Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Leadership's Missing Link: How Empathy Unlocks Human Potential with Matt Breitfelder

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

The best leaders aren’t just great decision-makers—they build cultures. So what does it actually take to create a thriving, high-performance culture?Today’s guest, Matt Breitfelder, is one of the most influential leadership architects in modern business. As Partner and Head of Human Capital at Apollo — one of the world’s leading asset management companies — he’s charged with attracting some of the world’s top talent and creating a high performance culture that brings out the best in his teams. This episode with Matt is the first episode in a series of conversations we’ve been having with global leaders in Human Resources. They are at the forefront of helping define Modern Leadership and what it takes to attract, retain, and build the next generation of leaders. This is a complex challenge as leaders grapple with the turbulent transformations reshaping today’s workforce. From the shift to—and from—hybrid work to the integration of emerging technologies, like AI, these conversations highlight the leadership capabilities that will help teams thrive in the modern workplace. We had the opportunity to sit down with Matt recently when we were in New York. During our conversation, we explored what separates great leaders from the rest, how strengths-based leadership unlocks potential, why the best organizations build cultures of trust and challenge, and many other gems of leadership and talent wisdom.You won’t want to miss this incredible conversation with Matt Breitfelder._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. Human beings are complicated and human beings have a lot of different styles. In my experience, empathy is the key unlock. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. This is the first episode in a series of conversations we've been having with global leaders and human resources. They are at the forefront of helping define modern leadership and what it takes to attract and retain and build the next generation of leaders. From the shift to and from hybrid work

to the integration of emerging technologies like AI, these conversations highlight the leadership capabilities that will help teams thrive in the modern workplace. Today's guest, Matt Breitfelder, is one of the most influential leadership architects in modern business. The caring and empathy is the doorway in, but the work is helping someone

explore the edges of what they're capable of. As a partner and head of human capital at Apollo, he's charged with creating a high performance culture that brings out the best in his teams. How do you describe the modern leader? The work of a leader is about change. Leaders influence humans to do something that they weren't planning on doing. I'm looking in the mirror every day with gratitude that I got another day, but I'm also striving to be better and better and better. So with that, let's dive right into this incredible conversation with Matt Breitfelder. Okay, we're here in New York City. This is your stomping grounds.

And I mean, the city is alive in all the right ways. And so I'm excited to sit down with you. You've been a titan in the industry for a long time. What is important about your journey for me to best understand who you are? Well, like most of us, and first of all, it's great to be here. It's great to have Finding Mastery on the road in New York City. Like most of us, I was shaped by my childhood and by my upbringing. I was raised by an entrepreneur and a therapist. I grew up in Chicago in a very diverse city surrounded by a great American melting pot. But my dad being an entrepreneur meant that I was his permanent intern.

So I got very interested in business. So it's a 24-7 commitment of understanding what makes a business tick. And my mom was a therapist. And so we're talking being exposed to Myers-Briggs, Deepak Chopra, John Kabat-Zinn, and lots of different tools and influences at a very young age. So that taught me to be very curious about what makes people tick. And so if anything, I think my entire journey is just the Venn diagram of those two things.

And I guess in some ways that just makes me bilingual of what makes business tick and what makes people tick. And that really propelled my life forward in college, studying economics and being really interested in psychology. I went into international economics as a trade negotiator in government, which is really the psychology of markets and how you negotiate and make decisions with other countries. Went to business school, went into consulting, and then I had my epiphany. And my epiphany was, why do 70% of corporate strategies fail? Why are only 20% of employees and companies highly engaged when you look at employee engagement surveys. And it just occurred to me that the HR field could be in the center of the action of solving some of the biggest problems

facing companies around the world. And I felt pretty uniquely qualified to dive into that space space and really never looked back. I got my first HR job at PWC. So as an MBA, that was a wonderful place to learn this craft because I was surrounded by skeptical, highly analytical people who were constantly saying, prove it. Let's prove this stuff works. Let's measure everything. Let's figure out which tools have the biggest impact. And's prove this stuff works. Let's measure everything. Let's figure out which tools have the biggest impact. And they were thinking really big. So it was serendipity that I landed in the perfect place to learn. And then since then, I've been part of three great builds of HR teams. So I joined MasterCard when they were right on the cusp of a CEO transition. They ended up picking Ajay Banga, who was really a transformational leader. He's now the president

of the World Bank. And the idea was, okay, Matt, can you help us unlock innovation and the potential of this company as Ajay takes the reins? So I spent five years doing that. And then I joined BlackRock right at the moment where they were ready for HR innovation and spent eight years at BlackRock and then joined Apollo five years ago. So really in each of those cases, these were really successful, bold, open-minded companies that were ready to reinvent HR. You are a titan in the field shaping the understanding certainly of what's possible on Wall Street. And you've been learning from people that are pioneers, that are way out on the curve, excellent at what they do. And your parents

have this unique combination of entrepreneurship and the life within, the psychotherapy kind of approach. Let me start there on one click. Is mom and dad, are they systems thinkers? Because you're a systems thinker. And I just watched it happen just now. So not only did you give this chronological arc, but you also talked about the structures that led to your path. Look, I think my father's from Iowa. So my father is the definition of being grounded, grit, responsibility, show up on time, do your job, get it done person. So I learned those great skills from him.

