Simon Sinek: Leadership is More Than a Title

[MUSIC] Welcome to Franklin Coveon Leadership. I'm Will Hodling, Franklin Covey's head of product. And every week we will unpack the methods, mistakes, and mindsets that built the world's most credible leaders. We hope that their hard-earned insights accelerate your journey. Today's guest is world-renowned leadership expert Simon Sinek. Simon's TED Talk, how great leaders inspire action has been viewed over 80 million times. And he is the author of multiple best-selling books, including Start With Why, Leaders The Last, and Infinite Games. Sinek is also the founder of the optimism company where he works with individuals, teams, and organizations to help them develop the human skills that will allow them and their organizations to thrive. Simon Sinek, welcome to On Leadership. >> Thanks, sir. >> Great to have you. >> Thank you very much. >> Lovely. So, in 2009 you gave a TEDx talk that really accelerated your career. It was exceptional talk, focusing on the importance of starting with why. It's now been viewed over 80 million times. I would love for you to start by sharing the journey that led to that talk. How did you land on that really important foundational insight of the importance of starting with why? >> My journey was born out of pain, to be honest. My story is very similar to a lot of people. I had entrepreneurial ambitions. I started my own business. And there's a statistic that hangs over your head that over 90% of all new businesses fail in the first three years. And having gone through it, I know why most businesses fail in the first three years. The biggest challenge, believe it or not, I don't think is the inability to build the business. It's actually the biggest challenge is what if you succeed? Because if you're going to fail, you're going to fail in the first year. But for me, and I think very similar to a lot of other small business owners, it's built on force of personality. And that's exactly what was happening with me. And so it was working. But it was starting to work. And after three years, it was now more successful than one person could deal with. And so I couldn't be in an every meeting. I couldn't make every decision. I had this pressure that my clients hired me. They only want me in the room. And the stress became so overwhelming. And I had no clue how to build structure. And was too stupid to admit I needed help. And so I pretended that I was happy, successful, and more in control than I felt. And that is a dark place to be. And it was that darkness that really, and my loss of passion, that superficially everything was good. But I didn't want to go to work anymore. That really set me on the journey. It wasn't until a very dear friend of mine came to me and said, something is wrong. And I came clean that I wasn't doing well. And just telling somebody that you're struggling, actually is more than half the problem. The catharsis, there's no more loneliness. Simply by telling somebody I'm struggling. And that's what I did. There was a confluence of events. I'll bury all the glory details. I'll give you the very quick version. But basically discovered that based on the human brain, the way the brain works, there are three things we need. We need to know what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. Everybody knows what they do. Everybody can say, can I answer the question, what do you do for work? We all know that answer. Some people can say how they do it. I think that they think makes them special or stand out. But very few of us can say why we do what we do. And that was my problem. I learned how to find my why. More importantly, I learned how to help others find their why. And the rest of the journey was totally organic. I predicted none of it. I wasn't, this is not supposed to be my career. So you're now 15 years post that talk. You've obviously been working on your why. You've helped hundreds of thousands of people find their own. Maybe just summarize for folks, what is your why? And to what extent do you feel like you've achieved it 15 years later? My why is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. So that together, each of us can change our world for the better. Nobody accomplishes their why. And that's part of the problem. People confuse a goal with a why. A why is a reason to get out of bed in the morning. A why is the reason people like you? Why is the reason people trust you? A why is the filter for the decisions we make that ensures that the places we find ourselves, the things we do are more likely to inspire us and lead us to joy and happiness. It's the foundation of the house. It's the thing upon which things are built. But it's not some goal to be the best or the biggest, the fastest. It is a constant pursuit to be the best version of myself with that as the clear filter of what I'm pursuing. Yeah. And you've talked about how finding your why is often you need to look backwards into your origin story. Right. You have a really interesting upbringing in origin story. You lived in multiple continents growing up in South Africa and in the UK, openly settling in the United States. How do you think your origin story, you know, if you're open to it sharing a little about your family upbringing and background, how do that lead you to your why? Well, there's a great irony in your question, which is when I go and do a why discovery for someone, I go backwards. I want to know where they come from. I want to know the times in their lives. They were the happiest, the most inspired. And I look for patterns. And I can see when they're not happy or not doing well or not struggling that that same