Speaking of Psychology - How to be an inspiring leader, with Adam Galinsky, PhD

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

What’s the difference between an inspiring boss and an infuriating one? What qualities do the best coaches, teachers and mentors share? Adam Galinsky, PhD, author of “Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others,” discusses why leaders often have even more power than they realize, the universal qualities of good leadership, and how anyone can learn to become a more inspiring leader in their work, as a parent, and in other aspects of their lives.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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See Home Depot.com slash price match for details. We've all had people in our lives who have inspired us. Maybe it was a teacher who sparked your curiosity about a new subject or gave you the confidence to learn a new skill. Perhaps it was a boss who offered support when you needed it and helped you do your job better. So what was it that set those inspirational leaders apart? What qualities do the best coaches, teachers, bosses, and other leaders share?

Are the most inspirational leaders born or made? or made? Do you have to be in a position of power to be a leader or can anyone lead from any level? And what can you do to become a better and more inspiring leader in your work, as a parent, or in any aspect of your life? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Adam Galinsky, social psychologist and the Paul Colello professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School. His research and teaching focus on leadership, negotiations, diversity, decision-making, and ethics.

Dr. Galinsky's new book is called Inspire, the Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. It provides a research-based framework that people can use to become better and more inspiring leaders. Dr. Galinsky is a sought-after speaker and has delivered keynotes and workshops to organizations including Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, the FBI, and local and national governments. He's author of more than 300 scientific papers and chapters, and his research has been featured in media outlets, including CNN.com, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Galinsky, thank you for joining me today. I am thrilled and inspired to be here. So let's start by talking about how you open your book, where you talk about leaders having even more

power than they realize. You call this the leader amplification effect. What is that? Why is it important? Absolutely. And thanks for that incredible intro. You got all the questions you asked were like all teasing the heart of the books. I really appreciated that. So basically, the leader amplification effect represents the idea that when we are in a position of leadership, all eyes are on us, right? Because of our authority, because of our power, because of our standing. And as a result, we know from the basic tenets, of cognitive psychology that anything that we put our attention on, that's going to have more amplified signals, and that's going to produce more intensified reactions. And so the leader amplification effect basically says that when we're in this position of leader, everything we do,

verbal, nonverbal, you know, small and big, good and bad, gets amplified and has this intensified impact on other people. So what should a leader do to moderate? this effect and turn it into something that's helpful. So let's just take a step back and I'll give you a couple of examples of what I mean by the leader amplification effect and then we can think about both how do we solve it, but also how do we leverage it? One of the examples I give in the book is I was a first year doctoral student at Princeton University and I was literally taking the very first class at Princeton with a guy

named Danny Kahneman who would one day win the Nobel Prize in Economics, a cognitive psychologist. And, you know, I raised my hand. I said a comment and, you know, I still remember 30 years later the four things Danny did that day. He crossed his arms. He shook his head and he scrunched up his face and he spit out. That's not right at all, you know. And then he smiled his beatific smile and moved on and the rest of the class moved on. And I, you know, I was frozen in humiliation, right? Like those words, that's not right at all. Just like they echoed inside of, like it, It reverberated inside of me. And it literally took me weeks before I could speak again in his class or any class.

So I remember this three years later, you know, I wrote about him in your times, you know, I shared her with Danny. And Danny's like, you know, first he, you know, he joked, I'm a monster, you know. But, you know, he doesn't remember that. Like, it was just she didn't think the point I made it was right. And he matter-factly said it. And then he moved on. And, but because of his position, right, that that criticism became humiliating criticism to me. But I also tell another Danny Coterman story is I was literally walking down the hallway

about six weeks later. And Danny said without stopping, just kind of casually over his shoulder, he turned to me and said, hey, Adam, I'd love reading your reflection papers. You're a great writer. And they turned the quarter. And I was so filled with elation, you know, the opposite of humiliation. Like I literally skipped down the hallway. And so these two very different Danny Cahneman's stories like represent the same underlying phenomenon, this leader amplification effect. Like that compliment became literally like glorious praise, right, you know, that has nourished me for 30 years. And so that tells us two really, really important things to get at the heart of the question

you asked, which is, what can we do about it? Well, the first thing that we can do about it is we have to become aware of it, right? And so, you know, a basic tenet of psychology is that knowledge is power, awareness, without awareness, we have no capacity to make change or to control things. Another example I give in the book is, imagine your boss saying to you, hey, Kim, come by my office tomorrow at 3 p.m. I need to talk to you. You're like, oh, my God, why do they need to talk to me? What did I do wrong? What's going on?

