it's a fundamental human need to
Speaker 2: feel like we matter, we're important, we're respected, we're having
Speaker 2: an impact. It matters so deeply. The other day, I
Speaker 2: dropped off my son at school, and then my second
Speaker 2: son off, and then I was walking down stairs and
Speaker 2: I saw my first son running down a different set
Speaker 2: of stairs, just looking so focused. He was going to
Speaker 2: get paper towels, and but you know, he took this
Speaker 2: so seriously, this little job, and you could you could
Speaker 2: see it like I'm the paper towel guy today. You know,
Speaker 2: you could imagine get ampstairs and the teachers saying, ash Er,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for getting those paper titles so quickly,
Speaker 2: and that would then motivate him in the future. So
Speaker 2: we're really driven by praise. Danny Kahneman talks about that,
Speaker 2: we know that positive praise is more important, but we
Speaker 2: tend to focus on punishment because we're punished for praising
Speaker 2: and rewarded for punishing because of some of the cognitive
Speaker 2: biases that we have. But people want recognition. They want
Speaker 2: to be recognized. There's phrases like I feel seen or
Speaker 2: I feel heard in what we do, and it matters
Speaker 2: so very much. Now again, as a leader, your praise
Speaker 2: gets amplified.
Speaker 1: So my little, my little statement of hey, good job
Speaker 1: in somebody's head becomes like good job, like this huge
Speaker 1: thing in ways I.
Speaker 2: Don't even absolutely right. You know. One of the things
Speaker 2: that I've discovered over time is we can start to
Speaker 2: think about the ways that we interact with people. Let
Speaker 2: me just give you a good example. Doctoral students when
Speaker 2: they do their first presentation, it's at the their say
Speaker 2: it's called They're second your paper. You know, it's their
Speaker 2: first big research presentation from the faculty. And historically what
Speaker 2: I would do is I would do there and I'd
Speaker 2: scribbled on notes and i would meet with them and
Speaker 2: I'd say, oh, great job, and here's three things you
Speaker 2: could do to improvement. And then I realized that I
Speaker 2: was kind of crushing their spirit, right, you know, they
Speaker 2: just had this amazing accomplishment and there I was already
Speaker 2: telling the things that they could improve. And so I
Speaker 2: actually just trained myself. I put in a rule I
Speaker 2: will not criticize or offer constructive comments on a talk
Speaker 2: until the next day. So after the talk, I'll come
Speaker 2: to them and I'll have at least two things to say, Wow,
Speaker 2: you really did this part great, and they did do
Speaker 2: those parts great. So they're honest and they're genuine and
Speaker 2: they're important and you can just see, you know, they
Speaker 2: got through this difficult thing. And then you know, the
Speaker 2: next thing, I can say, oh, hey, as we think
Speaker 2: towards the future, here's three things that we can think
Speaker 2: about how to make your talk. And so part of
Speaker 2: it is putting in little checks for yourself, right, and
Speaker 2: I literally do that. You know, before talk, I remind myself,
Speaker 2: this is their first talk. I'm going to only praise.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to criticize tollal and it can really
Speaker 2: really make a huge difference. And so what I tell
Speaker 2: people to do is always be genuine, always be specific,
Speaker 2: but look for ways to compliment and to praise others.
Speaker 2: I'll just give you one very quick example. I was
Speaker 2: doing a lecture for fifty cs and at ten point
Speaker 2: fifteen I gave them a call to action. I called
Speaker 2: it to use the leader amplification effect for good. Pick
Speaker 2: three people with less power, send them an email that says,
Speaker 2: you hit that presentation out of the park. I've just
Speaker 2: been thinking how great it was, or hey, I couldn't
Speaker 2: have completed that deal without your help. You know, I
Speaker 2: just wanted to say thank you. And at ten twenty nine,
Speaker 2: just before the break, one of the CEOs raised his
Speaker 2: hand and he said, hey, I've already sent my three emails.
Speaker 2: I've already got three email responses back. Everyone was overjoyed,
Speaker 2: and one person said they're taking their spouse to this
Speaker 2: restaurant they've always wanted to go to to celebrate. And
Speaker 2: I think there's two things the point about this example
Speaker 2: which are so critical and so important. The first is
Speaker 2: a finding from my research, which is that powerful people
Speaker 2: tend to be impulsive, so this guy couldn't even to
Speaker 2: the break to do it. But the second thing is
Speaker 2: it took them no time at all, took them a
Speaker 2: couple of seconds to write these emails. He probably did
Speaker 2: all three of them in less than two minutes, right,
Speaker 2: And so the cost is so little, but the reward
Speaker 2: is so great.
Speaker 1: It sort of even shows a third thing, which is
Speaker 1: even when you told the story, the CEO is seeming
Speaker 1: kind of happy, like that his comment had such impact, right.
Speaker 1: And I think this is something we don't expect too,
Speaker 1: which is that there's kind of a happiness benefit to
Speaker 1: the person who's giving the praise, to the person who's
Speaker 1: expressing the gratitude that we often forget too. Not only
Speaker 1: are you making the person that you're working with feel
Speaker 1: super inspired, but you yourself feel great. And when you
Speaker 1: don't express praise, you're kind of leaving that opportunity on
Speaker 1: the table when you could have in two minutes kind
Speaker 1: of felt this sort of great feeling yourself and given
Speaker 1: somebody the praise that will help them be motivated and
Speaker 1: excited to do the work that they're going to do
Speaker 1: for weeks after that.
Speaker 2: And I think one thing I actually tell people, and
Speaker 2: this is a little ironic, is I tell people send
Speaker 2: them my text or by email. And the reason why
Speaker 2: I do that is because that person who receives it
Speaker 2: gets to savor it. We can go back and relook
Speaker 2: at it, you know, if they're filling down, they can
Speaker 2: go back and look at that comment, the CEO said.