pattern is actually missing. And this is how I'm able to articulate someone's why. It's very, and I tell us a bit, it's, I can't do it for myself. I'm not objective about me and I can't see the patterns myself. I know some of the pieces of evidence, but I wouldn't be able to tell you conclusively what it was about my childhood that led me to this, to let me to become the person I am. My sister and I share the same childhood yet were very different people. So I don't know the unique stories that led me to become who I am, though I could do it for others and I appreciate the irony. Interesting about you and your sister being very different people. Maybe share a little bit more about that. And what ways are the two of you different, what ways do you do of you somewhere? I live with my head in the clouds. She's much more grounded than I am. She has the appropriate amount of cynicism. I can sometimes be a little too idealistic. And she and I, as a pair, we actually work together. We run my company together and she's my manager. And I think I like to joke that she's the Roy Disney to my Walt Disney. Roy Disney said of his brother Walt. If it weren't for me, he would be in jail for bouncing checks. I'm not that bad, but I was going to say, what do you expose to us today? Well, I think people think that I'm a very different person than I really am, which I think is fun. People think that I'm extremely organized. I'm quite disorganized. People think that I have read every book because for whatever reason they think I've read every book, I have serious ADHD. So I actually struggle to read. I say this, it sounds like a joke, but it's not a joke. I've written more books than I've read. And so as a kid, you know, with ADHD in a time before ADHD was a thing, there was no such thing as medication. And I was just accused of being hyperactive and unfocused and lazy and, you know, all of these things. But really what was happening is I didn't do school very well. And so I'm a great believer that the solutions we find to the challenges we have when more kids become our strengths as adults. So another kid in my situation could have failed out of school. I mean, that's one option. I was very lucky that I was able to find other strategies to learn. Reading wasn't one of them. And so I got very, very good at asking questions and I got very, very good at listening to the answers and doing follow-up questions because it's the only way I could learn. And so I became sort of a nice charming kid because I would go out to class and talk to the teachers and they would want to talk to me because I was nice and charming and curious. And I would pummel them with questions about things I didn't understand. When I got to college, you know, a lot of kids could like skip class and just go read the book and they would do great on the test. I couldn't. I had to go to class, which means I had to have really good professors because if I had professors who would drone on and would be boring, I couldn't learn. So I had to choose my professors based on how good they were at lecturing. Otherwise, literally I couldn't learn. And so to this day, like the way I learned is engaging in conversation. I think out loud. And I think with people. And so I was very lucky to figure those things out. And the irony is it's been the foundation of a career for me. Fascinating. I did not know that you and your sister ran the company together. I started a company with my own brother 17 years ago. We're not still working on it, but we are still best friends. So we managed to work through the experience. So I know working close to the family, I know about the pros and cons of that journey. Well, I may be the exception then because I couldn't tell you a comment. You know, it is amazing. We trust each other more than we trust anybody else. We are very honest with each other with feedback. Like we will tell each other, you sucked in that meeting. We are good, you know, you know. We know what each other strengths and weaknesses are. We don't want to be the other person, but we're proud of each other for doing what we're doing. We pump each other up. We hold each other accountable. And I would struggle to tell you a negative. You know, perhaps the worst thing is like maybe one too many times when we're at family dinner she and I will talk shop, which is probably a bad thing. Absolutely. I will say I also had a wonderful experience with it. So I agree with far more pros and cons. So you're 16 plus now or 15 plus. us after start with why came out, what do you feel like has really stood the test of time in that talk and then in the subsequent book that you wrote and then what parts would you change now with the kind of the benefit of talking to and learning from many people who have read it and implemented it? Well, I just came out with the 15th anniversary of start with why and so that there's a new book on the market that is the updated version. So I actually had the chance to actually go answer that question because I had to go reread this book that I wrote many years ago and decide what I would change. The irony is very little. What I did was I updated the book for the current times. I added some new case studies. Some of the funny things were when I wrote start with why the original version, I talked about Tivo as a case study as if everybody knew what a Tivo was. Didn't totally say anything. Yes, the answer was. You were going to be like, oh, this will be around forever. It runs out not so much. One of the questions I get from younger people is what's a Tivo? I had to go back and explain what a Tivo was. I did the good job of things that maybe have lost their