And in their mind, they might know, oh, it's totally inconsequential. I just want to tell them about a media I'm going to or share an idea. you know, but, you know, when we're left in the dark, like, and because of that power, that potential portentousness, which happens anytime someone needs to talk to you, but it gets amplified, right, and really reverberates inside of you. So, so we have to start recognizing the power of our words, but even the power of our silence, right? You know, I gave, I gave this example how, you know, at a university professors have more power than the computer tech support guys, right? You know, we're bigger fish in the university pond, if you will. But when our computer's

broken and they have it, they're in power. They control this resource. And one of the things when I was at Northwestern is we wouldn't hear from them for days. You're like, oh my God, is my computer ruined? Is it lost? Are they even paying attention to it? And we put a little rule into place to really solve the leader amplification effect, which is we told the computer people every single day, sometimes between 3 and 5 p.m. You have to email every person whose computer you have, and just give them an update. And maybe it's something like, we're still backing up your hard drive is taking longer than expected, or we're still looking for this part, but just keeps people in the loop. Now, going back to Danny Kahneman's criticism of me, one of the ways that we can solve this,

right, is that we can hold our tongue in public, right? or we can soften the blow. One of the things I discovered when PhD students do their first big research presentation at Columbia Business School, I would often go up to them like, oh, you did this well,

but here's three things you could do better. And you could just see, it was like sticking a pin in their balloon, you know, and just deflating them after this incredibly momentous experience that they've gone through. And so now I try to withhold any criticism

until the next day. Let them sell, the accomplishment. But the Dan Economist story also tells us how we can leverage the leader amplification effect for good. We can reach out to people and compliment them when they've done something well. We can express gratitude. And I tell this story in the book, which I really love. I was teaching to 50 CEOs. And at 1015, I gave them a leader amplification effect call to action. I said, I want you to write three people who have less power than you in your organization, and I want you just to be sincere, right?

Because it's infuriating when we're not sincere, right? And explicitly say, you know, specific details, something they did really well. Like, you hit that presentation out of the park, you know, or something they really helped you with. Like, I couldn't have done that great project without you. So at 1030, we're about to take the break. So this is 15 minutes later, and one of the CEOs raises his hand, and he said, says, I've already sent my three emails. I've already gotten three emails back, just effusively

joyfully saying how much my email meant to them. One person even said, I'm finally going to take my spouse to that new restaurant they always wanted to go to to celebrate. And I like this story for two reasons. One is it confirms another piece of my research, which is that CEOs and powerful people are impulsive, right? This guy couldn't even wait to 1030 to the break. But the upside is it took them almost no time at all. That raises a question of people who have that combination of high power and low status. I mean, and I was thinking of that when you were talking about the computer guys, you know, how they had a lot of power once they have your computer, but they didn't have the same status. How do you work with such individuals to improve that relationship?

One of the things I've discovered in my research is that when we have power, so you can think a bouncer at a club, a reimbursement clerk, you know, a tech person. We control some important resource, but sometimes these bureaucratic posts, right, aren't very respected, right? They don't have a lot of status in them. And so one of the things I've found is that it's that combination that is particularly toxic and is tyrannical. It makes people into little tyrants because they're so seething, right, at the lack of the respect they receive, but the power they have allows them to control other people. So I first discovered this, literally my postdoc, I got to Northwestern University,

and there was the reimbursement person in charge of reimbursements, and she was like the soup Nazi on Seinfeld. If you didn't give your thing in the exact hand of the right way, she had literally a red line in her cubicle, like, do not cross into my space. And, you know, she would berate you, you know, just like the soup. Nazi on Seinfeld. No suit for you, you know. But then I discovered something about her, which is that she really loves snow globes, but she couldn't travel. She had a kidney disease, which made it difficult for her travel, but also economically it was probably difficult. And so it wasn't my idea.

Someone else had given me this idea, but they said, if you want to get it hurt good graces, every time you go somewhere, bringing back a snow globe for her, you know, of that. And once I started bringing her snow globes, like all of my reimbursements were miraculously expedited. But with the snow globe with signaling was respect. It was saying, you matter. You know, I'm thinking about you.