Speaker 2: But the other reason why I do it is because
Speaker 2: of what you just pointed out, which is they're going
Speaker 2: to respond to you. If you just said, hey, great
Speaker 2: job on the presentation. You know, they're going to feel
Speaker 2: really good inside if you said it just you know,
Speaker 2: an interaction, but they probably wouldn't even know what to
Speaker 2: say to you, right They might even feel awkward saying
Speaker 2: thank you. But if you send it by email, they're
Speaker 2: going to reply to you and say, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm so glad that you noticed, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's tip number one. We need to express more
Speaker 1: praise and gratitude to kind of boost our own inspired nests,
Speaker 1: but also to feel good ourselves. Tip number two is
Speaker 1: that we need to develop a vision, ideally one that's
Speaker 1: a little optimistic. Why is our vision so important?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I mentioned earlier the fundamental of human
Speaker 2: need for meaning and understanding, and so a vision really
Speaker 2: allows us to make sense of our own behavior. I
Speaker 2: give this example in the book by one of your colleagues,
Speaker 2: Marsha Johnson and a Hold nineteen seventy three paper, where
Speaker 2: she gave people this paragraph to read that it doesn't
Speaker 2: literally doesn't make any sense. You separate things you don't
Speaker 2: want to do too many, and then you put them
Speaker 2: back into piles and you put them away. And I've
Speaker 2: done this, you know, with thousands and thousands of people
Speaker 2: across the globe, and like, you know, only a handful
Speaker 2: can can solve it, you know, every now and then.
Speaker 2: But in her other conditioner experiment, she gives them a title,
Speaker 2: and the title is doing the laundry. And as soon
Speaker 2: as you get the title, like everything just makes so
Speaker 2: much sense, Like I get it, Okay, you know, there's
Speaker 2: whites and darks, and we might have to go to
Speaker 2: a laundromat, you know, and then we don't want to
Speaker 2: overstuff the machine, you know. And so without a vision,
Speaker 2: it's just almost impossible for us to make sense of
Speaker 2: our own behavior, but also to coordinate and interact with others.
Speaker 2: The simplest example I love to give is, you know,
Speaker 2: two people walk out of a meeting and one person
Speaker 2: thinks they're supposed to do the task quickly and the
Speaker 2: other person thinks they're supposed to do it with the
Speaker 2: highest quality. And then they start working together and the
Speaker 2: person is going quick is like, why are you so slow?
Speaker 2: And the person, you know, doing it with high qualities
Speaker 2: like why are you so sloppy? And so without a vision,
Speaker 2: we don't know how to behave and act and make
Speaker 2: sense of the world, and therefore we get miscommunication, we
Speaker 2: get conflict. And so a vision is really orienting us
Speaker 2: in a way to help us make sense of our
Speaker 2: own behavior.
Speaker 1: And you have a really great hack for kind of
Speaker 1: enacting a vision and kind of keeping it top of mind.
Speaker 1: You've talked about the importance of catchphrases. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: know you even have one with your wife, which I love.
Speaker 1: I'm totally going to steal it to use with my husband.
Speaker 1: But why do catchphrases matter? And what's the one that
Speaker 1: you use with your wife?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I mean, I think catchphrases are ones that
Speaker 2: just help us make sense of the world. For any
Speaker 2: Ted Lasso fans out there, you probably remember that Ted
Speaker 2: Lasso says barbecue sauce before like important moments, Tin Cup,
Speaker 2: Kevin Costner would say dollar bills before taking a shot.
Speaker 2: I'm a huge basketball fan, and my wife is also
Speaker 2: a big basketball fan. She worked for men's basketball at
Speaker 2: University Connecticut when they won their first national title. And
Speaker 2: there's an old coach named Jim Valvano who had the
Speaker 2: top basketball moment in college sports when his team won
Speaker 2: nine consecutive do or die games, seven of which they
Speaker 2: are behind or tied in the final minute. Just this
Speaker 2: miraculous thing. He tells a story about his dad when
Speaker 2: he first made the tournament. His dad said, my bags
Speaker 2: are packed for you. I'm going to be there when
Speaker 2: you're in the national title. He's like, his dad never
Speaker 2: leaves the house, you know. His dad thinks everything north
Speaker 2: of the George Washington Bridge is Canada, you know. And
Speaker 2: so this idea that he's going to travel is so meaningful.
Speaker 2: And so my wife and I started using that phrase
Speaker 2: with each other. My bags are packed for you, like
Speaker 2: whenever we're going through a difficult time, just letting the
Speaker 2: other person know I'm here for you, I support you
Speaker 2: no matter what happens, I have your back and I'm
Speaker 2: there for you.
Speaker 1: So we have our vision and we kind of keep
Speaker 1: it top of mind with catchphrases. But tip number three
Speaker 1: is that to become truly visionary, we need to connect
Speaker 1: not just with the kind of overarching goal, but also
Speaker 1: with our values. Why are values so important?
Speaker 2: To say, why our values are important is an interesting question.
Speaker 2: We know that values are one of the most impactful
Speaker 2: things in the world, and we still don't actually know
Speaker 2: the exact process by which these values matter us. In
Speaker 2: one study that Jeff Cohne did, he randomly assigned some
Speaker 2: at risk students to reflect on their values for fifteen minutes,
Speaker 2: and that predicted who graduates five years later. Right in
Speaker 2: a study I did, we randomly signed people at a
Speaker 2: Swiss unemployment agency to reflect on their values, and two
Speaker 2: months later they were twice as likely to have a job.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the values reflection was so powerful we
Speaker 2: had to end the experiment and give everyone the values
Speaker 2: reflection task. And now we collected lots of variables, you know,
Speaker 2: to try to understand what was causing the effect, and
Speaker 2: none of them could fully explain it. But I think
Speaker 2: it just gets back to who we are as humans, right.
