Episode Transcript
Linda Rottenberg, CEO of company called Endeavor.
You know, she's this incredible leader, but she says she didn't really become an inspiring leader until she started talking about her human side.
In this case, it was her husband's battle with cancer.
But I always tell people, if she exposed her vulnerability at the beginning, no one would have taken her serious as a leader.
Hillary Clinton cries, and it transforms her into a human you know.
Elizabeth Dohle cries at the beginning of her campaign, and she's done right, you know.
And so you want to establish your competence first.
And once you establish our competence allows you to be generous.
Speaker 2Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
In each episode, we talk with inspiring scientists, thinkers, and other self actualizing individuals who will give you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.
We even hope to give you a glimpse into human possibility.
On today's episode, we feature Columbia Business School professor Adam Glinsky, author of the book Inspire, The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others.
In this episode, we discussed the universal characteristics of truly inspiring leaders and how we can all become more visionary leaders.
We also discuss the importance of expanding the status PI and what doctor Glinski calls the leader amplification effect.
This is an important discussion and very relevant to the world today.
So without further ado, I bring you doctor Adam Golinski.
Professor, doctor Adam Golinski.
So excited to have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1Thank you so much, Professor doctor Scott Kaufman.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Man, you know I've done this podcast eleven years.
It's like about time we had you on the show.
Speaker 1I've been a.
Speaker 2Long time admirer of your work, as you know, did O.
Thank you, Adam, Thank you.
Your new book is called is it?
How many books have you had?
Speaker 1It's my second book, so my first solo author book.
I had to call author a book called Fend and Foe before.
Speaker 2Oh yeah I remember that.
Yeah, I actually not know actually about I really like that book.
But your second book is called Inspire, The Universal Path for Leading yourself and others.
Why did you write this one?
Why are you like, Okay, I need to do this.
I need to go through the torture or writing a book.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a great question, you know.
I you know, I describe in the acknowledgments of the book, this book really is my heart and soul, Like I love this this this book, it's really everything that I There's a lot of personal stories, but there's also just like the core of my research and my identity.
And you know, over the last since two thousand and two, so you know, over twenty years, I've been teaching leadership to NBA students, you know, all over the world, and you know, my class has just developed over time.
And at some point I realized that, like my class told kind of a coherent story that I think would be just really helpful for people.
And I think, you know, one of the core ideas of the book, right, is that we when we inspire others, we make the world a better place to be.
And so I kind of call it spreading the seeds of inspiration.
And so I hope that this book people read it and they're going to learn ways that they can be a more inspiring person to others in the world and make their lives better, which means going to leave those people to make other people's lives better, et cetera, et cetera.
And so hopefully it spooks my heart and soul, but hopefully it becomes the world's heart and soul too.
Speaker 2That's well, is beautiful.
You talk about three characteristics of truly inspiring leaders, visionaries, exemplars and mentors.
Can you just run through all three for us?
Speaker 1Yeah, you know, and it might be really helpful if I just also do it with like an example that the way that I open the book, because I think it's really powerful, and I'll just mentioned really briefly, so you know, take a step back.
You know, how did I discover these three, these three core universal aspects of inspiring others?
Is you know, I've been asking tens of thousands of people across the world just tell me about a leader that inspire them, and events I started also asking them talking about leader that infuriated them, and I discovered these sort of three critical insights.
The first is the inspiring leader and the inferity leader are kind of like on a continuum and enduring continualm you know, optimists versus pestimists, courageous versus cowardly selfish, you know, generous versus selfish.
And the second thing is that there's not a single characteristic that's mentioned in one country, that's not mentioned in every country, so they're truly universal.
And then third is that they really comprise these three factors.
And the reason why they comprise these three factors is because they each satisfy a fundamental human need.
So visionary is sort of how we see and communicate the world.
Provides people meaning and understanding.
Exemplar, how we are in the world, provides people with a sense of protection and energy, and how we interact with other people in the world mentor that provides people with the sense of belonging and status.
And so let me give you this example to open the book.
Southwest Airlines thirteen to eighty.
It's flying from the to Dallas when the left engine explodes and tears a hole in the side of the plane.
Now one of the passengers got sucked into that hole and was fatally injured.
And now there's a massive crisis.
Right there's depressurization, Hydraulic lines are cut, fuel lines are cut.
The plane needs the descend.
So the pilot, Tammy Joe Schultz, she starts to descend it.
And it's at this point where she starts down the inspiring path.
She recognizes immediately that for the people in the back of the plane when there's a hole in your plane and it's going down, and went down twenty thousand feet in five minutes.
As she said, the plane wanted to descend, so she let it descend twenty thousand feet in five minutes.
But she recognized for someone in the back of the plane, they think they're dying, they think they're falling, they think they're crashing.
So she got on the intercom and she said ten words, and those ten words were, we are not going down.
We're going to Philly.
And everyone said like that.
Just that prevented heart attacks, right, That prevented anxiety, that prevented despair, that prevented hopelessness.
It created a sense of possibility.
And what she was doing there, and this is why she was so visionary, is she was giving them an optimistic why for their experience.
She was giving them a sense of understanding why they were descending.
It wasn't a fall, it was controlled, right, And so that really captures it.
The second thing, if you hear the air traffic control her conversation with them, it sounds like she's ordering soup out of deli, Like she's so calm, you know, she's like, we have a hole in the plane, we're descending, we're looking to go to Philly.
You know, it's very matter of fact.
And actually, when the EMTs evaluated her in the cockpit, one of them asked her a surprising question.
They said, how did you get through security?
She said, what are you talking about?
She's like, how did your nerves of steel not set off all the alarms, you know when you went the metal detectors, because she was so physiologically calm.
And then the third thing, she was a mentor.
Before she left the plane, she went row by row and looked every passenger and the eye and talked to them.
