Speaker 1: Here's something I've been thinking about. Most of us are
Speaker 1: walking around with stories worth telling from our own lives
Speaker 1: and their own experiences, and we talk ourselves out of
Speaker 1: sharing them. Sometimes we think no one will care about that,
Speaker 1: that's just my story. But Daniel Coyle has spent his
Speaker 1: career proving that instinct wrong. Daniel is the best selling
Speaker 1: author of The Talent Code and The Culture Code, and
Speaker 1: his new book Flourish is probably what are the most
Speaker 1: dogg eared books I've read in a while. In this conversation,
Speaker 1: we get into how he finds and constructs stories that
Speaker 1: pull people in. We also get into the specific questions
Speaker 1: that create real connection, ones you can pull out the
Speaker 1: next time you're stuck in a sea of small talk.
Speaker 1: And he also gives me a concrete structure for building
Speaker 1: local community when you're craving something more than surface level friendships.
Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
Speaker 1: and strategies.
Speaker 2: For optimizing your date.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, doctor, Amantha Imber Daniel. When I sat
Speaker 1: down to read your book, I feel like often with
Speaker 1: business books, you kind of go okay, I can kind
Speaker 1: of skim through the stories, and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: get to, you know, the practical stuff here. But I
Speaker 1: was so sucked in by your storytelling, as I have
Speaker 1: been with all your books, but particularly in Flourish, and
Speaker 1: I actually want to start with asking how do you
Speaker 1: find such great stories to tell? And then my second
Speaker 1: part is how do you actually construct them in a
Speaker 1: way that really just sucks in the reader like it
Speaker 1: certainly did for me.
Speaker 2: Ah, those are good questions. Thank you and thanks for
Speaker 2: having me. I'm delighted to be here with you, And
Speaker 2: what a good way to start. I guess I pay
Speaker 2: attention to my own reaction to story. Like certain stories
Speaker 2: and they always end up being mysteries, but they contain
Speaker 2: a couple of ingredients. The first is a deep, deep mystery.
Speaker 2: They're getting it something that really has call to us
Speaker 2: some deep question. Why do some groups combine in ways
Speaker 2: that seem allst magical and other groups fall apart? And
Speaker 2: those and I have a sucker like everybody for a
Speaker 2: good underdog story are a good unlikely story. So you
Speaker 2: kind of start with some structure where there's some surprise emerging.
Speaker 2: In the middle of that surprise is some mystery that
Speaker 2: is not abstract but is really just like relatable some mystery.
Speaker 2: That's the best mysteries are the ones that are right
Speaker 2: in front of your nose, Like you stir your cream
Speaker 2: into your coffee and you see a pattern. It's like,
Speaker 2: why is it like that and not like some other way?
Speaker 2: Or why was Thanksgiving dinner so wonderful this year that
Speaker 2: it wasn't last year? Some kind of basic thing right there.
Speaker 2: And then the third thing I look for is access,
Speaker 2: Like I need to be able to have access to
Speaker 2: the people who are in this story. I can find
Speaker 2: out what really happened when those elements are there. When
Speaker 2: I'm responding, I find myself I'm leaning into this. Why
Speaker 2: am I leaning into it? I have to ask that?
Speaker 2: And then is that a really a one time thing?
Speaker 2: Or is that something that is a present in everybody's life?
Speaker 2: Is everyone struggling with this issue? So every story has
Speaker 2: got somebody you're rooting for, some big obstacle on some transformation.
Speaker 2: Those three elements, and if the person we're rooting for
Speaker 2: is relatable, if the obstacle is also kind of mysterious
Speaker 2: and relatable, and the transformation is real, that's something to explore.
Speaker 2: But then often some of the stories don't work out.
Speaker 2: I'd hate to show you my notebooks for this book.
Speaker 2: I mean, the book is maybe an inch thick, but
Speaker 2: I've got several feet of notebooks with stories that like, oh,
Speaker 2: that one doesn't quite fit, or that one's too much
Speaker 2: like this one.
Speaker 1: I recently had a guest on that talked about some
Speaker 1: research from LinkedIn that said that storytelling is one of
Speaker 1: the five most important skills that people are going to
Speaker 1: need for the next few years. And you share a
Speaker 1: lot of stories from your own life in the book,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering, how do you mind your own life
Speaker 1: for stories? Like are you constantly just recording things that
Speaker 1: happen in your day? What's your process around that?
Speaker 2: It starts, I think with a process of reflection. There's
Speaker 2: such power in zooming out, Amantha. There's such power in
Speaker 2: sort of having a regular reflective practice, but also a
Speaker 2: practice that might let you look further than just the
Speaker 2: day that just passed to the weeks that just passed.
Speaker 2: And at some point in this for some reason, I
Speaker 2: found myself drawing on a piece of paper like the
Speaker 2: shape of my life, and I ended up drawing you know,
Speaker 2: something that was a little bit like that, like, and
Speaker 2: it just got me thinking, is that that exercise got
Speaker 2: me thinking why did I end up here? So again
Speaker 2: we end up in that question of finding mysteries that
Speaker 2: don't really have a clear answer, and then using that
Speaker 2: energy of that question and that mystery, Well, I was
Speaker 2: going to be a doctor. How did I end up
Speaker 2: being a writer? And so the surreality of that and
Speaker 2: the mystery of that is what got me to think
Speaker 2: about it. So that's one piece of it, and the
Speaker 2: other piece of it is kind of a courage thing.