My mom, she's from Sweden. She was a Swedish immigrant. She saw her work as a therapist, as a calling, a really higher calling person, purpose-driven person, and a very spiritual person. So she introduced me to how you can find that sense of purpose in your career. So that's probably what you're picking up. That's it. Okay. So systems thinking or pattern recognition for you, which one would you? I think I learned pattern recognition from her. I think I've learned systems thinking throughout my career. I think it's almost, if you think of systems thinking as just a perspective on things, on how you solve problems. I had a few teachers in high school and a few

professors in college who were really tuned into that. And I think I just took that ball and ran with it because in every job that I've had, I've always been clear about what are the new ways you could create value? What are the Venn diagrams of overlapping interests? Working as a trade negotiator, that was a huge part of the job. And then ever since working inside of companies in this bilingual way of where's the commercial opportunity and what are the humans thinking and feeling and how do you harness their full potential to go chase those opportunities? I think that's probably the skill set, one of the dominant skill sets that I built every time.

The reason I bring that up is because most therapists, so your mom is actually quite rare, systems thinker and being able to understand the delicateness of the inner life of a person. So systems thinking tends to miss that delicateness. And when you square the two, it's rare and it's special. And you have that. The Venn diagram, as you talked about entrepreneurship and the capabilities for people to be their very best, I might add one more to it, which is the ability

to see across systems. That in and of itself is a bit of a system. I want to understand how you think about the CHRO landscape because most people in it are one or the other and you have both. They create amazing systems for an organization or sub-amazing depending on the organization, but amazing systems for the organization and somehow miss the experience of the person, or they're constantly with the N of ones, the individual person that's trying to be exceptional or trying to keep their head above water and they're coaching in that way. And you've been doing both. Can you talk about, is that first and foremost, is that my analysis accurate or am I off tune? It's absolutely accurate. So if I think about what the role of CHRO requires, what's the modern CHRO look like? I think there's three big components. So one is

operational executive. So if you're a CHRO, you own some of the biggest light items in a P&L, managing compensation, managing benefits, managing learning, employee relations, employment law, citizenship, philanthropy, oftentimes a foundation. So you've got this operational component that works just like any other executive job does. You're the accountable person for those functions. And sometimes people think, okay, that's HR. If that's their answer, they're missing the other two big parts. So the other two big parts are leading change, which is very well aligned with the field of organizational development, which is all about systems thinking, which is if the company's here and the CEO wants to take it

there, what are all the things that need to happen in order to unlock the potential of the humans that work in the company to go do where the CEO thinks the puck is going. And then the third piece is coaching. And I would argue the most important role that we have as CHROs is as an in-house coach. So we see and feel so much in these jobs. And if we do the job well, we know what's going on, what's really going on in every corner of the company. If you build enough trust, our employees tell us what's up, where are the pockets of resistance, where is the skepticism. And if you understand that and you have no agenda, and if my only agenda is to help the company and the CEO and my colleagues succeed and to be better tomorrow than they are today and that's my total focus as a coach

then I think I maximize my impact and I'm always hunting for what those opportunities are what is that latent potential that's not being realized for no particularly good reason and how do we go at that and if I manage the portfolio of my time really smartly, I got really smart people who are experts helping me manage the operational component. Then I'm really hunting for what are those organizational change unlocks? And then what are the individual unlocks for my colleagues? And I'm a roving coach, always looking to help them see things more clearly. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.

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P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Let's stay here for just a minute. I do want to go back to mom and purpose and string that with your purpose. And I do want to pull on your understandings of leadership because you've been around great leaders and you are one as well. So I do want to get that understanding, but let's stay here, which is when you're thinking about helping people and you're thinking about helping them be their very best, unlocking their potential, what would you say is one of the greatest assets that you bring to that mission? I think there's, you know, I'm a rule of threes person, so I like to think in threes.

So I think in that work or in that mindset of being a coach, it's about clarity, it's about caring, and it's about challenging. And I think I'm good at building trust and psychological safety with people because I can lead with my heart and lead with empathy and create a caring environment so that people can hear the work that we need to do. And because of that, then I think I'm pretty good at helping people see things more clearly. And what's that information that's right under our noses that they just need to digest? And I think if they feel safe and they know I have their back and my only intention is for them to be better leaving the conversation with me than they were going into it, then helping them process that information and then challenging them to understand, okay, what does that really mean? What is the blind spot that person has? And more than anything, what do they need to do next? Why did you use the word caring? I like the three Cs. It's great. Yeah. Right. And, but you're anchoring. So you're working from caring to get to clarity and then to challenge, right?

And so why start with caring? By the way, I'm saying that like I don't understand. My approach is support, then challenge. Right. Okay. And so you're starting with caring first. Yes. I love it.

