The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 617: Adam Galinsky - How To Inspire Others, Build a Team, Speak Up For Yourself, Thrive Through Adversity, & Become Their Favorite Boss

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes for episode #617 with Adam Galinsky Notes: 10 Words - "We are not going down. We are going to Philly." The composure of pilot Tammy Jo Shults after the side of her airplane exploded. Leadership is needed most when things go bad. How do you respond when adversity strikes? Those are the moments when we must be prepared to share the vision and help our team stay the course. EMTs asked, "How did you get through security? You have nerves of steel. You don't even have an elevated heart rate." The 1992 cockpit study of pilots. Did more errors happen at the beginning or the end of a 19-hour flight? You'd assume the end because of exhaustion. However, more errors happen at the beginning of the flight because the crews don't know each other yet. How does this translate to your team? It's imperative to genuinely care and get to know the people on your team. Host barbeque parties, ask questions, and genuinely LEARN about the people you're leading. Those aren't soft skills, those are essential skills. What did Adam learn from his parents? The idea of Kaizen, is a Japanese business philosophy that promotes continuous improvement through small, incremental changes. Kaizen means "good change," "change for the better," or "improvement." Transactional leaders are infuriating. Transformational leaders are inspiring. Great leader exercise: "Tell me about a leader that inspired you..." What qualities do they possess? "Courage, Optimism, Generous." Inspire - the universal path for leading yourself and others Build habits - floss teeth before brushing. Write thank you notes. Moments of Greatness -- Elks basketball Team thank you notes - Rob Kimbel Columbia football coach -- "Who can I yell at?" Need to know who can handle it. Ron Ullery -- Share the vision early. 1:1 conversation, bring your leaders in. Adam did not get tenure when most thought he deserved it. They messed up by not sharing the vision until after, but then they made it better by sharing and showing him love. He then turned down Harvard to stay at Northwestern because of it. Vision - Big picture. Put context for behavior. Why is consistency important? The Great Gatsby and his dad. Greenlights. When you're thinking about trying to persuade others, you persuade yourself. Parenting -- When you flip out, they do too. We set the tone.

I'm going to share with you a story right now that I've never shared anywhere before. When you're at a university, in your six-year, usually, you come up for what's called tenure. And if you get tenure, you have a lifetime appointment for the next 30 years. That is guaranteed income. Your life is about as good as you can be of any job in the world. And my department voted enthusiastically to recommend me for tenure. So I go into my meeting with the deans where I'm thinking I'm getting tenure. My department's told me they want me to get tenure outside.

Like people told me when to get tenure and I didn't get tenure. I got promoted to untenured associate but not to a tenured position. And it was unbelievably shocking. So I leave the dean's office. I go in the stairwell and I cry. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people,

or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your weekoff right. You'll also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Talk to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Adam Galinsky is a social psychologist

and professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School. He delivered one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time called How to Speak Up for Yourself. And he's also the author of a great new book called Inspire, the Universal Path for Leading Yourself, yourself and others. During this conversation we discuss real life examples of how leaders kept their composure during extreme adversity and how you can do the same. And then he shares how to

develop confidence to do something you've never done before, the qualities that the world's most inspiring leaders possess, and how to use your power for good. Ladies and gentlemen, and please enjoy my conversation with Adam Galinsky. What can we learn about leadership from Southwest Airlines Flight 1380? That's a great question. So some of you may know Southwest's Flight 1380. It was a flight that was going from New York, LaGuardia to Dallas, Fort Worth. And about some maybe half an hour into the flight, the pilots were flying along,

and they felt a jolt. And as the captain said, it felt like literally they'd been hit by a Mack truck in the middle of the air. And what had happened is their left engine had exploded and tore a hole in the side of the plane. And so, you know, at that point, you know, many different things were happening. First of all, one of the passengers was unfortunately fatally wounded by being sucked into that hole. Two, obviously they were losing cabin pressure and oxygen. And so they had to adjust for that. obviously the hold on the flight side of the plane was also affecting the ability of the plane to fly.

Clearly, they also lost one engine. And I think, you know, what happened next is really just so remarkable because of how Tammy Joe Schultz, the pilot, handled that situation. And I think there's, you know, a few things that she did in that situation that I think are really critical. The first thing she did was clearly, like, she diagnosed the problem. and they had a pretty good sense of what was going on. And so she figured out, okay, what do we need to do first? And the first thing that she realizes we need to lower the, as she described later on an interview, she said, the plane was telling us that it wanted to go down in altitude.