Speaker 2: There's a reflexive response. We all have to say, oh,
Speaker 2: that's just my story. Nobody will care about that, you know,
Speaker 2: we all sort of feel and I feel that in
Speaker 2: a big way. Like at the end of this book,
Speaker 2: I tell a story about friendships that came about as
Speaker 2: a result of some of the things that I learned
Speaker 2: through the process of writing this book. You know, every
Speaker 2: book changes you, and this book changed me. And so
Speaker 2: I really resisted that for a long time. I thought, Oh,
Speaker 2: that's just my story. Those are just my friends. That's
Speaker 2: not a big deal, right, We're kind of it's imposter syndrome,
Speaker 2: you could call it. That we don't tend to look
Speaker 2: at our own lives the way other people would and
Speaker 2: to actually get yourself in a headspace where you can
Speaker 2: zoom out and say, wait a minute, that really is
Speaker 2: I'm not just sort of going down my belly button
Speaker 2: to sort of celebrate something. There really is something there.
Speaker 2: There's something that other people could relate to about being
Speaker 2: in midlife and finding a new group of friendships. And
Speaker 2: so I guess my process was sort of like coming
Speaker 2: to grips with it myself, realizing there's something there, there's
Speaker 2: something worth telling, there's something universal about my experience, and
Speaker 2: then kind of testing it out like verbally, like I think,
Speaker 2: you don't know what's in a good story until you
Speaker 2: actually have to put it in the air and tell
Speaker 2: it to someone. It can look good in your journal,
Speaker 2: it can look really pretty and transformative, but actually go
Speaker 2: tell someone and see how they respond. Tell it, Tell
Speaker 2: it again, see what is resonating. Stories are kind of
Speaker 2: these beautiful little machines, and they function on mystery and
Speaker 2: on tension, and locating those moments will help you tell
Speaker 2: the story better and your relationship with the story will change.
Speaker 2: You'll start out thinking, oh, this is a story about friendship,
Speaker 2: and you'll realize that it's about a story about maybe
Speaker 2: truth or a story about fear.
Speaker 1: So how then do you construct a story to I
Speaker 1: guess optimize the tension and mystery and those elements.
Speaker 2: I think it was Aristotle who talked about it. For first,
Speaker 2: you begin at a question. You try to begin at
Speaker 2: some kind of juncture where there's a mystery. And it's
Speaker 2: like all movies, this is you. You begin at some moment,
Speaker 2: some moment where things are coming together, find that moment,
Speaker 2: and then back off and then show a even bigger mystery, right,
Speaker 2: And then so you've got two things happening at once.
Speaker 2: You've got what's going to happen at this moment, but
Speaker 2: then you've got that's embedded in some larger story. Every
Speaker 2: story is a little bit different, but they all have
Speaker 2: that same internal structure of saying, here's a protagonist, here's
Speaker 2: an obstacle, and here's a transformation. And your last tool
Speaker 2: that you have is your sand paper to take away
Speaker 2: everything that's not essential. So there's a temptation when we're
Speaker 2: telling a story to include everything, to include extras, to
Speaker 2: talk about this, but really, in the end you want
Speaker 2: to be very kind of ruthless and just put in
Speaker 2: the parts of the machine that are going to advance
Speaker 2: your story. Figure out what you're responding to. Are you
Speaker 2: responding to the fear in the story? Are you respire,
Speaker 2: you're rooting for someone in the story. What are you
Speaker 2: responding to? Name that and that will help you tell
Speaker 2: it too. You know, if you want to get good
Speaker 2: to telling a story, the world has got a lot
Speaker 2: of places for you to go to school. Find your
Speaker 2: ten favorite stories and outline them and figure out what
Speaker 2: makes them tick and reduce them to bullet points, and
Speaker 2: then read it and then try to write it yourself
Speaker 2: by memory as much as you can put yourself in
Speaker 2: a position of constructing the stories you love. I know
Speaker 2: some writers that will just take their favorite passages and
Speaker 2: just type them, and it sounds kind of crazy and
Speaker 2: woo woo. But to actually take your favorite passage and
Speaker 2: then type it and slow it down and write it,
Speaker 2: it gives you a feeling for how the story's moving
Speaker 2: and where the camera's going, and where the obstacle is
Speaker 2: and where your mind.
Speaker 1: Is I reckon. The same could be said of asking
Speaker 1: good questions. And something that struck me about Flourish is
Speaker 1: that there were so many brilliant, reflective questions for readers
Speaker 1: to learn about and getting on like I just I
Speaker 1: made so many marks and underlinings and doggie as when
Speaker 1: I was reading Flourish. I would love to know which
Speaker 1: of the questions stayed with you.
