Best Simon Sinek MOTIVATION (3.5 HOURS of Pure INSPIRATION)

so there's another guy who does what I do he's extremely well respected he does extremely good work I hate him he's always been very nice to me when I've seen him professionally just I have an irrational hatred of him and whenever his name comes up it like it drives me nuts like people bring it like where we hired him and I was like because I hate him I'm really competitive with him and so I will go online and look at my book rankings and I'll immediately check his and mind you I don't look at anybody else's just his if I'm ahead I've got this like smug feeling and if he's ahead I get really pissed off so anyway we had the opportunity to speak at the same event I don't mean like me in the morning came in the afternoon like we were interviewed together on the stage and the interviewer thought it would be fun if we introduced each other and so I went first and then I looked at him and I said um you make me really insecure all of your strengths are all of my weaknesses and when your name comes up it makes me really uncomfortable and he looked at me and he said funny I feel the same about you the reason I had such an irrational hatred of them had nothing to do with him it had to do with me he's my worthy rival he was a very cathartic experience we've since become very close friends and worked together I no longer check his book rankings and because we share the same cause we can actually work together and so what I recognized was so often in business we have these competitors sometimes on our own teams and so having worthy Rivals instead of competitors competitors or other players we set out to beat but the problem with that is there's no Finish Line we're obsessed with beating the the other company then at some point sure you're ahead in whatever metric you chose until when that's not sustainable but rather the other players inside our industry outside our industry on our own teams we can choose our own worthy Rivals their strengths reveal to us our weaknesses and by having our weaknesses revealed to us it means we have the opportunity to grow and improve and the infinite game at its core is basically a game of constant Improvement our worthy Rivals reveal to us our weaknesses and our opportunities to improve hey it's Evan Carmichael and I make these videos because in my first business I quit on my business partner I was making 300 bucks a month and I didn't have the motivation to keep going and the thing that got me through was studying the stories of entrepreneurs who've had massive success and I hope that in sharing these stories with you you find a motivation to keep going and if I'm being honest I still need the source for myself today too so today let's learn from one of the best Simon signic and get some of his incredible motivation Joy there's a great story of two two Lumberjacks where every morning they start chopping wood at the same time and every day they stop chopping wood at the same time and every day one of The Lumberjacks disappears for about an hour in the middle of the day and every day he chops more wood than the other guy and this goes on for months and eventually the one who works all day says I don't understand every day we start at the same time every day we stop at the same time every day you disappear for about an hour in the middle of the day and every day you Chuck more wood than me where do you go for that hour and the other Lumberjack looks up and goes oh we'll go home and sharpen my ax you know that that if you if you take an infinite mindset it's not about how much you can get done each day it's how much you can get done over the course of a career over the course of a lifetime and and you you got to take vacations which means you turn off your email and you turn off your phone and you do not connect to the office you know go sharpen your acts like you do you take a Friday afternoon off you know we have something called duvet days in in our company where uh um where it's you wake up in the morning and you just can't do it and it's not like asking you know it's not like vacation days where you plan ahead and it's not like sick days you know where you're you're actually sick like you're not sick you just you just don't want to do it or I'm just not feeling it today I'm just not feeling it and you just you can do it and you do responsibly you can't leave your team in the Lurch obviously you know we you have to exercise um responsible freedom but we give people an opportunity instead of lying and pretending that they have a stomach bug um because they just can't face the day that they can just call up and say I'm I'm taking a duvet day and everybody goes go go we got you you know go I can tell you what I went through which is what set me on the journey um to sharing the message of the why and and uh helping people find theirs um a why is like a is like a it's like a compass Direction it tells you where you're going um we can live our lives by accident which is kind of like getting in a ship and just sailing or getting in a car and just driving you'll absolutely see some amazing things you'll stumble and upon some amazing experiences but you don't really have a sense of where you're going any sort of Direction in other words what's it all for what the why does is it provides a path it provides a map or a compass so you will still have some of those amazing experiences but now they have value and worth and they're taking you towards something else it's a journey towards something when I learned my why I had this tremendous calm come over me a sense of my confidence grew um a sense that my life had more meaning than I thought it had before and I had now the choice a new way of viewing decisions a filter through which to make decisions which now I would ask myself does this help Advance my why or not does this help me stay on the path that I'm supposed to be on or is this going to be a random a random Adventure so the why provides Focus Direction meaning and and confidence you cannot have Innovation or progress without failure it doesn't exist and if you truly aren't failing as you're trying to innovate then you're probably not pushing very hard because you haven't broken anything you're taking you're making very very safe choices we could never put a person on the moon without a bunch of rockets blowing up first like of course um uh um I I met a CFO once I asked him the priorities at the company and he said efficiency and Innovation and I laughed and said well good luck with that you know Innovation is inherently inefficient because it requires experimentation experimentation requires failure um much is said about fail fast I actually don't like the term that we I think we overuse the term failure um you know and the problem with the word failure is it's like the word cancer it's too broad like if you have stage four liver cancer or you have a mild melanoma those things are both called cancer but they are clearly not the same thing and the same thing is when we hear the word failure some people think failure means experimentation but a lot of people think failure means catastrophe and so when we tell our company failure is good fail fast that literally scares people we don't want to fail so I think we need a new word right we want to avoid failure failure is catastrophic and it should be avoided but Falling I think we should encourage you know when a kid falls off a bicycle we didn't tell them they failed we tell them they fell and what do we tell them get back up and try again so I don't want to tell people they failed I want to see people they fail and I want to encourage them to try again and you know brush off their knees so I think we should fall and fall often and I will judge the quality of innovation not necessarily by if you fell but how quickly you can pick yourself back up and try again let's reinforce that point because I think it's an important one that fulfillment is a right and not a privilege and when we go out with our friends for dinner when we used to be able to do that um uh you know you sit around and somebody says I love my job and everybody goes oh my God you're so lucky like they won something that statement should be the norm not the exception we should all get to go to dinner and say I love my job and it's the one person who says I don't that's that that we can that we can intervene um so yeah I believe it is a right and we have a responsibility ourselves to to find a a place where we want to work with the people that we would work with rather than just taking the biggest salary um that we have a responsibility to take care of the people around us and we have a responsibility to speak up and ask our our leaders to work with us and create a place where people want to come to work where we where there's a safe space for us to take care of each other and feel taken care of so there's Mutual responsibility all around so when you say you know how do we do it well it's it requires constant work it's like how do you stay healthy well I can give you a whole list of things you have to do you have to eat right you have to nurse your personal relationships you have to get enough sleep you have to exercise you have to meditate you have to be mindful you know there's a little there's like 30 things and you can't do all those things well all the time it's a striving um and uh and when one's doing well sometimes one one thing falls off it's a striving and it's the same the the pursuit of fulfillment is a striving you know I I think it's you know this is why I make the distinction between fulfillment and happiness you know to seek happiness is a lot easier because happiness is fleeting you know you you you get a new job you're happy you get a raise you're happy you win a new piece of business you're happy you're given a gift you're happy you know somebody says something nice to you you're happy and that feeling goes away no nobody nobody walks around with a sense of happiness for a job they got four years ago it's gone um where fulfillment is different fulfillment you can feel fulfilled by your work even if you're not enjoying it today you can feel fulfilled by your work even if you if you're having a bad a bad day you know or or one of your colleagues is grumpy you can still be fulfilled by the work it's more it's more uh it's it's more infinite it's more constant and so um whereas happiness is you know the things that lead up to it it sounds more like an event fulfillment is a striving it's a lifestyle and you do all these things like having a just cause like building trusting teams and working to be the leader you wish you had in other words you see your life as a life of service to those around you whether you're in a company whether you're an employee whether you're a leader or if you're just a parent that you see your life in service you know to your spouse your partner or your and your kids and indeed your community what makes a community highly functional is that we view uh that every single person within that Community sees their responsibility to serve the community rather than standing around demanding the community does something for them I think courage is external right the reason someone has courage to jump out of an airplane is because there's a parachute on their back it's the external thing a a a a a world famous trapeze artist would never try a brand new death-defying act for the first time without a net it's the net that gives them the courage you know the Navy Seals are considered one of the highest performing organizations on the planet and a former seal was asked what kind of person makes it into the seals and he said I can't tell you the kind of person that makes it in but I can tell you the kind of person that doesn't make it he said the Star College athletes who have never really been tested to the core of their being none of them making it he said the preening leaders who like to delegate everything none of them make it in he says the guys that show up with hulking muscles covered in tattoos because they want to show you how tough they are none of them make it in he sent it he said some of the guys who make it in are skinny and scrawny he said some of the guys who make it in you see them shivering out of fear he said but every single one of the guys who makes it in when they're emotionally exhausted when they're physically exhausted when they have absolutely nothing left to give somehow some way they're able to dig down deep inside themselves to find the energy to help the guy next to them in other words the reason these organizations and these people have the courage to do remarkable things is not because of their internal strength it's because they have the absolute confidence that there is someone to the left of them and someone to the right of them that cares about them um and they will know that and it's the quality of the relationships that we maintain professionally and personally that give us the courage to do difficult things Isaac Stern the famous violinist said music is what happens between the notes well something like trust happens between the meetings you know we few people think about the importance of building trust when they go to work or the what I need to do today to build trust with somebody like that doesn't really go through people's minds but we have Chit Chat as we walk into the meeting we've Chit Chat when we walk out of the meeting and we see somebody the whole they're like oh meant to tell you something or you knock on someone's door and be like got a minute and all those little innocuous interactions over the course of time like any relationship build trust it's about setting up the computer and setting up zoom and having a work session with somebody you know like we're not working on the same thing but I want to work with somebody a work buddy or having a lunch with somebody over Zoom or a Monday morning huddle where we talk about what's on our hearts and minds but we do not talk business on purpose or Friday uh cocktails that are just voluntary but the most important one is to just pick up the phone and call people and say hey how are you that level of empathy just check in on someone and I think we neglect it because we get mired in the day-to-day but you know one of you know if you're organized or disorganized you know literally keep a list of your team on a little card next to your computer and just you know go through it and have I called this person a while and talk to us but I'm just going to call and check in it doesn't matter if something's wrong or not wrong just check in on them you know don't wait for something to Break um and let people know that they're uh that there's connection and there's a way to reach out and say I need help um because if if if and and the most important thing is for leaders to be honest and open about their need to ask for help and that that'll work finite mindset is everything is about this transaction this listing an infinite mindset is I may win or lose this game I may win or lose this transaction and there'll be another one and another one and another one and another one and the goal is not to win this one the goal is to be better and better and better and better and better and what happens is you win more often yeah so I I uh see and where I struggle with that honestly is I want to crush it every time yeah of course of course highly competitive A type personality I get it yeah um but if that's all you do you you're not going to be in the game I don't know I've been in a long time but this is my point in infinite in the infinite game the infinite game the infinite mindset is about having the strength the will and the resources which means will is I really still enjoy this industry and the researchers is I got the money to stay in the game if you run out of will you run out of resources you find a different line of work right the goal is not to win every game the goal is to stay in the game as long as possible and you're more likely to stay in the game as long as possible if you're enjoying it and if you're making money so uh but like I said think of those agents who are better than you whether they're better marketers or better salesperson or they have they get more recommendations and again you don't have to like them you have to thank them and study them and learn what they're doing as I said because their strengths are revealed revealing to your weaknesses and sometimes partner with them because you're actually stronger together but hating them is stupid right all it does is make you cut focus on them rather than focus on yourself all it does is make you focus and and sit around with your friends and be like but they don't do this and they well you're not doing any of that either you know so it puts all your focus in all the wrong places it's like you know what it's like uh uh if the any skiers out there if you ski through trees every skier knows this if you say don't hit a tree don't hit a tree don't hit a tree you hit a tree because all you're doing is looking at trees where when you're skiing through cheese and you say follow the path follow the path follow the path you don't hit a tree because you're only looking at the path so your mindset is if all you're doing is focusing on them then you're good you're hitting trees that's what you're doing you're focusing all the things that make you weak rather than focusing on all the things that'll make you better it's a term that's been overused in business this concept of authenticity right all that authenticity means is the things you say and the things you do you actually believe and there's a lot of room for cynicism in the in the in the uh financial advisor World um because every financial advisor says the right thing I'm here to help you I'm here to help you find your nest egg to achieve your financial goals and blah blah blah blah blah blah every financial advisor I've ever met tells me the same thing but then the way they make me feel not always consistent where they may say the right things but then they're not actually listening to the things that I want I can feel that they're just trying to hammer a product um they're not actually trying to do what I what I ex what I talk about but rather I can feel the feel that they have an agenda that they're pushing something on me and so you know we're highly attuned social animals we can tell the difference and if somebody's going to put their agenda their uh uh commission their interests first then stop saying I'm here to help you and achieve your financial goals because I care about you stop saying those words I don't have I don't have a problem with somebody being selfishly minded if they approach their business just stop pretending that you're not because the ones that truly do care will be way more creative if they say I'm truly trying to help you they'll be offering advice and forwarding articles that have nothing to do with with the financial tools that you can buy from me I might send you an article about you know your teenagers and and screen time for example because you because that's one of the things you're concerned about and I'm here to help you live a better life like I may be more curious about all of the aspects of about helping you of which some are the things that I can deliver on within Financial advice and some Financial tools so I think I think if you got into this business to help people then help people um I think that's really really important I think one of the things that the the pandemic revealed quite frankly was the weakness of so many corporate cultures I mean we're we're seeing the great resignation happening and if you read articles or listen to some of the Talking Heads you know the prevailing thought as well they're getting you know checks from the government so they're not encouraged to come back to work um or they're pursuing their dreams you know which which we've seen as well in our own company somebody wants to go be a screenwriter and even though we have a great relationship and they love their job they they want to pursue their dreams but the other the other thing that I think is is underlying that it's that it's missing that these these commentaries are missing is that um the cultures uh may have been weaker than we like to think they are um uh that the the sense of belonging that people have when they would come to work is actually a lot a lot more tenuous than we'd like to believe so the the the bond that's allowing them to go off and do other things is is easily broken um I think strong cultures when there's a strong corporate culture we recognize that I can pursue my dreams and work because I love it here and I know my team is supportive of me becoming a screenwriter or something and I can do both or even though I'm making money potentially even more money um there's so much more I get from my work you know the camaraderie the love the support I get all of this training on how to be a better listener and a better Communicator which is having me in my marriage and helping me with my kids and I don't want to lose that plus I I have my I have close friends at work um and I can speak up and say hey I'm I'm being offered more money from the government is there anything you can help you know the point is it becomes a conversation rather than a rather than a resignation so I think one of the things that we're missing is this might be a wake-up call for a lot of companies that our culture is just not as strong as we think they are you know it's been spoken about for years that Millennials you know and now gen Z are just not loyal to work they bounce around from job year to year to year well is that them or is that us maybe if we had stronger cultures they wouldn't want to leave maybe if we offer them more than simply Financial incentives for hitting certain numbers that they'd want to stay maybe if they felt that they were growing like as human beings there would be things that were more appealing to them than simply simply a bigger paycheck somewhere else um so I actually think it's it's a it's a big wake-up call frankly um uh that that we we should go back and look at our cultures and say are we are we as good as we think we are the best leader is actually the best follower is even if they're at the highest levels of the organization they're still in service right it may not be to a person but to a cause an idea a vision whatever it is there's still some sort of something that they're beholden to and they're devoted to and they're in service to um so so followership is a thing um and um not to belabor the Marine point but uh you know Marines when they evaluate their leaders they're looking good for good leadership and good followership so for example there when you go through OCS officer candidates uh School selection um uh when somebody's a for a task you know chosen to be the leader of that group for that task the the Marines are watching the others as well so they're looking to see that everybody's contributing ideas and they're looking to see that that leader takes in those ideas but is decisive and and they're looking to see that the the members of the group if their idea isn't picked they still give their all to see that that the leader's idea is successful and if it fails give it their all to pick up the pieces and and see what they can do as opposed to going I told you right should have gone my way right I was right or sabotaging because their idea didn't get picked so they go all in so so good followership is is as important as good leadership that that we we respect that that um when a decision is made we will we will give our Blood Sweat and Tears to see that the decision our leaders have made will be successful and if it fails we will help pick up the pieces because that's the deal when you're trying to build uh trusting teams it's you you recognize that you cannot enforce certainty uh on people you can offer goals people like goals um but what's important is how we get there not not just that we got there think of it like uh think of it like um trying to lose weight right there's nothing wrong with setting arbitrary goals or with arbitrary dates which is by the way how we build our businesses we want to to hit x amount of dollars in Revenue by probably the end of the year because that's when we pay taxes it's a completely arbitrary number somebody might say we could do better than that you're like you're right and then we change the number right complaint works of fiction that so we're striving to hit a work of fiction right um um and it's the same when we want to lose weight I want to lose x amount of pounds by X date arbitrary right and we're doing all the things to do that we'll you know we're exercising eating well all the things we love standing on the scale we love a metric there's nothing wrong with that um human beings need that we can't run in a marathon without mile markers it's actually unnerving we need to know how fast and how far so the metrics are good and let's say you hit your goal right you hit your performance goal just as as as you uh had articulated amazing you feel incredible you feel like you've succeeded here's the problem you have to keep exercising for the rest of your life right in other words you don't stop doing the things that you were doing so the game hasn't ended it was simply a waypoint but what I think is more interesting is what happens if you miss your goal what happens if you don't lose the amount of weight that you wanted on that date and the and the answer is nothing nothing happens because you're probably way healthier than you are now than you were you're probably on the easily you can see the trend data you can see you're well on your way to hitting your goal you just pick the wrong date you're easily going to hit it in another month if you just stick to your regime business is the same which is sometimes we miss our goals but the question is how what's the trend data you know is the team working well together is morale High um is some of it out of our control you know market conditions and things like that things we didn't we didn't know about and so if we happen to miss the number the problem is is how are we rewarding our people and so many of us only reward Our People based on if they hit the number but what if they're begging borrowing and stealing what if they simply Rush at the end of the quarter to to drop their prices or have some sort of promotion