She told little girl how special she was and how like she never had the oxygen mask fall down, and that what a unique experience it was for her.
So she was visionary, giving people that optimistic.
Why she was an exemplar.
She was calm and she allowed everyone else to be calm.
And then she was a mentor.
She made sure that everyone was taken care of.
Speaker 2I mean it that what a rarity though.
I mean, if you did all, you know, I'm going all Abraham Masil on you right now, because he's like, self actuation is important, but only like ero point one percent of the populace, so how many percentage of the population?
And actually have all of leaders of leaders have all three of those characteristics?
Have you ever done a.
Speaker 1That's a great question.
So you know, I've created like a self assessment scale about that.
And I'll say two things about it.
I think are really really important and really really fundamental to the book, and i think why why it matters so much.
The first is this, my book answers the question whether leaders are born or made.
And that's a kind of in you know, a subtle ingredient of your question, which is like who has this and who doesn't?
And what I'll say is, yes, of course, some people are going to be born with greater physiological calmness, right, some people are going to be naturally able to see the big picture, you know a little bit.
But because what I've done in my research is I've identified a universal set of characteristics.
These are essentially behaviors, and that means that every single person can identify those behaviors, they can practice those behaviors, they can nurture them, they can develop them.
But we are never fully inspiring all the time, every single one of us, Like what I like to say, is life slants us towards the infuriity and end of the continuum.
And so we fall down because we're hungry, because we're tired, because we're under pressure, because we're in a new situation, because as were mad at our partner, you know, whatever reason, we fall down.
And so in some ways, you know, it's a constant practice of being inspiring.
And so one of the things I tell people is, you know, and I've shown this in my research, is shame is a is a destructive emotion.
When we feel shame, we want to hide or become a defensive monster.
So I say, look when you when you're infuriating.
Speaker 2That's that's funny.
Speaker 1When you're infuriating, hold yourself accountable, but don't beat yourself up, right, move on, How are you going to be more inspiring next time?
And I think that's right.
So it's a constant thing.
Now we can develop habits that allow us to be more inspiring more of the time.
And you know, it's funny.
I you know, I love your your your book Rise Above.
I think it's it's it's so fantastic.
And you know, I had this epiphany I was looking at through it again last night preparing for a conversation, and I had this epiphany, which is that you and I are actually talking almost about the same thing, but just from a different lens.
Like you're talking about what people can do to in some ways self regulate themselves, to to inspire themselves, to empower themselves, like as you talk about yes, and I'm talking about how we can inspire others empower others.
Now there's a link between ours, right, which is in your last chapter you point out when we empower ourselves, it gives us the ability to empower others.
And so that's your book is kind of like a stepping stone towards inspiring other people, you know, you know, maybe the critical first step in the process.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Great, great point and great observation.
And I agree with that.
You know, you mentioned how these things can have been flow and even the most inspiring people have their moments.
Right, So let's take you for a second.
Tell me about a time you were really sleep deprived and you were a little bit edgy there with your seven year old son, making him feel rejected.
Can you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a great it's a great example.
So one of the things I talk about in the book is I've coined a phrase called the leader amplification effect.
And the leader amplification effect is essentially that when we're a leader, people are paying really close attention to our behavior and everything we do positive negative, but also verbal and nonverbal get amplified and because of they have a bigger impact and intensify people's reactions.
Right, So amplified impact, intensified reactions.
And you know a corollarya of this is the parent amplification effect, right, our parent what we do is a I can think of some of the thing for any things my parents did to me when I was a kid, But one thing, maybe the greatest joy of my life, I'll put it out there, is one of the greatest joys of my life is that, since my son's been very very small he is now eight, he crawls in the bed and will like just drape his body online and fall back to sleep, and I just lie there with him, snuggle as tightly as can be.
Well, what happened was one morning when I was writing this book, I stayed up to like two o'clock in the morn and he'd come into my bedroom much earlier than normal, like six am or five thirty and I just couldn't go back to sleep, so I got out of bed and went to go sleep on the couch.
Now he interpreted my getting out of the couch is a total rejection of him.
Now I didn't realize that, but like two days later I knowed she crawled into bed, but he would go to the bottom of the bed like where like kind of the dog sleeps.
And I was like, what's going on?
I said, why don't you want to snuggle with me?
And he said, because you don't want to snuggle with me.
I was like, that's not true, and he said, yes, it is, dad, and so I was like, what is he talking about?
And then it was like later that afternoon I realized maybe he got upset when I left at six five thirty in the morning.
So that later that night I said to him, you know, hey, Asher, did I hurt your feelings the other day when I got out of bed?
And he said yes.
And I was like, is that why you think I don't want to snuggle with you?
And he said yes, And I said, well, you know what happened was there's really tired and I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.
And I would love if we could snaggle again tomorrow morning, and so we did, you know, But yeah, you know, one of the key things about inspiring is self awareness, and what that requires is how does my behavior impact someone else.
I had this incredible experience when I was a young assistant professor where I saw doctoral student nine in the morning and I said, Hey, Gail'll come by my office later.
I need to talk to you, you know, I said, I think, I said, come by my office at three pm.
I need to talk to you.
So six hour later, she shows up in my office and she's like scared.
She looks like a frightened dough you know.
And I'm like, I just want to go over some research materials.
And so I told her what I wanted and she is like, she slammed her fist on table, said never do that to me again.
Like, oh my god.
Do what She's like, never tell me you need to talk with me without telling me why?
How much work I got done in the last six hours?
Zero?
Is adam out at me?
Someone else amounted me, am I going to lose a resource?
You know?
And so now at first I thought Gail's neurotic and she has a little neurotic.
But later the next day, my chair of my department said asked me to come by their office, and I freaked out, you know, And so I realized it's really about self awareness.
Like I had to recognize I'm in a position a power.
Asking someone talk to me is inherently fear and deucy, and what I need to do is tell them why so.