Tell me why there as opposed to any other word. I've been very influenced by Daniel Coleman's work. So when his article, What Makes a Leader, came out, it kind of rocked my world because he basically said the most successful leaders have this unusual EQ ability. And I think in popular culture, we think, oh, it's just all about challenge. Just go right at challenge. It's just about the tough feedback. And then hopefully people the tough feedback and then hopefully people are tough enough to then respond to that. And I think the deeper you get into psychology, you realize it's all about Maslow's hierarchy. The challenge thing falls apart so quickly if

that's where you start. Ironically, the rebuttal to it's all about challenge is, have you met any humans lately? Because human beings are complicated and human beings have a lot of different styles. And even just looking at Myers-Briggs alone, you got a lot of different variety of how people are wired. So if that's true, you got to customize what you're doing to the unique human.

In my experience, empathy is the key unlock. So to use a tech term, empathy is the killer app in all of this. So think about the fact as an analytical HR person, I do walk around all day saying if only 20% of people are highly engaged and the best companies in the world, as an economist, that means you have an 80% failure rate in the work of unleashing what humans are capable in companies, precisely because we run most companies like Factors using only an engineering mindset. And engineering mindset's a really good thing. But if you couple that with caring and empathy and really seeing and knowing and understanding the person and taking the time to show them that respect. You just get so much more in return.

If anything, that's probably one of my biggest messages. And there's an art and science to that. I think Finding Mastery has covered extensively the science behind that. And I think the next big thing in HR is, oh, we can actually be very scientific about the fact that increasing our empathy in all ways actually increases dramatically the economic results. And not just a little, but over time. in some ways my work inside of companies is about how do you help a high performing company outperform over a very long period of time knowing that in economic terms there's a powerful force of reversion to the mean i.e all companies become average over time unless you work really hard to prevent that and so i think i could draw a line between that and the secret

sauce is actually empathy. If we could drill right underneath when people know you, you and I have had the fortune to know each other. I don't see you as a slobbering, empathetic, there's a term that Ellis created, which is called love slob. And it oftentimes in business gets confusing for people when they talk about empathy. I see you as a articulate, strong, clear, caring person. And somehow you've navigated that where you're not a weak, empathetic pushover in the business world. And I'm not saying that those things go together. But certainly, if you think about the old model, the industrial revolution and the extraction of the best and the tough-mindedness and the things we were talking about earlier, that is, in some respects, what some people falsely believe is leadership.

And that's not it at all. And how have you done what I'm able to pick up on? Yeah, I mean, I think what you're picking up on is also the cartoon version of HR, which is it's only one side of the brain. It's only empathy. That's right. And the magic is the future of HR and the future of work are basically the same thing. What happens to both sides of the brain? If you pick apart in any analytical way

what's going on, it leads you to this wonderful place. So if you look at public companies, the vast majority of the value of public companies is called intangible value. It's like 70 or 80%. Intangible value is culture, management style, people. People are our greatest asset. They literally are. But I think the corporate world has been only recently discovering there's this wonderful toolbox to manage the greatest asset. And it can be done in an incredibly analytical way. I'll give you an interesting example. So another book that had a big impact on me is Jim Collins' Good to Great. So in some ways, I walk around thinking about this book all day long because Collins studied

how do companies outperform over a long period of time? Because competitive advantage doesn't last very long in today's world. For that to be durable, you actually have to do some really serious work on culture and some really serious work on how you manage the individuals in your company. And when he did this study, he looked at the leaders of those companies that outperformed over 10, 20, 30 years and said, what are these people doing differently from everyone else? And he landed on

two very interesting specific qualities, which he covers in this article called Level 5 Leadership. The first one you would expect, fierce resolve, 10,000 hours, chasing mastery. We're finding mastery on this podcast. This is those who have the fierce resolve to be the best in the world, willing to pay the price and are constantly chasing that. The second one's humility. Well, isn't that interesting? That's a little surprising, but you need the humility with the resolve in order to constantly reinvent yourself if you're really serious about business and about performance. And the other interesting thing, as a CHRO, one of the great privileges of this work, of this craft, is you get to work with some

of the smartest, most successful people in the world. And my job is to help them be better and better and better. In the process, I also get to learn a lot from them. And in my experience, I've worked with a lot of great people, but the absolute best of the best actually have that level five quality. They have an unusual level of humility, of beginner's mind, and a level of openness that even though they've already summited the highest peaks of their craft, they're not done. And they know that it only gets harder if you want to sustain it. And that openness is where the work is. And it's really exciting for me to spend time with people like that. And the people who are slightly less successful haven't

gotten the memo on that yet. And they usually figure it out when they struggle and they realize, okay, vulnerability is actually really helpful in sustaining greatness. I can see your influence of Jon Kabat-Zinn in your thinking as well. So he is a deep mentor of mine And his influence on how a strong man shows up is, he just effortlessly exudes it. And it's because he's working from the inside out. And he's obviously one of the more brilliant people on the planet. And he's so clear about the core principles to allow somebody to be in love with the unfolding present moment,

to have a love affair with the unknown, that is a very hard thing to do. And you're talking about pointing to being open. And his work is about having a love affair with the unknown. So that openness to like, I want to keep understanding the humility that I don't know, even though that I've got X number of podium medals, so to speak in the business world under my belt. How do you help people that are extraordinary at what they do? They've got frames of reference that you can't buy. They've got a history of success. And what got them to the chair that they're in across from you has led to great success.