or or or or have some some trickery they'll hit the number and then we bonus them which tells everybody else I don't care how you hit your numbers as long as you hit them well guess what kind of behavior that's going to reinforce inside our organization whereas if you look at the data the trend data and you reward somebody who's well on the path what we're telling you is as long as you're doing a good job you'll do well in this organization leaders understand that they are not responsible for the results they are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results and that skill set is very very different than just trying to get people to do the thing that you know how to do better than them because you've been doing it your whole life when the pandemic struck I mean my book came out a few months before the pandemic and so for from a from for someone like me who like who loves to observe and like whether this stuff is true or not you know you sort of go you know you sort of Wonder is everything going to hold up or not uh and as an existential Flex uh is something that I predicted would happen either zero once or at the absolute most twice in a career but when covet happened we all went through it at the same time existential flexibility is is that you're able to make a profound uh 180 degree strategic shift in order to continue to advance your cause in other words stay relevant um uh this is not about the daily flexibility of business this is we're talking profound strategic shift here um and sometimes brought on by pandemic sometimes brought on by changing technology or politics or culture or tastes um but you're able to adjust um so for example it's um Apple Steve Jobs when they're developing technology in One Direction they just and they discover this thing called the graphic user interface that they did not invent and they decide to walk away from millions of dollars spent on countless man hours in order to focus on a different uh strategic uh position because jobs believe that that was a better way to advance his cause of empowering individuals to use uh personal computers um that's that's existential Flex having a sense of purpose cause or belief for our work is what gives our work and frankly Our Lives meaning um you know when we die nobody wants the the last balance in their checking account written on their tombstone you know nobody wants the last title on their last business card on their Tombstone we don't that's not how we want to be remembered we want to be remembered for the kind of person we were in the lives of others you know devoted mother loving father you know these kinds of things um and and we want to know that our work uh had an impact in something bigger than ourselves it's a very normal human thing unfortunately a lot of people don't start to think about thing those things until later in their lives and I heard this I usually hear this from senior Executives believe it or not where they say you know I've had great success and I've done all these things but but I don't want my I don't want my life to end on this chapter I I would feel like I've done something wrong you know and they want to make sure that they're that they do something powerful and impactful in the lives of others that that's how they want to close the book on their lives what I love about this young generation is they're starting to think about those kinds of things now you know it's not unique to a young generation everybody wants their work to matter and have meaning I think our young generation is just more vocal about it which is wonderful so you say I I've met this person that I really like how do I build trust well you don't tell them all your secrets on the first day right we all know that you have to be vulnerable but but there is there is a there's a timing you know and it's a dance and it's and it's giving somebody a little extra responsibility and seeing how they do and if they screw up instead of yelling at them be like all right try again you know that we treat mistakes as learning opportunities rather than you know and a mistake is only when you keep repeating the same error and you haven't learned anything um where we practice empathy you build trust with empathy as well so um empathy uh in business looks like this um here's a traditional scenario somebody walks you know picks up the phone and walks into their office when we had when we did that um and says you know your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row um we've had this conversation before and if you don't pick up your numbers in the fourth quarter I don't know what's going to happen right that's pretty normal here's empathy injected into that scenario hey your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row we've had this conversation before um are you okay I'm worried about you what's going on WOW right where it's about the person not the performance and so when again it goes back to that listening and you you are not listening until somebody else feels heard those things you know seeing someone as human understanding that we all have stresses and strains and Egos and insecurities and we bring all of that to work and though we still have to be uh emotionally professional you know you can't sit in a meeting like this because you're having a bad day that's emotionally unprofessional um though we still have to be emotionally professional um we're still human beings yeah and a good leader uh recognizes that and by the way somebody on a team recognizes that too you don't have to be a position of authority to be a good leader you know because those who may be higher in rank than us are also filled with insecurity and fear and stress and strain and ego and all that right and it's okay to go up the chain of command and say hey are you okay you know you're really hard on us in that meeting today instead of labeling them an be like are you are you okay you know and and by the way and that's the dance it's like any relationship you know it's not expected for one person in an interpersonal relationship to to do all the listening it's a dance and it goes backwards and forwards and you know you you you you meet empathy with empathy and you meet listening with listening I think very often companies can risk becoming reactive to things that happen in the marketplace which may so here's a great example right let's use a real life example Blackberry was a really fantastic company who built a really fantastic product with a really clear sense of vision which is we make strong secure extreme reliable products and if you remember if you ever had a BlackBerry you could throw that thing across the room drop it on the street and it just didn't break it just kept working it was the most reliable product on the marketplace you could type on the full qwerty keyboard without even looking down you could send a holding email and governments and big businesses loved it because it was really secure and really reliable then the iPhone showed up and the iPhone was the new shiny object and blackberry instead of sticking to their core and their beliefs became distracted by the shiny popularity of the iPhone which is a completely different animal serving a completely different audience and they started trying to copy iPhone so they started putting apps on their on their blackberries which what did it do made it slow and sluggish um then they started coming out with flat screens you're not going to make a better iPhone than an iPhone um and they basically destroyed their company because they completely went off the reservation and and abandoned their fantastic cause there could be two marketplaces where you have the shiny objective of the iPhone that we use in our personal lives and our companies prefer that we use a a Blackberry because it's reliable it's safe and it's and it's really really strong um and we could have had two dominant players for two dominant reasons like a PC and a Mac two dominant players are two dominant reasons for do two different reasons but they didn't they got distracted and I can imagine that their that their business people were saying you know business is moving at light speed we have to react um or we can work to advance our cause in a different way and not become distracted and that's part of the hard thing which is are we stuck in our old ways or are we actually sticking to our sticking to our long-term Vision that's that's part of the the difficulty of business to know the difference I would sort of reject the concept of of blunt honesty you know um you can be honest without being an ass um uh you know do I look fat in these genes I like the other genes better that's an honest assessment without making somebody feel bad uh for example um and we also have to get good at evaluating someone's personality some people are more sensitive than others and so a good leader is able to adapt their style and how they uh offer information so that um sometimes they have to be a little more polite to some and they can be a little more blunt with another because their personalities can take it um what we want people to do is hear the feedback hear the input um uh and it's based on how they receive it not how we like to give it we have to be the adaptable ones um as as as Leaders um but he he's absolutely right that good leadership starts with care and I hear this all the time unfortunately which is you know as a leader I didn't get to uh I didn't get to choose my team so why should I care about them or why why should I trust them you know they're not I didn't choose them well you didn't get to choose your children you love them um and this is one of the the the the risks of leadership you know leaders have to take the risk to care they have to take the risk to trust first I've never in my life heard a great leader say proved to me why I should trust you to their team it's the opposite a leader takes the risk to trust and it's the team who says prove to us why we should trust you that's the correct hierarchy um uh so so yes you don't you do have to care you want to see you want to see your people as human beings first um you know they are not the problem they may have a problem and inject a little empathy into the into the organization this is what what reflects care so for example I'll give you one one example um uh so here's a pretty normal scenario somebody walks into an office and says you know your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row we've had this conversation before if you don't pick up your numbers in the fourth quarter I don't know what's going to happen empathy uh changes that you walk into their office and you say your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row we've had this conversation before are you okay what's going on I'm worried about you that's empathetic that's the expression of care that we recognize that someone may have a problem but they are not the problem there are many people in your industry who talk a good game they talk about relationships but let's be honest it's they just want to make the transaction and move on and they pretend that they care and they pretend it's you know that they care about their relationship when the reality is it's one and done and on to the next and that's what happened to me I I had a mortgage broker uh he sold me a mortgage he was recommended to me it's how most of us meet somebody you know uh uh and he was very nice and charming and was there with me and then my my sale went through and he called me up to congratulate me and I was feeling a little warm and fuzzy towards him and then as soon as he congratulated me said and if you could recommend me to anybody else I'd be really grateful like and he wasn't calling to congratulate me he was calling to remind me to put in a good word for him somewhere else like if he actually cared about me and my house then he would have just called me really excited that I got my house and if he wanted something from me he would have waited a week a week or two to ask the favor but the guy it became abundantly clear to me I'm in the human behavior business yes he never called me because he cared about me yeah and by the way I will never ever recommend him because it was never I realized that I was just a number on a spreadsheet and so if you actually care about building relationships then actually build relationships yeah you know um I remember when I was starting out in my career I had a young a little marketing consultancy and I came from an industry that pretended that they were good at everything the marketing world like literally they pretended they were good at everything whether they were or weren't and when I went out by myself it was important to me to be honest and clients would come and talk to me and say we want to hire you to do all these things and I'd say I'll do that when I'm really good at that pretty good at that I like doing that that I'm mediocre on that I suck at I highly recommend you hire another company to do that and I'm happy to partner with them and it made them want to do business with me more because you said no because I told him what I was good at what I was bad at where I was super honest and we've all had that experience where you want to hire somebody and they go you should let me introduce you to something it happened to me recently yeah I wanted a is it like something silly yeah you know I needed wallpaper yeah I I he highly recommended I called him up he came he gave me a quote he's like you know what I'm not the best at this thing and he gave me the number of somebody else yeah now all I want to do is work with him again and I keep giving out his phone number to other people even though I actually never did work with him yeah because what builds a relationship is an honest broker honesty is such a hard thing to get especially in a transaction business especially in a commodity business because it is just volume in numbers yeah and that when you actually find an honest one all you want to do is help them build their book of business even though you may never do business with them and that's what a lot of finite-minded folks in your business don't get yeah which is you may never sell me a mortgage but I'll become your biggest champion so listening is a trust building exercise right if you've if you're in a Rel take it down to a personal relationship if you've been in if you've ever had a romantic relationship it's a loved one right um um making someone feel heard doesn't mean you're wrong saying sorry doesn't mean you're wrong it just means you take accountability for your for your actions and I think it is important that when somebody objects to vaccination that we don't demonize or villainize them but we attempt to hear them make them feel heard doesn't mean we have to agree but they have to feel heard and you know listening is not hearing the words you know it's making the other person feel that they were heard it's it's it we don't get to decide when when hearing has happened when listening they do and and by the way it's not 100 successful either you know because some people are just hell-bent on and but that's a minority and so I think the exercise of sitting down with people and say tell me tell me what's what you're going through tell me what you're afraid of I want to understand because we're trying to make everyone safe I I want to I want to hear what what your thing is and let them tell their story we have no answers we're not there to object we're not there to react we're not there to fix or tell them that they're wrong women are better than this than men um uh uh uh and I think that has to happen and it can happen simultaneously they are not mutually exclusive um I'll give you one one example which is I have a friend who uh refused to get vaccinated and I sat down with her and I said tell me tell me your reasoning right she goes well um this new technology like I don't wanna we don't know it hasn't been out long enough like we don't know so what I hear is fear of the unknown okay I go go on and she I let her talk and say her thing and explain all the things and I and then and I simply said so you're afraid of the MRNA technology right yes and I want them screwing with my DNA I said well just so you know it's 20 year old technology but then I found something I could agree with her but but you're right it is the first time it's been commercialized you're absolutely right that's the first time we've put it in the market so I affirmed her fear and then I said do you get flu shots every year she goes I do I said okay Johnson and Johnson is a good old-fashioned flu shot it's a different technology it's not mRNA so I you're 100 right if you're afraid of of the new technology don't get modern or Pfizer but Johnson and Johnson is it's just like a flu shot it's the same old Tech and she went it is and it is she went and got a modern shot [Laughter] to be heard because most of her friends when she said I'm not getting vaccinated he yelled at her told her she was stupid told her she's an idiot told her she's letting her friends down told her she's making other people sick told her she's a risk to society that doesn't make somebody's mind open up all I did was let her feel heard I think we do we can't we have to do that we don't have to like our jobs every day but we do get to love our jobs every days like you don't like your children every day but you love your children every day so having a a hard day you know that that's fine but the question is is what do we fall in love with and at the end of the day the reason um uh that we Stay or Leave a job is because how we feel about that job you know I think we we misunderstand when we think people just leave for money if they just leave for money then they never really had strong feelings of the company in the first place right because when people feel loyal to the company they turn down jobs that offer them more money or if it's so tempting and the numbers are so high then they go to their company and say listen I was offered this job it's very tempting there's a lot of pressure but I don't want to lead is there anything you can do to help me stay right so and you and there's the point is is there they're open about it and and what makes people want to have that conversation like I said is that they're seen and heard um the best companies um have all kinds of programs inside the company to help the person grow as an individual now we talked about you know listening skills and these kinds of things these are valuable for the work that we do but it turns out that those skills also help us as parents they help us as as as spouses or as boyfriends and his girlfriends they these are valuable skills in life you know um and I think that we forget that we talk about hard skills and soft skills as if those things are opposite it's a terror I hate the term soft skills hard skills and human skills and the more that we invest in human skills in addition to the hard skills that we're teaching the more people feel like they're growing as individuals I'm a better version of myself now than I was when I started at this company because the company is actually helping me on a in personal growth um uh WD-40 which is a company that I admire their their culture uh the lubricant company um uh they train their managers to be coaches so literally like Executive coaching training that kind of thing but they train their own people to do to have that skill set so that they're equipped to help their people who have challenges and especially with younger generation you know the younger generation is asking companies to provide everything you know we want to have our sense of belonging our sense of community our sense of personal growth our sense of purpose to come from work work it didn't used to be like that 40 years ago um and so and so there's a huge pressure on companies and so I think what entices people into the company and into the industry is not just come and do cyber security you know there's a percentage of people who are you know de facto interested in that but rather tell them the kind of experience they're going to have tell them what they get from the company and you'll find it remarkable how many people will all of a sudden be interested in the in the category in the company because of what they get holistically not just what they get from the product as a leader um our responsibility is to make the people feel that we have their backs and actually have their backs um so uh there's a sort of a nice anthropological if you want me to go down this rabbit hole there's a nice anthropology I find it fascinating there's a nice anthropological explanation which I actually uh explained in that book um which is which raises the question why do we have leaders um human beings are naturally hierarchical um we self-organize all the time it's got nothing to do with whether you have formal hierarchy like in an organization we we're constantly self-organizing like in a sports team who's who's the better player we self-organize and we pay we pay deference to the one who is better you know the scientist who publishes more or the Nobel Laureate all the other scientists pay deference right um uh this is not by accident um there's a very good anthropological reason for it going back uh many years you know human beings have only been farming for the past 10 or 12 000 years but we existed for tens of thousands of years on the planet before that and we lived in populations that were about 150 we maxed out at about about 150 which raises a very interesting question we they lived in austere times people are hungry um somebody you know brings back some food to the tribe we all rush in to eat um well if you're built like a football player you can shove your way to the front of the line right but this is a bad system because if you punch me in the face this afternoon I'm probably not going to wake you and alert you to Tanger tonight um and so it's just a bad system for cooperation which is if if we leave every person to themselves um and so we evolved into these hierarchical animals we're constantly assessing and judging who's higher in the pecking order who's the alpha of the of the group and when we assess that someone is Alpha to us we naturally step back we naturally defer and allow our Alphas to eat first um um and we get fed later and I don't get an elbow in the face right good system this has survived to this modern day there's not just not a single person on the planet absolutely zero who has any moral anger who is offended by the idea that somebody more senior in the organization makes a higher salary or gets a nicer office or a better parking space it offends nobody no we may think they're useless at their job but the fact that they make more money than us because they're higher up in the organization offends zero um if you're senior and you leave your coat in the other room someone will go get it for you if you're a junior and you left your coat in the other room you get your own coat in other words you get treated differently and this is why people want to get promoted because they like the perks but the perks don't come for free and that's the point which is as you make your way up the hierarchy as you achieve that Alpha status of the tribe there's an expectation that sure will give you first choice of meat and we'll give you first choice of mate but if danger threatens the tribe you're going to be the one who runs head first towards that Danger first to protect us which means you might die first right that's why we gave you first choice of mate because we want to keep your genes in the gene pool we're not stupid and and it's When leaders uh shirk that responsibility that we start to have moral outrage so for example nobody has a problem with a CEO making more money than they do the problem we have is when you're willing to lay off your people to protect your salary to protect your bonus rather than find other ways to protect the people this is what morally offends us we have we made a deal there's a deep-seated anthropological deal that we've made with our Alphas that you have to protect us you have to and you have to do what it takes sometimes sometimes putting your own interests second um and then and then you can but if you're willing to do that we're proud we're happy go enjoy you've earned it um and so I think this is this is a large part about building trust which is it's not just about saying nice things and being trustworthy it's that people feel that you actually have their backs and that you would be the one who take responsibility take accountability look for other ways to protect us if it meant um we're gonna get hurt they happen to have a coffee bar uh in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Vegas and so one afternoon I went and bought myself a cup of coffee and uh the Barista working that day was a kid named Noah Noah was funny and charming and engaging and I spent far too long buying a cup of coffee because I just so enjoyed talking to Noah so as is my nature I asked Noah um do you like your job and without skipping a beat Noah said I love my job now in my line of work that's significant like is rational I like the people I like the I like the work you know I get paid well I like my job love is emotional it's a higher order connection right like do you love your wife I like her a lot right clearly it's clearly a different standard right so when Noah said I love my job my ears perked up this kid has an emotional connection to his work so immediately I followed up and said tell me specifically what the Four Seasons is doing that you would say to me you love your job and again without skipping a beat Noah said throughout the day managers will walk past me and ask me how I'm doing ask me if there's anything that I need to do my job better not just my manager any manager and then he said I also work at another hotel and there the managers walked past us and catch us when we do something wrong there the managers are always trying to drive performance and make sure we hit our numbers he said there I'd like to keep my head below the radar get through the day and just collect my paycheck only at the Four Seasons do I feel I can be myself now this is the exact same human being working at two different companies and yet our experience of him will be profoundly different not because of him but because of the leadership environment in which he works you know I get this