Intent-Based Leadership | Captain David Marquet | CMX Summit West 2015

[Music] thank you stop stop stop Standing Ovation and I haven't even started yet okay and now for something totally different nuclear submarines this is Helman province in Afghanistan and we have teams over there that are comprised of Americans uh usaid some State Department people local and and they collaborate with the locals we have the tribal Chief over here some Afghan national government and we have a smattering of US military to provide some security and then to run these things so the officer over here is Caleb Kerr he's a naval officer and he's been handpicked by the US military to go run one of these teams Caleb Kerr is a submarine officer now you need to understand submariners are the people who were the introverts and the Geeks in high school who went into the military they go into submarines because you can basically hide from people so here's the story why is a submarine officer running this provincial reconstruction team in the hills of Afghanistan and that's kind of the story I'm going to tell today here's what happened to Caleb one day the tribal Chief in the middle of the night they bang on the compound door and they're bringing in a pregnant lady with a complication for her pregnancy the complication is she has an axe embedded in her skull that was put there by the tribe across the other side of the valley because they've been having this Feud for who knows how many generations and when she gets attacked they bring her to the Americans because you know hey it's America Americans you know they can save her and they do and about six weeks later she delivers a healthy baby it's a it's a great story and then Caleb goes to talk to the tribal Elder and he says look I I understand what's supposed to happen her brothers are supposed to go across the other side of the valley and acts someone on the on the other tribe but she lived and she has a healthy baby and we can celebrate that and maybe we can stop the cycle of violence and because they had a relationship because they had built a community the tribal Chief agreed to that and convinced the family not to do that and so a few that have been going on for who knows how many generations Generations ended right then Caleb served with me whing the clock 5 years early he had served with me on board the nuclear submarine USS Santa Fe and I believe in some small way because on the Santa Fe we thought about leadership as community and Community is leadership and our objective was to make people feel good about coming to work and to cleanse the toxins and the stresses and the fear that normally happens with work and to make better humans that he was able in this environment to be successful and stop this violence Caleb then went on he was selected to be the captain of his own submarine and he was one of the 10 officers that served with me who went on to become captains of their own submarines there were only 14 officers on a submarine and this so this means like in your little little group let's say you had a company of 14 people 10 of them go off to found their found their own companies and become CEOs it's a highly disproportionate number and this is part of the larger community on the submarine all my Sailors and you may think oh a nuclear submarine they're highly trained highly technical people and to a degree they were but the only people in this whole picture with college degrees is this group the average age of this whole of the whole submarine is 26 years old the a the oldest guy in the submarine was me I was 40 so it's s of this young energetic group of people who want to make the world a better place unfortunately this is not the way most workplaces feel when we go there they feel like this because this is the Legacy that we've inherited from the Industrial Revolution we want to make things we want to make them all the same and so people sit in rows and we say oh do I care what you're thinking do I care what this lady's thinking no just as long as our hands are moving I'm happy and then we make schools to support this and the schools look like this or you know maybe like this and then we get to leadership here is my 1981 Naval Academy leadership textbook and it says leadership can be defined as directing the thoughts plans and actions of others so as to obtain and command their obedience their confidence their respect and their loyal cooperation simply stated leadership is the art of accomplishing the Navy's Mission through people now hopefully we're going have a little bit of fun here hopefully you brought your phones because uh I'm going to ask some questions and you're going to get a chance to text your answers in to uh the slide here and the first question is how would would it feel to work in this environment so what I want you to do is pair up talk about it for a few seconds and then go to this website and text up your answer so go ahead and talk we need the gods of Wi-Fi to smile oh here we go yes okay pair up 30 seconds talk with your neighbor text in your answer here's the website here's the question yes okay good this is very good oh it got all got really small for some reason right I think this is right this is how it feels I be how do I know because I worked in that environment it feels good for the leader I walk around giving orders all day long do this do this do this do this do this right people are running around an extension of my will but but it's terrible for the people I mean can we even do that can can we even direct the thoughts right right can you do that what do you think yeah okay all the all the married people answered the question you can't and yet that was what we thought we were