cultural relevance to either remove them or replace them or explain them. Like I said, I added some more case studies just so that it's more current. But the core of the idea has unchanged. That's kind of the amazing thing. It is an idea that started out as a theory. I never thought I was right. I just thought I had an idea. And I always approached it with the scientific method, which is I had a theory and I just wanted to test it. And people would say, well, it worked in politics. And I'd say, I don't know. Let's try. People would say, well, it worked in manufacturing. And I would say, I don't know. Let's try. I was really honest. And the theory just kept working. And so the theory is sound. What I've done is made it more relevant for the current day. But it still works. What's an example of a place that you've tested and implemented it that you were surprised how well it worked, baby, whether it's politics or an industry. Is there a specific example of an implementation that you're like, wow, we really transformed this organization, this team, et cetera? So it's, there's two parts. One is what did I do, but also the work to call it life of its own, right? I think what's more interesting is where it went that I never expected it to go. So I could pretty much guess that it's going to work in businesses at different sizes. I can pretty much guess. And I could see how it would work in politics because politics at its best should be communicating purpose. But unfortunately, our politicians, all they do is communicate issues, different conversation. One of the reasons I think politics is a mess today is because there is no sense of why. It is only finite winning or destroying the other side or one issue at the moment. But what was way more inspiring was when you put something out in the world and it just takes on a life of its own. And you know, schools saying we use this with our students. And I'm not talking business schools teaching it on entrepreneurship. I'm talking like grade schools, churches and places of worship who use the work to inspire their people. Here are sermons being given that reference this work. I mean, there are multiple sermons that people sent me over the years that reference this work by name. It's just powerful, powerful stuff that these teachers or clergy are interpreting the work through their work was beyond inspiring for me. The military made its way into the military in quite a big way and how they invoke the work to help them keep focus and keep strategy and it's a strategic support. That to me was the most fun, which is watching it take on a life of its own. Absolutely. Well, I know many people in preparation for this podcast I told that I was speaking with you and they said, oh my gosh, that video. I've watched multiple times. It's really transformed my own direction in my career. Help me find my purpose in life. So thank you for bringing that out into the world and sharing it. After start with why you moved to leadership, you wrote leaders eat last. I heard you on a recent podcast with Scott Galloway and you shared a comment that leadership is one of the most misunderstood things in life. Can you explain that a little more? What's so misunderstood about leadership? I think people think leaders are the ones that are in charge. That's what I think. They think if you get the promotion that makes you a leader and nothing could be further from the truth. If you get the promotion that gives you a position of leadership, but you haven't proved yourself to be the leader yet, leadership is not rank. Leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise. And they're a very, saying the sad part is not enough leaders. A, know that that's their job. And B, even if they did, would know how to do it. And so I don't fault them for it. It's because we don't teach people. Like would you allow someone to do your taxes? Would you allow an accountant to do your taxes who hasn't learned accounting? Absolutely not. It's a stupid question. Then why would we allow someone to lead who we haven't taught how to lead? We think because someone's good at their job that makes them good at leading other people at doing the job that they used to do. And there's no correlation between being good at it and good at leading others to do it. And so we don't understand what it is very often. It's poorly understood. And we don't teach it. We just promote people without giving them the skills to do the job that they need to do, which is probably the reason. At best, most of us just like our boss, but the question is would you follow your boss? And if they quit, would you follow them wherever they went? Would you give them your blood, sweat, and tears? Would you sacrifice your interests because you want to help the person you work for? That's a high bar and the number is sadly not enough people feel that way. And when we do, it's remarkably fulfilling. Because we're not doing it out of responsibility. We follow our leaders and we give and sacrifice for our leaders, not out of some responsibility because we're forced to. It's because we want to. I'll give you a real life story that really captures this. I visited Marine-based Quantico in Quantico, Virginia, where the Marines have OCS, which is Officer Candidate School, which is where they select their officers. I was supposed to be given a presentation by the Colonel in charge of OCS about what they do at OCS and how it works. And he showed up late for a meeting. Now, if you know anything about Marines, Marines do not show up late to meetings. And he walked in and apologized. He said, I'm terribly sorry. We've had an incident. And I said, what happened? He