question all the time you know Simon how do we get the most out of our people people are not a towel that you ring them out to see how much you can get out of them you know it's it's a it's it's it's that's a good one man [Applause] [Music] it's a flawed question the question is how do we create an environment on in which our people can work at their natural best and that is the art of leadership it's creating environment in which relationships can thrive in which trust can Thrive and we all know what it feels like to be on a trusting team right um it means that we feel psychologically safe enough to raise our hand and say um I made a mistake or I need help or I'm having trouble at home and it's affecting my work or I'm scared or I don't know what to do without any fear of humiliation or retribution but rather to say these things with the absolute confidence that someone on our team will rush to support us unfortunately we also all know what it feels like not to work on a trusting team where admitting any of those things could hurt your chances of promotion could hurt your chances of it you could be humiliated and so when we when we work on teams where leadership is creating an environment where there's where trust is a at a premium we force our people to come to work and lie hide and fake where they're pretending that they've made no mistakes they're lying hiding and faking and eventually things will crack and things will eventually break and and when you talk about reinvention and you talk about Innovation and you talk about challenging the status quo or whatever it is necessarily there's risk and necessarily there are mistakes and necessarily there's stupid ideas and you have to create an environment which that's good the alternative is everybody playing it safe which is not the way that leads to to best or significant Improvement there's no such thing as a perfect job and there's no such thing as a perfect person of course there are things that we are doing that hold ourselves back and of course there are things about the environment in which we work whether it's the people or the job or the whatever the circumstances that may also be holding us back I mean but to see ourselves as victims is not is not the up is not the thing um but rather to seek opportunity and it goes back to that growth mindset um uh which is it's what I've learned is one of the best ways to grow oneself is to actually help somebody on the team grow service you know there's an entire section in the book shop called self-help and there's no section of the Bookshop called help others and I think what we've done is we've over indexed on the whole rugged individualism sort of self-helpy thing how can I be successful how can I grow my business how can I lose weight how can I find love and yet we forget how can I help somebody else grow their business how can I help somebody else find success how can I help help somebody else lose weight and find love Etc and the irony is is the more that we set out to help somebody else because we have more objectivity with other people ironically we actually learn to help ourselves I I tried this out I did a little experiment a dear friend of mine was going through a hard a hard time a solopreneur um the work wasn't going well her marriage was shaky and she was in a bad place and so she knows what I do for a living so she called me up and says would you spend some time with me I said of course so every single week religiously we spent about 90 minutes together she'd come over and we would talk and I would offer some perspective and some ideas and she'd feel great for like a day or two and then she'd go back and we'd get together the next week and she'd feel great for a couple of days and then go back in this repeating pattern went on for quite a while and then I remember my own work which is the idea of service and had a little idea which is to switch to switch it around and I called her up and said look I would like some coaching too and it was genuine I said you know me better than anybody else I trust you completely when we get together for one of our sessions Can it can I can I use up some of the time can I tell you what I'm going through and what ended up happening is we spent all 90 minutes talking about my stuff and this went week after week after week where she was just the uh advice giver and strange things started to happen she started to get more stability in her work more stability to her marriage her confidence went up and it was because she was helping me that she was gaining all the insights and perspective because it wasn't personalized it's like sales training and anybody who's ever gone through sales training you know this which is you always do it with three people you know the person who plays the role of the salesperson the person who plays the role of the uh the person you're selling to the buyer and an observer and it's the Observer that does the learning not the people playing the roles well in this case you got to see herself not being not be uh so close to it gave her objectivity so I'm a great believer in if you have a problem to solve at work try and help somebody else solve that same problem so there is another guy who does what I do he writes books he gives talks Etc his work is extremely well respected and and I admire his work as well I happen to hate him um he's never he's never done anything mean to me and we've always had a very quality relationship when we see each other professionally I have an arbitrary hatred of him and as a result of my hatred I'm extremely competitive with him I would log on to Amazon on a regular basis no and check my book rankings and then immediately check his and keep in mind I checked no one else's Just the Two of Us and if he was ahead I was angry and if I was ahead I was smug and whenever his name came up in polite conversation I would see underneath we were invited to speak together at a conference where we would be interviewed together um and I don't mean like like literally we would be on the stage together and the interviewer thought it would be fun if we introduced each other um um and so I went first uh and I turned to him and I said um you make me really insecure and I said all of your strengths are all of my weaknesses and whenever your name comes up I get really uncomfortable and he looked at me and he said funny I think the same thing about you the reason I was so competitive with him had nothing to do with him it had everything to do with me because his weaknesses revealed to me because his strength revealed to me my weaknesses it's more difficult to take a hard look at myself and say Here's all the work you have to do it's much easier and dare I say more fun to to direct all my energies at beating him um that turned out to be an extremely cathartic experience um and I learned the value of a worthy rival and the funny thing is after that experience I've never checked mine or his book wrecking since um I applaud his work celebrate him want him to do well because it turns out working together we actually are stronger um and I think this is the same Folly in business right I I like you know which is we decide who our competitors are and then we obsess with beating them like ABC NBC CBS and fox were obsessed with beating each other and all they did was look at Nielsen radiations every morning and then Netflix came up and didn't like who cares they're all over the world because they weren't even looking they weren't even watching because that's the arbitrariness of if you I remember back in the early days when I first started my career I was in the ad business and I was Junior dogs buddy to the junior dog's body and um I was on the um competitive analysis team and basically what that meant was we studied the competition and we put together decks to the executives of look what the competition is doing and we sometimes would hire outside Consultants to run you know research for us and if it was too expensive to study seven of them we'd cut it down to four which is hilarious if you think about it so you're making decisions based on four and ignore anyway you get my point so um I think the value of the other players in your industry of the other players in the game is not to beat them because there's no such thing as I said before you know Best Buy didn't win anything when Circuit City went bankrupt um but it's to recognize and respect them there are some players who do some or many things better than you maybe they have a better leadership stronger culture better marketing maybe their products are better design who knows what and instead of trying to beat them which couldn't mean you choose underhanded things or just drop your price you actually say okay let's make our product even better they have revealed our weakness let's Now work on that because the ultimate the only competitor in an infinite game is yourself there are so many lessons that we've learned over the past year and a half to two years that I think prepare us to be ready for the next future um I got a kick out of during the height of kovid uh the number of pundits who said during these unpredictable times I would smile and say all times are unpredictable there's never been a time that was predictable ever um all that happened was something that we didn't expect happened that reminded us that our lives and our work is unpredictable and to Future proof ourselves means being ready for the unpredictable there's something called an infinite mindset and those with an infinite mindset Embrace surprise they find opportunity in the unexpected that when something goes Haywire they go oh what could we do with this versus a finite mindset which likes to exert control and keep things very very close and time frame short because they fear the uncertain they fear anything that's off the plan and one of the things that we have to do to Future proof ourselves is to embrace things that are surprises and embrace the opportunity in uncertainty the other thing that I think we have to learn on how to Future prove ourselves is how to deal with stress and how to deal with trauma um uh whether somebody did well during covid uh business-wise or whether they struggle business-wise all of us all of us suffered some sort of trauma uh and when I when covet first showed up I called a friend of mine who's active duty military and I asked him during when you're in combat what do you do to compartmentalize your emotions so you can stay Mission focused my business blew up in right in front of me and I had to focus on my mission of rebuilding my business I wanted to know how to control my emotions so I could get the work done that I had to get done and he gave me a very sobering warning he said no one can compartmentalize their emotions he says we can do it for a short period of time but every everyone will suffer the trauma of combat sometimes many months after we get home and he said you will go through it maybe not now but you will go through it and uh sure sure enough about four or five months in um I started to feel extremely off my game um and I called him up and I said can I just ask you you know uh what are your symptoms when you go through the the the trauma of combat I asked no leading questions I simply said what are your symptoms he said well one I fall out of my sleep pattern for some reason I go to bed late for no reason and I don't want to get up in the morning and I thought to myself yep and he said I become unproductive and I rationalize it like oh you've been working hard it's okay if you have an unproductive day or two but then I have another and another and another and I thought to myself yep and he said I also become extremely anti-social I don't want to talk to anyone I definitely don't want to ask for help and I thought to myself yup and I realized I was going through depression I was afraid to use that word for fear that it sounded like a diagnosis but it was Little D depression that's exactly what I was going through which is why things weren't working and so I asked my friend again so how do you overcome it he said one you have to force yourself to get back into your sleep pattern and two you have to force yourself to ask people for help and that's exactly what I was doing and I reached out to friends that I trusted friends that I loved people who I knew were dispensers of good advice and I called them one by one and said I'm going through this what can I do I also reached out to friends who I knew were going through similar things and offered my support for them because that's one of the things I've learned in my career which is the best way to solve your problems is to help people who are going through the same thing and so to understand how to react under extreme stress to understand and build the relationship so that when you do go through something you know who to call my rule during covet and I called all my a-type personality friends and gave them my rule which is there's no crying alone and the question I would ask every one of you is if you start to cry who are you going to call who will you pick up the phone and just say I need to cry and tell them what's going on it is much healthier to know that someone will give you a shoulder and be there to support you no matter what you're going through how can we ensure that we're changing with times technology culture politics and tastes um rather than just trying to beat our competitor and you see it across Industries uh you know uh publishing for example um you know the internet showed up and they they saw it and they thought it was nice and they you know as it took on they sort of I guess they were interested in it they sort of played defense and then Amazon showed up and Amazon went to all of them and said hey you want to invest in us and they all said no well now they're all playing catch up they're all playing defense you know Netflix went to Blockbuster and said want to buy us and Blockbuster said no uh the rest of the TV and movie industry were too busy comparing who had higher ratings and they completely missed the fact that Netflix is now completely reinvented television I find that fascinating General Motors was destroying its own electric vehicles in a in a to protect its old business and now they're all rushing to catch up with Tesla I think this is hilarious and it's the little companies the Netflix's the Amazons the Teslas that get ignored that aren't seen as a threat that end up defining and redefining entire marketplaces now this is not unique to small companies big companies can absolutely redefine the problem is big companies are more obsessed with their finite goals big companies are more obsessed with beating their competitors and little companies are obsessed with their Vision little companies are obsessed with this outsized Vision that outstrips the resources they have right somebody says we're going to do this and everybody looks around and goes we don't have the money for that we don't have the talent for that I guess we'll have to be creative and I think this is one of the opportunities for big companies as they get big their Visions get smaller they become goals that they can just do a back plan for there's nothing inherent that a big company shouldn't be Innovative but to your point before they become risk-averse they become stable um and at the end of the day it takes huge Vision what I imagine is a huge corporation a multi-billion dollar corporation that someone will say we imagine a world that's so crazy and so idealistic that in this large corporation they all look around and go we don't have the money for that we don't have the talent for that I guess we'll have to be creative which scares the heck out of um uh the investor Community but remember all of those companies were founded by you know whether it's your Steve Jobs or all of all these companies Salesforce they all started by young people who had no experience and only had Vision um and I think that's there's no reason why big companies cannot uh cannot be Innovative but I think it's about pushing their own boundaries and allowing for entrepreneurship and inherent in entrepreneurship is failure you can't experiment without failing I remember talking to a CFO of a big company once and he told me that he has two priorities for the company uh uh uh Innovation and efficiency I I said good luck with that you know there's nothing efficient about Innovation because you have to keep trying something over and over again there's nothing efficient about that and for some reason I don't know what it is companies are obsessed with growth and everybody they brag we're a hyper Growth Company show me one article not 10 not 15 show me one article that shows any data that hyper growth is good for business and good for the company there is no data to show that companies are obsessed with growth actually build stronger companies because they don't um and so it is a Fool's errand that is promoted usually by an incentive structure that rewards short-term benefits I think what companies can do is start to look at their incentive structures and start rewarding things like teamwork ethics and and long-term gain and guess what you'll get the behavior year reward find a friend you love and uh you know one of those people who if you called them at three o'clock in the morning you know they take your call and you would take theirs don't do this with a spouse don't do this with a sibling uh uh don't do this with a boyfriend or girlfriend those relationships are too close um but find a best friend and ask them this simple question why are we friends and they're going to look at you like you're crazy because it's very hard for the human brain to put our feelings into words because the part of the brain that controls our feelings doesn't control language this is why we use metaphors and analogies and why we struggle to tell people how we actually feel it's because it's a different part of the brain and so they're going to look at you and be like uh I don't know why are you asking me this and you say come on I know you've been there for me uh my whole life and then you actually stop asking the question why ironically you actually asked the question what you say come on what specifically is it about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what and they're going to hem and haw because it's hard to put into words don't help them don't let anybody else help them and they're going to start describing you I don't know you're funny you're smart you're honest you've always been there for me you go good you play Devil's Advocate good that's the definition of a friend what it specifically is about me that I'd know you'd be there for me no matter what and again some will get through this quickly and some will get through it slowly and it'll be a struggle and you have to continue to play Devil's Advocate good that's the definition of a close friend what specifically is about me and eventually they'll give up eventually they'll stop describing you and they'll start describing themselves like my friend said to me Simon I don't know all I know is that I can sit in a room with you I don't even have to talk to you and I feel inspired and I got goosebumps in fact I'm getting them right now they will put into words the value you have in their life and you will have the emotional reaction you'll either well up with tears or you will get goosebumps this puts you in the ballpark this is where your why lives and if you do this with multiple friends they will say the same kind of thing it's in fact sometimes they'll say the same exact thing because your why is the thing you give to the world and amongst your closest and best friends it is the space you fill in their lives so that's a fun little way you can find your Why by ourselves as individuals we are not very good we cannot lift heavy weights by ourselves and we cannot solve complex Problems by ourselves but in groups we are remarkable um and so all of this stuff whether it's life whether it's whatever your job was in the service whatever your job is out of the service whether it's finding a new job um whether it's making your way finding out sort of what your passion is all of these things are incredibly difficult they're all incredibly complicated and the person who thinks that they can tackle any of these problems by themselves is a fool plain old you're a fool you cannot I'm going to tell you you cannot do it alone and so asking for help is perhaps the greatest single thing anyone can ever learn especially where everything is new and the stresses are different and uh and and often feel overwhelming and scary totally unfamiliar and the longer you are in the service the scarier it is um because this is you had 15 years doing one thing knowing one thing learning a culture and now not only is it new people don't even understand what you did and what you know the military is one of the most misunderstood cultures in the world it's so closed and insular that people just don't know it so you're dealing with that as well and so to ask for help in any form is brilliant I this is the single thing that completely transformed my own culture I had a small business I quit my job and started my own marketing consultancy a bunch of years ago and for a few years I ran on force of personality and it was great but then if you have a little bit of a little bit of success force of Personality doesn't work anymore and all of a sudden things started crashing on in around me because I couldn't I couldn't do it all and I thought I had to know all the answers and if I didn't I pretended that I did because I thought that's what I had to do and I learned I learned the very very hard way where I came it was a dark period that I had to learn to ask for help and and I it turns out I was surrounded by people who wanted to help me they just didn't because they didn't know I wanted it or needed it and it was the willingness to ask for it or accept it that transformed my life um and put me on the path that I'm on now now I'm really open about I can tell you stuff I'm really good at and I'll tell you I'm good at that and I'll tell you I am not good at that I need help with that if I'm struggling or if I'm stuck if I'm confused I say can I ask you I call up friends I call it people mentors and say I need your help can you help me and here's what I've learned about the building of trust we don't build trust by offering people our help we build trust by asking people for help that's what actually creates trust because it's an expression of vulnerability right it allows people us to offer us safety and protection and that's an act of service for the other person we always talk about being a stable company we talk about investing in stable companies and you know are you are you stable and you think about stability stability is is an immobile object you know uh and and so uh companies that are built for stability yes they're able to weather storms but they don't come out stronger or better they just come out they get through building a company for resilience means that you go into darkness but you're actually able to adapt for New Times new technologies new cultures New Politics new tastes and you come actually out of the hard times stronger than you went in um Victorinox is a great example Victorinox many of us know them by their signature product which is the old Swiss army knife and this company made basically made a name for themselves on this basically one line of product and they had other product but this was this was the core and then something happened that they couldn't predict nor could they uh prepare for which is September 11th happened and overnight we were banned from taking their product in our bags in our hand luggage or in our pockets we so many of us used to carry a Swiss army knife in our pockets are just throwing one on our hand luggage like we all had one you know every birthday for every teenager they got at least one right um every corporate gift you had a couple of Swiss Army knives and now we were banned from carrying them which means you're less likely to buy one to give as a gift and so their business their business plummeted overnight through no fault of their own through no market conditions nothing predictable but the genius of Victorinox is that they were built for resilience and what they did was they in good times instead of giving away all the money and big bonuses in good times they actually saved a ton of money and their attitude was um good times don't last but neither do bad times and if we want to get through bad times we need to have we need we need cash and so instead of panicking and taking loans or whatever it is they had their own stack of cash that it that they'd been hoarding so they had a little Financial resilience but then they looked at other products and they asked their people to help build up and they started investing heavily in watches now we have Victorinox watches which are much more and it's still Swiss made everything that they could do everything that they knew how to do clothing everything they leveraged their brand heavily and they built it back up also they protected all of their people they actually made deals with companies prior that if bad times ever happened that that other companies would borrow their employees which I thought was genius so they didn't lose their jobs they just did their job somewhere else and they completely reinvented their company company now to this day their Swiss army knife never really recovered it came up back a bit but it's now not the major product as a minor product that they sell because they actually came out stronger and reinvented and to be able to do that think about that coming in as one kind of company and coming out of another kind of company very very rare and very very special but very infinite minded I think some people turn off the humanity when they go to work um you know they they they may be you know loving parents and loving friends and loving you know children to their own parents and yet for some reason there's a switch that they think that that's irresponsible to do at work now I'm not talking about necessarily wearing your heart on your sleeve every day there is something called emotional professionalism you know if you're having a bad day you can say listen I'm a little off my game today but you can't sit in the meeting with your arms folded and be grumpy and give one word answers that's