Speaker 2: It's been a slow journey. Like a lot of people,
Speaker 2: I have a lot of belief in answers and what
Speaker 2: this book taught me, I think the same as you.
Speaker 2: It's like, it's not about the answers, especially in an
Speaker 2: age when answers are like as cheap as tap water.
Speaker 2: It's like the question, like a great question, a question
Speaker 2: that I think about a lot, is what does your
Speaker 2: perfect day look like? I find myself thinking about that
Speaker 2: a lot. My wife and I are newly empty nesters,
Speaker 2: so we have got this extra time in our schedule,
Speaker 2: and that question itself just inspires such deep thought and
Speaker 2: collaboration around it. You know, the question sends us out
Speaker 2: on this journey. And there's one that someone asked in
Speaker 2: the book, which was what would someone need to know
Speaker 2: about you in order to be your best friend? That's
Speaker 2: got me thinking too about like what do I really value?
Speaker 2: What would I say? The question I end up using
Speaker 2: the most is one that I learned through the book,
Speaker 2: which is what's energizing you right now. Questions like that
Speaker 2: create this. You know, there's that phrase that you know,
Speaker 2: we've all heard a lot creating space, like we're going
Speaker 2: to create space. I never used to like that phrase, Amantha.
Speaker 2: I always felt kind of woo woo, And as a
Speaker 2: science journalist, I'm like, oh, come on, you're not creating space.
Speaker 2: Actually I was totally wrong. Creating space is so real
Speaker 2: and what does that is a great question. So when
Speaker 2: I say what's energizing you right now, I'm really giving
Speaker 2: you this zone that you can play in, that you
Speaker 2: can share if you like, you can not share if
Speaker 2: you want. But it's creating the space for us to
Speaker 2: have a different kind of encounter than if I said
Speaker 2: what are you working on right now? Or if I
Speaker 2: said here's what I'm doing. What's made me realize what
Speaker 2: a precious resource and what a powerful tool those small,
Speaker 2: deep questions are. And the last one that I found
Speaker 2: myself using is why does this matter to you? If
Speaker 2: you can carve out these little islands, these little places
Speaker 2: to stand with other people to ask, why does that
Speaker 2: matter to you that relationships happen in those moments? Life
Speaker 2: is not a productivity contest. It's a not a learning contest,
Speaker 2: and it's not an IQ test, it's a moment's thing.
Speaker 2: Relationships aren't machines. They happen in moments, and those moments
Speaker 2: are questions. There's spaces that people are creating to say,
Speaker 2: why does this matter to you? What's your perfect day
Speaker 2: look like? What's energized right now? That's where relationships grow.
Speaker 2: And that's what I saw these flourishing places do with
Speaker 2: such virtuosic skill to say, we're going to carve out
Speaker 2: these places where we're going to interact in this way
Speaker 2: and form deep relationships and create meaning together.
Speaker 1: I love those questions, and it's funny I think about
Speaker 1: those times, like you know, I think about how much
Speaker 1: I hate going to anything that resembles a networking event
Speaker 1: or a conference or something like that. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: listeners can relate. I'm sure anyone can relate. And I
Speaker 1: think those questions of man their gold for just having
Speaker 1: in your pocket to make the event a whole lot
Speaker 1: more interesting, certainly for yourself, but probably for the other
Speaker 1: people that you meet, because so much of the time
Speaker 1: we're on the receiving end of such dull, uninspiring questions.
Speaker 2: I know, I know it. We're not taught to ask
Speaker 2: questions in that way. Like we're in school, we're usually
Speaker 2: taught it's some more important to have an answer than
Speaker 2: to have a great question. And yet it's those questions
Speaker 2: that we end up. I don't know, they form relationships,
Speaker 2: They formed that kind of the shape of our lives.
Speaker 2: To encounter a great question is such a powerful energy source.
Speaker 2: It's like great question is like an engine.
Speaker 1: Now. When I was reading the book, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about it's kind of a goal I guess that I
Speaker 1: have for myself this year, or a theme where I
Speaker 1: was thinking about my friendship groups and none of my
Speaker 1: friends actually live in the same suburb as me. And
Speaker 1: for some reason, you know, I've just been really craving
Speaker 1: local community and having that group of people locally, and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it doesn't help that my daughter
Speaker 1: goes to a school that's a couple of suburbs away.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think there was so much inspiration
Speaker 1: in Flourish, and you looked at a lot of different
Speaker 1: communities that were indeed flourishing. I would love to know, like,
Speaker 1: what advice would you give me to help create that
Speaker 1: sense of community or some kind of structure that I
Speaker 1: could use to build a little local community for myself.
Speaker 2: You know, I guess a couple things I'd say right off.
Speaker 2: The first is that it's not as hard as it looks.