supposed to do that's what was in my head so for 15 years that's the leader I was and I was darn good at it my dream was to be the captain I'm a nuclear powerered submarine and sure enough after 17 years in the Navy there's a message that comes out and says these are the captains for the next year my name was on the list next to my name was the name of this submarine the USS Olympia wonderful technologically advanced warship one nuclear reactor can stay submerged for 16 years has uh makes its own oxygen makes its own water we have to come to the surface every 90 days just to get food has a crew of 135 Sailors we had all men we now have women which is of course an evolutionary big evolutionary step forward in my opinion so for a year the Navy took me out of school and for 12 months all I did was study this particular ship I memorized the drawings uh the drawings of all the piping systems the internals of the pumps all the ratings of all the equipment uh the electrical systems where the breakers were all the problems the ship had I read the dossas of all the people I knew where they went to school how many kids you know where they married how many kids they I knew everything I was the smartest person on the planet for the submarine I flew to Hawaii and I got was getting ready to take command and then the plan changed next to the USS Olympia out there in Pearl Harbor Hawaii there was another submarine the USS Santa Fe the Santa Fe was the Enron of submarines the Santa Fe was the submarine that we laughed at we giggled at we snickered at during that year of training because the Santa Fe just went from one bumbling thing to the next now it wasn't like we melting down the reactor but they would get see and they have to come into Port because something would break and they had the lowest retention in the fleet they only reenlisted three Sailors 35 had the opportunity to reinlist only three decided oh I love the Navy I want to sign up I put her at the bottom of the fleet her inspection scores were at the bottom of the fleet and I felt you know it was kind of safe to laugh at them because I wasn't going to the Santa Fe you know I was like oh those poor bastards on the Santa Fe but the captain on the Santa Fe quit unexpectedly a year early and the Navy said marqu you're going to the Santa Fe and I became the poor bastard going to the Santa Fe and I L literally thought my life was over it wasn't the poor retention it wasn't the poor performance it was the fact that the Santa Fe is a different kind of Submarine than the Olympia the Santa Fe doesn't have sail plan the Santa Fe has bow planes the Santa Fe has 12 Tomahawk missile tubes up here in the bow the Olympia doesn't have the Santa Fe has a different reactor the Santa Fe was one of the newest ships in the fleet every piece of gear on the Santa Fe was different so all that knowledge that I had that was scary cuz in the Navy you're you know the captain's the guy giving all the orders ah never mind get dressed up in my white uniform take command I'm ready to go I take you down into the sonar room on board the Santa Fe now first of all cast out everything you've seen in the movies about submarines we don't do any kind of ping ping ping ping ping all we do is listen we're really good listeners and we convert the sound in the ocean to these uh lines squiggly green lines is the technical term and analyze them and by listening to the line and pushing it through some analysis we can say oh this sounds like a cruise ship uh this might be an oil well this sounds like a school of fish and this could be an enemy submarine and it's kind of important to figure out which one is which and these are the buttons right now on the Olympia lot we got lots of buttons on the Olympia I could have reached over the shoulder of the Sailor and say oh push this button I knew every button on the ship all I done for 12 months was study the ship but on the Santa Fe it was great to me but I had this bad habit of as still asking the Sailor they say hey tell me about your equipment well Captain this does this and this does this and of course there was some button that the say I was say what about this button and the poor sailor h I don't I don't know captain and they would cringe because they expected the hammer to come down well I'll tell you and you really should oh yes Captain I'm screwed up here that was leadership and on the santaan I'm sitting there go well what do I do because I don't really know the answer either I could pretend like I know the answer but for some reason I didn't do that I just said yeah I don't know either you're the captain well let's press it and see what happens ah crap we attacked the carnival crew no that didn't happen it was so scary revealing that this the person the captain who was supposed to know everything and give all the orders didn't didn't know all the answers but I think now now that for leaders to say I don't know it's is very powerful because it makes it safe for other people to say I don't know people can stop guessing especially if you're in a technical environment you don't need to guess you just say I don't know we'll go find out and when you have meetings if people are worried about you saying I don't know they're not not going to ask you hard questions because that might be embarrassing and I went through a lot of meetings at the Pentagon where there was sort of theater of the Absurd we couldn't ask hard questions because we were afraid the boss we would reveal that the Admiral's really an idiot and we you know no one could do that so was frowned upon it was a big waste of time well never mind here's what happens this is what happens next now remember I just took over the worst performing