that's emotionally unprofessional you know you can have hard feelings but you can't go around screaming and yelling at people you know you can have um so I think there's a there's emotional professionalism but I think for some reason especially as people make their way up the ranks um they think that expressing any kind of emotion is a sign of weakness um even that word vulnerability we talk you know it's such a common word now being talked about in in the business world that you have to be vulnerable to this day it makes some people feel very uncomfortable I don't want to be vulnerable well all vulnerability means um is saying things like I don't know or I need help or I'm overwhelmed or can you you know can you help me do this because I don't know how to do this or I've been promoted to a position where maybe I need more training and the reason we're afraid of saying that is for fear that it makes us look weak which will then damage our careers the reality is the total opposite by saying I don't know means someone can help us but instead we choose to lie hide and fake very often which eventually gets revealed enough stress piled on on that lying hiding and faking collapses either professionally or personally either we either feel the stress or or the projects that we're working on start to go haywire and very often when we get to those points everybody knows anyway um and uh the amazing thing that I've learned is when you say can somebody help me um we're surrounded by people who would love to help us they just didn't think we needed it because we acted as if we didn't so I think a large part of it is is quite frankly fear fear that if I express these things that'll that people will think I'm not qualified for my job um uh where the the uh the the the opposite is true and remember when you are in a position of leadership you don't actually have to be better at doing the job that the people you lead you have to be responsible for taking care of them to make sure they're good at their job but for some reason we think that um I have to be better than you at your own job because I'm the leader completely false I just have to make sure that you're equipped you have the tools the training and the psychological safety to come to be the best you can be even if it's better than me one of the things that um we we do is um is is we is creating a cult culture in which people understand that the reason we're giving feedback is not to quote unquote criticize them but to help them grow as human beings and that has to be that has to be established like this this is what we're gonna the advice I I offer is it's not just a checklist that you do and everything goes fine you know you create a culture in which uh difficult conversations and uh and and critical feedback are welcomed or at least understood um but it's also how we give it um usually we give it by pulling out a piece of paper and pointing out the thing that's wrong um and you know and saying you've got to fix something right we usually point to the evidence first um as opposed to starting by with by by the human being which is you know there's stuff I want to share with you I don't know where what it means but I wanted to raise it with you in case there is an issue um because I care about you and I want to see that you grow here but there's some evidence that things are going a little sideways and I want to I want to address them with them to see what opportunities there are or if there's anything wrong because I don't know the reasons behind it but um here's what um for example the way you talked to your teammates the other day was a little harsh and ordinarily I'd be wanting to say oh you know you're having a bad day it's no problem you know everybody gets a everybody gets a bad day but you've been really beating up on people um I don't even know if you're aware of that right um uh and sometimes they'll say I'm having a hard time and it opens up or they'll say I wasn't even aware I didn't even know or it reveals something as opposed to saying stop yelling at people nobody wants to work for you if all you do is yell at people you know it's hard for people to receive and so good feedback is not just about conveying the point we're trying to make it's about creating a condition in which the person is more likely to listen and hear it so we're all proud of ourselves once we've told them we did you did you give her the feedback yeah I told her right did they hear the feedback uh different question I think one of the essential skills of being a good coach is listening and this is a skill that is not taught in school we don't learn it on Home unfortunately and and we don't learn it at work listening is not hearing the words that are spoken that's like my favorite quote that you say go ahead I'm sorry listening is I thought I was being original the the listening listening is not about hearing the words that are spoken it's not being able to Parrot back what somebody said to you listening is listening for meaning right um you uh uh you are a good listener the test for being good a listener is if the other person feels heard right say that again right write that down so so I mean we've all had we just take it out of the context of business right we've all had an argument or wanted to share our feelings with a friend or a loved one right spouse girlfriend boyfriend you're sitting on the couch and you say something's bugging you and you say can I just tell you something that's bugging me and they respond by trying to fix it or they respond by pointing out the facts that may or may not align with how you feel right well that's impossible because this is what happened and what they're missing is you are not looking for them you're not looking for them to compare the facts of what's being said you just want to feel heard you just want somebody to go oh my God that's really hard yeah I hear it I hear that thank you for sharing that with me that must be difficult that's all I needed right I'll give you a a a a very funny example of bad listening so I used to date a girl who's an air traffic controller air attractive controllers are a breed unto themselves and it's only about the facts and I woke up one morning I had something in my eye and I couldn't open my eye it was hurting and I'm like flushing it out with water and nothing's work and I mean I couldn't even open my eyes to have her come on like come here come here I'm gonna look in my eye what do you see anything do you understand anything and she looks in she goes like this and she goes there's nothing there and then walks away and I eventually you know whatever it was I eventually was okay and I went up to her I was like WTF right I'm like I had something in my eye you just walked away and she's like there was nothing there so what do you want me to do I was like a little sympathy she's like well that's not going to get anything out of your eye listening is standing by my side while I'm flushing it out with water and go oh my God that must hurt so much yeah it does thank you right that's listening and if somebody can learn to listen and now now this is where it gets actionable this is not me just waxing philosophical and telling funny stories about listening my friend will guderro do how many of you are or restaurant people have you ever heard of 11 Madison Park so at some point in New York City 11 Madison Park was the best rest restaurant in the world right ranked number one and will believes in this he's he was the former owner he believes in this concept of unreasonable Hospitality which is going to what good services and then going way way way Beyond and one of the core tenets of unreasonable hospitality is learning to listen and I'll give you an example that directly impacts your business most agents don't listen and I'll give you an example what do you do what do you do for your clients after they close on a home right it's very common we've all we've we've all bought a home too right which is you walk into this new home that you just bought as a buyer and there's a bottle of champagne in the fridge there's a basket of flowers on the dining room table the same basket of flowers that you gave to every other client the same bottle of champagne that you gave to every client generic I'm a number it's just it's just rote but if you were listening while they were looking at all those homes and they saw this one little room that was too small to make a bedroom it was just sort of a stupid little Nook that nobody really understood why that room existed in the house and your client walked and goes I could make this my yoga room and that's the house they bought instead of putting a bottle of champagne in the house this is what will talks about instead of putting a bottle of champagne in the fridge why not put a yoga mat in that room with a little note that says it's perfect right that's called listening and every single time you go out every single time you go out with clients uh they are telling you things they're telling you stories they're waxing philosophical they're telling you what they don't like and what they do like but the problem is you're listening to whether they like big Windows you're listening to whether they like the view you're listening to whether they have two cars and they need three cars or whatever it is but you're not listening to the reasons why the why you're not listening for the meaning and that's those are the little notes you want to make that make someone feel seen and make someone feel heard I had the opportunity to work with the Navy Seals and within the Navy Seals there's actually a more Elite group within the seals that's much harder to get into you have to be a seal for like five years before you even can get into this even more Elite group and I asked the director of training for this group you know how do you choose who gets into this more Elite group within your own within your own culture and he drew uh an XY access he drew a a graph for me um uh and on the vertical axis he wrote performance and on the horizontal axis he wrote trust the way they Define performance is how good are you at your job right your skill set uh the way they Define trust is what kind of person are you and the way they put it is I may trust you with my money I mean trust you with my life but do I trust you with my money and my wife's right so so uh clearly nobody wants a low performer of low trust clearly clearly everybody wants the high performer of high Trust on their team clearly they learn is that a high performer of low trust is actually a toxic team member and they would rather have a medium performer of high trust sometimes a low performer pie trust it's a relative scale over the high performer of low trust and this is one of the highest performing organizations on the planet and they put huge uh Credence in the trustworthiness and the character of the team member over their simple uh performance metrics in business we're the opposite we have a million metrics to measure someone's performance and we have negligible to no metrics to measure someone's trust and so you may have a selfish driven toxic team member who if they're high performing what do we do we promote them and sometimes you get to the point where leadership knows that this person is toxic and you say you know you probably shouldn't do something about this you maybe want to remove them from the team and they say the same thing they're like yeah I know the performance is so good you're literally just waiting for something to collapse meaning either other people will leave or the culture will start to crack or there's a scandal or that person will leave because they get a better job offer they're not loyal so they may be your highest performer but they're not loyal um with the what the seals learn uh is sometimes these these medium performers of high trust are your best natural uh uh best natural leaders the irony is you know if you go to any team it's actually really easy to find these toxic team members that's the irony even though we don't formally measure it go to any team and ask them who the is and they'll all point to the same person okay um uh and and and and that that's an opportunity to coach them I don't believe in firing them I believe in coaching them you let people go when they're proved to be uncoachable and by the way if you go to that same team you say who do you trust more than anybody else who's got your back no matter what who's always who's always there to help you they're probably also point to the same person who might be your best natural leader and they may not be your best individual performer we don't teach difficult conversations we don't teach conflict resolution we don't teach de-escalation and we don't teach how to give and receive feedback we don't teach how to treat ideas we don't even teach people how to have a meeting like we don't teach any of these things and so we're just leaving it up to chance to hope that somebody knows what they're doing which we would never let somebody on the front line do we give them tons of training on how to do their jobs so part of it is is is the skill set that we that we can train um the other thing is a lot of leaders I think are afraid of doing things for fear of saying the wrong thing and again this this really lends itself to the training we need to give our leaders and especially I think this was really exaggerated after the murder of George Floyd um where so many leaders did nothing they're not bad people they were just so afraid of saying the wrong thing or inflaming a situation or triggering someone that they chose to to just do nothing um and so one of the things we need to do is teach people how to lean into tension um uh and and to learn how to de-escalate one's own anger or or one's own trigger and again you brought it up before which is and replace it with curiosity tell me more what else I'm struggling to under stand let me tell you the story that's going through my head I think is a really big one that I've learned which is because I'm reacting based on my own narrative right and so they're reacting to my words or my reaction and so one of the things that's really helped me is to share what's going on in my head so that people have the context of where my reaction is coming from let me let me tell you what my history is and what my background is I'm not saying this is right or wrong I'm just telling you my story and I'll say I had this happen in the past where X Y and Z and so I'm nervous at your suggestion because in the past this has happened can you help me resolve this or do you understand where I'm coming from and I think the more we can share what's going on in the process rather than simply you know responding with our answers or our reactions helps the other person see the way we're trying to see it and it also encourages us to see the way they're trying to see it so I think the more we share it's that vulnerability word again right let me tell you my history let me tell you my baggage let me tell you my background let me tell you my experiences let me tell you where my opinion is coming from um the worst thing the one that drives me up the wall the one that triggers me is this is how we've always done it well why do we do it that way because this is how we've always done it and my rule is if you cannot tell me why we're doing it this way that means it's it's on the chopping block that doesn't mean it has to change but but I wanna I want real explanations of why we do something this way if somebody can't tell me then then then it's it's open to being changed I'll give you a personal example the person who's who sold me this property uh it was the seller's agent oh okay right he was charming and nice and wonderful and lovely and helpful and all the things that I would expect and I warmed up to him and he was apparently helping me and then I remember distinctly at the closing he sat there with no personality all of his charm had left all his friendliness had gone he barely engaged with me he just wanted to be there to collect his checks he could get out of there and I realized it was all fake it was all for show it was all to butter me up so that I would simply sign on the dotted line and as a result I will never work with him again as a buyer or a seller I'll never list with him ever and I probably will never work with that company again because I realized they just saw me as a number they never saw me as a person in the first place um he was an old white guy I mean that should tell you a little bit of something as well that that sort of maybe how he was raised in the industry um and by the way the mortgage broker was no different you know uh he was charming and wonderful and lovely and helped me get a great rate etc etc and then I remember after I closed he called me and said congratulations and I said oh thank you that's so nice of you and he called me just to congratulate me on closing on my house and then the first thing he said to me was and if you know anybody who's looking for a mortgage I'd really appreciate the recommendation he never called me to congratulate me he called me because he wanted the referral like give it a breath you know like call me and congratulate me and a week later asked me for the referral and see let me tell you what sucks about that can I say that what sucks about that totally is that's that one person yeah colored your entity and but this is finite versus infinite okay he he could only see the transaction he could only see get business get more business get business get more business what he didn't understand is he's dealing with a human being and the more there's a relationship I will gladly recommend him I will gladly introduce you to my guy right um now I'm completely agnostic because if you're going to treat me like a transaction I'm going to treat you like a transaction if you're going to treat me like a transaction I'm going to squeeze you to get more money out of you I want a lower rate I'm going to squeeze the agents but if you treat me like a human being I'll gladly pay a higher rate because I want to work with you and that's what infinite minded players understand better which you don't have to be the cheapest you don't have to have the lowest rate or the lowest price if you have a great relationship what does it mean to live an infinite life clearly our lives are finite we're born we die we come we go but life is infinite The Game of Life will continue with us or without us which means every single one of us has a choice we don't get to choose the nature of the game Life is infinite we don't even get to choose if we want to play in the game or night once you're born you're in it we get one choice do you want to play with a finite mindset but you want to play with an infinite mindset to play with a finite mindset means waking up every day and say I'm going to be the best I'm going to be better than everybody else I'm going to accumulate more power more responsibility more money whatever it is whatever whatever your metric is I'm gonna I'm gonna get more than anybody else me and when you die you take none of it with you or we can choose to live our lives with an infinite mindset which means I'm going to leave this world the school in better shape than I found it it means I'm going to devote my life to see that those around me rise and we know that we're living with an infinite mindset because our obsession is seeing that we have an impact on the lives of the people around us we've all had teachers and some of you are those teachers we're 20 or 30 years from now I can go to one of your students and say you're a remarkable human being you've accomplished so much in your life how did you become the person you are today and they will tell me your name we all remember the teacher who believed in us we all remember the teacher who had our backs we all remember the teachers saw something in us that nobody else saw we've forgotten all the others but we remember those couple and that's what it means to live with an infinite mindset it means we divert ourselves to that mindset for everyone in our lives that other teachers will say that about us other principles will say that about us other students will say that about us our friends will say that about us I am who I am today because of you and I will commit to live the same life that you taught me how to live and you will literally live on beyond your own lifestyle your own lifetime that when you're gone others will carry your work for you this is what it means to live an infinite life and it is just a choice I try and read uh news from both sides of the political aisle not to find the one I agree with but I want to understand how it's being reported I want to know the different narratives that are being told so that I can understand those narratives so I can speak to those narratives I can learn those narratives and find hypocrisy in both sides by the way um I think that the one the one mistake that we all fall into is to decide that the ones that I agree with are right and the ones that I disagree with are wrong and this this binary notion of right versus wrong um is is what's gotten us into this into this mess in the first place um life is not so so so so so black and white in no respect uh it's nuanced and gray and complicated and messy and to to understand that we are hypocrites in our own opinions um and so is the other side and simply pointing out the hypocrisy of the other side is of no help whatsoever what's more important is supporting that our own hypocrisy and to try and understand that like I said it's a worthy rivalry thing right it's not trying to dominate or be right but it's rather tried to improve and to grow um and and so one of the things that I default to our values um I'm very proud of the fact that some of my friendships are with people who have very very very different uh political points of view um who we voted very very differently in political elections um and we can go to blows uh talking about some of the things that the government is is deciding whether we agree or disagree with it um but at the end of the day their values are like mine and we and we believe in taking care of each other and we believe in looking out for each other and at the end of the day more than their politics they're my friend and I learned this lesson the hard way where I was walking uh I was going for a walk with a friend who has very different political views than me and she said something and I I definitely thought it and I fear I may have said it how can you be so stupid and I realized I just called my friend stupid and she completely got angry at me not because I disagreed with her it's because I judged her and insulted her and she you know what she was a hundred percent right and what I had to learn in that moment was to listen was to replace my judgment with curiosity and to understand where her point of view comes from and that I and that the more Curious I became to understand that there were actually things that we did agree upon and though we may not have agreed upon everything we actually could find common ground and that Common Ground always boiled down to our values and the more that I got good at listening to her she actually we became much more open to listening to me and so as opposed to me hammering my opinion at her we started to have conversations and so I think when you go to a values level politics becomes secondary but when we let go of our values then all we have is the politics which is upsetting a just cause is something a lot more idealistic it's a statement of the world that you wish the the way the world you wished it worked the the world that you imagine like we imagine a world as PWC we imagine a world in which and then we devote our practice we devote our energy we devote our resources to advance towards that cause and we're going to bring our clients with us the work that we do takes us closer to that quote so I'll give you an example so my just cause our organizations just cause we imagine a world so you can see there's that Forward Thinking which as an aside which is why we call it vision is because you have to be able to see it right so we imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do that is our cause that is a cause so just that we would be willing to sacrifice in order to advance closer towards that ideal we will never get there it is an ideal okay and you can look at organizations or leaders that have made profound impact in their Industries or in the world you'll see these just causes whether it's all men are created equal right it's a just cause imperfect in all in its own way but you can see a nation striving um I have a dream literally imagining that one day little black children will hold hands on the playground with little white children imperfect in its own uh in in reality but you can see a a nation striving um when Apple and Steve Jobs used to talk about empowering individuals to stand up to Big Brother you can see the attraction to the personal computer because it literally gives power to an individual to compete against a corporation imperfect but a striving and all of these things become striving that become incredibly inspiring for for a Workforce because they feel like they're contributing to something bigger than themselves but when you think about innovation if you say provide greater value for our clients and it's not wrong I have to stress it's not wrong but but when you say innovate around that The Innovation tends to be more features and benefits it tends to be tweaking and efficiencies when you say be the best I don't even know how you innovate around that right you can't say some to say somebody you know make innovate so we're better but when you say Innovative way to advance this the ideas can come from anywhere inside the organization and the ideas tend to be a lot bigger okay so it's not that those things are wrong that what I'm what I'm offering are what a a clearer path to embracing an infinite mindset okay right it's not that the other doesn't work it doesn't have value it just has less value in the infinite game I was uh during covid um I worked out with a friend of mine who lives somewhere else we worked out on FaceTime together we would just turn on FaceTime and just do the same workout together basically and one day we were doing a particularly difficult workout and I said to her I have some good news and I have some bad