Speaker 2: It looks like it's very far away, right, But all
Speaker 2: the science and a lot of the case studies that
Speaker 2: I would were all the stories not of some massive
Speaker 2: new construction or massive new lift. They were like little
Speaker 2: rechannelings of existing things. To have a small event with
Speaker 2: the people around you, to create a small habit with
Speaker 2: people who are already around you, whether that's a meal,
Speaker 2: whether that's an interest to group. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: stories in the book is from the Paris neighborhood where
Speaker 2: everybody was disconnected and they put a table down the
Speaker 2: middle of the street, and then they started to self
Speaker 2: organize into interest groups. We're into hiking, and we're into biking,
Speaker 2: and we're into the museums, and we're into history. And
Speaker 2: at first when they started that, they thought that people
Speaker 2: were helplessly naive. They thought the organizers they called them
Speaker 2: teddy bear kissers because it sounded so far off to
Speaker 2: do something like this. But you fast forward a year
Speaker 2: or so, in the group, the place feels like a village.
Speaker 2: So I guess the habit that helped me do that
Speaker 2: a couple of things. One was like to be very
Speaker 2: intentional about having a daily random encounter in my neighborhood,
Speaker 2: like one encounter a day, just one conversation a day,
Speaker 2: that's it. Maybe it's at the checkout of the local stand,
Speaker 2: maybe it's at the post office. And the second thing
Speaker 2: was to pay attention to yellow doors. In the book
Speaker 2: I write about yellow doors, it's from Columbia University psychologist
Speaker 2: Lisa Miller. The idea is that we usually go through
Speaker 2: life attuned to red doors that are closed like don't
Speaker 2: go here, or green doors that are open, like go here,
Speaker 2: and life becomes infinitely more interesting when we start paying
Speaker 2: attention to signals that are neither go nor stop, neither
Speaker 2: red nor green, but that are a mixed signal, like
Speaker 2: a chat with a coworker who you haven't really gotten
Speaker 2: along with, or an invitation to a party that you
Speaker 2: don't really want to go to, or an invitation to
Speaker 2: try a new skill that you never were really good at.
Speaker 2: The courage and curiosity and those are the qualities that
Speaker 2: I always saw driving community curiosity. On the front end,
Speaker 2: say I'm going to give that a tribe. And though
Speaker 2: I don't really like it, and the courage to do that,
Speaker 2: I can say it's changed my life in a huge way.
Speaker 2: Having you know, there's a whole group of new friends.
Speaker 2: I was invited one day to go indoor climbing rate
Speaker 2: of heights. I don't really like to climb, but that
Speaker 2: I went, I yellow door in it. And now that's
Speaker 2: a group that we go on traveling with. Our friends
Speaker 2: are our families, are really good friends. We're playing music together.
Speaker 2: It doesn't take much like if you can sort of
Speaker 2: groupify the things you do alone. If you like to jog,
Speaker 2: find people a job with it. At every turn, try
Speaker 2: to add people to what you're doing. My wife does
Speaker 2: a thing whenever she's running an errand she has her
Speaker 2: friends that she calls and says, does anyone want to
Speaker 2: just come with me? I mean, I'm just going to
Speaker 2: the store to get something. Who wants to come with me?
Speaker 2: Do you need anything? The thing you would do alone
Speaker 2: just make that sideways, reach just yellow door and bring
Speaker 2: people along and then see where it leads. The other
Speaker 2: thing I would say is that be prepared to be annoyed,
Speaker 2: Like annoyance is the price of community. And I think
Speaker 2: we're sold a lie in the culture now that everything
Speaker 2: should be frictionless and happy all the time, that all
Speaker 2: our friends should always be great to us, but no
Speaker 2: community is really annoying at times. It's also transcendent, and
Speaker 2: to sort of prepare for that annoyance and to humbly
Speaker 2: realize that you're probably annoying too sometimes like I am,
Speaker 2: like you are, like we all are, ends up being
Speaker 2: a very liberating stance.
Speaker 1: I did love the concept of yellow doors in your book,
Speaker 1: and I want to know, Daniel, like, how do you
Speaker 1: or have you become better at identifying yellow doors in
Speaker 1: your life.
Speaker 2: I'm still the same person, That's the thing. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I haven't really changed. I'm still kind of grumpy and skeptical.
Speaker 2: And you know, if somebody says, oh, you should do this,
Speaker 2: one of my first reactions to be a little opposition
Speaker 2: to go like, man, I don't think so. I don't
Speaker 2: think so. But it just gives you a little microsecond,
Speaker 2: especially after you have a few of these experiences, to
Speaker 2: just go, huh, I wonder if I'm wrong. Like I
Speaker 2: have a story in my head that I'm not going
Speaker 2: to like that, but I wonder if I'm wrong I
Speaker 2: tell you one thing that really unlocked it for me
Speaker 2: was understanding the difference between complicated things and complex things.
Speaker 2: Does that ring a bell? Like complicated and complex like
Speaker 2: we normally think those are the same. We normally think, oh,
Speaker 2: we use those as interchangeable, like it's complicated, it's complex.
Speaker 2: In fact it's not. And not to get super deueby here,
Speaker 2: but this is almost like a systems theory truth about
Speaker 2: the world. Complicated things come together the same way every
Speaker 2: single time. If you're going to build this microphone, and
Speaker 2: I give you all the parts and you put it together,
Speaker 2: you'll get the microphone. Complex things are different every time.