submarine in the fleet so my idea is we're going to drill hard train hard going to put pressure on my team one of the things we like to do is we like to do this exercise where we shut down a reactor we pretend there's a problem with the reactor now when you got nuclear reactor you got a lot of power and so this is the signal this is the uh knob we use in the control room so we say head flank and the Helmsman says head flank eye CH ching and it rings it down here and it sends a signal to the engine room and the throttleman with the wheel spins it open and these valves open and the steam from the reactor goes in these main turbines which are like two city buses next to each other they spin up and they drive this 30-ft propeller and the submarine surges through the ocean and it's awesome it's awesome it truly is uh but when you shut down the reactor what you have is the basically the equivalent of a blender motor um driving the the submarine because you don't have all the Steam and the power and the surging and all that what you have is just a little electric motor and and what you're trying to do is fix the problem with the reactor and get a started back up before the battery drains down so I'm standing in the control room we're running this this is the very first day at C with me as the captain of my new nuclear power submarine and we're running this ex very first drill we ever run we're sitting there at a head oneir we're just going very slowly on this electric motor and I started thinking you know if we speed up on the electric motor it's going to draw more current it's going to drain the battery faster and it's going to make this race tighter is going to put some pressure on my team so I look over to the Navigator the officer of the deck the one who's going to give this order now he's been on board two years me two weeks him two years say Hey Na let's go ahead twoth thirds let's speed up and he orders it how I had 2/3 silence the poor kid sitting at this thing I'm looking at the back of his head and he's kind of going like this I couldn't see his face but I imag I say hey Helm what's going on captain on this submarine there is no 2/3 only oneir for the electric motor and what had happened was when the Navy went to the newest submarine they simplified things you guys don't care anyway it didn't have a two-thirds right all the other submarines had it and um well that was embarrassing for one thing I said hey nav did you uh did you know about this 2/3 deal yes sir I did so well riddle me this why did you order it what did he say you told me to we train people to do what they're told you really good at doing what you're told what do we do with you we promote you we make you the captain of a nuclear submarine and I was good at doing what I was told and telling people what to do this stopped me cold in my tracks and I realized we were on the path to death because if I gave a good order my crew would follow it and there'd be life and happiness and if I gave a bad order my crew is still going to follow it and there'd be death and unhappiness and that's a big motivator for me anyway so I realized the problem wasn't that I made a mistake in the order the problem was that I was the one giving orders the problem wasn't that I gave a bad order the problem was I was the one giving orders and this is a revolutionary concept because in general we think oh the leader the boss is the order giver and if they make a pro have make a mistake oh they just need to be smarter they need to give better orders like the captain on the Costa Concordia the Italian cruise ship you guys remember this where they ran ground the captain was giving the orders he was a great villain he fell into the very first Lifeboat could happen and and the Press lit up on the fact that he gave a bad order that totally missed the point the question was why was the captain the one giving the orders my initial Instinct would say well I need my team to be more empowered more proactive take more initiative but remember these guys have been beaten down because they done all these M they've been making all these mistakes and when they came to work all they cared about was not screwing up what's the what's the best way not to screw up don't do anything right for God's sakes don't make any decisions so it pushed the organization in this passive mode I so I realized I needed to change it needed to be me and the one thing I could do was say I'm not going to tell you I'm not I'm going to stop giving orders I'm not going to tell you guys what to do anymore so I want you to picture a submarine or a company or a cruise ship where the top person is doesn't give any orders this is the key to unlocking greatness I now think in humans we think bad leaders give bad orders good leaders give give good orders but great leaders actually don't give any orders at all they don't have to because they've got a team they structured their team team and they've got a team where people are taking action without having to be told and this is the greatness this is where greatness in human beings comes from there is no Medal of Honor citation that starts with after he or she was ordered dot dot dot private first class blank blank blank went out and no greatness comes from people making a decision to do something great so the degree to which which you tell people what to do you're suppressing any opportunity for greatness we didn't you know we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean 500 feet reactor shut down I don't have time for speeches and posters and newsletters and emails I just said say this say I intend to don't say request permission don't say what do you want me to do just say I intend to I intend