news she says well what's the bad news I said the bad news is we're only halfway done she says well what's the good news I said the good news is we're already halfway done and that simple the simple way in which I present the information literally profoundly changes the way in which we do the second half of the the workout we're only halfway done the rest of the the workout's a slog it's difficult it's hard and we don't want to do it we're already halfway done I mean it's all downhill we've already done this once we can easily finish this off and it's amazing how easy it is to change our mindset um uh uh and so it's the same thing here um we've done it in our own organization where um we see another organization who you know I mean I hate to use the word I use it just for the for the example but outpaces us I mean we don't care about that but and and instead of getting all angry and hot and bothered and trying to beat them we say to them we're the arrival what what you know what strength do they have that's revealing a weakness in us and we're like oh my goodness our website sucks or our e-commerce sucks or our you know customer service sucks or whatever it is you know we spend a lot of time looking at people who we admire who are in our space who do some or many things better than us we like look at their websites we look at their product we look at the ease of use we're like wow that's really good you know we don't have to like it we don't have to agree with it but we can still complement it and I think that's the big thing people think that you know that you you know uh that you have to hate everything that somebody does nonsense you don't have to agree or like but you do have to respect um and uh and quite frankly to put on blinders and go through the world with blinders on that there's no one else out there and they definitely can't do anything better than you is quite frankly just stupid because it's just not true um you're not great at everything and you never will be it's an infinite game it's a game of constant Improvement just like every person there's no such thing as a perfect person you know we should be in a growth mindset constantly trying to improve every day of Our Lives it's the same thing and it's even that's difficult even that's you even that you can't you can't grow every day even that's hard you know it's messy and human and that's the fun and that's why you go back to trusting teams and why the teamwork matters so much because sometimes we can beat up ourselves or get stuck in a negative mindset and all you need is one person to walk up and be like hey worthy rival right so the nice thing about worthy Rivals is it's subjective you can choose whichever person whichever company you want you don't have internal competition but you can have attorney work internal Rivals you know where there are other people that you compare yourselves to and you're trying to get better um uh but you don't want to stab each other in the back get angry when somebody else gets a promotion like we've all had that we've all had that you know deep down inside we see when somebody gets a promotion when we didn't right um even if we weren't even up for it um uh that's that's a that's a sign where necessary change needs to happen uh in our mindset uh it's easier to do than you think and when you get in the habit of it it's absolutely wonderful tell someone I need help like I think it is one of us it's one of these skills that is becoming fast lost especially amongst a younger generation which is the skill to ask for help you know we're all trying to act so tough you know this this nation over indexed on the whole rugged individualism thing you know where we Define successes visual success um and and most of our metrics most of our incentives and almost every job are individual incentives there you know there's no team bonus there's an individual bonus if you hit your numbers you know um and uh I think we've we've overdid it quite frankly uh and I think it's the pendulum needs to come back uh and and and we have to remember that we're a team we're members of teams we're members of families remember communities or members of societies and this is where maslov got it wrong you know Maslow's hierarchy of needs he says you know fundamentally at the bottom of the pyramid is food and shelter um and he put you know third you know third up the rung he put a a uh relationships well I've never heard of anyone Dying by suicide because they were hungry I've heard of people talking about suicide because they were lonely so in other words it can't be right and at the top you have self-actualization how or like I'm all self-actualized looking down with the rest of you who aren't at the top of the period what about shared actualization you know and the mistake he made is that there's a paradox which is every moment of every day we are both individuals and members of groups and every day we have to reconcile that do I put myself first at the expense of someone else or do I prioritize someone else at the expense of myself and the answer is you're right you're wrong and there's a whole group of people that says no no you always take care of yourself first because if you're not healthy you can't help others and there's another group of people that says no you always help others first because unless you help them they won't be there for you it's a paradox it doesn't work it's not so clean um and this is what we have to reconcile every day and this is why finding balance and managing it and the stresses and trains but the the challenge of asking for help and relying on our community really really matters my my definition of faith is that knowing you're on a team even when you don't know who all the players are um we are surrounded by people who love us and will take care of us you just have to ask sometimes because sometimes they don't know that we need it how do we replace our judgment with curiosity um so there's a simple technique there are simple techniques to do this um one is write yourself a little reminder put a little sticky on your computer that says be curious or ask questions you'd be amazed how well that works but especially in times when we're judging uh especially when we're in groups of leaders we're in meetings you know we can snowball into judgment really quickly let's say someone's performance is in Decline immediately they're lazy you know they're stupid they don't understand they're a problem child um all it takes is one person to break that judgment and say well maybe they're going through something and there is a technique where when you believe when you start to form a narrative about someone or about something that you force yourself to come up with 21 possible Alternatives of what could be going on in their life so are they lazy absolutely that's absolutely a possibility are they a problem child are they toxic absolutely are they going through is are there kids struggling at school maybe or do they have problems in their family maybe someone's sick maybe do they have medical issues that they're hiding from us that that they're too embarrassed about maybe like my point is is can you go through the exercise of writing 20 or 21 alternative stories of what could be happening and all of a sudden we find ourselves talking about and treating that person differently and it doesn't just come about people it's also about decisions we're making at work and all again in a meeting all it takes is one person to raise a question of what if um and uh as Leaders The more we start uh asking each other and ourselves what if or what are the opportunities what are the possibilities we'll find ourselves doing that with our people um that when they come to us instead of us correcting them and telling that they're wrong raising questions but believe it or not simply having a little reminder to be curious is is really important first and foremost we have to understand that there's no such thing as certainty of outcome um and this is why this is one of the this is a huge difference between finite mindsets and infinite mindsets right a finite-minded leader is afraid of surprises and does not like uncertainty which is why they like to work work in very short time frames because you can actually affect quite a lot of certainty if you only think quarter to quarter maybe year to year but if you start thinking in five and ten year increments you we all know we have zero control over those outcomes so finite minded players like to play with very short time frames because it makes them feel better even though the game is infinite so it's actually again sort of a stupid idea um infinite-minded players Embrace uncertainty and find opportunity in Surprise and so where something goes wrong or different and just as an aside I got such a kick out of when covet struck you know everybody was talking about during these uncertain times newsflash all times are uncertain there's never been a time in history ever that was certain all that happened was something that we didn't expect took place that reminded us that time is uncertain and for the finite minded players the immediate reaction was Panic right um what am I going to do how am I going to survive and try and double down on the old way of doing things hoping that if I just did it more or at least attempt to do it online that I would that it would survive right the more infinite minded players and this has nothing to do with stress we can still have high stress with the with with what was going on but the more infinite minded players saw the sudden change in their business and saw and thought Oh okay this is an opportunity what can I do with this and instead of doubling down on the way they used to do things but doing it online they said okay the times have changed the way I operate my business have changed all the things that I used to be able to do like having lunch with people can't do anymore so given what I know now if if I was starting from scratch I have something really valuable and important how would I build my business today to still provide the value to the people who are looking for the thing that I offer and that was their mentality their mentality was very entrepreneurial their mentality was very creative um and they though it may have caused stress there was an appreciation for the opportunity one of the nice things about the infinite game is two players or more who sell basically the same product for basically the same price for basically the same quality can all be wildly successful at the same time like no one wins um and and remember we're deciding the metrics so we could decide that it's market share or revenue or profit and we're making these arbitrary comparisons to arbitrary other players and we can be all high and mighty about ourselves you know General Motors decided that um that market share was the thing and they were obsessed with being number one in market share meanwhile they were losing money hand over fist year after year after year not sure if that's a very uh infinite minded Focus uh because you're clearly going to put yourself out of the game remember when when Circuit City went bankrupt Best Buy didn't win anything um if anything they had to change the way that they played because Amazon became a much more dominant force in the industry and so they couldn't actually do the things that they used to do and this is what it means to be an infinite player means you understand that it's not simply about repeating the same thing that's always worked but it's adapting with politics and culture and technology and it's not actually about competing against another player on in the field but the only true competitor in an infinite game is actually yourself how do I make my product better this year than it was last year how do I give better advice this year than I gave last year how to become a better leader this year than I was than I was last year and it's a constant constant education of constant constant Improvement I can tell you a funny story which uh you'll recognize from the book which really captures the difference between a finite and infinite mindset and it comes from a personal experience I had the opportunity to speak at an education Summit for Microsoft and then a few months later I was asked to speak in an education Summit for Apple now this was back in the Steve Ballmer days when Steve Ballmer ran men ran Microsoft um and at the Microsoft Summit the vast majority of the executives spent the vast majority of their presentations talking about how to beat Apple Balmer at the time was obsessed with beating Apple um at the Apple Summit a hundred percent of the executives spent a hundred percent of their presentations talking about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn one was obsessed with their mission the other one was obsessed with beating their competition um guess which one was struggling with issues of trust cooperation and innovation um so at the end of my uh talk at Microsoft they gave me a gift they gave me the new Zune when it was a thing this was Microsoft's response to the iPod and again there's plenty of uh evidence and footage of Balmer talking about he was going to beat the iPod and this was going to be the best product ever and I have to say this little piece of technology was quite good it was very user friendly it was it worked very well it was it was it was a really nice little product um at the end of my Apple talk I was sharing a taxi with a senior Apple executive and I couldn't help myself I happened I just had to stir the pot uh so I I turned to him and I said you know Microsoft gave me their new Zune and it is so much better than your iPod touch and he turned to me and he said I have no doubt and the conversation was over because an infinite player understands sometimes you have the better product sometimes they have the better product sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind uh the goal is not to beat your competitor the goal is to outdo yourself where Microsoft was obsessed with beating apple apple ignored Microsoft and was obsessed with out doing itself uh a year later Apple introduced the iPhone which rendered both the iPod and the Zune completely obsolete one of the things we have to remember is that just because the business can function with a distributed Workforce with an online Workforce we know that there's a sacrifice you know it's harder to build trust you know if you if you've joined the company during covid you've never physically met any of your your colleagues or co-workers you know and you know it's much harder to build trust when we don't meet each other we take for granted that we go to the office that you know the little brief interactions we have at work where you walk past somebody in the hall and say hello or the talk going into the meeting and the talk coming out of the meeting and bumping into somebody getting oh I meant to tell you something or do you want to grab a coffee know one of these things by themselves does anything but over the course of time they contribute to the building of trust to the building of Human Relationships in an online context we don't have any of the in-between all we have is the meeting we log on WE log off that's it and so what a lot of companies um um haven't recognized is that building Trust online is possible but it actually requires more work what used to happen just relatively organically now has to be now has to happen prescriptively so for example um I'm a huge fan of the Monday morning huddle we do one on our team we're on Monday morning the whole team comes together um and it's there's no discussion of work or deadlines or workloads or anything it's a human call where we simply say what's on your heart and mind and then we answer some funny or poignant question that's posed To Us by the person who's leading the Huddle that month um and and we simply talk about ourselves and you learn a lot about somebody you know somebody will say oh I had a great weekend with my kids and we went you know we went hiking I didn't even know that they had kids you know or somebody will say to be honest it was a really hard weekend um my father has cancer and he's in the hospital and he took a turn for the worst and uh and we start to see each other as human and we start to empathize and we start to create relationship and we start to get to know each other but it's done prescriptively it we we make it happen um I'm also a huge fan of of turning on a zoom for example and just working like we're not actually working with each other we're just in each other's screens as we're getting our own work done it's nice to have somebody there I'm also believing about a huge fan of the telephone um you know zooms are tiring especially when you have them all day um you know it's fake uh you know very often you know I'm looking at a DOT at the top of my screen so that you'll think I'm making eye contact with you but really I'm just staring at the dot at the top of my screen or if I'm staring at you sometimes the placement of the camera in the screens what you see is this but I'm looking right at your eyes you know um and so I think a telephone believe it or not is actually a much better way to connect with somebody especially when someone's distracted when you can see that someone's doing email you know while you're talking there's no actual polite way to say can you stop doing that and listen to me please you know and we just sort of do it on the telephone if you hear someone's distracted you go hello you there they go sorry sorry you know you can actually catch people and I find that those interactions you know I'm a Pacer I like to Pace when I'm on the phone when I'm thinking I can't Pace on Zoom which means my thinking is junk right when I'm on a phone call I can walk around and I can walk around wherever I go and I can talk to somebody and I can be much more engaged I think we especially for sales people use the phone pick up the phone how are you wanted to check in with you you know have a conversation without Zoom uh I actually think it's actually much better for building relationship believe it or not having zooms occasionally is great too but I think we've under we've forgotten we've forgotten how good the phone is the tension is healthy the tension is good um you know if all you have is empathy then you have a hippie commune and you're not actually gonna cure anything but if all you're doing is driving the numbers driving the numbers uh you're gonna have a short life span and break the machine also and you might have a spike and then you'll disappear or all your best people say I I hate it here and they go work somewhere else and take all of their their their their Brilliance somewhere else um so you there is a balance but there's also a hierarchy you know it's not 50 50. there's no such thing as 50 50. it doesn't exist you can't say well we're 50 driven by performance and 50 driven by culture because you will face decisions where one of those things has to we'll suck sacrifice the other the which one the question is which one are you going to choose there has to be a bias towards people there has to be a bias towards uh the teamwork the environment um and the will to to succeed is driven by the belief in the cause um uh uh you know if if if the cause is clear and the metrics and you're letting people see the metric so they feel they feel like we're making progress again go back to that Marathon analogy right which is you're exhausted you're tired but you're getting close to the Finish Line you start running faster not slower that's a good point um uh and so uh it's it's it's keeping people included to know what the metrics mean and um and which ones are trending and which ones are absolute but yeah there's nothing wrong with the drive to succeed as long as there's a context within which uh within which that drive exists when we are willing to put ourselves at risk to be there for someone right don't worry if this goes south I will be there for you um which may mean working late it may mean working extra hours it may be putting our reputations on the line I mean there's a lot of things that that takes um but when we genuinely promise to be there for someone um um uh and and it has to be genuine uh because if it gets tested it's it's very easy to find out if it was genuine or not um but if it's genuine then then it's repaid remarkably let me give you a silly example um let's say that um so I talk about this um sometimes which is the giving of time and energy is more powerful than the giving of money you can't build trust with money so paying somebody bonuses and giving somebody a big salary though feels nice is not earning or building any trust whatsoever you cannot pay for trust um and here's the example um let's say you're moving house um and one of your friends says you know what I want to help you we've been friends for years um I'm gonna pay for the moving van here's five thousand dollars and the moving van let me know how it goes have a great move that's really generous right another friend says you know what I want to help you move and they come over the week before and they're sitting in your house packing boxes they're sweat dripping down their brow they're there with you all day they're there to help load the truck they're there to help unload the truck they're they're there um uh to unwrap everything right they paid zero money they give you time and energy which are non-redeemable Commodities money we make money we spend money we make money back it's a redeemable commodity time and energy are non-redeemable Commodities and so when someone gives us something that they cannot get back it has a much more powerful effect on how we feel so now both those people call you another time and say I need your help which one are you more apt to help you want to give you money or the one who gave you time and energy and that this this is a good lesson for leadership as well giving our time and energy is often more powerful than simply just throwing money at someone let's say there's one person who started their own little business a little consultancy right got my shingle out I'm a consultant right and everywhere they go they keep telling you that they're better than everyone else uh they keep telling you they're smarter than everyone else they keep telling you that you know the big the problem with the big companies is is they don't have the flexibility I'm it it actually gets the point of being annoying to the point that we don't want to actually work with them because we don't believe them right um because um now let's let's change the change the scenario you meet that same person and and they introduce themselves look there's a lot of good good Consultants out there um some of them are a lot better than me um but I wake up every single day to be a better version of what I do today than I did yesterday and I can tell you the device I give today is even better than it was yesterday and the advice I'm going to give tomorrow is even better because for me it's an education and that's why I love working with open-minded wonderful clients who are partners because what we end up doing is growing together right now that's one person think about how appealing that person is they've actually told you that you may actually get as good or better advice somewhere else but it's who they are and who they're being in the disposition that they bring that make them way more trustworthy and uh us wanting to work with them um and it's the same for big companies it's got nothing to do with the size of the company which is it's called humility and honesty I remember young in my career I experienced this myself when I when I went off and hung my shingle out and I was a little I had a little marketing company a little marketing consultancy I remember going into meetings and the client would say we want you to do all of this for us and I'd say I'm really good at that pretty good at that okay at that really bad at that I highly recommend you hire somebody else to do that and I'm happily partner with them for them to do that and the clients wanted to work with me more not even though I just told them I can't do that only because I was the only one who was honest everybody else they talk to big or small told them that they were great at everything which is just not true nobody's great at everything and uh and so it's amazing when you take the risk to be honest it pays dividends in the trust that you build what I think is really interesting is think of a date like uh uh like a job interview right um and think of a job interview like a date right so um if you went on a on a first date with someone and they sat down they said you know um I'm extremely rich um I've made lots of money I do lots of cool things I've met a lot of famous people um I go on TV all the time which is good because I'm really good looking uh yeah yeah would you want to go on a second date with them right not very appealing it's also not very appealing when we sit down for a job interview and just tell people how great we are and all the things that we've done it's the same kind of thing now imagine if you knew you or why and you're making a conversation with someone uh and they say so you know where are you from what you know tell me a little bit about you and you say you know I love what I do I love my life I love my job you can say I I wake up every day to inspire people to do the things that Inspire them and for me the challenge is finding all the different ways that I could do it um and I've been really really grateful for the path that it's taken me and I've I've made some money and I've got to go on TV which is fun because I'm really good looking and you can see how all the same jokes and all the same things now have a context and that's what why it does it provides context it also helps you connect with somebody that when somebody's telling you about themselves and you ask some questions and you get to know them a little bit and you realize that maybe their values are completely different than yours so y gives you Clarity and confidence in who you are and what you need around you but it also helps you present yourself in a way that's way more authentic now there's a there's a there's a rub to the why that I don't talk about that often um uh because you really have to get good at giving your why before you can deal with this but the the difficult part about