I value you. And when she passed away, I went to her funeral service. And there at the back was all of her services. snow globes and you could pick them up and she had written who had given it to her. Wow. So she said, if any of you ever gave her snow globe, go to the back and see if you can find yours and you can take it home with you, you know. And so they really meant something to her, you know. And so what I tell people, if you're seeing someone acting in a tyrannical way, it could be a boss, right? It could be someone like a reimbursement individual, someone who has some power, ask yourself this question.

what are they feeling insecure about? And can I make them feel a little bit more secure, a little bit more respected, a little bit more feel like that they matter? Now, your book talks about the three tenets of inspiring leadership that you've identified in your research, and they're being visionary, being an exemplar, and being a mentor. Talk about each of those and how you came to the conclusion that these are the sweet three. Yeah, the sweet three. I like that. No one's ever used that phrase before. Some people will call it the trifecta, but I like the sweet three better. So I'm going to steal that from you. The reason why these are the sweet three or the universal three is like to call them, I discovered it by asking thousands and probably tens of thousands

of people across the globe to tell me about a leader that inspired them and a leader that infuriated them. And from those many things, I discovered three really valuable insights. The first one is that the inspiring leader and the infuriating leader really exists on a continuum. And to understand that, let's go back to the leader amplification effect. When you're in this position of leadership or eyes are on you or people looking up to you, you have power, you control a resource, because those eyes are on you, neutrality isn't an option. So your behavior is going to impact people. And is it going to be positive on the inspiring end or negative on the infuriating end? So the first big insight is, you know, we don't really

have a choice of whether to inspire and fruate, we're going to do that. The second insight, as you just mentioned, is that there's these three universal characteristics. And each one of them sort of describes how we see the world, says, visionary, and that kind of involves this optimistic, big picture that we also simplify and articulate in an engaging way. There's how we are in the world, and that's what I call the exemplar. And that's like, being a common, courageous protector, being authentically passionate, and being super, but also human in our behavior. And the third is being this inspiring mentor, which is how we interact with others in the world. And that's really about empowering people, elevating them,

but also empathizing with them. And then the third insight is that the reason why these are the three universal factors of inspiring or infuriating others is because they each satisfy a fundamental human need. So being visionary satisfies the fundamental human need for meaning and understanding. Being an exemplar satisfies the fundamental human need for a sense of security and protection, but also like, you know, energy and propulsion. And the last one, being a mentor, satisfies a fundamental human need that we've kind of already talked about, the sense of being valued and celebrated and respected and seen. You talk about these being universal that they don't really vary across culture, but I'm wondering, are there additional characteristics that you might find

in other cultures that are important to leadership to being an inspirational leader? You know, I really haven't, and that's what makes it so surprising. Like, there's not a single characteristics. So let's say, get 60 people in a room and I say, tell me about a leader that inspired you. And I always say to them, what was it about that person? Like, tell me the one thing that really, you know, solidifies either they're inspiring or infuriating effect on you. And there's not a single traitor characteristic that is mentioned in one country that isn't mentioned in every other country in the world. Now, not everyone mentions each one, but like as a collection of 100 people, every single one is going to be mentioned. Someone's going to be inspired by their

leader's optimism or seeing the big picture or their ability to communicate in a straightforward, simplified, but engaging way. Someone's going to be, you know, inspired by someone's calm, encourage in a crisis or their ability to be passionate or the fact that they're so good at their job. And someone else, you know, is going to be inspired by the fact that their boss trusted them and empowered them and gave them responsibility or always let them share success, right, and elevated them or really understood the context in which they're coming from and were able to empathize with that. It's peak pollination season and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds.

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Can a bad or a not-so-good leader learn to be inspirational? Absolutely. And this is, I think, you know, if I were going to, I said three insights, it's really four insights. And the fourth insight you mentioned in your intro, which is, I think my research definitively answers a centuries old question. Are inspiring leaders born or made? Right. And I think I have emphatically demonstrated that they are indeed made. Because here's the thing. Because there's a universal set of characteristics that distinguish the inspiring and infuriating leader, those can, be learned, they can be developed, they can be nurtured, they can be practiced so that we can become more inspiring over time. Fundamental to this idea is this really, the seed or the heart of it is the fact that we are not inspired or infuriating people. Our current behavior inspires or infuriates others. And so that means that we could be behaving in a furtating way today, but the good news is we could be inspiring tomorrow. Now, the bad news is it's hard to stay on the inspiring side of the continuum. We could be amazing today and slip tomorrow and be infuriating. So it's a lifelong journey,