it's urger ship I intend to start at the reactor I intend to look a torpedo and it was awesome because then the guys below them would say I intend you to the officers and the en listed guys would say I intended to the Chiefs and so what happens is now everyone's thinking we went from one thinker one leader one boss and 134 doers to 135 active thinking passionate creative people 12 months later the Navy came down inspected our submarine this is a this is a at Sea inspection shooting Torpedoes firing missiles driving the ship four days lots of things happening the US the crew of the USS Santa Fe received the highest score that the Navy had records for thank you thanks these guys who were the worst before why everyone's like oh that marquet fellow the people on the outside didn't understand what was happening they go oh that marquet fellow must be really clever he must be just giving a lot of good orders no I stopped giving I was out of the order giving business I'm going to give you some reframes for leadership now here's what I think as David said Community doesn't start at the boundary of the organization and work out Community starts with the CEO the most important community in your organization is the organization and if it doesn't feel like a community and and in fact a very strong Community right there there's nothing you can do to create a sense of community out here it has to start here so when I think of community managers I think of culture Warriors I think of leaders I think these are the people with the keys to the culture of the organization which is the most important thing I was working with McDonald's I mean a big a fast food company um Wendy Wendy's Chipotle no not anyway um a big franchise owner he calls me up he says hey my people aren't treating our customers with empathy I want I want can you help me help me get my team to treat our customers with empathy all right I'll come see what's he was in Vancouver but it was the summertime so I said I would go up there I go up Vancouver and you know meet up and I'm going to go out to one of your stores I go out there I'm I'm sitting in the back what's happening in the back right the shift manager is like the fries were done now go out and sell some hamburgers it's like you know F you you know you want shakes with that so uh I went back to the headquarters I and I I said hey I think I know what's going on here the problem is your shift managers aren't treating your people with empathy so of course they're not going to treat the customers with empathy it starts inside and then I started drawing the string back right so why are the shift managers not treating their people with empathy because the district people probably aren't treating them with empathy why is that right all the way back to him right how are you treating so anyway it didn't call me back I you know we had some talk about volunteers earlier today when it comes to the most important thing that people can do at work passion creativity energy thinking everybody's a volunteer some people say oh it's easy for you in the military you just order people I ordered you to have enthusiasm and be passionate does that work no of course not we get to blow stuff up sometime so when we shoot a torpedo first of all the torpedo never hits the ship that's another thing that doesn't happen torpedo has a long fire and it's telling us back on the ship what we're seeing and it's and I get to talk to the torpedo and steer it then it goes under and blows up and this creates damage but we blow a hole in the ocean that the ship falls into and breaks in half and then in the military we like to have you know we have to make up new words for everything so this is a non- combat effective vessel and it's going to sink in about 10 minutes so these Torpedoes are big deals you don't want to mess around with them here we are this is a Santa Fe we're in saso Japan we're loading a torpedo and this is kind of a complex operation it takes we have to take a crane and put it in this cradle we have hydraulics and cables and we raise it up and bring it down inside the submarine it takes about 40 people to do it so before we would do something like this we were very religious about doing a brief well what's that we I'll get together we're going to hey we're guys we're going to load a torpedo so we get the book of loading Torpedoes upon the signal of the crane operator Thou shalt take a snug turn on the for line captains and then you said anyway it was horrible 40 minutes went by any questions no let's get on with it what is this about it's about doing it's not about thinking and I realize we have all these rituals in work the way we sit in meetings the way we talk to each other things that we thought were good keeping you guys have to-do lists anyone have a to-do list right it's about doing right it's not about thinking so this idea that we're going to think really replaced doing so we found these rituals all over the ship and we canceled them and of course I'm a kind of a snarky guy so I had some fun because the inspectors love to come to the Santa Fe because they were sure to find a lot of problems which of course is the most joyous thing for an in inspector and they would come say these are these crusty old guys like captain we're here to monitor of Santa Fe loading torpedo sounds like um Sean connory a little bit doesn't it okay great I want to see everything including the brief yeah just hey about that we're not going to do a brief a brief's technically not required it was best practice but only loading the torpedo properly was required it's true uh actually what we did is we replac the brief with a certification where we would ask the sailors what's your job