How do you get them to stay open to keep learning? At the end of the day, if I think of myself as a coach and I know that every human is unique, so the caring and empathy is the unlock to try to understand what makes someone want to tick. And a little bit goes a long way so that's almost like the caring and empathy is the doorway in but the work is helping someone explore the edges of what they're capable of and so even though it's true that everyone's unique it's also true that the one thing every single person i've ever worked with has in common is their deep interest in success. And if they're

really interested in success, they understand the price you pay is constantly pushing yourself to see what you're capable of. And so one of the doorways there is trying to push people to understand, are they really interested in success or are they willing to plateau because they're comfortable? And so part of the work that's really fun is working with people who are trying to see if they're going to plateau. We're talking about fundamental commitments and a fundamental commitment to growth to success. What are some of the fundamental commitments that you've made to yourself? I'm trying to role model what I'm asking other people to do. And I'm looking in the mirror every day with gratitude that I got another day and got craft and profession that I love.

But I'm also striving to be better and better and better. So anyone I can find who's got new tools, new ideas that can challenge my thinking, help me be better, I want to talk to them and I want to learn from them. And I want to practice this craft at the highest levels and that kind of never ends. I'm the kind of guy who wants to be doing this till I'm 85 years old or more. And that's how I'm approaching this work. And people love authenticity. So if I'm an advocate for this, I got to be doing it. And that's actually part of the beauty of this. In the process of having a very clear focus, purpose, and intention, then my role is to help other people be much more successful over time.

In the process of that, I get to feel that energy and I get to experience that. I get to strive for that myself, which for me is having purpose around being great at coaching and being great at the craft of HR. For them, it could be any number of things, but we can match those energies, which is really exciting. And one other thing I would add that's really special about Wall Street, so I've spent 15 plus years working with some of the best investors in the world, and just like the public perception of HR is inaccurate, and I'm working to reframe that, the public perception of Wall Street leaders misses a bunch of important stuff, but one of the most important is that great investors are

inherently probabilistic thinkers. So if the world is 45% right on investing and a great investor can figure out how to be 51% right, you can be really successful as an investor. But it means that you're wrong a lot. By definition, you're wrong a lot. There's no way you're not regularly wrong. You're just trying to be more right than everyone else over a long period of time. It's kind of like in baseball where you have a job if you're 25% right, you're really good if you're 30, and you're one of the great you have a job if you're 25% right, you're really good if you're 30, and you're one of the greats of all time if you're 33% right. In investing, it's very similar. But the fact that you accept the fact that you're regularly wrong means you're actually

much more open, and I would call it humble, to what are my blind spots? What are my decision-making blind spots? What am I missing? Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentous Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested. NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting.

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FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. So you're talking about two things that I want to highlight. One is because there are wrong a lot, that's one of the forcing functions to want to be open to continue learning. And you're also talking about what are the blind spots that get in the way of me seeing or making decisions with speed and accuracy. And so let's talk about the contrarian bit for just a minute and how you coach that. Because if you take a best in the world talent in sport and you think about coaching them, you can coach the upper skills, the middle skills, or their bottom skills, the ones that they're not very good at. And a mistake that many coaches make is they pick the skill that the person is obviously not very good at and drills in on that.

That's what I would call a low performance coach. A high performance or master of craft is somebody that works in that upper echelon, even though we've all got range. But they work in that upper echelon, and I would be even more precise to say that they pick the bottom of the upper third to focus on seeing an improvement. Because what that does is it helps the athlete, the performer in whatever domain, have a sense of, oh yeah, I can keep learning. Oh, and I'm good. When you focus on the bottom, there's a long struggle and it's hard and there's a lot of

mistakes and there's a narrative like, man, I'm kind of a mess. Maybe I can't really do all these other things for the long haul. Maybe I've just been getting lucky. Do you focus on the upper, middle, or lower? And then how do you drill in on helping them be just a little bit better? My view on this is that you focus on the upper, and let me make two distinct points that I think are relevant. When you think about the contrarian cafe or what it's like in a company, there's three factors to consider. Organizational, which is a big factor, which is the totality of a company.