if you will. People with power often have to negotiate with others who may or may not be equally powerful, but how can somebody with power negotiate well and what are some of the pitfalls that they have to avoid? Yeah, I think, you know, the one thing that I've studied the longest in my career, dissertation was actually titled Perspective Taking, Debiasing Social Thought. And one of the things that I've discovered in my research is probably the most powerful tool that we have as humans is, and really distinguish us from other species, right, is the capacity towards perspective taking. And we can perspective take over time, reflect on our past and plan for the future, but we can also get into the minds of other

people. And one of the things that I've shown in my research is that when we take the perspective of others in a negotiation and really try to understand what it is that they want in a negotiation, we are able to offer that, but in a strategic way that also benefits ourselves. So one of things I've shown, one of my favorite papers I ever did came out in 2008 was I showed that pure empathy negotiation is a bad idea. It's a win-lose. You just give away the farm, you lose, they win. But perspective taking actually helps you find that balance between meeting the other side person's needs and fulfilling your own. And one of these, like you might call it peer review tricks, you know, or tools, maybe peer review tools is a better term, is that one of things I've shown in

my research and another one of my favorite projects is that we can get a huge advantage in negotiations, but have the other side, at average, not worse off, and feel really great about the negotiation if we just give people a choice between two options. So one of my favorite examples is, you know, car dealer says, I can give you this car for $25,000 in a five-year warranty or $24,000 in a three-year warranty. Now you're giving them a choice, and they can decide, do I value two years a warranty or $1,000? Now, for me, the dealer, each year, each year, year warranties worth $500. That's where we call them multiple equivalent.

They're equivalent to me. Simultaneous offers are mesos. And what was shown in our research is that I can be more ambitious or aggressive, if you will, my offers when I offer a choice. The other side sees me as wanting to reach a deal and be generally interested in them, you know, completing a deal that's good for both parties. They trust me more. I also come to trust them a little bit more.

We create a better climate. but I walk out with a better outcome than I've had given us either one of those alone. And most of the time, not always, but most of the time, they walk out no worse off. So we expand the pie, we get a lot of that. And then it also helps us with innovation and creative agreements too, because one of the best ways that we can sometimes solve negotiation problems is coming up with an idea that's not even on the table, but it satisfies the fundamental underlying needs of each person. So the kind of deal where the salesman says you got to make this purchase today because tomorrow it's all gone, that's not an effective way to negotiate, I take it.

It could be. I mean, I think, you know, Bob Chaldean would say a fundamental principle is the value of scarcity. And so I would always tell people, if that's really true, you should use it. You know, you don't want to lie to people because then they come back to you and you're like, you could still give them the same deal. What you're picking up on there is harnering people isn't the best. way to get the best outcome because when people are cornered, they get aggressive, right? And so you're trying to get them out of the corner, but still in the space that's in the best situation for you. You've also studied the characteristics of the best mentors. What are they? I've mentioned them already in some ways. I use the word empower. I use the word elevate and I use the word empathize. And one of the things about empowering is when we give people an increase in responsibility or give them opportunities, we're signaling something really important, which is that we trust the person, we believe in the person. And if you ask people, this comes up all over

the world about an infuriating leader. They micromanaged me, right? It's they try to control me. So they're not satisfying my fundamental human need for control, but when we, we let someone else make a presentation, for example, we let them sit at the head of the table. We invite them to important meaning, you know, there's a line from Confucius. I'm not sure if I'm going to get exactly right, but it's something like, you know, if you tell me, I will forget. If you show me, I may understand, but it's only when you involve me that I truly understand. And so getting people involved is really, really valuable. And, you know, I've shown that in my research, I've shown that the feeling of control is so fundamental for people's psychological states that when we lack

a sense of control, we try to regain it psychologically through superstitions, through conspiracies, right, through, you know, false patterns in data. And so what we want to do as leaders is help people feel in control because that's going to help them have the right psychological mindset. Elevate really comes down to this simple principle, which is that we're inspiring when we share success and take on, protect people from burden and punishment. And we are infuriating when we still success and blame everyone else for everything else. And, you know, if you ask people around the world about a time when they got so angry at their peer, so this isn't about leaders, it's when they feel like a peer stole their idea, right? You know, they try to take

ownership over something that was there. There's something so infuriating about that. And just simply, you know, sharing success. And so one of the things I've shown in my research, I have a paper coming out in JPSP this month, January 2025, called the vicious cycle of status insecurity. And going back to my example of, you know, the person at Northwestern who was insecure, right, and then they kind of viciously, you know, react towards people. When people are insecure about their status, they desperately want to claim credit for everything. But my research shows is that's really a vicious cycle and counterproductive because when we share success, we actually gain in status. I call it expanding the status pie, like negotiations, expanding the pie.