Speaker 2: We are meaning makers. We want to connect to higher,
Speaker 2: larger purposes, and our values are really our pathway to
Speaker 2: doing so. So one of the things that we make
Speaker 2: all of our students do a Columbia Business gool, and
Speaker 2: I even do it myself, is we make them think
Speaker 2: about their values and to create a values hierarchy with
Speaker 2: their top value at the top and the other values
Speaker 2: kind of stem from that, and then we give them
Speaker 2: a laminated card with their values on it. I have
Speaker 2: my own card in my pocket right now, and you know,
Speaker 2: to tell them to take it out and really think
Speaker 2: about that. For me, my top value is generosity, and
Speaker 2: for me it's about being generous to other people materially
Speaker 2: but also generous to other people emotionally generous in helping
Speaker 2: think about the larger context in which people find themselves
Speaker 2: that might explain some Abaran behavior And how can I
Speaker 2: just go through the world with a more generous frame
Speaker 2: of mind as my top value? As sort of you know,
Speaker 2: one of those examples another value that I have in there,
Speaker 2: which also connects me It's kind of a catchphrase with
Speaker 2: my wife is the word kaizen. She lived in Japan
Speaker 2: for two years, and the word kaizen means continued improvement.
Speaker 2: We can always be better tomorrow. We can always be
Speaker 2: a little bit more inspiring tomorrow than we can today.
Speaker 1: This is such a fabulous practical suggestion because I feel
Speaker 1: like we can all write this list and take it
Speaker 1: with us or even use our devices. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: top page in the notes app is just like a
Speaker 1: list of your values. And I think this is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing we can do in any leadership situation.
Speaker 1: I think especially in parenting.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Imagine in that tough parenting moment, if you're kind of
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do next, you could
Speaker 1: just go over to your notes app and you see generosity, cousin,
Speaker 1: or whatever your own personal values are. It could just
Speaker 1: be so powerful to kind of ground you and help
Speaker 1: you make the most inspired decision in that moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you know, one of the things
Speaker 2: for me as a parent, My own father was just
Speaker 2: an amazing person, but he had a volcanic temper. It
Speaker 2: was not that frequent, but when it came out, it
Speaker 2: was sudden, extreme and terrifying and even like penetrated my
Speaker 2: nightmares as a kid. And I found myself early on
Speaker 2: when my two year old, you know, when he was
Speaker 2: having a tantrum, I almost felt like I'd become my
Speaker 2: dad had this like just just volcanic rage was coming out,
Speaker 2: and I still remember like the first time it came
Speaker 2: out and my son just fell to the ground in
Speaker 2: like a few state of tears of like just nothing
Speaker 2: like I'd ever seen real again, the leader amplification, in fact,
Speaker 2: the parent amplication effect. I had to train myself, even
Speaker 2: when he's fine off the handle, to always take the
Speaker 2: more generous path, right, the more bigger sure path, the
Speaker 2: more visionary path, the more step back path that I
Speaker 2: can do, you know, be there as a container for
Speaker 2: his emotions without erupting myself.
Speaker 1: So that story about your dad is a nice transition
Speaker 1: to tip number four. Another way we can become a
Speaker 1: little bit more visionary, and that's through engaging in a
Speaker 1: bit of time travel. How could time travel help?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a couple of things about time travel. So
Speaker 2: one of the first things I studied grad school. I
Speaker 2: still remember in nineteen ninety three when I was looking
Speaker 2: at grad schools. One of the things I was most
Speaker 2: interested in was counterfactual reflection, the idea about how we
Speaker 2: could think about our paths differently and how much that
Speaker 2: affected us. And the classic example of this is you
Speaker 2: go home a different way home from work and you
Speaker 2: get into an accident, and you're like, Oh, if I'd
Speaker 2: only gone the normal way home from work, But if
Speaker 2: you go to the normal way home from work, you
Speaker 2: don't think, oh, if only I could have gone to
Speaker 2: this exotic way home. Right, So we go from unusual
Speaker 2: events back to usual events really quickly. But it's really
Speaker 2: about how we think about all the different paths that
Speaker 2: we went. There's a rural world that drove me to
Speaker 2: do some of this research that you're talking about, Laurie,
Speaker 2: and that is I knew of a couple. She was
Speaker 2: a waitress at a restaurant and she met her husband
Speaker 2: at this restaurant. But she wasn't supposed to be working
Speaker 2: that evening and he wasn't supposed to be at that restaurant.
Speaker 2: He went to the wrong restaurant because I think there
Speaker 2: is two versions of the same restaurant in the city,
Speaker 2: and so neither of them were supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: It's awesome it's like a Hallmark movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and you could just see them tell the
Speaker 2: story and like it just added meaning and wonder like
Speaker 2: it was faded it was meant to be. So with Katie,
Speaker 2: with Laura Cray, my colleague at Berkeley, Feltellac Neirose, a
Speaker 2: bunch of other people, we did a whole line of
Speaker 2: research where we basically showed that when you think about
Speaker 2: the path that you didn't take but might have your
Speaker 2: own path scenes for more meaningful and important. So here's us.
Speaker 2: You know, in one of the experiments we did, we said,
Speaker 2: think about the path you took to meet your current partner,
Speaker 2: your boyfriend, girlfriend, you know, spouse, whoever it is. Or
Speaker 2: we said, think about all the pasts that you almost
Speaker 2: took that would have led you away from this partner.