said, well, it's pretty bad. He said, it's bad enough that we're considering throwing one of our Marines out of the Marine Corps. I was like, whoa, like, career ended. Like, what happened? Yeah. And he said, he fell asleep on watch. And I was like, that's it. Like you're going to end someone's career because they fell asleep on watch in the woods of Virginia. Right? And he said, no, you don't understand. And we asked him about it. He denied it. When we asked him about it again, he denied it again. And only when we gave him irrefutable proof, did he say, I'd like to take responsibility for my actions. The problem we have is you don't take responsibility for your actions at the time you get caught. You take responsibility for your actions at the time you perform your actions. He says, we have another Marine that fell asleep on watch. He owned up to it immediately. We punished him. We have no problem with him. He's fine. But this kid, you have to understand, I cannot put him in a leadership position because of his Marines for one minute, think that he would lie to protect himself or that he would put himself before his Marines. Trust will break and people will die. And so you start to understand that all these concepts that we have about what leaders are supposed to give are completely backwards. For example, somebody gets a leadership position and they say that their people prove to me why I should trust you. That's wrong, wrong leaders have to just give trust no matter what. It's the people in the team that you have to earn their trust. It's the opposite. It's the opposite. Go back to those Marines. That Marine in charge, that young lieutenant, he trusts his Marines out of the gate. That's the rule. But those Marines, that leader has to earn their trust. And that's when they'll follow. That's when those sacrifice, only when that leader has proved themselves worthy of trust, worthy that they would sacrifice their interest for the good of their Marines. Which is where the title leaders eat last came from. It actually came from a discussion with the Marine when I said what makes the Marines so good at what they do. And this general said officers eat last. And this is not some punch line. This is how it actually goes. If you go to any Marine base anywhere in the world at Chow Time, you will see that the Marines line up in rank order. The most junior eats first, the most senior eats last. There's no rule book. There's no instruction given. There's no order. That is what they do because that is how they view their responsibility that the more senior takes care of the more junior. And just like a parent feeds their child before they feed themselves, so too does a good leader feed their troops before they feed themselves. And there are countless stories in the field where they're running low on food. And that was it. leader will give up their food to ensure that all of their troops will eat. And what happens every time is all of the troops will give up a little bit of their food to make sure that they're literate. That's what it means when we say leaders he last. I noticed that it's a powerful example. I appreciate that. I think that Frank and Covey comes at leadership from a very similar mindset as you and that we are focused on leadership as a choice, not a title in that. You know, it is a mindset. Everybody in organization can be a leader. It's not just about whether you're an explicit manager or not. We also focus a lot on the importance of trust. Steven and our Covey are leading at the speed of trust, the importance of earning and extending trust. I've noticed in a good amount of your writing and speaking you talk about the Marines, is there a. Just maybe share a little more why is that become a case study that you kind of anchor on pretty regularly? I've written about the Marines, I've written about the Army, the Air Force, the Navy. I'm a fan of these remarkable human beings and I've learned a lot from them. So I've written about all of them. Yeah, you know, it's not that there's. I should have said the military more broadly. Yes, the Marines really are. It's not that they're perfect. There's a lot of pretty bad leaders in the military and they get a lot of things wrong. But on balance, there are a lot better than private sector I have found. And it's not because. it's for multiple reasons. One, the lessons are easier to witness. They're easier to see because the stakes are higher. When life methodist stakes, you can see it a lot easier, the quality of the leaders, as opposed to quarterly results. That's number one. And number two, they teach it. Just as I said a moment ago, that in private sector we do a very bad job of teaching leadership. We have to do better. In the military, they do a very good job of it. Each promotion you get, whether you're enlisted or commissioned, they will give you leadership training along the way. And it's mandatory. And some of it's small and some of it's pretty significant. And there's constant, constant leadership education throughout somebody in the military's career. In leaders' last, you talk about the importance of the circle of safety. We've had Amy Edminson on the podcast before talking about psychological safety. How does your concept of circle of safety maybe differ from some of the work that she's done or other work in the industry on this concept of psychological safety? I mean, inside that circle, it is psychologically safe. The concept's over that. I mean, when I talk about a circle of safety, within that circle is psychological safety. What I attempted to do is say, how do you build that circle? It's not enough to simply say, it is required and this is