And it was crazy.
If I'd said to Gail, Hey, Gail, come by my office at three pm.
Let's go over your research materials, versus come by malfic three pm.
I need to talk to you, same number of words, you know.
It didn't want to change anything.
Someone else told me a story recently, like their boss sent them an email on a Thursday, Hey, come by my office at two pm on Tuesday, I need to talk to you.
She didn't sleep for five days.
She goes by the boss's offer at two pm.
She's like, Oh, I just want to go over to the agenda for Friday's meeting.
She's like, I didn't sleep for five days, you know.
And so part of the awareness of the impact that we're having on other people that I think is one of the biggest keys.
Once we become aware of that we can harness it for good.
Speaker 2Yeah, those are really great examples.
Is it possible to have these characteristics and to show that awareness for members of your in group, but be really divisive to your outgroup?
Like, I mean, you know, I'm sure you've struggled with Like, is Trump a good leader?
You know?
In some ways he's kind of kind of he's kind of a good leader for his people, his people, but not for all people.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, I think let me say three things about Trump.
The first thing is that on these three dimensions, how we communicate about the world, how we present ourselves in the world, and how we interact in the world.
At one level, Trump's inspiring in all three.
So make America Great Again is optimistic, it's simple, it's you know, it's it's a mantra.
You know, it's it's a guiding light.
He presents himself as a creative genius, as a wrong and powerful protector of people.
And there's one thing, one of the core.
So the three core elements of being kind of like an exemplar of desired behavior is being courageous.
It's being strong and powerful, and it's also being authentically passionate and and and creative, you know, and he's authentically passionate.
Even his biggest attractors would say he's authentically passionate.
Ye.
And then third, he's a mentor in this sense he he's he's talking to people who feel forgotten and not included in current America and says, you still matter, right, the forgotten people in the Midwest, Wisconsin, Michigan, Right, you know those areas that really that really you know, Pennsylvania that really turned the Tidy election.
Now there's he's very inferreding on other dimensions, right, because he is his make America Great Again is only for a subset of the population, so it's non inclusive.
He uh, you know, makes He's very impulsive, right, so he makes very strong decisions based on whatever he's currently experiencing.
And from a day to day level, he's one of the worst mentors in the sense of like he throws everyone under the bus when things go well, it's me, me, me, me me.
When things don't go I mean, he constantly says, I hardly knew a person you know that he's known for ten years, you know, like as if like, what are you talking about?
It's their fault?
I don't know this person, you know, and so so he's a complicated one, and you you hit the nail in the head, which is that he's in he's you know, like a messiah and inspiration to the people within the in group because he's satisfying all three of their needs.
But he's such a pariah for the outgroup because he's inferid in all three of those dimensions.
Yeah, I don't know, sayah and the pariah at the same.
Speaker 2Time, I kind of want to reserve Yeah, no, absolutely, I kind of the deforment wants to reserve the phrase inspiring leader to those who don't have that split.
Like I mean, like Hitler was obviously an inspiring leader, but but I don't really feel comfortable calling human an inspiring leader, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1Like, yeah, yeah, And I think history changes, right, So I think history is going to look differently at Trump than some of the way that people currently do.
Right.
Speaker 2And you know, I should be clear Hiler was an inspiring leader to the Germans, yeah, not too much, to the Jews.
Speaker 1Yes no, and and to probably only a subset and the rest of the world, right, yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2So there's something I want to reserve that I feel like there's like a moral component here that that is not explicit in your three things, but I kind of want to be.
Speaker 1I think, let me just say, I think the single biggest so you know, I've actually, you know, in my class, I've shown a picture of like, you know, Martin Luther King with his arm raised and Hitler with his arm raised, and they're in the same posture, right, And the question is, you know, why do we see these people so differently?
And I do think it really comes down to the vision and who it's reserved for.
And I think that's exactly what you said.
You know, it was reserved for Germans and you know, not for Jews and Trump.
It's reserved for some you know, for the red states, not the blue states.
I mean, even the current budget is designed to punish blue states, right, It's like it's it's and I don't think we find in the long run people who are you know, punishing, demonizing, separating, dividing people as in the long run very inspiring people, even if they might be current in the short run for a subset of people.
Speaker 2Yeah, we're we're on the same page in this one.
Speaker 1Yeah, wonderful can spirits you and I Scott see it again?
Can rid spirits on the same page.
Speaker 2Indeed, indeed, you coined a lot of phrases in this book.
But I don't think you just did it for this book.
You've had a long and long career where you've used these things.
So here's another phrase you throw out there, inspiring infuriating continuum.
Yeah, you know, I've never heard I've never I've never I've never like seen that continuum before.
So can you talk to people about it?
Speaker 1Yeah?
I mean I think what happened was I started.
So I'll tell you this is how it all started, right, you know.
So I I was teaching the FBI after nine to eleven.
I was at Northwestern University of Callogic School Management.
So one day an FBI agent to start talking about a leader that inspired him, and I was so struck by how much his entire persona transformed.
His eyes lit up, he stood up in his chair, his arms were animated, and like he just seemed to be like like this, this spirit of inspiration seemed to like you know, it was well spring of hope and possibility.
You seemed to flow through them.
So I actually stopped, and I still remember when this happened, and I just asked everyone else in the class, could they tell me about a leader that inspired them?
And everyone could, And so from that day on, I started asking everyone all over the world tell me how to leave inspired them.
Now a year later, as teaching FBI again, and one of the agents said, I don't want to talk about a guy that inspired me.
I want to tell you about this guy that just pissed me off.
He made my blood boil.
He infuriated me.
And so then all of a sudden, I and so I started asking them, we'll tell me about leader then inspire infuriated you.