Speaker 2: Then we laters asked people how important is this person
Speaker 2: to you? How significant are they? How meaningful is this relationship? Now,
Speaker 2: this is your significant other, but thinking of all the
Speaker 2: ways you might not have met them made that relationship
Speaker 2: more important, more meaningful, more significant, more impactful.
Speaker 1: So it's just a way that anything in our life
Speaker 1: that we want to feel a little bit more inspired about,
Speaker 1: we can just think like, well, it might not have been,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden it starts to seem
Speaker 1: even more precious.
Speaker 2: Right, you know? And you know I moved to New
Speaker 2: York partly to find love, right and to me, the
Speaker 2: counterfactual is, what if I hadn't come to New York,
Speaker 2: I would have never met my wife? We met at
Speaker 2: a party. What if she hadn't gone to the party.
Speaker 2: What if I hadn't gone to the party. I can
Speaker 2: feel that sense of wonder rise, you know, inside me
Speaker 2: whenever I do that. One of the ways that we
Speaker 2: can make our own life seem more meaningful, or as
Speaker 2: a leader, we can make our firm or groups journey
Speaker 2: more meaningful is think about the past that we hadn't
Speaker 2: taken as one way of really helping us value the
Speaker 2: path we are on.
Speaker 1: It's time for a short break, But when the happiness
Speaker 1: Lab returns, Adam will have more actionable tips for turning
Speaker 1: you into an inspiring leader. The Happiness Lab will be
Speaker 1: right back. Emotional contagion. That's what happens when one happy,
Speaker 1: optimistic person completely transforms the mood of a room. It's
Speaker 1: also what happens when one negative person quickly burns everyone
Speaker 1: out and that's why inspiration expert Adam Golinski's next tip
Speaker 1: is for leaders to pay particular attention to the power
Speaker 1: of emotional contagion.
Speaker 2: If we just go back to the leader amplification effect,
Speaker 2: when you're on stage, people are really paying attention to
Speaker 2: so whatever you're expressing gets inside of them. And in general,
Speaker 2: emotions are contagious, like we know that the yawns are contagious,
Speaker 2: but when you're a leader, your emotions, I like to say,
Speaker 2: go from being contagious to infectious, and so it really
Speaker 2: affects us more so. When you're leader, your calmness becomes
Speaker 2: their calmness, but your anxiety can become their anxiety. Your
Speaker 2: courage can become their courage. And one of the areas
Speaker 2: where I've really looked at this is around the topic
Speaker 2: of passion and this idea that it's really hard to
Speaker 2: inspire others when you're not inspired. And one of the
Speaker 2: ways that we can inspire others is through our passion.
Speaker 2: And I do a little exercise whenever I teach, and
Speaker 2: anyone can do it themselves is just ask someone to
Speaker 2: tell you about their passion. And when you do that,
Speaker 2: I want you to listen. But also observe what changes
Speaker 2: in their behavior when they start talking about their passion.
Speaker 2: And the thing that I've shown in my research right
Speaker 2: is that a number of behavioral things happen immediately. Their
Speaker 2: eyes light up, they smile a big, beaming smile, they
Speaker 2: move their hands more, they talk a little bit quicker,
Speaker 2: a little higher pitch, and they often kind of lean
Speaker 2: in as if telling you a secret. And I ask
Speaker 2: people what happened to you when you and their passion,
Speaker 2: and people start saying, my eyes got wide, I started
Speaker 2: to smile, I leaned in, And so we start reciprocating
Speaker 2: the behavioral things, but start feeling that passion perkoly inside
Speaker 2: of us. Now what I love about this little simple
Speaker 2: exercise it also shows us how tied passion and authenticity are.
Speaker 2: Notice that your eyes, your mouth, your voice, your hands,
Speaker 2: all those things are being changed simultaneously and spontaneously. And
Speaker 2: if you were to try to do that, say okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to pretend i'm passion, I'm gonna make my
Speaker 2: eyes big. Oh wait, now I got a.
Speaker 1: Smile, doesn't work as well.
Speaker 2: And so I think there's this link between passion authenticity,
Speaker 2: and because of that, it also increases that infectiousness of passion.
Speaker 1: And the idea that we kind of matter and our
Speaker 1: authenticity matters. In this inspiration equation gets to top insight
Speaker 1: number six, which is that to be inspiring, it's not
Speaker 1: enough to be superhuman. We really kind of need to
Speaker 1: be human. Like the human part is really important. I
Speaker 1: think this is something that leaders often get wrong, that
Speaker 1: they need to be a little bit more vulnerable. Why
Speaker 1: is vulnerability so inspiring?
Speaker 2: Part of it? When we're super we seem out of reach,
Speaker 2: and so if we can find ways to humanize ourselves
Speaker 2: and make ourselves more vulnerable, then people can connect with soma.
Speaker 2: I was quoted recently in The New York Times talking
Speaker 2: about Hillary Clinton in two thousand and eight. You know,
Speaker 2: when she had lost in Iowa, and then you know
Speaker 2: she kind of teared up it before New Hampshire, and
Speaker 2: then she came back and won New Hampshire. And then
Speaker 2: later she made herself be more human by taking whiskey
Speaker 2: shots at a bar in Pennsylvania. The reason why the
Speaker 2: Newyartimes called me is because they're like, what did you
Speaker 2: think of Donald Trump going to McDonald's, And I said
Speaker 2: it was brilliant. Here's a person who flies in his
Speaker 2: own private yet, but seeing him doing the same activities
Speaker 2: that an everyday, average person does humanized him. And I said,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a chance he's going to win the
Speaker 2: election because of that, you know, because he just seems
Speaker 2: more relatable in that way. And so by exposing our
Speaker 2: own vulnerabilities, we help people understand that not everyone's perfect,
Speaker 2: but we also often give clues and pathways to how
Speaker 2: we might overcome our own challenges and obstacles. In that way,
Speaker 2: I like to tell people the story of myself that
Speaker 2: I came close to getting kicked out of grad school.