what it looks like. I'm also very interested in, okay, got it. How do I make that? And so what I attempted to do in that book was to help us understand the anthropology and biology of human beings, these tribal animals and why these circles of safety's work, but also to demonstrate how to actually make one. So it's actually more practical. Some of the, I think generally speaking, Mewd-Z-Lass had tons of critical acclaim, it was a best-selling book. Some of the criticisms of it are that it's really focused on neuroscience and there's not, as a lot of great anecdotes and stories, there's not as much foundational research, randomized control trials, et cetera. How do you respond to those critics about the amount of evidence-based research behind it? I'm not an academic. And I studied anthropology and I'm a pattern recognizer. And one of the things I've gotten very, very good at over the years is recognizing patterns and seeing where they manifest. And the fact that the work works, like I do everything, one of those, I've learned those things, I use them. And I think that the fact that the work works I think is the greatest testament. And one of the problems with academic work is it sometimes works on paper. And it's so controlled very often because for good science, you need to have exactly controlled circumstances. And the reality is that every organization isn't controlled. We're organized in the world mess here. And people don't see. And it's imperfect. And so I think that the correct answer is go read a book by an academic who's done the highly highly controlled things. Let's call that the left brain stuff. That's all that the quantitative stuff. And put that with my work, which is the more qualitative work, which is allows for the messiness of human beings and the imperfection of human beings and the imperfection of organizations. And the total lack of control that is called reality. And overlay those two and you're going to get more instructions. I don't think my book is the only thing you should be following. It is one of the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. So when somebody says it's not this, I'm like, I know that's what that is. And he attempting to write somebody else's book and like two academics competing about whose research is better is probably one of the reasons not all academic work works. They're in competition. I see myself as a part of a puzzle that I'm contributing to these challenges. But I think that that that reputable work should be worked should be used in concert not in opposition. Yeah. One area that I was like, I have wrestled with in my own career is the balance between safety and stress, the balance between pressure and complacency. I'm sure you work with a lot of kind of hard charging CEOs. I've heard you quote the Joshua, Joshua, a founder of Lux Capital say chips on shoulders, put chips in pockets before. How do you think about the balance between psychological safety, between that circle of safety and driving for breakthrough outcomes, breakthrough results? Are they not in conflict? That's a false choice that a lot of people have. The answer is not one or it's one end. And I've made this mistake. I've over indexed on being too mushy, too nice. Let's talk about our feelings. And I had a company that was lovely and everybody was lovely. We got nothing done and couldn't hit a deadline. But in the flip side, you have a company that's driving hard and everybody's only incentivized on financial results in the quarterly every quarter. Everybody's only whipped if they get wrongly. They have low standards that if you screw up, you get fired. That's not a strong culture either. And people are stabbing each other in the back and it's a great short-term strategy. Those organizations don't last for the long term because you're going to a burn people out at best. And at worst, people are fricking bitter and angry and quit and leave and hate each other. I mean, it's like nobody wants to work in a place like that. And the answer is that you have to create psychological safety and hold people accountable. And it's just like kids, right? You can't over-conn over your kids and do everything for them. Your kids will grow up to be complete scrupps and have no sense of responsibility. At the same time, you can't be this draconian taskmaster or parent because your kids going to rebel at some point be deeply depressed and unhappy even if they're a high performer and do really well at school. The answer is you give absolute love to your kids and when they need help you help them, but also you let them make their own mistakes. And you hold them accountable for their mistakes and you support them as they fix their own mistakes. But you're there to support them by the side. That's the correct model. The correct model is they are not mutually exclusive. You can have love and accountability simultaneously. A parent knows how to have love and accountability. Well, a good leader should know how to have love and accountability as well. Yeah, absolutely. We totally agree. We talk about the importance of great leaders expect a lot and care a lot. You need to do both of them simultaneously. So, absolutely a line and agree on that. More recently, you have spoken a lot about Gen Z at work. I think there's a lot of misconception, misunderstandings about the things that Gen Z cares about, don't care about it or what not. So, maybe start from your perspective, what is the biggest misunderstanding that millennial and Gen X and Boomer leaders and managers have about Gen Z as this new demographic grows in the workforce? So, I mean, it's a lot of the same complaints that people levied