Team, which is actually where most of the work gets done, and individual. And sometimes we over-rotate on organizational or individual when the truth is the action's a team. Where at the team level, the relationship the manager has with the team drives performance, it drives retention, it drives everything. And I think part of what we've been missing in the debates about diversity are that diverse teams outperform. And diverse teams particularly outperform in any complex problem. And part of our contrarian journey is you want a lot of different perspectives,

which can be informed by different background, different training when you're attacking a problem and the nature of the work that we do. But you need psychological safety for that to go really well. So like part of it is if you have psychological safety and you're building trust in a team and and you care about each other have each other's backs and and you can pull a pro the problem you're solving out where it's not a debate about identity it's a debate about a problem okay that's where the magic is it's a debate about a problem. Okay, that's where the magic is. It's somewhat similar

when you move it from team to the individual level, where I think Maslow's hierarchy of needs is everything, where if you tend to that and you create safety, then you can work your way up the chain. And one of the most revolutionary ideas in the corporate world is strengths-based. And in the old days, we'd have the Jack Welch model of the well-rounded leader as living God. And we've rejected that because it's just not practical. It doesn't work at scale. But if you're strengths-based, then you're actually saying, every one of us has our own set of specific strengths where the work is between a minus and a plus and i think what you're saying is very similar to the way that i think about this which is you can it's much more impactful to say i want to work with

people where i'm getting them from an a minus to an A+. Depending on what job they're in, the journey from a C to a B might be really important for the success in that role, but where they're really going to shine is A- to A+. And I think the world spends too much time on C to B and not enough time on A- to A+. And I think if we're authentic strengths-based leaders, we put our focus on A minus to A plus. We can be more vulnerable and authentic about the C areas, but that's not where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck. So I really see these two things together of how do you construct a team with the right mix of skills, but also that the work is inherently strengths-based, which I think is how you guys look at this in sports as well. We've had in the HR field so

many tools that have got us way too focused on constructing the ultimate well-rounded human. When we live in a world that values spikes much more than well-rounded. And that works if you think about teams differently. And you actually say, if you've got a team of 10 people, I don't need 10 perfectly well-rounded people. I need 10 people that as complementary puzzle pieces through all their diversities and all the difference in their skills, that those pieces fit so that the team's outperforming. What you're describing is an ecosystem and where the sum of the parts are greater than we could ever imagine by any individual alone. So you're not looking to create a well-rounded performer. You're looking to put the pieces together, the coral reef, if you will, where we can

feed off of each other and do something extraordinary together. So I want to ask a question about how that goes wrong. So if I'm a gatherer, you're a hunter, we've got somebody that can build a fire, somebody that can build our homes and fill in all the necessary pieces. We have all the right capabilities, but we're not working well. What has gone wrong? I think there's a bunch of ways that goes wrong, which give us a lot of work to do with optimizing teams. I think, look, one of them is that in most companies we're still putting too much of the focus on individual performance,

and you got to get the incentives right. So every individual on the team feels them getting individual credit is not that important, and the team succeeding together is the key. That sounds really simple, but most companies just aren't really set up that way. You want to organize your compensation, your incentives, your performance management around the contribution to the team and the interdependencies that people have. This is what sport does. We're trying to win a championship. And where it goes sideways is you see people point to the back of their jersey, point to

their family name, which in and of itself isn't a problem. But when it's about me and my family and not us together, it's gone wrong. So how do you structure that from a business standpoint? Because I know what we do in sport. We talk about the power of the collective. We talk about what we could be, could become together. We talk about what it feels like to be connected. We often don't talk about the end game goal. Right. Most of the time talk about the feeling of being connected to do something special. How do you structure that from incentive based and our practices to help teams be better? I think there's a number of dimensions to that. I think one is the culture of the company.

So in our company, it's all about collaboration. It's all about partnership. I think one is the culture of the company. So in our company, it's all about collaboration. It's all about partnership. It's all about the interdependencies. We're going to do our best work together always. And how do you reinforce that? So you reinforce that in a way that you compensate people. You reinforce that with feedback flying in all directions so that people are hearing from each other on what's working, what's not working. There you go. And that if people feel validated and safe, then they're happy to put what's not working on the table because everyone wants to understand what the unlock is. And I think the key is using feedback as something that's not about identity.

It's about a moment in time and a discrete issue and try to put it on the table. So ideally, the members of the team as peers, and this is another thing in the corporate world we don't talk enough about, the peer relationship is actually really, really important. And if peers share a very high bar and very high standards and want to chase these big goals, they want to push each other. They want to put the issues on the table and they want to work through it. Your teams are groups of three. Our teams are different sizes, but in the corporate world, you're typically going to see teams of five to 15 people reporting to a manager. And I think part of the work in the corporate world is for that manager

to see their role is ultimately about coaching. And sometimes in the corporate world, we think about feedback back to the earlier part of this discussion where it's like challenge without care and challenge without care doesn't work. So then managers who are giving feedback without the care part are so surprised when it doesn't work or it actually leads to lower performance and where it can actually be destructive if not delivered carefully. I think by reframing the role of the manager as you're a coach and you actually need to understand each of these unique humans who are in your care and your job is to help them achieve the highest impact they're

capable of but unfortunately for the manager that's a mass customization exercise like you actually can't it's often said that good managers might attempt to play, to think of management as checkers. Great managers understand that it's chess. And that's easier said than done. It actually takes more effort, but you get a much higher return. How would you help them understand how to apply what we're talking about, really caring for somebody else? One thing that comes to mind when you say that is when we're going through a tough time at

work and we want to get things done, the temptation is often to say, oh, well, caring is not related to the fact that we got to get this done. And my rebuttal to that would be, look, a little bit goes a long way. And there are so many dysfunctional moments like that, or there are so many moments like that that can become dysfunctional. Because especially when a team's gone through a difficult time, if people don't feel even a basic level of care or psychological safety,

we all know what happens. Guess what happens? People hold back, they stop putting all the issues on the table, and then it becomes even more difficult for the manager to figure out what's going on because people are irrational. If it's not safe, they're going to start withholding. And they're probably withholding exactly the information you need to know to unlock it.