knowing your why is the thing that you give to the world the value you give and offer refer to other people is also the thing you need the most so it's one so one of the ways to to to to um understand the people in our lives partners and Mates is can they actually give us the thing that we give to other people you have to be clear and open about what you stand for and just like when you hire somebody you want to make sure that when you hire them that they share your values that they believe in your vision you know they don't just think it's corny you know or marketing but rather that they they buy into it and sometimes we'll make mistakes and sometimes people will come and they fall in love with it after the fact but we it's you know we try on balance to bring people that we believe will get along with the people who work here because of our values and our and our cause and so too is it with with with suppliers um I think that um uh or or clients it's the same thing which is we stand for what we stand for and our goal is to attract people who believe what we believe the the more vocal we are about what we believe those people literally will come to us or turn down a competitor who may even be cheaper because they would rather do business with us and so it's okay to do business with a supplier that doesn't believe what we believe but we have to go in with eyes open knowing full well that this is just a transaction you offer a decent product you give me a decent price this is not going to be a lifelong relationship this is a transactional relationship and when it's done I'm just going to hold you to very different standards right because when it's transactional we're a little less patient when things go wrong um and sometimes we kid ourselves you just can't do that too often it's like if you're living a healthy lifestyle you can have chocolate cake just not too often um so yeah I think the more vocal you are the more you attract and then you have to make decisions like you're hiring people because they're going to become a member of your family as well this is the difference between the short-term finite minded and the long-term infinite minded the finite minded is it the cheapest today is it the best relationship today and pay no attention to the secondary or tertiary effects and definitely pay no attention to what will happen in five years whereas that long-term minded infinite-minded uh player um looks at some it's it's looks at something and and looks at someone and says well you know you're not the cheapest but I think we're going to get along just fine and over the course of time the quality of work will far away what have you paid a friend of mine who's a consultant loves to joke about her clients that they never have the time or money to do it right the first time but they always have the time and money to do it again and I think when you're infinite minded you consider those factors from the from the beginning if I ask you do you need to change and you said to me no I'd be worried you know like you think you figured everything out like emotionally professionally all your relationships everything's golden oh okay how's that working out for you you know I think the answer is always yes which is to view ourselves or our organizations as Works in progress you know that is an infinite mindset infinite mindset is fundamentally constant Improvement so you know there's big change there's little change there's tweaks there's dramatic change sometimes it's reacting to changing cultures uh changes in culture politics technology you know sometimes the change is our own sometimes we have to react to it but I think the honest answer is yes we have to change there's always opportunity to improve something so there's this notion in businesses that people fear change which is just fundamentally not true people fear Sudden Change you know um but incremental change is not threatening people feel fear change that threatens them right and very often the way we change manage uh is we do lots of PowerPoint presentations about what's coming and don't worry and we have all these things and we we treat it very rationally and what we're ignoring is the emotional response now there are some people who who love change um it's a it's an infinite minded thing to embrace uncertainty to see opportunity in surprise for some people especially people who have been who have gotten good at doing something for 10 years 20 years um that all of a sudden you say you're gonna change it they fear again there's that emotional word they fear that um they won't know how to or it will set them back and so no number of rational assurances will help them get over that at some point we have to just let them go through the process we Bandy these words around a little too quickly these days they all kind of mean the same thing you know authenticity and tension you know purpose flow all these things you know of course it matters what is the what is the birth of this motivation is it for PR is it is it to hire Millennials because that's what they want so we'll give it to them you know uh uh is it is it because the street demands it or is it is it because it's something I fundamentally believe in I'm I'm very for with the round table announced the statement's a bit pablum but you know reads like a you know the generic values that put on the wall of a generic company um uh I would have liked to have seen them the people who they attribute the work to in the press release to folks like Kip Tyndall from Container Store or Jim Senegal from Costco who've been leading this way for decades and have been outspoken about the way business has been done and been criticized for it for decades like they're better Messengers for it because they're deeply they have that deep intention they fundamentally believe business should be done this way and the true infinite minded player wants to build a business not just to Build a Better Business for themselves it's they want to build a business because they want to build business better so they don't just come up with an idea and then hoard it they come up with idea and share it because it's good for the game it's about perpetuating the game so if the intention is to see All Ships rise then then I'm very open to what these these companies are saying if the intention is to see our ship rise I become a little cynical be the leader you wish you had become a student of leadership study it read about it watch things about it practice it every day you know like be a parent you know like join the movement means I'm going to take care of my team sometimes I'm in a leader leadership position and sometimes I'm not and it doesn't matter I'm going to practice leadership if I'm a salesperson you know I'm if I'm if I work at the if I work at uh the check Encounter of an airline I'm going to take care of the people I work with I'm going to take care of the customers as if as if they're my family you know like practice leadership learn about it study it because I do these things because I recognize I'm just a piece of a a puzzle you know it's one of the reasons I wanted to come talk to you on camera it's because you know when we do a jigsaw puzzle the first thing you do is lean the picture the the Box against the wall and then you start putting the pieces together to build that picture my job in this movement I'm the guy who points at the box right I'm the one who's pointing at the picture pointing at the picture maybe pointing out a couple of the pieces and where they go but I need lots of people to join me we need lots of people to join us who say I have a piece of the puzzle I'm willing to lead this way I'm willing to abandon Milton Friedman ideals and and do something bigger something more follow that you know live with an infinite mindset lead with infinite mindset um and put their piece down and say how can I help build that Vision we we need the Army and so how people can engage in the movement is actually practicing all the stuff more than anything else that's what we need the best leaders are actually the best followers in what ways what do you mean um the best leaders never think that they're the final that the buck stops with them they always believe that they're in service to something bigger than themselves and even if that leader uh the person in leadership position gets to the tippy top of whatever organization they still feel that they're subordinate to something even bigger right so uh uh the Pope this still thinks that he's in service to something bigger than than him right a CEO of a Visionary organization feels that they are still beholden to and in and following a vision bigger than them so the best leader is actually the best follower is even if they're at the highest levels of the organization they're still in service right it may not be to a person but to a cause whatever it is there's still some sort of something that they're beholden to and they're devoted to and they're in service to um so so followership is a thing um and um not to belabor the Marine point but uh you know Marines when they evaluate their leaders they're looking good for good leadership and good followership so for example there when you go through OCS officer candidates uh School selection um uh when somebody's a for a task you know chosen to be the leader of that group for that task the the Marines are watching the others as well so they're looking to see that everybody's contributing ideas and they're looking to see that that leader takes in those ideas but is decisive and and they're looking to see that the the members of the group if their idea isn't picked they still give their all to see that that the leader's idea is successful and if it fails give it their all to pick up the pieces and and see what they can do as opposed to going I told you right should have gone my way right right I was right or sabotaging because their idea didn't get picked so they go all in so so good followership is is as important as good leadership that that we we respect that that um when a decision is made we will we will give our Blood Sweat and Tears to see that the decision our leaders have made will be successful and if it fails we will help pick up the pieces because that's the deal will one thing make them work together um uh I shared incentives is also a part of thing usually all we do is give individual incentives which means we're only incentivizing Behavior to work individually um uh and by the way incentives don't always have to be Financial it can be just recognition and reward you know catch people doing things right so when you see people helping each other and sharing call it out publicly you know compliment publicly criticized privately in front of the rest of the team um give people promotions when there's a behavior that you want to promote like like teaming um but also ask people to solve problems together and and thank them together and if one person comes to you and complains I'm doing all the work you say well why don't you find out what maybe they're struggling maybe they're like we have to push push back um uh and also I think the most important thing is leading by example um asking for help I mean when the leader acts like they know everything and they have all the answers then all it's doing is telling everybody else you better know everything and have all the answers because that's how you're going to get ahead here and so I think one of the most difficult things for anybody in a leadership position to get comfortable with is is saying I don't know or I need help or can somebody help me or can you do this with me um I love working I love teaming with folks on on my team it doesn't matter what the rank structure is bring in someone Junior let's work together um even if all they're doing is poking holes you know do you think this is good no I think it can be better okay let me try again um so I think I think demonstrating the behavior that we want is a big part of it depending on the size of the organization obviously um it's very common that other team members will go to the leader and say we don't want to work with that person I mean that that's usually a big highlight you know um that's frequent um uh you can tell in meetings very often if somebody is domineering but I'm also a great fan of peer reviews quite frankly um uh the the Army Rangers dealt with this they called them Spotlight Rangers when when candidates were going through Ranger school they had to in the past they had this issue where these very talented Ranger candidates and the T and the instructors loved them so they looked like they were great candidates the problem is as soon as the spotlight was turned off they were horrible people so leadership didn't know and so they implemented peer reviews so now you have to be good at your job your instructor has to like you and your colleagues have to like you you're you're you're and so um and by like I mean respect and you're you know you you're seen as a team player and help each other out so um if all you're doing is reviewing annually someone's performance that's insufficient there needs to be regular feedback mechanisms um and there needs to be an open open dialogue and peer review 360 review where you all come into a room and you get to give each other feedback in real time um but yeah it's probably because there aren't enough metrics what is your advice for somebody that's in a company that they they don't have an infinite minded culture don't don't be there no don't try and influence that which you cannot influence don't control that which you cannot control you know an infinite mindset means that is something I can do but I can influence and take care of the people to the left of me and to the right of me I can take care of the people who work for me I can even take care of the person I work for sometimes we have a toxic boss not because they're bad but because we don't understand the pressure they're under sometimes to Simply exhibit empathy to our boss you know hey boss you were really harsh on us today everything all right what's going on I'm worried about you you know I'm here like we can we can succeed together I'm we're here to help you you know if we're no matter where we are inside an organization leadership is not about rank or authority leadership is taking responsibility for the people around us and so any anybody on any team at any rank at any level can be a leader the first choice is that we have to want to be a dear friend of mine Lieutenant General George Flynn from the Marine Corps said that the first Criterion to being leaders you have to want to be one so any of us can volunteer to be a leader um and that's what you do you commit yourself to seeing that the people with whom we work on a daily basis love coming to work they feel that someone's got their back they feel supported they feel that they have top cover they feel someone cares about them as a human being listens to them knows their story allows them to be themselves we can be that leader and what you start to see is those teams becomes really high performing those teams become super tight and you start to hear rumors across the company because everybody wants into that team because apparently it's a great team to work with to work on um and before you know one of those people goes and moves to another team and they take everything that they learn because leadership is learned and they do it for another team and if we take that infinite mindset and eventually the tail will Wag the Dog and it doesn't matter if it's this CEO or another CEO because we will Outlast whoever's in charge right now and that's the goal we're doing this for the good of the organization we're doing this for the good of the Cause right and the tail can whack the dog so leadership and Authority are not the same thing title affords you Authority affords you rank right um but that doesn't make you a leader I know many people who sit at high levels of organizations who are not leaders um we do is they tell us because they have authority over us but we don't trust them and wouldn't follow them anywhere um and we I know many people at low levels of organizations that have no formal rank no formal Authority but they've made the choice to look after the person to the left of them and and take care of the person to the right of them uh and we would trust them and follow them anywhere um and so rank affords you the opportunity to lead at scale it affords you with the opportunity to take care of more people Implement systems and and incentive structures and all the rest of it reward behaviors to to to to to you can influence culture with rank but that doesn't make you a leader and you still have to study the the the the the tenets of leadership and and and when they align it's magical you know when you have Rank and you and you've been studying leadership then you can then you can actually affect the culture in a in a more robust way and and one of the primary responsibilities of any leader is to make more leaders and and you can do that at scale if you have authority leadership is not about being in charge it's about taking care of those in our charge and the Very responsibility of a leader is not to drive performance leaders are not responsible for the results leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results and the problem is is we don't teach people how to lead right when you're very very Junior we give people tons of training how to do their jobs some people get Advanced degrees how to do their jobs so that they'll be good at them and if you're really good at your job will promote you and eventually you get promoted to a position where you're now responsible for the people who do the job you used to do and we don't teach you how to do that so how can we expect people to be good at their jobs if we don't train them how to do it like would you go see a doctor that didn't go to medical school no so why would we work for a leader who has no training in being a leader that's why we get managers that why that's why we get micromanagers that's why we get toxicity it's not because they're bad people it's because they don't know what they're doing and they're making it up as they go along and those lucky times that we get to work for a great leader well they were lucky that they probably had a great leader before them or they learned it somewhere else or maybe they had a terrible leader and they committed to do the total opposite of everything the point is they learned it well we have to teach leadership so that leaders can create environments in which all of us can work to our natural best that produces trusting teams the power belongs to the people this is a this is just an anthropological truth sure you know the power always belongs to the people which is why dictators bus in crowds to to give the appearance that they're popular or they actually have fake elections to give the appearance that they have a mandate dictators do that right if if the if the people didn't have the power dictators wouldn't need rallies and they wouldn't need elections right right dictators fear the people right because people have the power in any in any population in any organization and what keeps dictators and bad leaders authorities in power is by keeping the people divided because if you can create mistrust amongst neighbors um then the people can never come together and never depose the leader and so if you look at any dictatorship that ever existed there are systems look at East Germany during the Cold War you know we didn't know who was telling on us so everybody kept to themselves and nobody trusted anybody neighbors didn't trust neighbors and that allows authoritarian organizations to to do as they please the people which when people come together you know it's it's not it's not it's not Congress that just woke up one day and decided the Civil Rights Act that's a pretty good idea it was thousands and thousands and thousands of people marching you know in in peaceful protest [Music] um that put unbelievable pressure on a on a on a system to change and anything that's ever happened in the world where there's been revolutional Revolution happen this way yeah people always have the power and this is very true in the business as well the people have the power and so if we have mass layoffs on an annualized basis and you create internal competition what you're doing is you're pitting people against people especially if you create a system where we're only incentivized based on individual performance so in a sales organization for example if my income literally depends on how many sales I get and you're gonna I'm Gonna Keep stuff away why would I help you yeah right keep the people divided you keep the system that we've got but as soon as the people come together good things happen we are the sum total of how we were raised and the experiences we had we when we were kids good or bad and what I find remarkable when I've done these and I've asked people tell me a specific early happy childhood memory and sometimes somebody will stare at me and very uncomfortably say I did not have a happy childhood I don't have any happy memories and I'll say well tell me a sad one then and uh and so here here's one of the actual things that somebody told me um they had a very a very abusive father and one of the things they remember is uh her and her brother her baby brother hiding from their father when he went on a on a rampage and she remembers holding her brother and covering him up while they hid in the closet and she tells this traumatic difficult sad story and it occurred to me while I was listening to the story I said you told me about how you made specific attempt to cover your brother to protect your brother that's positive in other words what you'll find is even in difficulty you will find these these these strengths that come out and that's who this person was this person at her core was a protector that she would stand in the way of those uh uh who who who might be harmed in other words it was very very positive I'm a great believer in the world of balance that there's a cost for everything that is good that happens to us or everything we gain comes at a cost but everything bad also offers some silver lining there's always a positive and something bad that happens as well so the the one of the dirty secrets about finding your whys you actually don't have to have happy childhood memories you just have to have childhood memories um and there are still patterns in there that reveal who you actually are and so some of those coping mechanisms um though in their specific form I would venture to say that there's still some things that came out of that that helped make you who you are that offer you Great Value how do you create the environment where people are going to thrive and create those results that you're talking about what does it you're asking me the question um uh what does it mean to be healthy you're asking me the question what does it mean to be a great parent like I don't have five things to be a great parent right it's a lifestyle and it's comes number one with the commitment that I'm responsible for the life of another human being the growth of another human being the closest thing to leadership is parenting you have to be an infinite student of parenting you know you want to be a parent you ask your friends you ask your own parents you join groups you read magazines you watch talks whatever it is you're constantly consuming how to deal with this constantly changing challenge of being a parent and it's ups and downs and successes and failures you know and that's what it is leadership is the same leaders great leaders are students of leadership no matter how achieved they may be they're still learning um and it's a lifestyle it's the lifestyle of what I need to do to look after people which includes things like listening uh learning how to give and receive feedback um learning how to have effective confrontations how to discipline when necessary in a way that's constructive um roam the Halls get to know people learning what it means to to ask somebody questions how do you ask questions you know like some people are naturally good at being curious about other human beings and some people are uncomfortable because they're introverts or whatever socially awkward but we can learn you know how do you learn to remember people's names well I'm bad at names no you've just decided you're bad at names we can learn to be good at names so that when we walk down the hall and say hey Tom oh my God he remembers my name it's a nice feeling it's a lifestyle it's a lifestyle there are many many things we have to do and constantly work on to be a great leader to create that environment those of us who believe that there's a better way to build a corporate environment those of us who believe that we're that it is that that that being able to say I love my job as a right it's a it's not a privilege it's not for a lucky few who get to go home at the end of the day it's like I love my job right it's not some some Lottery that you win you know you know you go to a dinner party and you ask them to do like your job and they go I love my job and we go oh you're so lucky they didn't win anything right it's not luck right we are entitled it is our it is our god-given right to love going to work why is that because I think human beings are tribal animals and all of us want to feel inspired we all want to feel like we're a part of something bigger than ourselves we all want to have some sort of physical and psychological safety whether it's at home or work you know we we fear War We Fear crime and we we want to feel psychologically safe at home we want safety and at the end of the day every human being on the planet once the feeling that I can provide for myself and my family there's nobility in work you know um handouts don't work and they and they destroy the human ego you know there's nobility in being able to to do a hard day's worth of work and and collect a paycheck and when I do really well somebody says good job here's a little extra for you because you're a valuable member of the tribe and we want to make sure that we're incentivizing the behavior that you're doing and the behavior you're doing is you're taking care of something bigger than yourself so I am uncomfortable with this concept of work-life balance um because balance is achieved with