So as she said, we let the plane go down in altitude. So she sort of figured out what the plane needed to do to be sort of effective. But here's what I think that made her not just a great pilot, but a great leader. Now, imagine you're a passenger seeing that plane, and all of a sudden, you know there's a hole in the plane, and now the plane is dropping. And there's probably this sense of just unbelievable sense of panic of, oh, my God, we are just dropping from the scry to the ground. And she went on the loudspeaker, and she just uttered 10 words. And when you talk to the passengers afterwards, they always describe those 10 words as, like, transformational, like churning the possibility, panic into possibility. And those 10 words were simply, we are not going down, we are going to Philly.

And so she was letting them know, like, there was a plan. Like she didn't lead them in deafening silence, right? And that was really, really important. And I think one of the things that we forget as leaders is we got to accomplish the task, in this case, landing the plane successfully with no further injuries. But that doesn't mean we have to do that in a vacuum or isolation. Because we're a leader, because we have followers, we also have to communicate to those individuals.

And so I think that is one of the remarkable things. And just her attention throughout the process, I love this one little detail. So she landed the plane, and she purposely moved the plane so that the fire engines and ambulances were on the side where the engine exploded in case there was a fire, in case they knew anything.

But she also in her mind, she said, there could be a passenger who totally panics, rips open like the exit door and goes out on the wing, just desperately trying to get out. So she actually churned the wings down so it would give people a little bit of a slide in case they sort of needed that. And so, and then the last thing she did before she left the plane, and first of all, I should say, she landed the plane successfully with no more injuries.

And there's some remarkable little bits to that of how she was able to do that. When you listen to her, when you listen to her talking to the air traffic controllers, she literally could be describing what she wants in her coffee that morning. You know, she's so calm. Her voice is so steady. At one point, she says, we've lost an engine. We have a hole in the plane. And it appears someone has gone out. And the air truckman's like, wait, someone went out. Okay, wait, never mind. We'll deal with that later. You know, like, but she's just so calm and cool and collected. And when she landed the plane, the EMTs came to check her out. First thing they did. And one of them jokingly said to her, how did you get through security? And she's like, wait, what are you, what are you talking about? And he said, how do you? How do you? your nerves of steel not set off all the alarms at security like you're so calm if you just measure your pulse any other physiological reactivity like there there's someone who did not go through a crisis or a deal and then the final thing she did before she left the plane she went row by row and met with every passenger and just said how are you doing is there anything we can do there's a little girl

she's like you know this has never happened before you're special you got an experience no one else got you know and so she just was very thoughtful and then there's one final thing that she did, which I think was really important, is she was black flying like three weeks later. And she said she did it partly for herself, right? She wanted to get back to the normalcy of everyday life. But she also did it because she wanted to show to other people that she wasn't afraid of flying. And if she's not afraid of flying, they shouldn't be afraid of flying either. And so she was that again, that exemplar of like presenting herself the way that she wanted other people to be in the world. And I know there's a little bit of a long answer, but it's great.

It's a great way to open the book. And we all want to be. be that poised, calm. I come from the world of sports where I played quarterback and like having moxie and being able to be cool under pressure when the de linemen are on top of you and stand in and make the throw is like a big part of it. And so you you learn through like legitimate like fire. They're right on your in your face. We want to be that. But for those who say, well, maybe she was just born that way. Maybe that's just the way she is. You know, Adam, like that's great. But how can I be like that. How can I be calm? How can I have my heart rate not rise when I'm landing a plane that literally blew up in the air? What are some ways to make this practical, a practical application

for maybe the more normal person so they could implement some of the things they've learned from that flight, from that pilot into their own lives? Yeah. I'll say a couple things about that. First of all is, I think that is literally the heart and the essence of the book, inspire, which is that leaders aren't born, they are made, right? And one of the things that have shown in my research, 20 years of scientific research, right, is that there's a set of practical steps that we can take that over time will make us more inspiring and less infuriating to other people over time. And so one of them is the more experience you have, the better off you are. You know, there's a reason why rookie quarterbacks often, you know, I'm going to use a phrase

that's a little off color, but shit the bed, you know, in their first year. Caleb Williams, right? Number one draft pick. Everyone said he's revolutionary and, you know, he's going to be, defy the odds of the rookie quarterback. And, you know, there he is struggling, just like every other rookie quarterback in the NBA, even Peyton Manning. And so part of it is you need experience. But another thing, which I think is equally important, is that we need to reflect on our experiences and think about what happened. And we need to use those experience to plan more effectively for the future. And so that's one of the things that like a quarterback can do. Like maybe they lose their, how they use their footwork when they get under pressures.

They can practice their footwork so they know, okay, next time, if my footwork's better, I'm going to handle that better. And so that's like a long-term strategy that people can use. Some of the short-term strategies that people can use, and I think this is, you know, one of the most important ones of all is I love speaking in front of really large crowds now. So put me in front of 500 people. I'm even happier if it's 1,000 people. I like that experience now. But like early on in my career, I hated it, dreaded it, loathed it with an unmitigated sense of fear and passion. Like literally I felt like I couldn't breathe.