Speaker 2: You know, geing a second year. There's three categories. There's
Speaker 2: thumbs up, thumbs down, you're SCREWGE, You're not going to
Speaker 2: make it, or the level hand is, we don't know
Speaker 2: which way it's going to go. And I felt very
Speaker 2: lucky because they told me here's the three things you
Speaker 2: have to do in order to stay in the program.
Speaker 2: And so because I got very clear vision of what
Speaker 2: I had to do, I was able to do those
Speaker 2: things and stay in the program. But it just lets
Speaker 2: people know, like, look, first year is going to be tough,
Speaker 2: and sometimes you know you're going to struggle, and the
Speaker 2: question is how do you find the guidance that you
Speaker 2: need and tap into the resources that you have to
Speaker 2: be successful.
Speaker 1: I mean that must be huge for your own students
Speaker 1: to hear, like, oh my gosh, Adam, who's this new
Speaker 1: book and has done all this amazing research, he almost
Speaker 1: get kicked out of the program. Right, You could see
Speaker 1: exactly why that is an inspiring moment for your students,
Speaker 1: because if they're facing their own moments of failure and securities,
Speaker 1: they could just kind of brush those aside because you've
Speaker 1: been vulnerable enough to share Hey, I went through it too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so sometimes we need to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more vulnerable. But as a leader, I also know that
Speaker 1: sometimes you got to remind yourself that you're a little
Speaker 1: bit super like. You need to find moments where you
Speaker 1: kind of feel powerful and in control. And that gets
Speaker 1: to tip number seven. You also remind leaders that to
Speaker 1: be inspiring, it's helpful to kind of get a sense
Speaker 1: of that sense of power and control. And you have
Speaker 1: a really great practical exercise we can use to do this.
Speaker 1: What's that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know the thing that I've done the
Speaker 2: most research on is thinking about a time when you
Speaker 2: were powerful, you know, I ask people to write out
Speaker 2: a reflection, and we've shown that this task of thinking
Speaker 2: about time are powerful has affected dozens of different types
Speaker 2: of behaviors in a variety of different ways. But the
Speaker 2: way that I think about it is that when we
Speaker 2: think about the ways that we're super, they allow us
Speaker 2: to go out and be more super. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that I think that we want to tap
Speaker 2: into is our successful moments in life and our own
Speaker 2: experience when we were our best self. We can then
Speaker 2: leverage that and allow us to be our best self
Speaker 2: in the next moment. You know. I tell people you
Speaker 2: can actually even calibrate this even more. The next time
Speaker 2: you have to do an important presentation, Think about time
Speaker 2: you gave a great presentation. The next time you have
Speaker 2: to write something, think about time when you wrote something
Speaker 2: really well. That can really allow us to tap into
Speaker 2: the task specific inspiration that we need to be successful.
Speaker 1: And you found that this power recall process is like
Speaker 1: super effective in all kinds of different contexts. Like, tell
Speaker 1: me some of the contexts in which you see this working,
Speaker 1: because it's really broad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, and you know, use the
Speaker 2: word earlier, which I think is really important optimism, you
Speaker 2: know about being sort of optimistic. So you know, one
Speaker 2: of the things we've shown is that makes people optimistic.
Speaker 2: But you know, we've shown for example, and one study
Speaker 2: we did, we had people come in and we said,
Speaker 2: we're going to have you write a letter for a job,
Speaker 2: so you're going to try to get this job. Before
Speaker 2: you do that, we're going to give you a chance
Speaker 2: just to get some practice writing. And that's when we
Speaker 2: used our manipulation where we told half the people think
Speaker 2: about time when you had power and the other half
Speaker 2: we're talking about it when you lack power. And then
Speaker 2: we have them apply for a job, put their application
Speaker 2: and sealed envelope, and then we had other people rated.
Speaker 2: You know, they didn't know anything about the power reflection
Speaker 2: task at all, and we just had them rate would
Speaker 2: you hire this person? And the people that have been
Speaker 2: randomly assigned to get this you know, power reflection, they
Speaker 2: were more likely to get the job. And the single
Speaker 2: thing that seemed to matter the most was people just
Speaker 2: express more confidence. They just came across as more confident
Speaker 2: in their letters. We showed that when we randomly assigned
Speaker 2: people to think about time when they had power in
Speaker 2: a negotiation, and they go into that negotiation, their voice
Speaker 2: is more studying, more dynamic. They're also more likely to
Speaker 2: make the first offer in the negotiation, and we know
Speaker 2: from research that making the first offer on average leads
Speaker 2: to better outcomes. We've shown it makes people more visionary.
Speaker 2: Pam Smith has done this research showing that people see
Speaker 2: the big picture when they think about timing that power.
Speaker 2: And then finally some research in Europe, they asked people
Speaker 2: to do public presentations. But why they did them. They
Speaker 2: measure their physiological arouse levels and they found that people
Speaker 2: had done the power recall were more calm and less
Speaker 2: physiologically aroused when they did that. So again, I think
Speaker 2: the key thing is that it's tapping into our own
Speaker 2: lived experiences and allowing us to leverage those experiences.
Speaker 1: And so Tip A is going to switch gears a
Speaker 1: little bit. It's not kind of the things you do
Speaker 1: to yourself, but the things you do in the interaction
Speaker 1: with somebody that you're trying to inspire. And Tip number
Speaker 1: eight is that you can be a bit more inspiring
Speaker 1: by giving more choices. Why are choices so inspired?