Speaker 2: Complex things are alive, they change when you interact with them.
Speaker 2: So the changes the difference is, is this problem more
Speaker 2: like building this microphone or more like raising a teenager.
Speaker 2: You can't have an instruction sheet. It's not a to B,
Speaker 2: two C to dfer teenager. It's complex, it's alive. And
Speaker 2: so when you realize that a lot of times in
Speaker 2: life we go under the illusion that our lives are complicated.
Speaker 2: We go into the usion that A goes to B
Speaker 2: goes to cegos. If I go to the party, I
Speaker 2: won't have a good time right, In fact, we're wrong.
Speaker 2: Life is complex. You don't know you're in interaction with it.
Speaker 2: It's complex. So when you understand that it's not a
Speaker 2: straight line, that it's not always a to B two C.
Speaker 2: That in fact, when you're dealing with complex system the
Speaker 2: best thing to do is to experiment your way into them,
Speaker 2: like to try something to probe and see, oh that
Speaker 2: yellow door. It didn't look good on the outside, but
Speaker 2: actually once I got into it, I kind of enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: Like that's interesting. And in our life we hate to fail, right,
Speaker 2: we hate to have that feeling of failure. But you
Speaker 2: know what, relationships are exactly the same. You're trying to
Speaker 2: grow something, you're trying to create something. So having conversations
Speaker 2: that go really great and having conversations who go really
Speaker 2: poorly teaches you things.
Speaker 1: When we are back, we are going to get into
Speaker 1: talking about building twenty a structure at MIT that accidentally
Speaker 1: became one of the most inventive places in history, and
Speaker 1: what the lesson there actually means for how leaders run
Speaker 1: teams today. Daniel also is going to be tackling something
Speaker 1: I hear constantly now, the pain of leading through relentless change.
Speaker 1: AI included and his advice is not what you would expect.
Speaker 1: And we are going to finish with one of the
Speaker 1: most simple exercises I've come across in a long time,
Speaker 1: one that just takes thirty seconds and can immediately reconnect
Speaker 1: you to what actually matters. If you're looking for more
Speaker 1: tips to improve the way you work can live. I
Speaker 1: write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered
Speaker 1: that have helped me personally. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot Com. One
Speaker 1: of the stories that I really loved in the book
Speaker 1: was you talk about building twenty at MIT, and one
Speaker 1: of the concepts you explore is these speed launches that
Speaker 1: they had as a ritual. I'm wondering if you could
Speaker 1: tell me, tell me more about that, because I just
Speaker 1: think there's so much inspiration there for workplaces to take
Speaker 1: from that.
Speaker 2: Oh, that place is incredible. It was a building that
Speaker 2: was built by accident. They were not by accent entirely,
Speaker 2: but inhabited by accident. It was built to build the
Speaker 2: US radar system for World War Two. It was built
Speaker 2: in almost in just a matter of weeks, and when
Speaker 2: the war effort was over. It was kind of left alone,
Speaker 2: and different groups from a nearby college MIT sort of
Speaker 2: colonized this building, almost like a coral reef, groups from
Speaker 2: all sorts of different disciplines, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: these new inventions started coming out of this building. Some
Speaker 2: of the first video games, some of the first sound works,
Speaker 2: bows electronics came out of there. And they had so
Speaker 2: much agency in this building. That's the thing in the
Speaker 2: book I call it the rule of the Beautiful mess.
Speaker 2: We tend to go through life thinking we want to
Speaker 2: have things tightly organized, sort of complicated, if you might
Speaker 2: put it that way. We want to have the lunch
Speaker 2: room over here, and we want to have the lunch
Speaker 2: hours right here. And what these people did is if
Speaker 2: they wanted more room in their laboratory, they took out
Speaker 2: a saw and caught a hole in the wall. And
Speaker 2: they didn't have to call engineering or anything. They did
Speaker 2: whatever they wanted. When it came to their lunch room,
Speaker 2: they had cut a hole in the wall too, and
Speaker 2: they had people making sandwiches on one side, and they
Speaker 2: would hand the sandwich out through the hole in the
Speaker 2: wall and they would gather in the hallway to eat it,
Speaker 2: and then they would have these impromptu sort of lecture
Speaker 2: lunches where people would share what they were working on,
Speaker 2: whether it was from sociology or from electrical engineering. This
Speaker 2: incredibly fertile cross pollination that happened, and it happened because
Speaker 2: they self organized. It happened because they had agency as
Speaker 2: human beings. We've constructed a world that doesn't have as
Speaker 2: much agency as would be ideal. I think when you
Speaker 2: give people that space so that they can control what
Speaker 2: they're making, so that they can have clear autonomy over
Speaker 2: what they're working on. When you talk about flourishing, what
Speaker 2: you're talking about is whole human beings coming together and saying, Hey,
Speaker 2: what do you want to do? What do you want
Speaker 2: to do? And that's what community is, when peer groups
Speaker 2: decide to make their world better. I don't know why
Speaker 2: I've got me thinking about this right now, but one
Speaker 2: of the things that I remember most about having two
Speaker 2: brothers and now being the parent to four daughters are
Speaker 2: those days when they decide to build a fort in
Speaker 2: their room. Does that happen in Australia where kids decide
Speaker 2: we're going to build a fort, right? I think that's
Speaker 2: like the ultimate, like little rehearsal for community. Right, they
Speaker 2: already have beds to sleep in. They don't need beds.