And I realized they're all on a continuum, right, So courageous versus cowardly come versus anxious, optimistic versus pessimistic, right, you know, generous versus selfish, you know, sharing credit versus stealing credit, micromanaging, you know, versus involving other people.
And so I started realizing they were essentially mirror images of each other.
And so I realized that this continuum, I think really matters because I think it's like embedded in the architecture of the human brain.
We're kind of designed to process people along these dimensions because they matter so much for fulfilling our fundamental human needs.
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Okay, now back to the show.
Well did you talk about language?
I love that?
Yeah, yeah, can you just tell me, tell me what needs in particular you're thinking of, yeah, yeah, any connection.
Speaker 1Yeah yeah yeah.
So so visionary satisfies this.
We have this fundamental need for like meaning and understanding.
So like Tammy Joe Schultz, like, what's going on?
Why are we dropping right?
Spriting a sense of understanding?
But like you know, you know, I talk about this in the book, but that you know, the data are very clear and I can attest to this that like when you have kids, your life gets worse.
You sleep less well, you eat less well, you rarely shower, you barely have sex.
Right, your your house is a mess, your mind's a mess.
You know, your body's a mess.
Right.
But people talk about this psychological experience of meaning.
My life has a sense of purpose.
And so regardless whether you have kids or not, it's not dependent on kids.
But we are biological condition to crave meaning.
Right.
You know, Nietzsche has this great quote.
Right, a person who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow right, they can suffer the slings and eras of outrageous fortune if they know why they're doing something.
And I think that's really, really, really important, which is that's what Trump does the supportives, right, he gives them that meaning and understanding what's going on in their world and how they can be that.
Now, we also want to feel safe and protected, right, and that's why the exemplar is so important.
But we also want to feel energized.
That's why passion matters so much, you know.
And then the third set of meanings, So the first set is like meaning understanding for vision.
Then it's like what I call like protection and passion for exemplar.
And then the third is these really two fundamental human needs because we're social beings, a sense of belonging and a sense of status.
Right that I'm included, but I'm also valued and respected, right that I matter?
And so I think that's why these are the three universal dimensions.
Speaker 2Wait wait, wait, wait wait, it's so interesting because I've never like in Maslow's hierarchy and in mind, I guess, well, you know, I guess we would put status under the esteem needs.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly, yeah, yes, okay.
Speaker 2I was trying to think, like where would I put.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's definitely under esteem.
Speaker 2Yeah okay.
Speaker 1And you know, I think that, you know, you could look at like, you know, Trump supporters, right, they they they were losing status and they were losing security, and so what he was able to do was really satisfy their security needs.
I'm going to protect you and take care of you, and you are the most important people in this world, you know, And so I think those are are really what's going on with that.
I want to go back to the inspiring for in continuum because I think that one of the things that makes the continuum so important is it's not just philly philosophically or theoretically or conceptually interesting.
It's also practically important because if we fall to the inferitying side, we actually have a path to the other side, right, we can you know, like if I'm stealing credit, I can start sharing credit, Right if I'm micromanaging, I can start giving responsibility.
So it actually gives us, you know, the counterweighting toolkit to get off of the the inferity mat and you know, and to stand up onto the inspiring side.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, can anyone learn these skills?
Things are so important?
And you yeah, okay, tell yeah, tell me more about like how can so, how can a human like become more visionary if just by share will yeah?
Speaker 1So three things I'll say about it and he probably knows I'd love to say three things about everything.
But the first is in the book I talk about how for each one of these we could there's a kind of reflection task that we can engage in and that helps us so to become more visionary.
One of the most important things we need to do is really tap into our values.
And so there's so much research that shown that when we tap into our values, we can see the big picture, we become more optimistic.
It's motivating.
I'll just give you.
I just published a paper a couple of years ago in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences where we worked with a Swiss employment agency.
I had a post doc from Switzerland, so that was our end and in Switzerland, when you become unemployed, which is one of the five biggest stressers anyone can experience in their life, and I was fired from my first post college job.
After I graduate at Harvard, I got fired from my first job, so I know how painful that experience is.
And when people go in to get their employment benefits, they have to register in person.
And for half of the people coming in, we gave them a we gave them a values reflection task.
We said, think about your values, you know, put them in a hierarchy, like we're you know, the most important one.
Why do they matter to you?
But I think this is a key part of our manipulation.
How you demonstrated your values recently.
Two months later, the people would randomly signed to reflect on their values were twice as likely to have a job.
And the effect was so strong we had to stop or study and give everybody the values intervention.
And you know, not only did we make those people's lives better by getting them jobs and the people's lives around them, we also saved the Swiss government put a bunch of money too, because they had to stop paying Someone gets a job, you know, and you're pay unemployment benefits and so there's there's real value.
Now.
That's how we get into a visionary state of mind.
Now, to get into an exemplar state of mind.
There's two things that we can do.
One of them I've published, you know, hundreds of studies on and thousands of studies probably around the world on this is that thinking about a time when you had power.
And so we you know, done this in people before negotiations, before interviews, and we can show before speeches.
So you know, one study that I didn't do that was done actually in Europe by some researchers is before giving a speech in front of an audience, very scary.
They had some people reflect on time which they had power, some people reflect on time when they lacked power.
They measured their physiological arousal, and then they gave their speeches.
And what they showed in this in this research is the people who thought about time and their power were physiologically calmer and gave better speeches.
Right.
I've shown that in interviews that people who do this power prime before an interview are more likely to get admission to a school, for example, And so it's really a powerful way to do that.
Speaker 2Yeah, wow, is this is this more replicable than the power pose.
Speaker 1It's much more replical than the power post.
And you know, you know, here's what I'll say about this.
There's there's there's something called the pea curve anouts yeah, I love me too.
I hired Amy at Kellogg.
I was literally on the search committee and I was chairing, and I was chairing the search committee and Amy didn't apply for the job.