Speaker 2: No one likes to be told what to do, right.
Speaker 2: We don't like to be treated like objects. We don't
Speaker 2: like to feel pressure, we don't like to be forced.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that I've shown in
Speaker 2: my research is that when we offer people options, they
Speaker 2: see us as more concern with their well being. They
Speaker 2: see us as wanting us to get the right outcome
Speaker 2: for ourselves. So in negotiations, we've shown, for example, that
Speaker 2: car salesman says, I can offer you this car for
Speaker 2: twenty five thousand dollars and a five year warranty or
Speaker 2: twenty four thousand and a three year warrant. Now most
Speaker 2: of you can quickly calculate that for the car salesperson
Speaker 2: when your warranty is worth five hundred dollars to them.
Speaker 2: But what you're saying is, I don't know how much
Speaker 2: warranty is worth you, So I'm going to let you
Speaker 2: make that choice. And we've shown a couple of things
Speaker 2: in our research that are really really important. The first
Speaker 2: is that we can actually be much more ambitious or
Speaker 2: aggressive when we offer choices because people see us as
Speaker 2: having their best interest into account. The second thing that
Speaker 2: we've shown is that when we make these sort of
Speaker 2: ambitious offers, we get a better outcome for ourselves. But
Speaker 2: the other side often doesn't get a worse outcome, so
Speaker 2: it expands the pie. And the thing that most exciting
Speaker 2: about this research is that it works for everyone. It
Speaker 2: works for men and women, It works for people who
Speaker 2: have more power and less power in the negotiation. Offering
Speaker 2: choices just solves the prople. Now, I started doing this
Speaker 2: research back in the nineties on choices and negotiations, but
Speaker 2: in the mid two thousands I saw it in practice
Speaker 2: as a parent. I wasn't a parent yet, but my
Speaker 2: twin brother is a parent, and his daughter was not
Speaker 2: getting dressed and she was fighting everything, and talking to
Speaker 2: my ster in law, you know, we said, what if
Speaker 2: we start giving choices? And so she do that. She
Speaker 2: just hold up two parents' pants, Okay, Fiona, which parent pants? Okay?
Speaker 2: That one okay, Fiona which shirt? And so all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, instead of fighting, she was making choices. And
Speaker 2: I saw just how valuable it is. Any time that
Speaker 2: you can take a demand and turn it into a choice,
Speaker 2: You're going to be far better off. You're going to
Speaker 2: get a better outcome, They're going to be happier, there's
Speaker 2: gonna be fewer transaction costs, there's going to be less frustration.
Speaker 2: Everyone's going to be better off.
Speaker 1: And you think about that whenever you're in a position
Speaker 1: of having less power, right, when people give you choices,
Speaker 1: you just feel like you have some agency, like you
Speaker 1: can kind of make the decision for yourself. And that
Speaker 1: kind of guess to why Tip number nine is so powerful.
Speaker 1: You've argued that to be more inspiring, we need to
Speaker 1: be more credit sharing, as leaders explain some of the
Speaker 1: unexpected benefits of credit sharing, and even to the leader.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is. You know a survey that came out
Speaker 2: a few years ago that asked people what's the most
Speaker 2: inferiting thing that happens at work? And one of the
Speaker 2: things that was it might've been top of the list,
Speaker 2: I can't remember, or near the double list, was other
Speaker 2: people stealing credit from you, other people taking ownership over
Speaker 2: your idea. You know, it just infuriates us, right, And
Speaker 2: it goes back to that fundamental of human need of
Speaker 2: wanting to be recognized and feel respected and to have
Speaker 2: the status. And two things we've shown in our research
Speaker 2: which I think are really important. The first is that
Speaker 2: when we're feeling insecure or not inspired ourselves, it warps
Speaker 2: our brain and twists it into thinking that, oh my god,
Speaker 2: if I share credit with others, I'm going to lose
Speaker 2: status myself. And so we've shown that when we're feeling insecure,
Speaker 2: we're less likely to share credit with others because we
Speaker 2: see now status at zero sum. But what we've shown
Speaker 2: in our research is that when you actually share credit
Speaker 2: with others, you actually get a status boost. So I
Speaker 2: was somewhere and I was like, people said how much
Speaker 2: they love my book, and I said, I couldn't have
Speaker 2: produced such a great book without my amazing research assistant, Chloe. Now,
Speaker 2: Chloe's going to be raised in status, right because I've
Speaker 2: just said how amazing she is. But so will I.
Speaker 2: I get a boost in status because I credited her.
Speaker 2: People like people that share credit, right, They like generous
Speaker 2: individuals who acknowledge other people. And we'll try to push
Speaker 2: this to the extreme. We said, okay, it's an entrepreneurial situation.
Speaker 2: Two people. There's two finalists, and each have to make
Speaker 2: a final little speech, and we have one of the
Speaker 2: people either say, you know, I couldn't have done it
Speaker 2: without all the things that I did, or they said,
Speaker 2: you know I couldn't have done it. I also want
Speaker 2: to think my competitor who also helped me gave me
Speaker 2: some great advice. Now you could say, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you've just raised the status your competitor. They're going to
Speaker 2: get picked to win their award. But you still are
Speaker 2: better off by doing that. You're still more likely to win. Now,
Speaker 2: the effect is much smaller than in other situations. But
Speaker 2: even when we share credit with the people we're competing
Speaker 2: with the most, we still get a status boost.
Speaker 1: Now we can use that status boost in good ways,
Speaker 1: especially if you find ways to learn from the people
Speaker 1: maybe that we're competing with, or maybe especially as a leader,
Speaker 1: that are kind of working under us. And this gets
Speaker 1: to final to number ten, which is that to really
Speaker 1: be an inspiring leader, we should seek out some downward learning.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by downward learning?