I would argue, particularly in moments like that, if you've lost the care, again, a little bit goes a long way. We're not talking about needing to go that deep. So it is a little bit as simple as, hey, how you doing? Exactly. So my advice on that is the empathy part where you're emoting care is key, but then questions are the answer. You don't have to have the answer as a manager. And in fact, the whole point is if you want to play chess, this is about curiosity and inquiry. All you have to do is say, hey, how are you doing? Hey, what are you worried about? What could I be doing differently? What do you think we as a team are missing that's our big unlock? The way you ask those questions is as important as the actual

words. Because if you say, hey, how you doing? Yeah. As opposed to, how are you doing? Right. And just the slight tone about, well, what's going on for you? As opposed to, hey, well, what's going on? Right. Right. So you're saying if you ground yourself in empathy, if you ground yourself in really trying to care about the other person's experience,

that the relationship is built and there's an unlock that springs from that, which is some sort of insight, some sort of aha moment that could happen in that conversation. More importantly, it creates a culture where people are bringing to the surface important ideas. Exactly. And our mutual friend Pete Carroll

talks about learning the learner. So this is a learning the learner thing. And the way you just said it comes across as I'm asking you a question that I really want to know the answer to. And the reason I really want to know the answer is because I'm genuinely, authentically curious about you as a human and I'm super curious about how that knowledge will help us go crush it on whatever problem we're trying to solve okay and my understanding my lived understanding is that the reason that people stop caring or the reason that

people no longer care the ones that they love the way it felt to be cared for by an adult when they were a child, if they were so fortunate to have that. The reason we stop is because we are stressed. When I'm stressed, fatigued, overwhelmed, there's an agitation, there's an irritation, there's an internal scratchiness, there's an anxiousness, and sometimes there's a, what am I doing it all for? There's an overwhelminess, there's an anxiousness, and sometimes there's a, what am I doing it all for? There's an overwhelm in that way as well. I feel like I'm sinking. So if I'm sinking, how can I attend to you? And my experience is that people are overwhelmed right now. Stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, suicidality, and I can go down the list of real mental health challenges are on the rise. So for me, the life vest is helping people have the

internal psychological skills so that they can be fully present in whatever set of circumstances that are challenging or wonderful and wonderfully challenging. How do you help? How are you coaching or not or addressing the internal individual psychological skills so that we can be better teammates, so that we can be a better team, so the organization can be purpose-driven? What's interesting about what you're saying is I think we're all feeling it in this era, number one. You as well? Of course, of course. Yeah, I think we're, how could you not? With the COVID era that we've all been through and the collective trauma we experienced in COVID

and the uncertainty in the world that we're all going through right now. I think if you're paying attention, you're feeling it, right? And so we all need to unlock some of these tools because look, we've just talked about the work of the manager of the leader is to quote unquote go there in order to unlock the performance of your team in order to do great things together. Like this is actually required.

And if you avoid it, your team is going to underperform. It's actually that simple. But in order to have the fortitude to go there and to work it and to figure this out and to pay the price of greatness, you have to work your own internal fortitude. And I think one of the most important things we can do in companies right now is to expose corporate leaders to this amazing toolbox we now have, which you have captured beautifully in Finding Mastery, where we have more and more tools, which ironically, some of which have been developed

in sports like the National Football League, and with great success of how a more human approach to coaching is leading to better and better results and literally winning football games. Okay, that's really interesting. We need to normalize that these tools, if they're helpful to people, to be a better version of yourself inside a company and a better manager. If meditation is helpful, you should meditate. If more hours of sleep is helpful, you should sleep more and actually accomplish more, ironically. If a different type of feedback is helpful, great. If Myers-Briggs is helpful, great. If StrengthsFinder