And the day before search committe meeting, I thought of her and she was at Rucker's Psyche and I brought her CV to the to the thing and we hired her.
And look, I think the power post is really important.
But research shows that the power pose on outcomes like interviews or negotiations or stuff shows what's called a flat line, so it doesn't look like there's a real effect there, whereas the power prime shows like what's called the curve line, which shows like there's a real effect there.
Now, I do think though, and this is what I'll say to people is to get yourself.
And I think you would would really resonate with given everything you talk about in your book, is that you got to pick the thing that works for you.
Right.
You know, for some people it's going to be a power post.
For some people it's going to be thinking about you know, you know, the time of their power Ted Lasso says barbecue sauce right before he throws his darts, you know, Kevin Costnero and Tim Cupp says dollar bills before he swings the golf club.
Like, sometimes it's the mantra that helps you.
It's something that allows you to do that.
Now, the second thing that we can do to become a more inspiring exemplar in our presence is to really think about our passion and what we're really passionate about, and to communicate about our passions.
And I've shown this in my research, Like when you ask someone to talk about their passion, their eyes light up, they smile, big beaming smile, they talk faster, they use their hands more right, and they lean in.
So think about that when you're talking about your passion, right it's in your eyes, it's in your mouth, it's in your throat, it's in your hands, it's in your body.
Right now, when I ask people what happened to you, they're like, I my eyes lit up, I smile, like I could feel that passion percolating in me.
And the second thing I think it's so important about that reflecting on your passion and sharing it is that you can't fake it.
Yeah, like if you're trying to fake passion, like okay, I gotta make my eyes big and I gotta smile now, I gotta You can't listen to how you can't spontaneously and simultaneously but authentic.
Speaker 2Wait, can we can we oom oom in on that for a second, because I've been thinking lately that passion probably doesn't belong in the emotions demean of psychology.
It's been miscategorized.
I feel like it's it should be characterized as a cognitive mindset because if you just treat it as like an emotional situation, it's of course going to wane very quickly, you know.
And you know, especially like with with love love, you know, your passion for someone you don't always feel passion for for your partner.
So anyway, No, your point is very well taking.
I've just been thinking about the whole construct of passion lately.
Speaker 1No, I think it's I think what you're saying is incredibly important point.
And I do think that, you know, passion is also linked to our values and that sense of meaning and understanding too, you know, And I think that's what really is is really important, and I think that's why we infuse our vision with our passion, it makes it even more powerful.
And so I think that's exactly right.
And then just how do we get into like a mentor state of mind.
Well, this is what I've studied the longest thing in my career, you know, since nineteen ninety five.
This is you know, I started working at My dissertation is perspective taking right and really taking other people's perspectives.
And like, just to give you one example of a study that you know, I've shown that perspectiking helps you get better outcomes and negotiations.
But in one study we did is we took every third year medical student or fourth year medical student at Howard University an American university George Washington University, sorry, George Washing University and Howard University, and they had to do interactions with patients and the page rated them on like a seventeen measure of like how satisfied they were, how informed they felt, how much they trusted the doctor right, and before they went into their patient interviews that morning, we had the dean give half the people a manipulation because people were separating different rooms because they couldn't all fit, and so for one of them he said, you know, when you go in and meet your patients, really try to take their perspective.
Try to think about what it's like to be on that side of the table.
And to help you practice, think about time when you took someone's perspective.
We're going to have you.
Give you five minutes to do that.
The other people, you know, no intervention at the When we look at the patients satisfaction ratings, the people who had a perspective taking doctor.
And here's the key thing.
You know, the people didn't know about the manipulation, like the patients knew nothing about it.
Same thing back when I talked about power and those interviews and the speeches people interviewing.
The people didn't know that there had been a manipulation, right you know.
So so the receivers are blind.
But the patient rated their perspectaking doctors.
They felt more satisfied, more informed.
And here's I think one of the things that I found most valuable is they trusted the doctors more.
And why does that matter?
Because trust is one of the best predictors of actually complying with your treatment resurement.
If you trust your doctor, you're going to follow their advice.
And then what's the what's the correlation there?
Well, you know it was experimental manipulation, you know, so you know, I didn't look at exercise that you don't have to go back is we published paper in twenty ten, so that was fifteen years ago, so I don't remember.
You know, it was probably the effect size probably wasn't very large.
But what I'll say to you is that, like you know, if you go back to you know Rosno and Rosenthal's you know, binomial effects dice display, right, you know, even a tiny effect, you know, if it moves people from the failure to success condition is a huge.
Speaker 2Impact, right, Yeah, No, no, it's it's clearly very important work.
I'm I'm actually I'm just curious, you know, just how much.
It's a great question of an effect because it's not something that doctors are trained.
It's not part of the training program, and why not.
Speaker 1Yeah, But but I want to say one thing about this.
You know, we talked about who's inspiring who's infuriating.
You know, I think you know, as a doctor, you know, if you wake up and you're kind of on the grumpy side of you wake up at you know, uh, you think your first appointments at ten at nine, but it's really ten, and so you wake up earlier than you wanted to, which I know happens sometimes to people.
And uh, and then you're a little grumpy.
I think if you just take a step back and say, okay, I got to take the perspective of my patients, you're going to be a more inspiring doctor that day than if you fail to engage in that reflection.
Speaker 2Yes, well, this could apply to anything.
Yeah, not just doctors.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, wow, teachers.
Speaker 2You know, well, we're we're a little bit all over the place.
But I'm okay with that because this is all it's.
Speaker 1All going towards one final point.
It's all.
It's like the end of the Loki the first season.
You all good.
Speaker 2There's a telios to this conversation.
So I want to call back something you talked about a little bit earlier.
We talked.
We just so briefly touched on the word status and esteem.
But I think it's such an important one because you talk about expanding the status pie.