Speaker 2: So one of the things that I've become really fascinating
Speaker 2: with is what makes a good mentor right. You know,
Speaker 2: that's the third factor of being inspiring person. It's like
Speaker 2: how we interact with others. But what does it mean
Speaker 2: to really mentor someone? And you know, there's a number
Speaker 2: of characteristics that are central. One is that we really
Speaker 2: take the perspective of the person, we really engage with them,
Speaker 2: we think deeply about their situation, just really getting inside
Speaker 2: their head, but look in the world from their perspective
Speaker 2: what they need and what they want. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that we're found in our research is that
Speaker 2: people are better mentors when they recognize that they can
Speaker 2: learn incredibly valuable insights even from people who have less
Speaker 2: power or status than they do. And so we showed
Speaker 2: in our research that downward learners, people who say I
Speaker 2: can learn a lot from people who are below being
Speaker 2: the hierarchy, they tend to be better mentors. But in
Speaker 2: my favorite experiment that we did in this project, so
Speaker 2: we know, we did a lot of correlational studies that
Speaker 2: showing downward learning people tend to be better mentors. But
Speaker 2: in one study, we actually took people who are going
Speaker 2: to be in mentor roles and in half of them,
Speaker 2: we said, think about a time recently when you learn
Speaker 2: something valuable from someone below you in the hierarchy. And
Speaker 2: then later we put them a position where they we're
Speaker 2: going to have to serve as a mentor for someone,
Speaker 2: and we ask the mentees about their experience, and we
Speaker 2: found that when they've been randomly signed to be with
Speaker 2: one of these downward learning reflections. People who had just
Speaker 2: engained this reflection, they rated them as more engaged but
Speaker 2: also more impactic. And so it was a combination of
Speaker 2: that engagement and empathy that made them feel like they
Speaker 2: got a lot more benefit out of that interaction.
Speaker 1: Just that curiosity to learn from the people that see
Speaker 1: us as leaders that winds up making us seem more
Speaker 1: empathic and ends up helping the person that you know,
Speaker 1: we're trying to help kind of succeed in whatever they're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'll tell you one quick story which I
Speaker 2: really loved. For my life, I got to spend I
Speaker 2: wrote the book Proposal in Hawaii. I spent a year
Speaker 2: in Hawaii with my family, and I was talking to
Speaker 2: someone on the phone because we had been having a
Speaker 2: problem with birds would fly into the house and then
Speaker 2: get trapped in poop everywhere. And my friend had suggested
Speaker 2: a couple weeks earlier, by these rubber snakes, put them out,
Speaker 2: you know, in front of the doorway, and then the
Speaker 2: birds will be afraid and they will come in. And
Speaker 2: it didn't do anything. Literally, the birds would just step
Speaker 2: over this, you know, rubber snake. And so I was
Speaker 2: telling my friend it didn't work. And at six in
Speaker 2: the morning, my son had just woken up. He'd crawled
Speaker 2: into my lap. He heard me tell the story and
Speaker 2: he said, oh, I know why, Dad, And I was
Speaker 2: like why. He's like, there's no snakes in Hawaii. We
Speaker 2: learned that in preschool. So this four year old he
Speaker 2: had learned something that I didn't know, you know, because
Speaker 2: he was going to school in Hawaii. And it was
Speaker 2: just a good example, like he had different knowledge than
Speaker 2: I did, and he had different experiences and was able
Speaker 2: to bring those experience and knowledge to bear and then
Speaker 2: realized that we would have to come up with a
Speaker 2: different strategy to keep the birds out of our house.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been putting all these strategies to become
Speaker 1: more inspiring into effect in your own life. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that's made you more inspired leader, But has it also
Speaker 1: made you a little bit happier too?
Speaker 2: Definitely?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think you know you mentioned earlier the example the
Speaker 2: CEO who got those effusive emails back thank you so
Speaker 2: much for the praise and the gratitude, and you said
Speaker 2: that made that CEO probably happier. And I have to
Speaker 2: say that was such an amazing epiphany for me because
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about it in that way. You know,
Speaker 2: I use the word spreading the seeds of inspiration, right,
Speaker 2: So he spread the seeds, but then he got some
Speaker 2: back from doing that. And I think that when we
Speaker 2: know that we've had a positive impact on people's lives,
Speaker 2: it makes us happier. But you know, one of the
Speaker 2: things that I think that I've most learned from all
Speaker 2: of my research, and it's something I've brought up like
Speaker 2: three or four different times, but the power of reflection,
Speaker 2: Reflecting on your values, reflecting on times when you had power.
Speaker 2: We're confident, we're successful. We talked about reflecting on what
Speaker 2: you've learned from people below you, reflecting on your passions,
Speaker 2: all of these things. We are the examined life. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a famous phrase, right, you know, it's examined life
Speaker 2: worth living. But I think the reflected life is really
Speaker 2: the true path towards making yourself and other people happier,
Speaker 2: because it's through those reflections or the right types of reflections,
Speaker 2: that we can put ourselves into a frame of mind
Speaker 2: that allows us to be more inspiring and then to
Speaker 2: receive more inspiration back to us.