2.0 is helpful, also great. I think we can actually be agnostic about the tools, but normalize that great leaders are trying stuff and they're using these tools and most of them work most of the time. Yeah. That, that insight is incredible is that the great leaders that, that idea that I'm going to sleep four and a half hours of sleep and out tough you and I don't drink water and I'm just going to, you know, grind better than anybody and not sleep. And it's so antiquated that one, I don't think it ever really existed, but we've believed it somehow. And two, the great ones are tinkering with best practices

to help them be more fine-tuned, like sleep and meditation and being aware of the power of imagery and all the assessments to help deepen the insight. Do you have a handful of ones that are working for you? One point I would make in reacting to what you're saying that I can't help but make it. I think the corporate world is still letting go

of this 1950s cartoonish version of a military general that leaders were modeling themselves against that was invulnerable and that would make fun of everything we're talking about. But in today's military, mindfulness is helping their performance on the battlefield. So modern military leaders are absolutely using Spillbox. In some cases, they're using it better than the corporate world. So we should be paying attention to that. And we should be inspired by that and say, let's replace that cartoonish military model

with a new version of corporate leadership, which can be inspired by your work and sports. That actually using the modern tools of EQ, of mindfulness, of well-being, of sleep, of meditation, et cetera, allows you to win more and perform better and outperform over years and years and years to come as the modern form of Jim Collins, good to great. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate

temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas, crawl into bed under their sheets, and my nervous system starts to settle. They also offer a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding, which tells me, tells you that they believe in the long-term value of what they're creating.

If you're ready to upgrade your rest and turn your bed into a better recovery zone, use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. That's a great discount for our community. Again, the code is FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Caldera Lab. I believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things. And for me, that includes how I take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want

to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality

personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. How do you put that inside of the activity of business? Because most of us are, you know, it's called nine to five. No one's really working nine to five in the corporate gig. There's a daytime shift and an evening shift, right? The daytime shift where meetings and the evening shift after dinner, we are doing emails. How do you find the right structure system to get this set of practices as part of the

natural way that we do business? That's where it will differ from culture to culture in the corporate world because for these tools to work well, you have to meet the company and the people where they are. And inside of different business models, you're going to have a different rhythm. If you're on a sales team traveling constantly, that's a different rhythm than if you're going to the same place every day

and you're working from home. In the kinds of cultures that I work on in Wall Street, you might be doing multi-billion dollar deals where you've just got to grind and you've got to really push yourself over a period of time in order to accomplish your goal. The challenge I often have for my colleagues who work like that, where it's like lump, it's spikier periods periods is these tools are really important as your steady state so that when you do feel like you're in the seventh game of the nba finals you you can have the perseverance to push yourself to those heights but i'll often say to my colleagues but today isn't actually the seventh game of the nba finals and Joel Embiid is making sure that he sleeps well because he's restoring

himself for those moments where he's got to bring it. And I think one of the greatest gifts from the sports world, and sports psychology is ahead of most companies in terms of how we think about leadership development, we can actually learn something here, which is surprising and ironic to people, but absolutely true, is that rest and recharge goes with high performance. And we need to normalize that. And we need to work with people inside of these cultures to say, okay, let's work with your business model. Let's work with what excellence looks like. But in any culture, there's peaks and troughs. And let's make sure that we get this right. And again, I'll come back to the team. So one thing is normalizing it in a company where these are just standard tools that

we can use or not use. But maybe even more importantly is what's going on in your team? What are your peers doing? Talk about this stuff with your peers. Normalize it on that unit of 10 people. And hey, I'm taking vacation next week. I really need this time off. Can you guys cover for me so I can actually unplug for a few days and store myself? And then when you go on vacation, I'll do the same thing for you. I think if we normalize those things and we extend the playbook inside of companies and we actually prize that rest and recovery goes with high performance and that the goal is i want to be the best in the world at what i do whatever that is i'm chasing that thing and i'm willing to pay the price but the best athletes in the world who you interview

on this podcast they're all kind of that's the thing, which is I need the yin to that yang, and I can't do it without that. And I think in the corporate world, we need to make that, not only make that okay, but make that clear that that's what great people do. When you think about the modern leader, how do you describe the modern leader? Leadership is ultimately about change. The work of a leader is about change. Leaders influence humans to do something that they weren't planning on doing. And we all like the idea of change. We don't really like to pay the price of change because it makes us uncomfortable. So the work of the leader is how do you have enough empathy, enough clarity, and enough motivation to be able to help people see that the distance from here to there is in their best interest, that they're in good hands, and that the leader has a good plan that they can buy into.

I think what's changed is the tools are better. And you and I are both obsessed with expanding the toolbox. And the idea of being more authentic and more vulnerable and more real, today's followers, we expect that from our leaders. We want our leaders to tap into our purpose. We want to see their human side. We want to kick the tires a little bit and really see what they're made of if we're going to pay the price of change, which again, we all kind of like the idea. We don't really want to pay the price. And I think modern leaders have figured out, okay,

if I'm really interested in success and what got you here won't get you there, I got to open up this playbook and I'm going to try some new stuff. And this is the beauty of the toolbox. Certain tools work well in certain situations, and I think leaders should feel okay saying, part of the work is I'm going to experiment, I'm going to innovate, I'm going to try stuff and see what works in this culture and with this particular set of humans.