against the millennials. Snowflakes entitled, and some of it seems well-founded. If they work for you, sometimes it is the idea of boundaries, for example. This young generation is very keen on boundaries and that you obey their boundaries. The question is, are they obeying other people's boundaries? So, a lot of it is founded and sometimes confusing for a leader. I think the things that we get wrong is where it comes from. They're not broken, they're not necessarily entitled, but you have to understand the world that they grew up in. So, their parents came of age in a world where mass laughs started to become normalized. There was no such thing as mass laughs in the United States prior to the 1980s. It just didn't exist. It was for existential purposes only. The company was absolutely going bankrupt and we have to let people to go to save the company. Now, we just let people go on an annualized basis because we missed our quarterly earnings. We missed our annual earnings. You know, we made money just as not as much as we promised so you get to lose your entire job, right? Which is insanity. But you have to remember that's how they grew up. Every single one of them, either their parents or their parents' friends were laid off through some fault that wasn't their own. It was not a meritocracy. It was just this total normalizing of own up-parent behavior. And so what companies don't recognize is employees will play by the rules that companies set. So if companies start to view their employees as disposable, just there to help us make our numbers and make the shareholder money, what they're driving is we put ourselves first. So give it enough time. How does the market bond? Well, now the labor pool says, "Well, if you're going to put yourself first, I'll put myself first." Those are the rules that you set. So if you go back to when I was in my career, what we would do is we would work our brains out, go above and beyond. Then we would go to our boss and say, "Hey, look how much extra I've done. I would like a razor promotion, please." Yeah, pay me. Right? But we asked after we did the work. Now, this young generation goes, "Give me a promotion or a raise and then you'll see how much I'm going to do." And they're not wrong because if there's no guarantee of stability and there's no loyalty to the employee offered. Why the heck would they go above and beyond when they could lose their job through no fault of their own, even if they work their brains out? So they got to get that stability early. They got to get that money upfront to guarantee before they do the work. That would be the correct response to the way that companies have been treating them for the past 20 or 30 years. And so companies offer employees so little loyalty for so long that now employees offer so little loyalty back. They quit easily. Loyalty is the two-way street. So what we are seeing is the pendulum response to 30 or 40 years of really poor leadership in the corporate world. And this is what you get. These are the rules that companies set in the employees are simply playing by those rules. The companies that play by different rules who do prioritize the well-being of their people who do want to help them get on a career path. That if the company misses its numbers, it's okay. We will win together. We will struggle together. We will get through this together. Those companies have much less of an issue of all the traditional things that compete people complain about from millennials or Gen Z. If you had to flip the equation and now let's say you're talking to the Gen Z listeners out there. They're saying, "I'm entering into my first second job. I want your advice on how I can survive and thrive in the corporate world. What advice do you have for them?" So a couple things. Number one, especially when they're entry level, I always tell them treat your first job like your graduate degree. You're going to school. You're going to learn how to do things and you're going to learn how not to do things. If your job is not the best, stay. Stay for a little longer. Now, very few jobs are truly toxic with somebody screaming, yelling and abrasive and abusive. Get the heck out of that one if that's what you're in. But just because you don't like your boss or just because it works a little difficult or just because it's a little hard, those are not reasons to leave. I understand you want to go somewhere better. But what I'm telling you is you're at school. School wasn't always fun or easy either, but you did the work. Do the work because if you quit too often and you quit too quickly, you're not going to get that education. Because we don't learn anything in the good times. We learn things in the difficult times. My fear is that because they're so comfortable with quitting and it's so socially acceptable now, that what you're starting to see is somebody who's been in the workforce for five years and they've had six jobs, seven jobs. Right? And so if I'm hiring somebody, and I see somebody who's had five or six jobs in five years, I'm not going to hire them because there's no guarantee that they're going to stick around. That's number one. Number two, the odds are pretty high. You haven't weathered enough storms, which means I don't know how good you are in the tough times. And I know we're going to have tough times. I don't know what kind of team player you are if you're just a band and ship when things get difficult and you're a little uncomfortable. And so what you're going to have is a group of employees who've been in the job for five or six years who are basically entry level in terms of their skills that are wisdom and much difficult to