two opposing forces and why should work in life be an opposition right and uh I I don't think there's if you don't have work-life balance if you're struggling to find work-life balance no amount of yoga will fix that right um taking off an extra week of vacation and by the way vacation means you're not working on the beach that's just telecommuting from a beach um um but I believe in in uh that the that you're able to build a life where work and personal life become uh not only you say interchangeable but smooth and what I mean by that is they're not necessarily confined by hours in a day but rather where I choose to give effort so for example if it's four o'clock in the afternoon technically part of the work day and you're hankering for a run because it's a day like this you can go for a run like that's you know and one of the things one of the mistakes that I've made was treating things that are important to my mind my body my spirit as stuff something that I'm supposed only supposed to do off hours or on weekends but just like I can't decide when I have an idea sometimes it's on Saturday and sometimes it's in the evening I also can't decide when I need a break sometimes it's something I feel that's something I plan for and so we've gotten really good it's imperfect you know sometimes responsibility takes precedence but we have gotten really good in our little company that if somebody wants to take an afternoon to be with their kids they put in their calendar with my kids a long time ago I used to have when I when I had um a different form of business before all of this stuff we used to have things called duvet days which I I get I can't remember we had like five duvet days a year or something and a duvet day was you wake up in the morning you just don't want to come to work you're totally healthy or it's a beautiful day and I just would rather go to the beach so you'd call up and leave a message at eight o'clock in the morning or seven o'clock in the movie like hey I'm taking a duvet day I'll see you tomorrow and no one would bother you right and people like that's amazing that you do that Simon like people are doing that anyway it's called hey I think I have a 24-hour bug I'm not going to be at work today and they go to the beach so just call it out um you know schedule time at the gym in the middle of the day if that's when you like working out and I just found the the more seamless that we can make work in life um the more we start to enjoy both more because they're not they're not opposing first of all I don't like the term failure I like the term falling I think you need we fail fast well the problem with the word fail is it's like the word cancer right if you have stage for a lung cancer or stage for liver cancer and you have a mild melanoma with a 99.99 chance of you'll be fine both of those things are called cancer and the problem is they're not the same thing and failure is the same is the same which is failure could be absolutely catastrophic or it could be a minor hiccup but the problem is we call it failure so I think we need to use different terms right failure I believe is something we want to avoid but Falling is something that happens naturally and we want to fall and get get up more often that's what I think is full full Fast and get yourself back up as opposed to lying on the ground and complaining right so I I want to embrace falling because that's that's taking risks that's trying you only fall when you push the boundaries right the the the language matters because it changes our mindset especially because it's too broad a definition for failure so one of the ways we Embrace falling is by when somebody does fall we don't say what have you done we go okay try again as Leaders right um or um how can I help you fix it and we just a little more relaxed about it and and we don't swoop in and do it for them right but rather we go so in other words we're encouraging risk-taking we're encouraging people to try recognizing that they won't lose their jobs that that especially if you're more Junior you really couldn't do anything that brings down the firm anyway and we have to give people the opportunity to fall and let them either learn to fix their own problems or guide them so that so that they can every single one of us has screwed up a bazillion times the only reason we are where we are today is because somebody said all right all right you're an idiot but try again you know like that's where I know who did it for me Peter and tomagio my old boss years and years and years ago go the guy would never answer any of my questions Peter what should I do what do you think we should do I'm like oh if I knew I wouldn't be asking well what do you think I think we should do this then do that what are you gonna do you know but I never felt fear that I would get fired ever I never felt afraid that my job was on the line when I screwed up we have to do that for people existential flexibility is the willingness to make profound strategic shifts in order to advance your cause 180 degrees right this is not the daily flexibility that you need in business a leader or even us as individuals may never have to perform an existential Flex um and at most you might ever have to do it in an entire career once or never but the responsibility of the of any leader is to prepare their organizations for an existential Flex should it need to happen so what is an existential Flex um so the best case is really uh Steve Jobs um and his just cause uh jobs and Wozniak had a very clear just cause which is to empower individuals to stand up to Big Brother right they're revolutionaries at heart and they saw the personal computer as a brilliant tool to help them advance that to empower individuals to stand up to the big brother and Steve Wozniak imagined a time in which an individual could compete in business against a corporation thanks to a personal computer depression right um Apple's already had success from the Apple One the Apple II it's already a big company Steve Jobs is already a famous CEO and in December of 1979 jobs and a bunch of his senior Executives go and visit Xerox Park which was xerox's r d division and Xerox shows them a new invention of theirs called the graphic user interface that allows a user to click a mouse on a desktop to move icons and folders to use the computer instead of having to learn an entire computer language now jobs who believes in empowering individuals seize this technology and says to his team we have to invest in this graphic user interface thing and the voice of reason I guess in the team says Steve we can't we can't do it we've already invested millions of dollars in countless man hours in a different strategic direction if we suddenly change directions we're going to blow up our own company to which jobs actually said better we should blow it up than someone else and that decision led to the Macintosh the first properly graphic user interface computer that had in mass-market appeal that was so profound that the entire platform of Windows Windows 2.0 was basically designed to act like a Macintosh you know and the reason we all have computers on our desks today the reason it's a household appliance the reason any one of us can compete against a corporation is because of this profound shift he was willing to do that now I call it a capacity for existential flexibility because it's not shiny object syndrome which you know too many entrepreneurs are subjected to you know this is it this is it guys you know flavor of the moment um uh it's done with the very specific reason of advancing the cause I found a better way to advance the cause and you have to have the just cause otherwise how do you know what to shift and you have to have the trusting teams because you will put the organization through short-term hell and that and the numbers probably will go down in the short term and the team has to be willing to say we agree we understand why you're making the shift let's do this and it's going to suck but we're in and they hunker down and they figure it out if you don't have a just cause you're literally just chasing something and uh if you don't have the trusting teams this happens a lot where sometimes the leader has the just cause but the team doesn't know it um and if you don't have the trusting teams then people will think you've lost your mind and they'll start abandoning or you respond to the pressures from Wall Street or outside because the numbers start to go down um but but uh existential flexibility like I said if you don't have to do it you have to prepare the organization for the for your success for your successor to be able to do it which means keep the cause alive and and maintain the the trusting teams yeah human beings Homo sapiens been on this planet 50 000 years-ish right and for 40 of those 50 000 years literally four-fifths of our our time on this planet we lived in populations that were never larger than about 150 people and we didn't all live on top of each other I mean they were communities um and the way we survived in these dangerous times when we took care of each other you know we contributed some people built things some people hunted the things some people made food some people we took care of the kids and their families and um and and the wealth was distributed um um you know there's there's evidence they found in anthropological digs where the best cuts of meat which you would think would go to all the alphas because I'm the strongest I get to choose the food first you know the best cuts of meat which they can tell by the bones are actually distributed amongst the tribe in other words the the alphas the leaders yes they were entitled to eat first that's just the way we are we're hierarchical animals you know nobody has a problem but somebody more senior nobody has a nobody has visceral contempt for the idea that somebody more senior in an organization makes more money than me we're okay with our outfits getting better treatment yeah you know nobody has a problem with celebrities you know making more money getting getting a table in the restaurant that we have to wait for it right we're okay with it you know it's one of the reasons we all try and you know increase our our standing in in society by doing good and you know hopefully you do it in a good way not just getting you know internet famous which is getting Fame without any contribution to society different subject right um but it was it was a it was um it was shared hardships shared sacrifice for the good of each other you know that doesn't mean there was an ego and selfishness of course but at the end of the day we needed each other yeah and then about 10 or 12 000 years ago when we started farming we didn't need to travel anymore we could stay put um and we could also sustain much larger populations um than about 150 um because we could because we could amass resources this also allowed for ruling classes and intelligency and things like that you can have an entire group of people who didn't hunt and didn't gather they just governed you know like it's a ruling class that's what it is right or they just thought about it philosophers yeah like you could we we had the resources for that and we were okay with it and it's a good thing because look at the advancements in modern society in the past 10 000 years simply because we we couldn't we you didn't have to go to oil the field you you could actually go invent something could innovate you could innovate right so it's a good you know we were not naturally made for living in large populations um and so the way it worked best is when when we when we organize into smaller groups which is why hierarchy matters which is why leadership training matters um so you asked about is the tough person responsible no the top person is responsible for taking care of the people uh in their direct responsibility and ensuring that they are charged with and incentivized to take care of the people you know with their direct responsibility who are charged with an incentivized to take care of the people in their direct responsibility and the people on the front lines are actually doing all the work feel taken care of and and are happy to contribute yeah there's a marine that I know who's a Marine General who says the way he can judge the quality of a lieutenant is he listens he listens to how the the troops talk about their Lieutenant so when he's not around is it the lieutenant or is it our Lieutenant they take possession of their leader wow right that's our Lieutenant right versus that's it's always the colonel it's never our kernel it's always the colonel because there's no relationship it's too too distant right um so as soon as we take possession emotional possession of our leaders there's a there's a sign of devotion and mutual trust but that relationship starts with how the leader leads you know yes we have a responsibility to give back but we call you leader not because you have the rank we call you leader because you took the risk to trust first we you took your we took all your leader because you took the risk to build the relationship first you took the risk to create the circle of Safety First you took the risk to go head first towards the vision first that's why we call you leader because you undertook an element of risk you literally lead you went first right right nothing to do with rank we all carry a narrative um someone's lazy um someone stupid someone doesn't care someone's only in it for themselves these are narratives that we carry and the problem is when we evaluate their behavior through our narrative we it'll become it will become self-reinforcing we will see the things that reinforce our narrative and the problem is then we'll treat them that way if we've decided someone's laser we're going to treat them as lazy so there's a great exercise to do which is literally take out a piece of paper and when we're struggling with someone to think what are the 20 other things that could be going on in their life so yeah number one they're lazy possible it's absolutely possible number two they're having trouble in their marriage uh number three their um things have gone wrong and they and they don't know how to ask for help number four they're still struggling with the trauma of covid number five their kids are flanking out of school like all of a sudden we realize there's a lot of other reasons that could explain their behavior and we will then treat them accordingly we will treat them with greater empathy you know instead of walking to someone's classroom and saying what the hell you're you know your performance is still down I've had this conversation with you before you got to get your performance up or I don't know what's going to happen or you can walk into their classroom and say your performance is down we've had this conversation before are you okay I'm worried about you we we they have a problem but they aren't necessarily the problem and even if ultimately it does become that they're a bad fit the culture they're still they are still not the problem they still are just a bad fit for the culture they have a problem we can help them solve that problem by going to help them relocate to a different School District where they're going to be so much happier we're going to be so much happier everybody gets to be so much happier so the other story I was thinking of is the story of Alan Mullally when he took over Ford um Ford is losing money hand over fist in other words performance was in Decline and when he sat down with his most senior Executives and he asked for a report on how their divisions were going regular green every single one of them delivered PowerPoints with all green slides and he said at the end of the meeting how can everything be green if we're losing billions of dollars and they just sat there and he had another meeting same thing all green and he said the same thing how can everything be green if we're losing billions of dollars the problem was the previous leader if you delivered a red slide you got fired and so there is no way that anybody was going to tell the truth because their job depended on it and so one executive took the risk to turn one slide red and malali said thank you for the the the the visibility that's great transparency now how can we all help him fix that problem he has a problem he is not the problem all the other Executives thought he was going to get fired turns out he wasn't and slowly but surely everybody including leadership could finally get a clear and transparent view of what was actually going on in their organization and they worked together to solve the problems if somebody was struggling people said how can we help you rather than I'm fine you're the one that's screwing everything up so it's a great way to think about it there's a whole industry around I think work-life balance yes yeah it's like there's a massive industry that's just trying to teach this and help people with work-life balance yeah the problem seems like it's failing treating well it's treating a symptom isn't it you know it's you know it's like so many things in our life so here's the bad analogy um so we buy running sneakers and they have really thick you know this yeah they have really thick heels tons of padding in the heel right but that's because people don't know how to run right because we land with our heel which is bad for our joints you know you're not supposed to have an extended knee yeah all of it you're supposed to be a toe planter where your knees are always bent I mean you know all this yeah so instead of teaching people how to run what we do is we just build shoes with more padding in the heel and treat the symptom rather than the Cause right and uh uh I think it's it's the same thing you know uh uh we we treat symptoms instead of the cause so so the work-life balance thing what we're doing is instead of instead of changing businesses instead of changing the way a business operates and changing the way in which we teach leaders to operate with an infinite mindset so that we more naturally have work-life balance and let's be Crystal Clear what work-life balance means you know doing more yoga does not create work-life balance right that's the that's the shoe that's the cushion on the shoe right yeah what what the the imbalances I feel safe at home I don't feel safe at work that's the imbalance and no amount of yoga or vacation time is gonna fix that what fixes that work life imbalance is better quality leadership in our businesses and then what you'll find is the balance but instead what we do is we have an entire industry that's treating the symptom that's putting that's putting cushion on the shoe to to make us feel kinda for an hour right that I've achieved balance you know but it's just for an hour and you know we literally Market you know companies Market themselves as helping provide you work-life balance unless you're teaching leaders to the people who are my bosses then you are not helping me achieve work like mountains you're helping me numb the pain you have me cushion the blow we are designed to take care of each other as social animals it is in our biology that we will take care of each other this is why it feels so good when somebody does something really nice for us with no expectation of anything in return we've all had the experience where somebody does something nice and you're like oh my God thank you and then they put their hand out you're like oh it kind of like ruins the whole experience completely it ruins it but when they just do it and they're like no no and you're like please like no no no it's my pleasure yeah you know not only does our esteem for them go up but it just it feels good likewise it feels good when we do something for someone else with no expectation of anything in return when we give our time and our energy money actually doesn't work believe it or not like if I told you I gave 500 to charity this morning you'd be like okay that's great Simon but if I told you that last weekend I gave up my Saturday and went to Painted schools in the inner city you'd be like nice that's really awesome now the value of my labor was worth a lot less than 500 and that's the point right that's the point which is um we are designed to take care of each other and there's a chemical called oxytocin which is the chemical responsible for our feelings of love and friendship and Trust when you look at somebody you adore and you go like this that's oxytocin when somebody touches you and says oh my God it's so good to see you touch creates oxytocin so good to see you yeah you know it actually makes us feel closer to each other you know when oxytocin is released in our bodies not only does it make us feel good not only does it boost our immune systems but the more oxytocin we have in our bodies it actually makes us more generous because the human body is trying to get us to look after each other and it gets even better than that the person who does the act of generosity giving of time or energy without expectation of anything in return they get a shot of oxytocin the person on the receiving end gets a shot of oxytocin and even witnessing an act of generosity or kindness releases oxytocin it feels good to see somebody do something nice and the more oxytocin we have in our bodies as I said means we're more likely to do something nice for somebody this is the biology of pay it forwards it's the human body's desperate attempt to get us to look after each other and so when we create environments where we allow that to flow it does naturally it just takes care of itself it's just biology um when we create environments where we restrict that it actually does the opposite it releases a chemical cortisol which is the feeling of stress and anxiety cortisol actually inhibits oxytocin which means if we work in a poorly LED organization not only do we have high stress but we actually it actually inhibits empathy and in other words I'm less likely to even want to care about somebody because of the poor leadership and the poor environment that's been provided for me to work in right and the more cortisol we have in our bodies stress goes up anxiety goes up it affects our immune systems happy people live longer happy people have lower rates of cancer diabetes and heart disease which means when you're in a position of leadership you're actually medically responsible for the lives of these people get the environment right they will live longer they will suffer lower cases of disease and they will probably have happier families because of it whereas if you're a bad leader over the course of time you're actually killing the people working with you our jobs are actually killing us I recognize that business is an infinite game and almost all of the leadership in business today is finite minded and so there's literally you can't show up to a game of basketball ready to play football like it's not going to go well we overuse Sports analogies in business but Sports has beginning middle and end there actually is a Finish Line right we overuse the analogies they're incorrect analogies you know running a business is the same as as getting healthy it's a lifestyle leadership is a lifestyle an infinite mindset is a lifestyle right so for example you can't get healthy by going to the gym for nine hours it doesn't work right um but if you go every single day for 20 minutes you'll absolutely get into shape 100 but I don't know when and it's different times for different people right and leading is the same thing you can absolutely have fitness goals you can absolutely have finite goals within the infinite context of being healthy but there's a practice that you have to do you have to get enough sleep you have to go to the gym you have to eat well you have to protect your relationships you know because healthy relationships really matter to our health and you have to do all those things vigilantly and if you miss your health goal it's okay you keep working at it and you know you will hit it business is the same who says that you have to meet this goal on this arbitrary date now it helps to drive and it's good to have incentives and we we're very goal-oriented species that's fine but if we miss the thing it's fine we just keep working towards it like their guidance they're not absolutes because they're arbitrary dates and arbitrary numbers and even if you do hit your Fitness goal you don't get to stop working out you have to keep going for the rest of your life right and this is what leading with an infinite mindset means here's an example this is a normal scenario in business right we will give a team um a target a goal to hit by a certain time frame usually a year um because that's usually when we pay taxes right that's the only reason things are done in years right if we pay taxes every 18 months all the goals would be 18 months right so we usually give people a financial Target and there's two teams one that is driven solely by hitting that goal because all they care about is getting their bonus at the end of that goal morale is up and down if they happen to have a good month morale is up if they have a bad month morale is down retention is terrible they can't hold on to employees nobody really trusts each other the boss is toxic and right before the end of the financial year they have some mad push where they're dropping prices all over the place and they're managed to drive revenues and hit the goal right the problem is we bonus that team we bonus that leader because of what uh because of the goal they hit right and basically what we're doing is spreading a message to the rest of the company saying we don't care how you get there we don't care if you step on your people we don't care if you act unethically if you hit your number you're going to do very well in this company versus another team that's doing extremely well it's good steady slow growth like really really On Target you know not the highs and lows the Peaks and valleys morale is super high retention is amazing it's a model team they trust each other they share information and they miss their goal on the agreed upon date right at the end of the year they're just shy of it but clearly you can see see from the trend data they're going to hit it at 13 or 14 months the problem is we don't give that person anything we don't give that team anything right and this is part of the problem when you have an infinite mindset absolutely