When we celebrate others, we acknowledge their contributions to our success, they rise up, but so do we. And so that's really another valuable, too, is just to look out for acknowledging people. I mentioned the CEO earlier, right? You just sent those three simple emails, took them a couple of minutes and just transformed people's lives by acknowledging that. And then finally he's empathizing with people, which is really about understanding the context in which people find themselves. My eight and seven-year-old sons are really into the Wings of Fire graphic novel, if you know anything

about those, but these dragons. And there's kind of a dragon that everyone kind of like pooh-poo's on because their name is sunny and they always see the optimistic sunny side of the equation. And in the end, this dragon ends up being the hero. But at some point, you know, someone's like, you know, they're trying to kill you. It's like, yes, but they're trying to get their own brother out of prison. And if they kill me, they can't. So it's always able to understand that, you know, it doesn't want to be killed, but it's also not angry at the person's behavior because you understand it's driven

by a positive constructive need on their side. Let's talk for a minute about people who are a little bit lower on the orb chart. in a workplace, for example. Because a lot of jobs automatically power is conferred just by dint of the title that you have. But there are people who are newer, younger in an organization. Can those people be inspiring leaders even when they're not a boss? And how do they do that? One of the definitions I've come up for leadership is the capacity to motivate, integrate,

and enable a collection of individuals towards a shared goal. And so if you take that definition seriously, the word power, authority, rank is not in that definition. It's again going back to, and this is really the heart of everything I've said today. It's going back to your behavior, right? It's like, what are you doing that's enabling or motivating people? And so the exact same thing occurs here, regardless of where you are, which is, can you engage in a behavior, right, that is inspiring? can you engage in a behavior that helps people see the big picture, right? Or you see the big picture. Can you be calm even in a crisis? Can you tap into your passion, right? Can you empower other people? And so

in the book, I apply the three principles of inspiring leaders to making wiser decisions, to being a better negotiator, to creating more fair processes, to being, you know, more inclusive. But I think, like, a good example is when I talk about, you know, you can inspire other people to be a good decision maker when you are a wise decision maker, regardless of where you are in the ORC thing. And so it's really about behavior. It's about your behavior. Doesn't matter where you are. If you can be visionary, be exemplar, be a mentor, eventually that's going to have a positive impact other. It's going to spread the seeds of inspiration. You talk in your book about parents as leaders. What leadership as a parent look like and has your research changed your approach to being a dad?

100%. I already mentioned my 7-8-year-old sons. A corollary of the leader amplification effect is the parent amplification effect. And I tell this story in the book, which I really like one of my former doctoral students, Erica Bailey, who is now at California Berkeley as a professor. When she was 12, she overheard her mom say to someone, both girls are really great at piano. but Abby has a real knack for it. Now, Abby was her sister. And Erica was so incensed at the sibling comparison that she never played piano again.

Remember, her mom said she was really good at it. Now, her mom didn't even know this. I brought it up at Erica's PhD graduation. Her mom's like, what are you talking about? I was like, do you not know why your daughter quit piano? She's like, no. And so that's a good example of like this offhand comment had this huge impact and affected in some ways, Erica's life course. And so one of the things we have to

recognize is that what we think is sort of a casual comment or we're trying to push someone in one direction. Like, when you did that, that really disappointed me. Like, that may sting really deep to that person, to your child. And so, you know, recognizing the parent amplification effect is just as important as recognizing, becoming aware of the leader, you know, amplification effect. But here's two things that I think, you know, all those things really matter. So one thing that my book has helped me be a better leader is to try to take the big picture and see the larger context. So let me just give you one example of this is my mother-in-law, my wife's mother, came to the hospital when Ashra was born from Connecticut, and she never left. She left the hospital, but she never left

our home, and she's lived with us for the last eight years. But this December, she moved to Las Vegas. to start a new chapter in her life and we're really happy for her. My older son Asher is so close to her. Like, we used to joke when he was too, like the first woman you ever loved was, you know, his grandma, Lola, you know, which means grandma Tagalog from her Filipino background. And after Thanksgiving, Lola over Thanksgiving went to Vegas to help sort of set things up and her other daughters went there. And sometime when before Lola came back, Asher started being really mean, especially to Jen, my wife, you know, and she was reacting pretty strongly to it. And I think, you know, in this case, being visionary and seeing the big picture, which is, Hasher must be so

furious at Lola for leaving, right? But he can't express it to her. He can't jeopardize their special relationship. And so Jen is sort of that stand-in, you know, if you will. And so having that bigger picture does two things. One is it makes us less reactive, right, to the slings in arrows that he throws at us. But it also helps us think about how we can help him on this process towards transitioning to this new experience. And so doing that, you know, every time we're on the subway and someone starts acting up on the Newark subway, I go into calm and courageous protector mode, right? Like I make sure that my body's in between my boys. I let them know that I'm in control of the situation. They're safe. And then, you know, being a mentor is really about,