Speaker 1That's another phrase I love.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Well, no, I mean you have your book is full of Adam Golinski originals.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, you know, expendence that is pie.
You know what I really so I kind of coined this phrase, but it's because I've been teaching negotiations for twenty five years and we talked about expanding the pie, the negotiating pie.
And then one day I realized most people think about the and the big problem negotiations is most people think about the pie is fixed, but it's actually oftentimes spable.
And I have this epiphany.
It was literally just like four years ago, you know, it was in sometime in the you know, some reason past that, like most people think about, status is fixed.
If I give you credit, I lose credit, right, you know.
But then I realized that, you know, the status pize expandable.
If I give you credit, you gain in status.
But so do I because people really like the person that shares credit, you know.
And now it doesn't mean it works in every possible situation.
Sometimes we've got to own our own, you know, contributions.
But the idea is that when you can recognize other people, that fills them right with an empowering sense of respect.
But people also see you as a good guy, as a good person right, as as the right type of person, the person they would want to leave them and so you know, sharing credit is actually, to use another negotiation term, preredo optimal, right, it's going to make the world a better place.
Speaker 2Well that's really interesting because of course you know about the two dimensioned warmth and warmth and competent.
Speaker 3Can you.
Speaker 2Be a certain kind of inspiring leader where you demonstrate both.
I mean, you know, I think of that whenever every time someone tells me about the worth comp mentions, I think about that meme why not both?
You know with the girl?
You know, so can you yeah, tell me your thoughts about connecting this to that continue those continuums.
Speaker 1Well, you know, one of the things that I mentioned this in the book, but you know, I really like this might be another you know, Glinskyism.
But like I say, to be superhuman not human super And what I mean by that is that, like there's so many evident like Linda Rottenberg, CEO of company called Endeavor.
You know, she's this incredible leader, but she says she didn't really become an inspiring leader until she started talking about her human side, in this case, her husband's battle with cancer.
But I always tell people, like, if she exposed her vulnerability at the beginning, no one would have taken her serious as a leader.
It's like, you know, Hillary Clinton cries and it transforms her into a human you know, Elizabeth Dole cries at the beginning of her campaign and she's done right, you know.
And so you want to establish your competence first.
And once you establish her confidence, competence allows you to be generous.
And I'll just say, like, I honestly think the one thing that I most enjoy about having status in the world is it gives me the opportunity to be generous to other people, right, you know, And I love being generous.
In fact, I have a values card.
It's in my wallet right here, and my number one value is generosity.
That's what I believe is the most important thing.
Yeah, exactly.
But but but I think that you know, we can expand the test pie And I'll give you one example that I love.
I was got invited to speak before the top hundred executives at Fox and Rupert Burdock and along with a guy named Sir David Brailsford, and Sir Dave Brailsford was knighted by the Queen because he took British cycling from a doormat to the top of the Olympic Mountain.
They hadn't won a gold medal, I think on one hundred years, and then suddenly, within you know, six years, he's taken them to you know, the most medals at the Olympics.
And then he conquered the Tour Defronce.
He created a brand new team called Team Sky and they won five of six Tour de Frances.
How did they do this?
Well, this is what he said.
I thought, this is one of the most important things I've ever heard.
He said.
Cycling is a team sport.
We are a team, but there's an inherent problem.
One person gets all the glory, right.
It's you know, the lands of Armstrong, right, you know, the person who everyone sees that the top writer, right, you know, but everyone's working help the person.
He said, So I have a job to do as a leader, which is to acknowledge the contributions that each person made that day to the team's success, which, of course one person's getting most of the credit.
So I'm like, you know, Scott, he wouldn't have won this, you know, leg today if and if you hadn't chased that breakaway down, you know, and Mike, you know, if you hadn't you know, taken the lead and drafted like he would have been too tired to make that climb up the hill.
And you know, Bob over here, you know, it was so great that you were able to keep everyone you know on that curveent, you know, whatever it was.
And He's like, every single day, I'm thinking about what did each person do that was really helpful and acknowledging them.
And I think that's one of the most important things that we can do as a leader, is to recognize people.
When people feel seen, it's transformative.
I mean, everybody wants to be seen.
Everyone's to be recognized.
It's true.
You know, I've been teaching.
I teach for a group of high potential women in the wine and spirits industry, and one of them gave me a handwritten card recently and it was the I think the most like I've never felt more seen in my life.
She said, you know, the you know, the child in me, you know, was moved by your visual language.
You know, the you know, the actor in me was moved by your practical tips.
The human in me was moved by your the way you created so much interaction among the classmates, you know, and the scientist and me was moved by your research findings.
And if you had asked me what I want to do as a teacher, I would say I want to take scientifically validated ideas, present them in an engaging way while people get to interact with each other and learn from each other, and then give them ways to demonstrate that practically in their own lives.
And she like recognized all four of those things.
And I've never felt more seen.
I mean, leaders, you know, want to be seen.
Right So when we you know, I you know, you know, praised my Dean recently and someone asked me, like, who's the most you know, inspiring person in my life right now?
And I said my Dean.
And part of it is because he's he's strategically brilliant, he is deep humanity and empathy others.
But he also listens to feedback and I can go to him, I can say you could do this one thing better, and he's like, you're right, you know, and and you know, But then I sent my Dean, you know, the article when it when it came out with me talking about him, I was like, you know, I just want you know, like like you inspire me.
Speaker 2Oh, this is such a sweet conversation.
Speaker 1I mean you you talked about passion before you know, and I really you know, and I mentioned earlier in this book is my heart and soul Like I really I think you can see my infectious, youthful, authentic passion.
I love this material.
I really think it makes the world a better place.
Speaker 2Oh absolutely, yeah.
Do you think inspirations infectious?
Speaker 1I do, I do you know?
And I think it's reciprocal, and so I have I don't have this in the book.
I created SAFF for the book.
Another glinskyism.