get it, much more difficult to get to get a job. Right? So I'm not saying stick in something horrible. I'm not saying stick it out for five years. It's not what I'm telling you. Right? What I'm saying is, see if you can get through one year. Right? See if you can get through one year. And treat it like school. Learn what you learn from the good leaders. Reject what you're getting from the bad leaders. Start to think about the kind of leader you want to be. Right? Study leadership. Read the books. Watch the talks. You know, listen to the interviews. Listen to the podcasts. Become a student of leadership. Start seeing what works. And maybe some of the harder leaders are actually better than you think. And maybe some of the leaders that you quote unquote like are actually pretty crap. They're just nice. Right? So you got to start learning, but treat it like school. And then by the time you get to your second or third job, you get to start apply some of those skills. And you've been through a couple tough times, which when you go for an interview and they say, why are you here? You'd be like, I have done some work. I've been with a company that's gone through some tough times. I learned great lessons and now I want to take those lessons and apply them at a higher level. That's very appealing to an employer. Yeah. I think that line treat like school is something that whether you're a Gen Z on your first or second job or you're on your 20 of work is probably still a good line to remember a good mindset to have. And it applies not just to work, but applies to personal life and every relationship treat like school and whatnot. That kind of growth mindset and thinking about the slope of your development. I think it's important for everyone. Well, this is what in tech, they call first principles. I'm not a huge fan of a term, but this idea of beginners mindset, which is how do you always view yourself as the student? How do you always view yourself as the beginner? What do I have to learn? And how do you keep that mindset forever throughout your whole career? 100% true, 100% agree. Yeah. So you have made the transition from sharing ideas, whether it's on TED or writing these best selling books to now running your own company, the optimism company that is teaching individuals, teams, organizations, human skills to thrive. Frank and Covey, Stephen Covey, Road 7 habits of pilot effect of people. And then over time, Frank and Covey has taken that course and then many others and shared it with the world. What's the hardest part about the transition from writing ideas and sharing them broadly to actually working directly with companies to try to improve people in organizational performance? What have you found really difficult about when the rubber meets the road inside of organizations? The truth is the timeline is the opposite. I had the business first and I wrote books and started giving talks afterwards. So I've had a company since I was 28 years old. I wrote my first book. The company originally I thought was more in marketing and less in kind of the personal development. That's pretty. That's pretty everything. But we've been running a business, helping people find their why. We've been doing, you know, I've had a team of speakers and teams of coaches that go into companies for years where we pivoted our business. We was doing Covey because in Covey 90% of our business dried up more than 90% because we were all in person. We did workshops. We did tons and tons of workshops. And so that wasn't a thing anymore. And so we pivoted into how do we still bring this work to life in a way that's compelling and entertaining through an online medium. And so I'm very, very proud of the work that we do at the optimism company where we have taken some of the things that I've learned over the course of my career where I've learned from people who have taught me. And whenever I'm curious about something I don't know about. I go, you know, I'm really lucky. I get to call somebody, actually I've been doing this my whole career to be honest. And when, before I started any of this stuff, I would always call, you know, friends or friends of friends. I'd be like, can I take you out for lunch and pick your brain? I've been doing this forever my whole life. And so I continue to do it, which is when I don't understand something, I call somebody who understands it. And I say, can you teach me? And one of the things that we did on our platform is some of those people, we just like put up a camera. And so I'm learning in real time, or I ask the people who taught me, like, can you help teach other people things like listening, things like how to resolve conflict, how to give feedback, how to receive feedback. You know, these are the things that I had to learn. And so I've realized that human skills are desperately lacking in the leadership world. And so I wanted to teach as many people those, those, those human skills as possible. And we built our, our business with a very simple, I was actually inspired by Arthur Blank. Arthur Blank's the founder of Home Depot. And Arthur said something quite remarkable. He said 100% of the customers who come into Home Depot are there for only one of two reasons, to solve a problem or advance a dream. That's it. And we realized when we were looking at our business, oh my god, that's 100% of our business too. The only reason anybody would come to the optimism company is to solve a problem or to advance towards a dream, solve a problem. I have no purpose at work. I don't know how to, I don't know how to, you know, give constructive criticism to my employee. I don't know how to give constructive criticism