have the goals but the trend matters more how you get there matters as much if not more and we pay attention to that so even if I hit my fitness goal I'm eating better I'm sleeping better my relationships are great I'm going to the gym yes I miss my goal but I know if I just keep going I'll hit it I'm getting healthier and healthier right I just got the timing wrong and this is what we need to build into business that infinite mindset yes have the goals yes have the Ambitions yes have the annual targets if we miss them as long as we're doing the right things we have the right lifestyle to take us there that's a much healthier way to live a life and a much healthier way to build an organization heck man I've disagreed with my own ideas you know I've been pig-headed and dogmatic about this is the way we gotta go and everybody is wonderful and and like falls apart they're just like okay yeah I kind of screwed the pooch on that one yeah but I take accountability yeah you know or we find in the middle somebody goes hey if we do this we can probably be more successful and we pivot there's there has to be at the decision-making ranks there has to be a humility that the ideas don't always have to come from me right Bob Gaylor the fifth chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force is the best definition of humility I've ever heard he said don't confuse humility with meekness humility is being open to the ideas of others so you know it's not about like oh shucks that's not humility you know you and I know some remarkable leaders people of great power and authority and they have huge egos yes you know they know they're good and they don't mind talking about how good they are but when somebody says hey I got an idea they lean in like they're little kids they go let's hear it you know I'm looking at some of the photographs on your wall and some of the folks that I know here they have an insatiable curiosity for ideas and even though they're unbelievably accomplished if you have something to share with them they want to talk about it they want they want to hear about it that's humiliating to me you know so it's not this you know it's not me it's you know self-confidence is a good thing thinking you're better than everyone else that's unhealthy oh that's good yeah you know thinking you're good is healthy thinking you're better than others is unhealthy what are your thoughts around courage how do people get the courage to to play the long game to not the long game it's the infinite game because a long game could be five years right true yeah this is forever uh how do people build that everything that we're talking about in the infinite game is really really really really hard it is so much easier to build a company based on short-term Ambitions than it is an infinite cause it just is right it's also fun right until it's not um less inspiring but sometimes sometimes fun right hitting a goal feels good right um it's much easier to just hire and fire people frequently higher fast Fire fast as to hiring slowly and and firing slowly because we we try and take care of our people as best we can it's just it's hard to build teams all of that stuff we talked about leadership like what am I supposed to do to build a trusting team well I wish I could give you a list of five things it's really really hard to be a parent it's much easier to be an uncle or an aunt or not have kids right it's hard right so why do it you know it's fun and and exciting to be to try and beat our competitors you know but to to have to face our own weaknesses every day oh that's exhausting you know existential flexibility I'd rather not I just would rather not you know so so the reason this takes courage to completely change our mindset a about the game that we're actually players in um and how we want to approach these things and do we want to shift our mindset and our organizations to prepare for the infinite game to be organized for the infinite game it takes courage because we're going to be swimming Upstream in a world that is very finite driven you know the pressures on us are overwhelming from Wall Street or our own egos or from internal incentive structures or our bosses whatever it is the pressures are overwhelming for us to play the finite game and so how do you stand up to massive external pressure courage and courage is something that comes from relationships you know it's external a a world famous trapeze artist would never attempt a brand new death-defying act for the first time without a net they would never do it so why do we think that we could do something difficult without external support too um I've had the opportunity to meet real heroes people who've risked their lives to save the lives of others with the belief that they were going to die and they didn't and when I asked why did you do it they all say something similar which is they would have done it for me it's external and so we have to have we have to take the time to Foster and take care of people around us to nurture our relationships because when we're going to be doing something difficult when we're going to be swimming Upstream when we're going to be innovating and and and and doing something different there are days we're going to doubt ourselves there are days we're going to get knocked on our ass there are days that storms are going to rise and we have to have people who say I got you back you need to do this we need you the world needs this keep going I believe in you you know um and so courage courage comes from from not only our willingness to do that for others but then their willingness to do it for us and we commit ourselves to a just cause and we're willing to to do those things then you know the great thing is we take a lot of people with us and change the world for the better and isn't that sort of the point of an infinite life to leave this world in better shape than we found it to leave the companies that we work for in better shape than when we started to leave our families stronger and better capable than than what they can do without us you know isn't isn't that what it means to live an infinite life that we can literally live on beyond our own lives we take accountability away from people and we don't even realize it yeah so we're actually destroying people's confidence or ability to make decisions because we keep answering their questions or making decisions for them I had a boss many years ago uh one of the best leaders I ever had Peter and DiMaggio and um he wouldn't answer a single question I asked it drove me absolutely nuts hey Peter you know what should I do well what do you think we should do well I I'm I think we should do this he goes well you should give that a try then you know or he would just ask me questions he goes well have you considered this I went no he goes well maybe think about that you know but he would never tell me the answer he'd always tell me the parameters um what he told me was self-reliance it was the most valuable lesson I probably ever ever learned um very often you know somebody will come and say you know should we go with blue or green I'll go with green well we just answered the question once I go with the one you think we should go with what should we do here make the decision you think is the right decision to make you know and then let them make the decision and when we give people accountability the amazing thing is they rise to it yeah but we keep taking the accountability because we keep answering all the questions so there's a very easy lesson for everyone here is um stop replying to all the emails that you're getting while you're away right like I know what happens you know in every break or right now uh you know there's an email that says you know should we go with this one or that one and you're replying and in every break you're going to reply to all your emails and tell people your opinion of what you think they should do versus saying I'm going away for a few days for this conference so I can learn to be a better leader um hold down the fort while I'm away if there's an emergency figure it out you know um or only call me if you absolutely do not know the answer um and stop replying to all the emails and they now have to work you're giving away uh responsibility one of the reasons they don't take responsibilities because they don't give it to them how do you develop self-confidence we're kind of going off here now but I'm this is a topic I'm really passionate about right now I believe uh self-doubt is one of the biggest Killers to anyone's Dreams yeah so how does someone develop self-confidence and sustain it with the ever going changes and stresses and uncertainties that always come up once you reach a certain level there's a new uncertainty no so I think it's ironic that we call it self-confidence because I don't for one think it comes from the inside I think our self-confidence comes from the outside right I mean that's the wrong way of going about it or you think that's where it comes from in general that we are being misdirected by the name when we say build your self-confidence that's the instruction is saying go inside look inside oneself but I think that's I think that's I think that's a false Direction children aren't born self-confident their confidence is built from their parents and their friends and their teachers where they're rewarded when they do well and they're pushed when they fail when they can do better simply you know we know this that simply telling kids that they're great all the time actually doesn't build self-confidence actually does the total opposite right right um and I for one I can tell you my in my own experience my own self-confidence um uh a hundred percent comes from the relationships that I have um it's not some deep internal fortitude you know a world famous trapeze artist is not gonna try a brand new death-defying act for the first time without a net so it's the people in my life um it's it's when when I do doubt myself that somebody says you got this when somebody says I believe in you when somebody says no matter what happens whether it succeeds or fails I'm going to be by your side that's when I have the confidence to do difficult things wow right I don't have some natural battery that I that that just right you know that that to me is bravado yeah I don't know about self-confidence you know you know being a huge risk taker is not an indication of self-confidence to me you know jumping out of a plane and jumping out of a plane with a parachute are two different things right right um um to me self-confidence is measured and there should be a degree of of of doubt um but but I I think true self-confidence belief in oneself and belief in one's cause you know I could not do the things that I'm doing and I would not have the strength um to have made the sacrifices that I've made or continue to wake up on a daily basis to drive to spread this message um if I were alone and so when we talk about building one self-confidence I think the mistake that we make is that we look inside I think the reality is we're trying to build our self-confidence we should be looking to our friends we should be nursing our relationships when I'm looking to build my self-confidence the question is who around me do I need to take care of you know the way we bid our self-confidence is by helping somebody else build theirs right it's an act of we will build our confidence with an act of service we're social animals our happiness our joy our success everything is dependent on our relationships um and we respond to the environments we're in you can take a good person and put them about it in a bad environment and they're capable of doing bad things likewise you can take a person that the group or even Society has given up on and you put them in a good environment and they're capable of turning their lives around and really making something remarkable out of themselves we are social animals and we respond to the environments we're in and leaders are responsible for building that environment and if you create an environment in which people feel safe amongst their own we will naturally the natural human response to those conditions is trust and cooperation remember trust and cooperation are feelings they're not instructions there's no PowerPoint or pitch that you can give it upon the end that someone will trust you you can't tell somebody trust me it doesn't work that way their feelings um likewise if you create an environment where we actually fear each other fear the people with whom we work the natural human reaction to that that environment is paranoia cynicism mistrust and self-interest that's what happens there's enough danger outside the organization there's enough stuff going on outside that we should have to fear the people we work with or fear our own leaders and most leaders don't get this most leaders think leadership is about being in charge no it's not it's about taking care of those in your charge most leaders think everybody works for them nope you work for the people in your organization it is your responsibility to take care of them make them feel safe and they will naturally want to cooperate and work hard and give you their blood and sweat and tears to advance your vision all they ask is you take care of them make them feel valued and valuable and the rest takes care of itself it's like a parent it's like a coach teach them train them give them the opportunity to fall and try again um and and if they fear the leader then they're gonna take steps to protect themselves from the leader it's pervasive in our world today if you work in an organization where we're at standard practice for employees to feel the need to send a cya email after every single decision they make that is a sign that they are taking time and energy out of their day away from doing their job in order to protect themselves from their own leaders that's what that is you know anybody who keeps a file of all the good things they've done in their career just in case they need it yeah that is people taking time and energy away from doing their jobs in order to protect themselves from their own organization so you can't ask those people to give you the best of their thinking and be more productive if you've created an environment where they're forced to protect themselves from you you know and this is what I learned and so it's all about this environment the circle of safety we come to work feeling uncomfortable that some of the decisions that are being made don't benefit the good of the employee that it really benefits this this artificial constituency that we call the shareholder which is really just a bunch a bunch of institutional investors there's this shareholder myth because there's been a steady decline of the middle class being involved in the stock market for years and the whole point of the stock market was that we all get to share in the wealth that we helped build because it's on the back of Average Joe employees that produce the great wealth in the nation and the whole point of the stock market The Genius of the modern day Corporation The Genius of the public company was that we all get to share in the wealth that we're helping produce unfortunately over the course of the 80s and 90s we've seen systems produced where we're seeing the general population the middle class actually be less included in in that success and the reason I wrote the infinite game was because I myself got tired of being told by people in positions of Authority or people of extreme wealth that I was naive that I don't understand how business business works and for many years I believed them I thought maybe I am the dumb one right we all kind of feel that because they have the power they have the authority they have the money they know more than we do but we still go to work and feel uncomfortable and it turns out that that discomfort that gut feeling that says that there's something wrong here turns out that the majority actually knows something and to me this is a World is Flat moment that that the the the the people who've learned to game the system that this discomfort that we feel we're we actually are right like they actually don't understand the game they're in business is an infinite game and when you play with a finite mindset lots of people suffer including the companies that they themselves are trying to build that's the great irony the great irony is the way you build great companies is with an infinite mindset the way you build great companies is by prioritizing people before profit the way you build great companies is will before resources um both both things important but there has to be this General leaning where we can feel when we come to work and feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves where we feel that our work and our effort is worth more than simply the money we make what I'm saying is that the business needs to operate in a way in which in which uh uh they care about their people more and uh and and then these arbitrary finite things aren't the end-all be all right and create an environment which we can have stressful moments but there's not this sustained stress with the steady every day every day of Our Lives which we know has contributed to increases in cancer diabetes and heart disease I mean our jobs are literally killing us yeah um so I think short bursts of stress are not the problem the life that I live is actually I think pretty healthy yeah it's this it's this steady drip of cortisol when you go to a job where you you know where we don't believe that our bosses care about us and the company doesn't care about us and they have annual rounds of layoffs to balance the books every year they don't they see me as a number and then then the company has the audacity to say you know Millennials Aren't Loyal it's not what are you kidding me it's like they've entered into a Workforce in which they're just treated as a disposable commodity why should they be give you loyalty show a little loyalty to your people and you'll be amazed the Loyalty they give back right so I think that's a much unhealthier environment and that's what I rail against there are five practices in order to lead uh with an infinite mindset um you have to have a just cause you have to have trusting teams you have to have a worthy rival you have to have a capacity for existential flexibility and you have to have the courage to lead so just cause we have to give our people something to advance a cause so just that they would be willing to sacrifice their interests in order to do so in other words turn down a better paying job or frequent business trips or working late hours and though I may not like those things I do them because it feels worth it because I believe in what I'm a part of here because I feel that I'm helping Advance because there's no achieving in the infinite game the goal is not final achievement the goal is advancing to progress in the infinite game and to have that vision of an idealized state of the world um that um all men are created equal right it's an ideal that a nation is striving towards that will never actually get there but will die trying that's the point and we can offer people the same thing inside an organization in fact we have to um to give them something to advance now how is this different from the why a why comes from the past it is an origin story every single one of us has our own unique why it is our Birthright it comes from the sum total of how we were raised as kids it is objective you have one and you have one for the rest of your life the only one right and the rest of our lives are about making the decisions that help us uh keep in balance with our why a just cause doesn't come from the past it just causes about the future it's about where we're going right you can have multiple just causes you can have one professionally you can have one personally you can have one for your family you can have one for your church and we're involved in all of these there's massive pressure put on people especially young people too what's your vision well we're not all Steve Jobs and Bill Gates we're not all Visionaries we don't have to have a vision but we do have to find a vision that we can find someone else's vision and we are so compelled by it that we want to make it our own that's what it means to go work for a company with a Visionary leader that we believe in that Vision so clearly that we take their vision and we make it our own and we will happily contribute our work our effort in order to advance what is now my vision right Martin Luther King had a vision he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and told us his vision but his vision became our vision so I may not have come up with that Vision but I found it and I'd like to devote time and energy to help Advance it even Beyond him leadership is a responsibility to people around us it's not a rank um you've heard me say this before I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations who are not leaders right they have authority and we do as they tell us because they have authority over us but we would not follow them right and I know many people as do you who sit at lower levels of organizations who have no formal Authority and that they've made a choice to look after the person to the left of them and look after the person to the right of them and we would trust them and follow them anywhere in other words leadership can come from anywhere with an or within an organization yes we have the right to demand to have better leaders and better leadership in our companies but when we don't quitting is not the only option nor is simply complaining but undertaking the task of being becoming the leader we wish we had wow you know anyone at any level can can become a student of leadership and anyone at any level can choose to take to to look after this person and that person and work tirelessly to see that they rise they become better versions of themselves and that they show up to work inspired and go home feel feeling fulfilled and feel safe when they're at work because of us it's akin to how do we be more authentic you know um and and the way so many companies tackle that is they go and do market research right we go and do focus groups uh to find out how we can differentiate ourselves um which I think is funny which is the which is the same thing as asking your friends sort of how should I talk to you and how should I dress so that you'll like me more and your friends are going to look and be like what you're like how do you want me to talk to you and how do you want me to dress so that you'll like me more because I care and your friends would be like I don't know just be yourself right and this is what companies do they go get outside advice to how to be themselves how they should how they should present themselves to the outside world um the way you differentiate yourself is you is you are yourself it sounds silly but it's true which is you know what your vision is and your causes you know what you stand for you know what your your culture is which means you know what your values are just like a person right and you work hard imperfectly because like a person we're imperfect and messy and you work hard to do things that represent what you stand for and operate in a way that represent your values and what starts to happen is you start to stand out because you're consistent and people start to be able to say I know what you stand for and you start to become predictable and you're either very attractive to some people who believe what you believe or you people don't like you because they don't believe what you believe both of those things are good and then there's always people in the middle who just want to do business with you because the transaction is good and the the you know the price happens to be right the product happens to meet a certain spec certain specs I'll do business with you but it's it's the ones who believe what you believe it's the loyal ones that make a car that make a company stand out um and do more to spread the good word of your organization than you could ever do with advertising and so it the irony is is live true to your values make decisions consistent with what you stand for which is seen by employees as well as customers by the way people who believe what you believe want to work there and want to be loyal to the company because working here says something about who I am um you know if I say I work for Apple you actually know something about me even though you know nothing about me just because apple is good and by the way there's no difference between a customer and an employee it's just a behavioral difference either work for you or or I buy from you but ultimately I believe what you believe the behavior may be different um so I think that the best thing a company can do to stand out is is to is to stand for something and live by its own value because you made it this far in a video I want to celebrate you most people start and don't finish most people never actually follow through most people say they want something but they don't ever do the work to actually get it but you're different you are special believe Nation you made it here all the way to the end and I love you so it's a special celebration if you put a hashtag believe down in the comments Below on this video I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome if you want the eight steps to end laziness and procrastination check the video right there next to me I think you'll love it continue to believe and I'll see you there what we do is we kind of check out because it feels overwhelming or we check out because we're afraid or we check out because we start listening to self-doubt and then we make these teeny tiny decisions

Channel: Evan Carmichael

Views: 137,423

Keywords: entrepreneur, yt:cc=on, evancarmichael, simon sinek, simon sinek motivation, simon sinek motivational video, motivational speech, life advice, simon sinek motivational speech, simon sinek leadership, entrepreneur motivation, simon sinek interview, simon sinek top 10 rules for success, simon sinek millennials, simon sinek advice, simon sinek success, simon sinek motivation - how to be a leader, simon sinek’s motivation, best of simon sinek, simon sinek 10 rules of success

Id: DRfi2PCOScA

Length: 200min 48sec (12048 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 21 2022