I call it reput you so and REEF comes from the Bible, which is that like the energy we put out, the energy we get back, you put out inspiration again, inspiration back.
But my REAP is r E I P because it's an acronym for reflect on your experience, emulate inspiring leaders in your life, form an intention to be more inspiring, and then practice it r E.
I yes, good you and yeah, and so let me just give you.
You know, I don't know how much time we have left, but I want to.
I think this is one of the great practical tips that I could give people, which is how and this is I think gets back this idea about like expanding the inspiring pie right and inspiring energy in the world.
But getting back to that reap, So I talked about a guy named Joseph Stigliano in my book.
He's president of a bank.
He's got twelve hundred employees, and he sends a birthday note to every one of his employees.
Now, he's got to be pretty organized to do this right.
And he showed me the note.
The note is one line and he does about five of these a day over his cup of coffee.
And line might be like, you know, hey, Scott, happy birthday.
How was you know bullying?
You know, this person went bullying.
And then you know, the person write backs a novel like, oh my god, bolliing was amazing, blah blah blah blah, you know, or bowling was tough this weekend, you know, whatever it was.
And you know, so I share that story, you know, around the world.
And then I got a call from a CEO and he said, I got to tell you I adapted what Joseph Stigliano did.
Every morning, over my cup of coffee, I send out either a compliment or an expression of gratitude to someone in my orbit.
And I might say Hey, Scott, I was just thinking about just what a great conversation you led last week on your podcast, or it might be Hey, you know, I couldn't have gotten that idea out without you know, your help.
Thanks so much for you know, assisting me.
And he said three things to me that I think were really interesting.
The first thing he said was, you know, when you give someone a compliment in person, they get embarrassed, you know, they're like, oh, you know, he said, but when you give it over writing, they get to savor it, they get to share it, and they feel more comfortable responding, you know, with a lot of enthusiasm back to you, right, you know, and whereas in person, I think he gets muted, you know.
And he said.
The second thing he said is I did this to put a skip in their step, but I got these incredible responses back.
Oh my god, thank you so much.
I'm finally going to take, you know, my spouse out to that incredible restaurant they wanted to go to because you're a compliment.
Today, I feel so, you know, I'm on top of the world.
He said, it put a skip in his step, knowing that he'd put a skip in their step, you know, because of their responses back.
So you said so by sending it by by text.
You know, someone told me I read your text five times over the weekend.
Right, they got to savor it.
You know.
I shared it with my spouse, you know, my mom, you know, and then you know they also get you get this expression back.
So if I was going to say anything to your listeners, your your you know incredible listeners out there, I would say, at least once a day, go out of your way to try to compliment someone or express gratitude towards someone.
And if you make that a daily habit.
The CEO does it over his cup of coffee, Joseph stigand who does it over his cup of coffee?
Right, if we build it in a practice that you know, we don't have to think about it, it happens automatically, you're going to make their world better, You're going to make your world better, and you're going to spread the seats of inspiration.
Speaker 2I really like that.
That's us in positive psychology as well.
Yeah, I really like that.
Do you teach positive psychology in any reclasses?
Speaker 1I mean a little bit.
I mean, you know, I certainly teach about the role of optimism as a leader, right, and how important it is to help people see.
You know, I love this line from George W.
Bush's two thousand convention speech, which is the last paragraph that says Americans live on the sunrise side of the mountain and just that idea, right that we're like we're on the dawn of a better tomorrow.
Speaker 2I love it.
I love it.
Well.
Along these lines, a lot of people are talking about DEI and all that, and people on the right like bashing in and put all that aside.
I think we all can agree that fairness is important, you know, Like, no matter what your political views are, I hope we all can agree that fairness is win.
And so I really appreciate the use that word in your book to kind of try to sidestep a lot of this.
And so how can you inspire fairness in organizations?
Speaker 1It's funny, right because I I very purposely use the word inspiring fairness rather than inspiring equity to get about.
Speaker 2What I'm saying.
I see you, I see I.
Speaker 1Did.
Yeah, you know, And I'll just say, you know, the one Achilles heel like I'm the viceting of di I.
I've been the vice dean of the and so like.
Obviously, I'm a strong proponent of having a diverse, inclusive, and fair place, but diversities one Achilles heel is that when you create preferential pathways for some groups, the groups that are those pathways are going to feel it's unfair, right, And so I think Trump tapped into a justifiable sense of resentment, right, that that people experienced, you know, white resentment, and so I do think that, you know, it's I think it tells us a larger story that if we're unfair today, people are going to want it compensation tomorrow, but the people tomorrow who aren't being contemplated are going to think it's unfair.
So if we're unfair today, we just create cycles of unfairness for the future, right.
And so that's one of the reasons why it's so important to be as fair as possible.
And I think that's where we start with values.
You articulate the values and the system, and if everyone understands it, then it's fair.
I tell a story in the book about how when I was at Northwestern, we used to fight about hiring every single year, and we would argue about the rules and everyone's trying to manipulate the rules to try to fit their preferred candidate, and I this is the honest truth.
I think the only time in my life I've actually felt homicidal was during these faculty meetings, like for people manipulating, and then so one had a great idea.
They're like, let's meet in the summer when we don't have any candidates on the table and come up with the rules that we're going to use, and we're going to write them down.
We're going to create a constitution and these are going to be the rules.
And after that I want a lot of times, but I also lost some times.
And when I lost, I was sad but not angry, right, you know, because because the rules were fair, we'd set them up in advance.
So I think that's really important.
Thing is the thing very carefully at the very beginning of what's going to be a fair procedure, because if you start off with unfairness, you're just creating an infuriating cycle.
Speaker 2Wait wait, wait, this is so important, This is so important.
I don't want to gloss over this.
So fairness for everyone.
Yeah, And I think being minded about that, I really appreciate the way you're thinking about this.