Speaker 1: So we bought through all these great ideas that we
Speaker 1: can put into effect to become more inspiring leaders. But
Speaker 1: you know, as someone who's been a leader myself, I
Speaker 1: know that, like you kind of screwup sometimes without realizing,
Speaker 1: you can accidentally switch into that kind of not so
Speaker 1: inspiring or maybe defeating sort of role. Many strategies for
Speaker 1: leaders to pick themselves up and maybe do a do
Speaker 1: over when things don't go so well in a leadership role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first of all, I want to just re emphasize
Speaker 2: the point you just made, which is so important, which
Speaker 2: is it's really hard. We're all screw up. My wife
Speaker 2: loves to throw my research back in my face and
Speaker 2: tell me when I've been particularly infuriating. My kids are
Speaker 2: very good at telling me when I'm not being the
Speaker 2: most inspiring person. And I think again, reflection really helps
Speaker 2: right to think about what was going on in that
Speaker 2: situation that made me lose the big picture or maybe
Speaker 2: not be as courageous I could have been, or been
Speaker 2: to aggressive in a way that hurts someone's feelings. And
Speaker 2: so I think that's one thing I really believe in
Speaker 2: the power of apologies as an incredible way of helping
Speaker 2: people understand. And I think the single most important thing
Speaker 2: that we can do in apologies besides take responsibility, which
Speaker 2: is like the core of it is tell the person
Speaker 2: what we're going to do differently the next time. Make
Speaker 2: a commitment to the future. And I think that is
Speaker 2: where you're saying, look, I screwed up, But that's just
Speaker 2: empty water without the promise of the future. So I
Speaker 2: think that that's one of the things that I really
Speaker 2: think about, and part of what I tell people is
Speaker 2: how can you be more inspiring more of the time.
Speaker 2: I like using a little phrase from the Bible, reap
Speaker 2: what you sew. Reap what you sew comes from agriculture, right,
Speaker 2: like we tend to our crops and we reap what
Speaker 2: we sew. But it has two meanings that I think
Speaker 2: are really important. The first is that what we do
Speaker 2: today impacts the future. And second thing, what we do
Speaker 2: today comes back to us in the same form. So
Speaker 2: if we're generous, we're going to get generosity back, but
Speaker 2: if we're mean spirited, we're going to get mean spiritedness
Speaker 2: back to us. And so my reap is not spelled
Speaker 2: ore eap, it's spelled ore eip and RIP is an acronym,
Speaker 2: and our stands for reflections so again we talked about
Speaker 2: the power of reflecting on our own experiences, but also
Speaker 2: thinking about when we're inspiring, when we're infuriating. The e
Speaker 2: is emulate. I've asked people all over the world to
Speaker 2: think about a leader that inspired them. The next step
Speaker 2: is how could you emulate that person? And then can
Speaker 2: you take those reflections and those emulations and turn them
Speaker 2: into an intention a commitment to the future, And that
Speaker 2: comes back to the apology thing I was just talking about.
Speaker 2: And then finally, how do you practice that the next
Speaker 2: day and turn that into a daily practice. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that I've found in my research in
Speaker 2: my own personal life is that if we can be
Speaker 2: a little bit more inspiring tomorrow, it actually gives us
Speaker 2: the skills also the motivation to be a little bit
Speaker 2: more inspiring the next time. So every time I feel
Speaker 2: that volcanic rage rise up inside of me, but I
Speaker 2: stop it, I feel so good about myself that it
Speaker 2: increases the probability that I'm going to be that better
Speaker 2: father the next day. And so the practice really becomes important.
Speaker 2: We can build off that practice and reflect on building
Speaker 2: off that practice for the future.
Speaker 1: I've long wanted to inspire those around me, But I'm
Speaker 1: only now just waking up to the power I have
Speaker 1: as a leader. If you're like me, that I highly
Speaker 1: recommend Adam's new book Inspire the Universal Path for Leading
Speaker 1: yourself and others. But let's quickly go over some of
Speaker 1: the ideas he's just shared. Tip number one, park the
Speaker 1: criticism and find more praise, especially in writing. A tiny
Speaker 1: investment in your time can make you and the person
Speaker 1: you praise feel great. Tip number two is to have
Speaker 1: a vision and share it. We all want to find meaning.
Speaker 1: If you can vividly explain why you're asking someone to
Speaker 1: do something, then they'll do it more effectively and more cheerfully.
Speaker 1: The third tip is to remember that your personal values
Speaker 1: are your guide. If you value honesty, then ask yourself,
Speaker 1: what would an honest leader do now? If it's empathy,
Speaker 1: then how can I be the most empathic boss? Tip
Speaker 1: number four is to marvel it where you're at right now.
Speaker 1: Appreciate all the decisions, hard work, and strokes of luck
Speaker 1: that build your business or your family. Tip number five
Speaker 1: practice positive emotional contagion. Remember that a leader's fear or
Speaker 1: their enthusiasm will have a profound impact on those looking
Speaker 1: for inspiration. Tip number six is that you don't need
Speaker 1: to be superhuman to be a good leader. You can
Speaker 1: just be human. Letting people know you're vulnerable will give
Speaker 1: them the confidence they need to take their own risks.
Speaker 1: But don't overdo the self criticism. Since Tip number seven
Speaker 1: is to remember your successes, recalling your past triumphs can
Speaker 1: help you deal with new challenges on the horizon. Tip
Speaker 1: number eight is to give choices to those you leave.
Speaker 1: No one likes to feel boxed in, so give options
Speaker 1: rather than orders. Tip number nine share the credit. We
Speaker 1: all want to be recognized, but we truly succeed when
Speaker 1: we share the arles with our teams and even our arrivals.
Speaker 1: Adam's final tip is to show humility. The most inspiring
Speaker 1: leaders listen to the most inexperienced voices. Being open to
Speaker 1: downward learning can make you more productive than you expect.
Speaker 1: We've still got one more show in this How To season,
Speaker 1: and while I've loved making all of these episodes, I've
Speaker 1: saved something very special for last. I'm going to let
Speaker 1: you in on the science of how to find your purpose.
Speaker 1: That's all. Next time on the Happiness Lab with me,
Speaker 1: Doctor Laurie Santos