You know, it's hard, right? You got to find a balance between empowering people and supporting them, right? You know, I always say encouraging them and challenging them. And so, you know, I'm constantly working on finding the right balance of like helping them be autonomous, but not putting too much pressure and responsibility on them. And I don't always succeed, but I'm striving at least to find that balance. So who are the most inspiring people in your life? I mean, you've already mentioned Danny Connman and his name comes up all the time when I'm talking to people because he's inspired so many folks, and it's a great loss that he's not with us. But who are the other people who have inspired you? I would say, you know, both my parents in their own way, you know, my dad inspired me. She was such a creative, ingenious, you know, decision maker, always coming up with, like, getting around what looks like, you know, an unscalable obstacle and coming up with, you know, fresh ways of looking at things. My mom was generous. I remember I was home. my mom was widowed at this point and we were going to a restaurant. We had a really difficult reservation to get. And she was taking long to get ready. I was getting really annoyed. And what

she was doing is she remembered the waiter at this restaurant had just had a new baby. And so she was getting a gift for him, you know, and that just touched me. And you know, my current dean, Costis McClaris, he is just a brilliant strategic thinker. He was actually on the dean's search committee. And the president at one point was like, you're a better strategic thinker than any of our candidates. You should be dean. But he combines that with just an incredible level of like humanity and their ability to understand the deep emotional lives of others and to never forget that there's humans behind every decision. And, you know, I shared that with him recently in a meeting. I was like, just, it's a very rare combination. It's an inspiring combination to combine brilliant,

and strategic thinking and deep empathic humanity. But just to close up, I'd like to ask this question of researchers. What are you working on now? What are the big questions you're still trying to answer? That's a great question. You know, I've worked on so many different topics. I think one of the things that I'm most proud of are having some simple reflection tasks that people can do to get into more visionary state of mind, a more exemplar state

in mind and more mentor. And so one example is we did a study with a Swiss employee. agency for recently unemployed individuals who came in to register for employment benefits. And, you know, one of the things we know from psychology is that being suddenly unemployed is one of the five biggest stressors we can experience in life. It leads to depression and anxiety and even suicidal thoughts, you know, at times. And what we did in this is we used an intervention that Claude Steele kind of, you know, was the seminal person behind it and Jeff Cohen and others have have really elaborated on it, but we just ask people to reflect on their most important values,

to think about why they matter to them, and to think about how they've demonstrated those values and their recent behavior. And two months later, people were twice as likely to have found a job if they were in that experimental group. And we actually ended the experiment and gave everybody the intervention at that point. This is a paper published in the proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences last year. And so just reflecting, on your values satisfies that fundamental hume for meaning and understanding. And it really grounds and centers people. You know, part of being visionary is optimism. And I think it gives people just this optimistic energy that allows them to go get a job. Similarly, one of the things that I pioneered

and was a vanguard on is this simple reflection task. Think about a time when you were powerful and in control. And shown this had transformed effects. Researchers in Europe, not a study I did show that If you give people that reflection before a high-stakes speech and then measure their physiology, they basically are calm, right? You know, calm in this impending crisis. It makes people see the big picture. It helps them, you know, more likely to feel authentic. It makes them better negotiators, like all these different things.

And then finally, to be a better mentor is to reflect on what you've learned from people below you in the hierarchy. And that sort of reminds you that you can learn from anyone. And I think that each one of these reflection tasks are simple and straightforward, but powerful and transformative because they're tapping into those fundamental human needs, but they're doing so in a richly, authentically, autobiographical way. You're building on your own experiences. And so if I was going to leave your listeners with anything, is that just the inspiring power of reflection to help us be more inspiring. Well, Dr. Goulinski, I want to thank you for joining me today.

It's been really interesting talking to you, and I have to agree with Dr. Connaman that you're a good writer. So the book is accessible. People should take a look. It's called Inspire. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was great fun being here. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingof psychology.

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