Speaker 1I really do what we want and I think everyone agreed to this is we want fairness and opportunity, right, and so if everyone has fair opportunity and we want to eliminate bias, right, I mean, there's some ways we can do this, right, Like this is probably the greatest example.
In fact, the person did this research one then Nobel Prize in economics the best way to create gender diversity in symphony orchestras blind auditions.
Yeah.
Right, that's not giving anyone an advantage, right, It's not giving women an advantage because they've been unfairly treating in the past.
It's that women were being unfairly treated because people saw they were women and then judge them differently.
My favorite part of the story is that they they realized they had to either put down carpet or have people take off their shoes because you'd hear the click click click of heels and know as a woman, and so obviously putting down carpet.
Some people don't like to take off their shoes.
But like, you know, the idea of like you had to eliminate different footwear from hearing the different footwear.
But that's a good example of that, right, you know, Another example would be like, look, we know the sets are the single most important, one of the single most important things for getting people into schools.
Some people are hiring tutors, right and working really hard, you know, and they have money to do that.
And but are there other ways that we can help people get the same type of tutory right, great opportunities even within schools, right, so that we're giving everyone the opportunity to be better and do better.
Speaker 2I love it, you know.
I have a section in my new book called in Power DEI And I mean that's really what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1Yes, absolutely, it should be.
Speaker 2Inspiring two people to feel as though they belong and to feel is not just that they belong, but that they have that they're valued.
Yeah, and you were talking earlier about the importance of being seen.
There's something very inspiring about feeling like you're seen for not just your belonging, but also for your positive contribution you can make to the group.
I don't see them as exactly the same thing.
Yeah, but they're both important, you know.
Speaker 1Yeah, And I think you know, I'll tell a story about it.
This is a former student of mind, a black man.
He told me this great story in class he told it in class, you know, but we had a huge discussion around it.
Like he you know, got hired right out of college and he was in a band.
He was a drummer in a band.
He loved playing in this band, but he was so worried that his colleagues would look down on him for being in a band.
So his colleagues would say to him, what are you doing this weekend?
And he would deflect because he didn't want to reveal the truth, and so everyone's like, who, this guy's kind of weird, you know, And then you know, one day he finally opened up to one of his friends that said, oh, you know, I'm in this band.
He's like, oh, I'd love to come see you play, And then he did, and then the friend told other people that he had seen it, and then he played a show and there were like twenty people from the firm there, and you know, he ended up getting you know, sponsored, which is a big deal in a consulting company where you get sponsored and now you are you know, you have to pay for business gool, which is you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars these days.
And one of the partners said to him, he's like, if you hadn't shared that life aspect of you, we never would have sponsored you because we didn't know you, you know.
And everyone was better off because he shared who he was.
Like, he was better off because he had to be more authentic.
He was also better off because he was more valued by other people.
They were better off because they felt more connected to him and felt he was a better, you know, more important part of the team.
And so I think there's also a sense of, like with DEI, of helping people be more authentic.
I just published a paper in organization science showing that in organizations that have really preached bringing your your full self to work, it actually is a DEI positive effect, meaning that like black individuals feel more comfortable bringing their full self to work.
And what I love about that that's an inclusive policy, affair policy.
It's not saying women should bring their self to work or underrepresented more.
Everyone should bring them self to work, and that includes people who are underrepresented.
Speaker 2I love that.
Can you please send it to me.
There's someone I have a colleague of mine, she's really into this and I would love to send her.
Yeah, just to end, is there what would be the absolute tippy top message you'd want to give people from this book.
If someone said, you can totally give me one message about this book, you know it's.
Speaker 1Interesting, I would say two things.
I would say, I want to say three things.
I want titles, So back to your book too.
The first thing I would say is that each and every one of us can be more inspiring.
We can do it by engaging in the right reflections, right the right emulations, creating the writing tangents, and practicing right that are I p the reap.
But the second thing is that when we're more inspiring, we are creating a better world.
And it's especially true when we're a leader because of the leader amplification effect.
We have a responsibility duty to be inspiring because otherwise we're going to spread ires of infuriation.
And I think, you know, your last chapter of your book talks about like when you empower yourself, you can empower others.
But I also think that when we inspire others, we also inspire ourselves, you know, So tell the story of the CEO that, like, you know, when he sent out his compliments and gratitude, he got wonderful things back, and then that inspired him to do that even more so in some ways, you know, you know, we maybe we should write a paper, right, you know, empower yourself to empower others, but inspire others to inspire yourself.
Right, it's like this reciprocal coin.
Speaker 2I love that, Adam.
It's a great fusion integration of both of our passions.
And although I am very very passionate about that too as well, what you do.
And I wonder if there's some sort of acronym we can come up.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2That's catchier than than that saying thing.
I you're so good at coming up.
Speaker 1I love acronyms.
I'll just tell you one to you know, trying to understand what is inequality, I came up with the road to inequality.
It's differences and resources, opportunities, appraisals, and deference.
And if you think about all of those, right, Like people who are advantage, they have more resources, more opportunities are appraised or evaluated more positively, and people defer to them.
So it's the road to inequality.
Speaker 2Oh, that's so cool.
And then and then just returned to the EII academic what does that stand for?
Speaker 1Oh?
I was just like trying to make a oh, empowered to empower, inspire to.
Speaker 3Inspire, got it?
Yeah, yeah, no, I was just trying to come up with some but you did it.
Okay, Well, what do we call them the glinskyisms?
I guess so yeah, yeah, yeah, Hey, thank you so much for coming on my podcast.
Speaker 2It was long overdue, but I can't wait to shine the spotlight on your amazing and really important work in the world today.
Speaker 1So well, you know, I've probably done fifty podcasts and I can honestly say that this was my favorite conversation so far.
Speaker 2W thank you, Adam, thank you, thank you.