Speaker 2: But the idea that I'm going to put a blanket here,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to put pillows here, and we're going
Speaker 2: to create this world together. The energy that kids get
Speaker 2: from that is through the roof. It's the most fun
Speaker 2: thing they do. We built a fort. We built a fort,
Speaker 2: and that's the same energy that building twenty had. We
Speaker 2: built a fort. We built this. This is ours. We're
Speaker 2: going to teach each other to do things. We're not
Speaker 2: at the university. We'ren't building twenty. That is ours. And
Speaker 2: so that is such a precious and I think rare thing.
Speaker 2: And that's what you have in all the places that
Speaker 2: I visited, this sense of real ownership, real agency, and
Speaker 2: this is probably the key point leaders who are willing
Speaker 2: and who encouraged that kind of behavior.
Speaker 1: There was something you wrote in I think I was
Speaker 1: in the context of the rule of surprise, and you
Speaker 1: write that change often happens slowly, then in a surprising bloom.
Speaker 1: And I reflected on that because I found that so interesting.
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of counter to how we think
Speaker 1: about change. And I thought that really rings true to me, Like,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, my company's culture went through a
Speaker 1: really bad time and then you know, there was sort
Speaker 1: of some changes in the combination of the people and
Speaker 1: the team, and then it's like it just sprung back
Speaker 1: within weeks in twenty twenty five. And I'd love you
Speaker 1: to explain a bit more about like what that means
Speaker 1: and why why does you know it happened slowly then
Speaker 1: bang it like it blooms.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's true, isn't it. Think about you know,
Speaker 2: when you think about our own lives, I think we
Speaker 2: start to recognize that pattern, whether we're talking about physical
Speaker 2: fitness or new habits or adopting change. I think it's
Speaker 2: because we are naturally built to sort of resist change,
Speaker 2: especially in social situations. It is risky, it's deeply risky
Speaker 2: to change, especially when things are even average right, because
Speaker 2: we're taking a risk to make that change, and so
Speaker 2: we almost have to convince ourselves by living it. I
Speaker 2: forget who said this, but life is lived forward, but
Speaker 2: it must be understood backwards. We're living through life, but
Speaker 2: we're constantly sort of renarrating our past to say, oh,
Speaker 2: this is why this is happening. This is why this
Speaker 2: is happening. So I think that's partly true too, that
Speaker 2: we're our storytelling is just catching up to our reality.
Speaker 2: When we say, oh, it happened all at once, Well,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe it didn't. Maybe it didn't, but it
Speaker 2: certainly feels that way. It certainly feels that way. The
Speaker 2: flywheel is an example that I hear a lot right
Speaker 2: when it takes a lot of energy to start it spinning,
Speaker 2: and it takes time, but once it starts spinning, a
Speaker 2: flywheel has got a ton of energy to keep going.
Speaker 2: So you feel that energy at the end, almost like
Speaker 2: it's happening magically, but it's not. You put in all
Speaker 2: the energy in the front to make it change. You
Speaker 2: put that in. So it is a tribute to how
Speaker 2: complex the world is, I think, because that's a shape
Speaker 2: of complexity. If the world was complicated, you could just go,
Speaker 2: well A went to B, goes to C, gooes to D,
Speaker 2: and now we have change. Right, it's easy. We just
Speaker 2: have to put it together the pieces. But it's a
Speaker 2: living thing. So because it's so complex, complexity takes a
Speaker 2: little time. But that's also what makes it very very powerful.
Speaker 2: That's also what makes it very I don't know, so
Speaker 2: beautiful when it does come together like that, because when
Speaker 2: you have that flywheel type energy, then you can grow
Speaker 2: even more things. It is funny, you know, some days
Speaker 2: you look out and it's the same thing we see
Speaker 2: in nature. Spring's never going to come this year. It's
Speaker 2: been so snowy here in America, Springs never going to come.
Speaker 2: But you know what, in like three weeks, the daffodils
Speaker 2: are going to be blooming and they're going to come out.
Speaker 2: They're going to astonish us all.
Speaker 1: I'd love to know how that might apply to advice
Speaker 1: the leaders. I feel like every week I am speaking
Speaker 1: to different leaders that are talking about, you know, change fatigue,
Speaker 1: and particularly the change that ali transformations are having on workplaces.
Speaker 1: And you know, with this knowledge that change happens slowly
Speaker 1: then in a surprising bloom, Like, what's the advice there
Speaker 1: for leaders that feel like they are stuck in a
Speaker 1: world of pain because of change that's going on.