what are you thinking about what decisions might you make what are you worried about how could this go wrong and only when the person in charge was s satisfied that we were ready to move forward would they come to me and say captain we've conducted the certification I intend to commence torpedo loading and every once in a while they would come to me and say captain I've conducted the certification we are not ready and that was embarrassing because I would have to send a message to the in this case the captain of the tender who had a ship here ready to load and I said well we're not ready we got to delay for three hours we got to get we got to study more or get the gear right or whatever it is is that bad maybe is it as bad as dropping a torpedo or killing something no and if you never say we're not ready then you're not making a decision you're just doing the next thing hospitals are in this Opera in this thing has anyone ever gone to a hospital for a scheduled operation you guys are probably all too young for this but you know when you get older you're going to go in and and and had had the surgeon come out and say I'm glad you're here on time we're not ready is that ever happened to anybody really they're not ready because they're late but are they not ready because they've done he's chested his team and he feels his team isn't ready to go yeah I don't know you know some people say yes this would be the first time that anyone has ever said which is good because most times if they're not saying yes they're just bringing the next person bringing the next person bring in the next person should they be ready yes but if they're not you want them to say we're not the point of this is you probably have a lot of rituals which are focused on doing and focused on compliance which you probably don't even know you have and so I encourage you to look carefully at all these things and blow them up and give power to the people and allow them to think now giving people power isn't a complete program we're going to start with giving people control but control without these two pillars is chaos that's bad on a nuclear submarine people need to know what they're doing so for me this is things like you know the laws of physics starting up the reactor but but people also need to know what we're here for and this is I think up where you guys can really be helpful because if I say you get to make a decision now do we ship the product or not do we you know do we like you know is Pornhub okay to have on our website or or not they kind of need to know what you're about and then I think the next layer down is this idea of Define roles languages in process and some people like go oh not processes I hate it like I'm like the do opening and people are leaving right now but when you don't have a common language when I if you can't hold something up and say what is this if everyone doesn't call it the same thing then that's where you have you start with a lack of CL it so we spent a lot of time on the submarine even though we had 100 Years of submarining tradition deciding what to call things and what words we were going to use and what they meant and then we would build these things up from here number two leaders push authority to information the old way was to push information to Authority so on the submarine if someone wanted to go on vacation because Navy reg said so they had to put in a form that went up to the second in command of the submarine that meant if you were this sailor here your your sheet had to be signed by six people the division Chief Senior Chief War Shack the Department chief chief of the boat division officer department head and then the executive officer our form we Navy HR gave us a form we only had five slots on it it was actually kind of crazy and so what do we call this is pushing information Authority now that guy sitting right behind the Sailor Senior Chief warshack knows everything is he a good kid what's submarine doing that week is his mom sick he needs to go back to Texas and visit whatever but he doesn't have the authority to make the decision and so we say oh well we create create balance scorecard or we buy you know some Erp system to do this this is the 20th century solution the 21st century solution is to push the Authority for making decisions out to the people with the information and this is what you guys do as Community managers and oh by the way that means encouraging this person to talk to this person and this person to this person this person and this person to this person yes and this person back to this person oh but that makes people nervous right oh these all these people here are nervous when this happens but if it's information that's fine it should be fine kind of a good news story we you know the submarine started doing much better I told you about the inspection the very next year we had 35 Sailors again eligible to reinlist every single one every single one signed up to stay in the Navy why because their lives were easier because we gave more time off no because they could connect what they were doing to something that mattered because we gave them the authority to make decisions we say people don't want easy they want agency they want a matter because they felt they were listened to because they felt like their toxins they didn't have toxins built up at work that they would go home and then take out on their spouse or their dog or their kids and so Stephen cubby who I was a huge fan of I get a phone call one day says Stephen cubby would like to ride your submarine Stephen Cy that's amazing and so he came out and had this magical day Dolphins were jumping and it was like a Disney movie it was awesome little mermaids