to my boss. I don't know how to get through this tension that I'm having at work. I don't like work. I have no sense of direction. Help me help me. I need to get out of this now. How do I quit? How do I interview? Right? We teach all those skills to solve problems. At the same time, they're the people who want to get promoted, they want to be a leader, that want to advance inside their organizations. Maybe some people want to start businesses. What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? What does it mean to develop your leadership skills? Those who want to advance their dreams, we're there too. And we realize just like Home Depot, if you have a problem at work, or if you're trying to advance a dream of work, we're there to help people grow at work. That is the whole reason the business exists. - I love that. So I want to move now, as we move towards closing to our lightning round, a few quick questions for you. So first question is you are a self-proclaimed entrepreneur. - You're late for a lightning round yet? - We're lightning round, we're in it. - This is lightning round, it's a fact. - We're in it, yes, yes. - Okay. - You are self-proclaimed, eternal optimist. What do you do to pick yourself up on a bad day? - Call my friends. - Awesome. - Perfect, fill in the blank in 2035, leadership will require blank that is rarely taught today. - Human skills. - If you had a billboard that everybody driving into New York City drove past, what would it say? What message would you want to share? - Ooh, it's one of two. I would either say, "inspire someone today or be kind." - Lovely. What is a book or podcast or speech, not one of your own, that you find yourself recommending regularly? - I mean, the things that I listen to and recommend have nothing to do with my industry. - That's great, it could be, we can go broad on this. - Okay, I think the podcast, the which trials of J.K. Rowling, fascinating. - Awesome, great. What is a 30 second, so this will be a little bit more than quick, quick lightning, a 30 second actionable challenge for listeners to do on the day that they listen to the podcast. - A 30 second challenge that I'm giving them? - Yes, exactly, something that they can do right after they're done listening to the podcast. - Okay, be more curious. Something goes wrong at work, instead of criticizing somebody, be curious as to find out what went wrong. The ability to suppress judgment, you can have judgment, but can you keep it in check and go and be inquisitive and curious about what happens before rendering verdicts, telling people what to do, getting people in trouble, making assumptions, any of that stuff. So, exercising curiosity and being inquisitive is much harder than it sounds. - What is a leadership cliche that you wish you could ban? Or, leadership, common leadership advice that you think is wrong? - Do as I say, and not as I do, leaders set the tone. People are watching you. And so, it doesn't matter what you say, people will watch if you're gonna do, how you're gonna react and they will copy you. So, you know, if, I mean, I give this example to executives all the time, like if somebody calls and your assistant answers and they say, hey, you know, this person's on the phone and you say, hey, will's on the phone and you say, tell them I'm not here. You have just condoned lying in your company. So then don't come and complain to me when you find out there's some scandal because of lying, because you have condoned lying to avoid little discomfortable things. - Awesome. So, final question for you and we'll have some sound effects to get out of the lightning round. I'm gonna give you more time to answer this one. Who is a leader that has greatly impacted you in the course of your career and development and what lesson can we all take from them? - So, one of the greatest leaders I've ever worked for, a guy named Peter and Tomasio, a noingly, never ever, ever answered any of my questions. Peter, this happened. What should I do? I don't know, what do you think we should do? Well, I'm asking you because I don't know what to do. Who's, what do you think? Well, I think we should do this because why don't you go try that. You know, and Peter taught me self-reliance and he taught me to trust my decision making and he also taught me that if I royally screwed up, he might be frustrated with me, he might be mad at me, but he will stand next to me and work with me to fix it. And so he taught me total accountability. He wouldn't accept anything other than total accountability. You couldn't walk into his office and say, this screwed up, you could walk into his office and say, I screwed up. - I screwed up. - And it was one of the best leaders I've ever had. - Wonderful. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining today. I really, really appreciate all the insights that you share, the stories. Thank you for all of the amazing ideas that you shared before this. They've been instrumental in my own development. I remember I drew the golden circle on a white board and I had to start up before I joined Frank and Covey and I drew the golden circle on the white board and explained all of my teammates about the importance of starting with why and how that needs to be the anchor of what we do. So thank you for those ideas and thank you for joining today. I hope our audience enjoyed the conversation as much as I did and look forward to seeing everybody next week for another episode of on Leadership. - Thanks for helping me spread the message and to your listeners, take care of yourselves, take care of each other. - Wonderful. Thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)