Speaker 2: Think like a gardener, I would say, you know a
Speaker 2: lot of leaders like to think like I certainly the
Speaker 2: captain of the ship, you know, like I'm the one
Speaker 2: who decides the direction. That's how we understand leader. I
Speaker 2: think we kind of misunderstand leader in that way. Most
Speaker 2: organizations are not actually work like that. What do gardeners
Speaker 2: think about They think about creating space for things to happen,
Speaker 2: planting seeds and then nurturing those changes in small ways.
Speaker 2: And gardeners also have to be incredibly patient, so being
Speaker 2: that that level of patience is not an extra, that's
Speaker 2: absolutely at the core. The skill set that I've seen
Speaker 2: work very effectively in this case is is locating culture champions,
Speaker 2: locating champions of that change and really helping them broker
Speaker 2: those ideas, selling those ideas with an house, franchising those
Speaker 2: idea in house, identifying people who you feel like ken
Speaker 2: champion those changes, and then when you start to see
Speaker 2: something bloom. The good leaders I've seen are really good
Speaker 2: at radiating their delight, their happiness, broadcasting spotlighting that story.
Speaker 2: At Pixar, they have a different team take on each movie,
Speaker 2: and the head of Pixar is named ed Catmill, and
Speaker 2: he would always watch with very worriedly because he's a
Speaker 2: guy who tends to worry. Is the team getting it?
Speaker 2: Is the team coming together? That was his question, because
Speaker 2: he knows you can give a good idea to a
Speaker 2: bad team and you'll get a bad movie. You can
Speaker 2: give a bad idea to a good team and you
Speaker 2: get a good movie. So is the team coming together?
Speaker 2: So he'd be watching them, he'd be very, very worried.
Speaker 2: And there was one movie they were doing. I forget
Speaker 2: which one it was. It was maybe it was something
Speaker 2: about camping, and he saw that the team. He was
Speaker 2: really worried about team. But then he saw the team
Speaker 2: had set up a tent on Pixar's lawn and they
Speaker 2: were camping together, and then he saw it. Then that
Speaker 2: was it. He was waiting for that to happen. So
Speaker 2: he couldn't make it happen. He couldn't order them to
Speaker 2: go do that, he couldn't coerce them. But what he
Speaker 2: could do is create space, you might say, asking questions,
Speaker 2: trying to get the team to navigate itself. And another
Speaker 2: tool that is useful to do that is a team
Speaker 2: intent process. To have a team intent process to make
Speaker 2: sure you as a leader. You can't be the one
Speaker 2: to say this is what I want your team to do,
Speaker 2: but you can't say, hey, you guys should get together
Speaker 2: and talk about three things. Talk about what your desired
Speaker 2: end state is. Where do you want to go. What's
Speaker 2: this going to look like in six months? You guys
Speaker 2: decide what your desired end state is. How do you
Speaker 2: want to work together? I mean, talk about how you
Speaker 2: want to work together, that's the second thing, and then
Speaker 2: have regular meetings along the way to see how that's going.
Speaker 2: Are you still being energized by this? And then another
Speaker 2: thing that they could talk about was what do we
Speaker 2: not want to do? Let's name really clearly what we
Speaker 2: would call our via negativa, like the place we don't
Speaker 2: want to go right, do a pre moor in them.
Speaker 2: If this goes horribly, If this goes absolutely horribly, what happened?
Speaker 2: That's a good question to ask. So getting the team
Speaker 2: to ask those questions can be really powerful. And the
Speaker 2: reason those questions are powerful is that what you're trying
Speaker 2: to do as a leader is establish three things. Establish
Speaker 2: a really clear horizon, establish very clear guardrails, and then
Speaker 2: you want a spark agency those three things, and then
Speaker 2: let the team self navigate.
Speaker 1: I want to finish with actually where your book starts,
Speaker 1: which is talking about awakening cues, which I love that
Speaker 1: part of the book. Can you share what an awakening
Speaker 1: queue is?
Speaker 2: It's an awakening to meaning it's we go through life
Speaker 2: typically just kind of focused on what's in front of
Speaker 2: us and doing our day and staying in the moment
Speaker 2: in what I would say task awareness, where we're sort
Speaker 2: of working on that task Awakening queues are moments where
Speaker 2: we zoom way out and we see meaning, we see
Speaker 2: what matters, and they happen when you sort of I
Speaker 2: would say that the idea of mattering, where you see
Speaker 2: the inherent value in the people across from you and
Speaker 2: the inherent value of the project you're involved with. So
Speaker 2: there's sort of these moments of living into questions. They
Speaker 2: arrive as questions awaken Accues are all questions. I'll give
Speaker 2: you an example of one that I thought was really
Speaker 2: really powerful. We all think that middle school is famously difficult.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows middle school is a nightmare no matter what
Speaker 2: country you're in. But there was an experimenter who had
Speaker 2: the idea, does it have to be this way? And
Speaker 2: so he gave every middle schooler a letter from a
Speaker 2: kid who had just graduated that same grade. So they're
Speaker 2: in the first day of middle school. You and in
Speaker 2: our first day middle school. We both get a letter
Speaker 2: from someone who just graduated middle school. And the letter
Speaker 2: has a couple of quick themes. It says, sixth grade
Speaker 2: is really hard, and everyone gets through it, and teachers
Speaker 2: are there to help you. That's it. They just get
Speaker 2: that little thing. And the kids who got that little
Speaker 2: letter outperformed kids who got a whole module of social
Speaker 2: emotional learning, that little signal of belonging, that little signal
Speaker 2: of connection of being seen and seeing the larger project
Speaker 2: of zooming out, an awakening attention and creating meaningful relationships.