seriously Dr Cub is really quiet he spends a couple hours he's watching he's watching the no the certifications the no briefing he's watching the i in 10 to and I'm a little bit worried because that's like this is a big huge thing for me and he finally comes up to me says hey um this is the most empowering workplace I've ever SE I've ever seen I said oh thank you very much just by the way we don't you know we don't use the word empowering here but that's okay for you and and then he said um an I haven't seen you give any orders said yeah I try to get out of the order giving business and then he said I know what's going on here and I said okay we'll do tell because for me it felt very confusing it just felt like we had I had to stop giving orders and everything that followed was just sort of this mesh of experimentation and he and we came up with this people used to come up and say tell me what to do and I refuse to tell them what to do first of all you have to hear tell me what to do you don't tell them what to do you say what do you think what would you do if you were me one of my favorite tricks was I would get up out out of my captain's chair oh the captain's chair that's a big deal on a submarine I would get out of my cabin chair and I would say hey have a seat you weren't supposed to sit it's it was like you know your grandfather's Lazy Boy you know no sit in that chair and uh and then I would say okay yeah you know what was that problem you were telling me about and the words that came out of their mouth were totally different before they were talking about their division their Department whatever and now I was like well that's not really the problem and they would sort of see things from a different perspective it was amazing and then say okay what do you recommend and what do you intend to do which I love maybe even just tell me what you did you do it you decide then tell me and uh poor Dr cubby puts his head down and starts rubbing his forehead I think poor Dr cubby is sick seasick I said Dr KY are you okay sir should I get the Corman that no I'm I'm fine I just I'm like I'm a seven guy we got to have seven so he made up this to me was the greatest leadership hack ever because I you know empowerment is fuzzy but this is it's it's discreet it's measurable I could hear where people were and just say oh hey why don't you say this and I kind of think this might be interesting to Overlay your community commitment curve close in high commitment you're they're up there just doing stuff as you move away from the center and you get lower and lower commitment maybe the magnitude of what they're doing goes down but also their level of of authority their level you know their level of engage you know engagement goes up as we go up Enga engagement thinking passion creativity ownership go up as we go up the ladder all right now here's the next question another poll question is you got someone down here tell me what to do and you're like and you're you're doing all these strategies you're putting them in the captain's chair and they just seem stuck at telling me what to do what is it that keeps people people at tell me what to do text it on in does anyone have an extra water give it a heave thanks Politics the question in one word what would keep some from moving up the ladder what we're building here is called a word cloud which I'm super in love with and the way it works is the more people type in the same word that word gets bigger relative to the other words yeah and fear conquers all all right I think this is this is very consistent and I've done this uh almost a hundred times on four different continents and so far every time fear has been the number one thing so I want you to put your heads together with your partner again I'm going give you 60 seconds this time and I want you to discuss okay if fear is the thing that keep that's keeping people that tell me what to do that's keeping people from that sense of creativity that sense of ownership what does it mean to us as leaders in terms of how we interact with people what does this mean to us okay take 60 seconds and talk about it who's got something who wants to share something sorry it's a little hard for me to see anyone yes right so they need more help they need more context about the decision decisions they're making how much risk can I take is this uh we have a concept called above and below the water line below the water line sinks the ship above the water line doesn't so we say hey it's above the waterline have a ball do an experiment it's below the waterline let's think about it let's send it over to the scientist make sure we're okay okay good what else trust trust trust is very important I have um here's my take on trust which is different than than most I think most people think trust equals trust plus competence right after this I'm going to go to LaGuardia you're driving me to what's the problem you're driving me to LaGuardia you turn you take me down into Long Island right do I trust you if I think you're getting me to LaGuardia then I trust you you know why did you go to Long Island it's just a matter of e reading the map it's a competence issue the and when we break trust and competence apart it's very useful because trust is an emotional thing you don't trust me but if it's I break it apart say yeah I trust you but I'm not sure we should be going to Long Island we can have a conversation about that with devoid of emotion which is what we wanted so trust is very important but remember trust is like are we in it together when you tell me we should turn left do you mean we should turn left that's different then should we actually turn left what else respect yeah we should respect