And the tools that work, I'm going to keep using. The tools that don't work, I'm going to set those to the side for another day. But each of us as leaders, I think the work is figuring out what are the tools that I'm going to be using and trying so that these humans in my charge, that I can bring out the best in them and we can go take the hell together. And how are you squaring artificial intelligence with, let's give it a three-year arc because we can begin to play like we have some idea of what would happen in three years. But how are you thinking about artificial intelligence from the CHRO lens? So this is where it gets really cool, Mike. I think AI creates a ton of opportunities in the HR space. And AI

has reframed the whole tech revolution. It was only a few years ago that in HR circles, we were talking about how quickly can we teach everyone who works in our companies to code because everyone's going to need how to code. With generative AI, that's no longer necessary because the interface is so much better that very few people are going to need to code. So we've actually inverted exactly what the prevailing wisdom was just three or four years ago. So that's pretty big. I think the other thing is the AI revolution as it pertains to the future of work is not actually really about technology. It's about how those tools are used by humans for humans to be more and more successful,

to get more and more leverage, to have greater and greater productivity. So we just got to invert the way we're thinking about this because you could buy into the robot takeover mental model or you could buy into these are some of the most powerful tools that have ever been created, which is what am I as an individual? What are you as an individual uniquely great at? And how do I use these tools to do more and more of that? And if we embrace the tools that way, we're going to design them in a more human way. And we're going to be able to chase the best version of this from a place of strength and openness and not a place of fear. You're an optimist. You see the future as being bright. Well, I think I'm a practical optimist where I think you got to take in the information and see what the risks are because of course the risks are real and we've got to understand them.

I'm an optimist in the sense that I want to play the cards that I actually have, not the cards I wish I had, but the cards I actually had and play them as well as I possibly can. The number of gems and insides or nuggets per 10 minute increments here is incredible. Like the gems that you're saying are in and of itself worth each one of them to open up. And I want to thank you for the succinctness of your insights and the way that you're able to string them together. And I'd like to get you to react to something Kathleen Hogan, the CHRO of Microsoft said. She says, we are facing a human energy crisis.

And when she says that, how do you respond to that idea i'm totally on the same page with kathleen i think i i react to her statement with two things come to mind so one is that we have massively under equipped our companies with the tools of well-being. And if there's a race here, we need to race to normalize that sleep and meditation and taking the steps to fine-tune your mind have a huge ROI. And the conventional wisdom is that those things either have nothing to do with work, those are just personal choices, or that somehow those things could detract from performance. And I think we've proven 10 ways to Sunday that they fuel performance. So how do we make sure that every company is making that toolbox available to

everyone so that we can increase our energy? The second thing that's coming to mind is the work Tony Schwartz did years ago on manager energy, not time. And I think that was path-breaking work because Tony was talking very early about the importance of what kind of environment are you creating in the workplace? How are people treating each other? And how do you make better design choices, choices as a manager to increase the energy of your team and to make that a thing so that you have the most precious commodity? As we are dealing with greater uncertainty and markets in the world, economy, et cetera, we need that energy. And if we're going to innovate, we need that energy. And the 10,000 hours rule, where if you want to be the best in the world at something, and we all say that we do, we're often not clear with each other about the

price that you have to pay. I work with the best investors in the world. And if you want to be one of the best investors in the world, you actually work harder than the people around you, not less. But if you manage your energy really well, you get capacity back. You have some form of that underpinning of well-being. Tell you what, Apollo Global is lucky to have you. And so are we to have your insights and very applied practices to be shared amongst our community. So thank you for that. And before we go, just a couple quick hits. Just a couple little one-liners

for you to respond to in one or two or three words. I am grateful to be here. My purpose is to coach and elevate everyone I come across. Pressure comes from? Inside.

Who tells you no? Pretty much everyone around me i work with very skeptical people mike so part of the great gift i get and i'm working in really high performing organizations like apollo is i get challenged constantly and i think the skepticism is actually a gift for people like us. And I know you've experienced this in sports your entire career. When people meet you with like, huh, okay, that's interesting. Prove it. Show me. Let me try it. I love that. I think you do too. I absolutely love it. Yeah, it's great. It's way better than, oh, this again. It's way better like, huh, that's an interesting premise. And that's important because I don't ever want to rest on this stuff. I want to keep going. And if it's not working, if it doesn't work for them, that's important for me to understand.

And if it does work for them, that's also important for me to understand. And so I'll often call myself the walking suggestion box because I want that information. I want that pushback. I want constant challenge and information. And I steal myself for that, but it makes me better because it allows me to fine tune everything I'm doing so that it actually works. Matt, thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for leading from the front and fundamentally disrupting Wall Street in a way that is helping people be more of themselves and performing at higher levels than we even thought we would imagine. Awesome. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Thank you. That was a really insightful conversation. Emma, who do we have up next? Right. There was so much to take away from that one. So next up, we have a bit of a gear change as you sat down with music producer and DJ Diplop. This is a must listen. Right. There was so much to take away from that one. So next up, we have a bit of a gear change as you sat down with music producer and DJ Diplo. This is a must listen. Right. A hundred percent.

The question here in this conversation was, how do you stay ahead in an industry that is always progressing? How do you stay ahead? From chart topping hits to headlining massive festivals, Diplo shared how curiosity fuels his creativity, his take on mastery as a path, and the real challenges behind fame and success. Tune in for this conversation with one of the most boundary-pushing creators of our time. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the

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you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.