Speaker 2: That's what awakening queues do. They activate and awaken meaningful relationships.
Speaker 1: I love that study. I've actually written about that study myself,
Speaker 1: but yes, it was nice to be reminded of it
Speaker 1: in your book. I'd love to know, like for listeners
Speaker 1: that you know, thinking, well, that all sounds really good,
Speaker 1: but like, what is one thing I can do today
Speaker 1: to kind of to have that zooming out moment and
Speaker 1: you know, to tap into that sense of really mattering.
Speaker 1: What are one or two simple things that people could
Speaker 1: do today?
Speaker 2: Well, you could do your council exercise. This is one
Speaker 2: of my favorite ones from Lisa Miller again at Columbia,
Speaker 2: where it's very simple. He just takes thirty seconds. But
Speaker 2: you close your eyes and you picture a wooden table,
Speaker 2: and you picture the people on that table who have
Speaker 2: your best interest in mind, who truly are on your side,
Speaker 2: people living or deceased in your life, and you picture
Speaker 2: them taking a seat there, and you take your time
Speaker 2: picture them, and then you ask them if they love you.
Speaker 2: Then you come and take a seat at the table,
Speaker 2: and then you ask them what do I need to
Speaker 2: know right now about the path? About my path? What
Speaker 2: is important for me to know right now? And it's
Speaker 2: just like a little grounding exercise. Again, I'm not wou
Speaker 2: wu person at all, But when you actually take your
Speaker 2: time and do that picture, figure out who's at your table,
Speaker 2: Who shows up there? Who surprisingly shows up there? When
Speaker 2: I did it, I had some My little league baseball
Speaker 2: coach showed up for some reason. Who shows up there?
Speaker 2: These are the people that are with you all the time,
Speaker 2: and they're your counsel and you can lean on them
Speaker 2: if you need to. You can ask them those questions
Speaker 2: they're around. Another thing I would encourage people to do
Speaker 2: is to just ask yourself these litmus test questions, who
Speaker 2: do you feel most alive with? And the second question
Speaker 2: is what are you growing with other people? What are
Speaker 2: you growing together? What project? What thing? What are you growing?
Speaker 2: Those questions can be a guide. And a third thing
Speaker 2: I would say is think about making a bit of
Speaker 2: an energy calendar, Like take the last week and write
Speaker 2: down the times where you felt most alive, most activated
Speaker 2: by meaning most connected to something. And a good way
Speaker 2: to think of it is where did you feel like
Speaker 2: you disappeared, where you kind of disappear into your task,
Speaker 2: disappear into your flow. Where did that happen for you?
Speaker 2: Locate those points and that's kind of your map, like
Speaker 2: that will teach you something important. The thing about all
Speaker 2: of this is in a world where so often we're
Speaker 2: given these three steps, this four recipes, I mean, there's
Speaker 2: no sort of nice, neat perfect recipe because it really
Speaker 2: depends on you. It really depends on your ability to
Speaker 2: sort of sense where you're at, to think deeply about
Speaker 2: your values, to think about where you're headed, to think
Speaker 2: about the people in your life, and to carve out
Speaker 2: space for these kind of grounding pauses that let you
Speaker 2: see yourself and your life more clearly.
Speaker 1: I love that, Daniel, Thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: me on how I work. I've been such a fan
Speaker 1: of your books for many years, and so it's just
Speaker 1: been such a joy to have this conversation. Thank you
Speaker 1: for putting so much great work into the world.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. This has been a total delight.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that's stuck with me from
Speaker 1: this conversation is that annoyance is the price of community.
Speaker 1: Like I saw this idea that the right friendship should
Speaker 1: be frictionless, but every real community is irritating sometimes, and
Speaker 1: expecting that and even welcoming that is actually I think,
Speaker 1: what let's you stay in it long enough for something
Speaker 1: meaningful to grow. Now, if you're looking for one thing
Speaker 1: to try this week, I highly recommend Daniel's yellow door idea.
Speaker 1: So the next time you get an invitation you'd normally decline,
Speaker 1: just pause for a second and ask whether your no
Speaker 1: is a real no or just to have it. I
Speaker 1: love that Daniel went indoor climbing despite being afraid of heights,
Speaker 1: and that those people are now some of his closest friends. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're looking for more inspiration, maybe about human connection,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend going back and checking out my interview
Speaker 1: with Lael Stone. There is so much good stuff there
Speaker 1: about how to build human connection, and there is a
Speaker 1: link to that in the show notes. If you like
Speaker 1: today's show, make sure you get follow on your podcast
Speaker 1: app to be alerted when new episodes drop. How I
Speaker 1: Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people,
Speaker 1: part of the Coulan nation.