each other right because respect is the antidote to fear what else reming unre consequences yeah we're moving unreasonable consequences right like we tend to be we talk about fire drills most of the time it's not really a fire right just what else puppies is gaining gaining on us how about this we we as Leaders need to make people feel safe okay we don't add stress I used to think the leaders added stress they made it hard right because if we oh we're GNA you know we're going to work really hard we're going to make it hard for my team and I'm going to test my team by fire and they're going to come out stronger on the other side but when it comes to thinking stress makes it harder to think which is what we're trying to say we're which is really what we're trying to do now think not do this is the national spelling be contest and they did a study they said oh if the person before you gets the answer correctly does that improve or reduce the odds that you're going to get it right what do you guys think it actually makes it go down because it puts more pressure on you puts more stress on you and it causes your prefrontal cortex to go dark you're you're not thinking as well literally uh and and it causes you to sort of recede back to your reptile brain where all you want to do is fight flight or fear you know it makes you afraid and it makes it harder to think leaders fix the environment not people too often we say oh you weren't very empathetic you weren't generous you weren't a team player so I'm going to send you two's today offsite empathy training team training whatever generosity training doesn't work that's not the way leaders think leaders think what is it about the environment that's not allowing my my people or my community to be act in this helpful way here's the very here's the study that really highlights this this happened back in Princeton at the Princeton Theological Seminary back in 1973 two psychologists went in there they asked the Seminary students if they wanted to give a talk on the Good Samaritan and a bunch of them signed up they came into an office one at a time and they received the following set of instructions you're going to go across campus and you're going to go give your talk and then the following part was slightly different it was either and you have plenty of time or it was if you leave now you'll be just in time or it was you're already late now on the way that they had to walk to where they thought they were giving this talk about the Good Samaritan there was a man lying on the ground an actor who was staged these people had to walk right past this person right some around some actually stepped over this person as they were going to give a talk on the Good Samaritan the question was there was no talk the question was how many people would help this person of the people who were told you have plenty of time 63% helped of the people who were told You're Just in Time 45% help my question to you what do you think happened to the group that was told you're already late did the number go down or go up all right let's see what we got aha oh look at that tide okay someone who said went up tell us uh kind of what you're thinking you're already late so mil as well help okay good anything else now hey sorry I'm late saving a guy's life my bad exactly exactly that would be an awesome planet to live on that unfortunately or I don't know that's not what happened went down to 10% now when I first read this I was super bummed out I was like oh human beings are jerky uh but you know I think what happens is most workplaces feel like we're on this constant rush we never have time to think we never have time to help each other and so we get this behav Behavior where we're all sort of you know in our own little worlds doing our own little things and you as a leader can create an environment where it feels the deadlines are still real I got it but you don't need to make add more stress where it feels like yeah we can take time to help each other out then all of a sudden the people the same people that you always had are all of a sudden going to be start helping I like where did all these helpful people come from they were there all along one of the most fun things we did on the Santa Fe was not fighting fires but after the fire we fire exercise say you know why did it go not well and people say well they did this they did that they engineering they the officers they the there was all this they on board and one day I just got mad and I just beat the table I said there's no they on Santa Fe and it Rhymes so kind of stuck I said we just say the word we and we just started talking about everyone is we we and and what happened was 6 months later we had this amazing culture where it felt like we but it wasn't because it said oh we're a team please be a team act like a team it's because we practiced the word we and then we felt like a team but listen everybody when I think back about my life and the things that I regret the only things I regret is when I allowed myself to be treated badly and for you and for your kids don't do that you have more power and more Authority than you think you have you don't need to work in these bad environments and the more people stand up and say I'm not tolerating this the better that's what you guys need to do [Applause] [Music] boom

Channel: CMX

Views: 82,418

Keywords: YouTube Editor, Intent-Based Leadership, David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around, CMX Summit, CMX, Community management, Leadership, communitcation, psychology, science, building communities, inspiring speakers

Id: I5RkDDo6B9Y

Length: 48min 34sec (2914 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2015