Like I couldn't even use my fingers. Like how do I do the, you go to the next slide if my hands are shaking. And I just felt so overwhelming. And this was around like 2006, 2007. and so almost 10, 20 years ago. But in 2003, I actually introduced into the scientific literature a little essay. And the essay was simply, and we were trying to study the psychological effects of like sort of having a sense of power, status, you know, control.

And one of the things that we wanted to understand with the psychological effects is, well, Ryan, if I give you power and I put you in the role of the boss, you might act in certain ways just because I expect you to act that way. Or you maybe act that way is because you have more things on your mind. and your attention's divided, right? And so we want to know, like, how is power actually coursing through your blood? Like, how is it really affecting you? And so my colleagues, Deb Grenfell, Joe McGee, and I actually settled.

This was actually 1999 and he had published in 2003. But we ended up settling on this idea of, what if we just ask people to recall experiences from their own life in which they felt powerful, in control, or their best self, right? And then what they can do is they can leverage that authentic experience. to do that. And that's essentially, I basically used my own scientifically validated intervention, you know, on myself. And I started to think about like, you know, I know what I'm doing. I've done this before. I can think about the times where I did it really well. I can see myself performing well. And I could feel that confidence, literally, you know, take the anxiety and push it away.

And instead of cortisol, I had sort of positive adrenaline and excitement. And I think that's, that's, you know, one of the ways that we can do that. So we can get into the right mindset. So like, you know, before a Super Bowl, right, a quarterback might think about, you know, how well they performed in the AFC championship game, right, as a way to get them, you know, that. I'll tell you my favorite quarterback right now in the world is Josh Allen. And Josh Allen was not good under pressure when he was a rookie. And he's, I think, one of the best demonstrations of someone who really learned over time how to be a better quarterback. And like, people were talking up, I mean, even in a second season, I'm talking about what a failure he was and what a

colossal mistake it was for the Buffalo Bills to have drafted him. And now he's probably going to win the MVP this year. We were talking about, I believe, is confidence. And a number of people in this podcast has talked about how to build that. And that is through creating evidence for yourself. Yeah, yeah. You can't just shout affirmations in the mirror. You have to create evidence for yourself. And what I hear you saying, Adam, is that I think you have to regularly put yourself in the position to do something hard, do something challenging. And it almost doesn't matter what that thing is, because regardless, if you proved yourself that you can do hard things, that is portable to other areas of your life. I did the improv class so I can go do the triathlon. And one of them's mental,

one of them's physical, but both are hard. And so I'm thinking of, can you maybe go a little deeper on why this is so effective to regularly, the Navy SEALs would say push your edges, why it's so useful to regularly be banging on those edges of your current zone of comfort and competency because it's portable to other areas of your life. Yeah. I mean, what you said is sort of, what was the phrase you is I really liked it about evidence to yourself? Is that what you said?

I think confidence needs evidence. This comes from other guests. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I like that phrase. Confidence needs evidence that you've done hard things, but it doesn't have to be. be the exact thing. You can you can say, well, I've done this hard thing. So now I'm going to go do this other completely different, but still hard thing. I do this task in my, in my class where I ask,

I get people eight candidates for a kidney. And I randomly sign them to advocate for why one of the candidates should receive it. And one of the things that we show in this research is that whoever they advocate for all of a sudden shoots up the list, right, in their mind. And it's not strategic. It's not like, I'm going to do this so I can benefit. It's like they feel more attached to that person, but part of it is that when they think about how to persuade others, they're actually persuading themselves because they're coming up with evidence that's going to work. And in some ways, what they're doing is, they're coming to the evidence that also works for them. And I think it's the same thing with experience, right, is that we can use, in some ways we're always,

we're, you know, psychologists like to use these words sometimes, but like, we're always, both the object and the subject of our own attention, right? You know, in some ways we're observing ourselves doing the things that we're doing. I'll give you one example that's not in the, it's kind of in the domain of leadership. So one of the things I've talked a lot about is how all the principles of leadership can apply to being a better and more inspiring and more effective parent. And one of the things that when I early, I have two kids, now seven and eight, but when they were toddlers, I found myself doing the exact same thing my father did, which is getting so mad at my kids when they were having their tantrums and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then I realized really quickly that when I exploded, it just, it was like they exploded. Like it was the worst possible thing I could do. You know, you're the tone, man. Yeah. You're like, if I use more force, I'll overcome their force. But all I did was create either, you know, terror or more force. And so I basically said, okay, you know, and this is a good example. One of the things I talk about in the book is about it's good to think about the inspiring

characteristics of leaders in our lives, but also the infuriating characteristics of the leaders in our lives. And so my dad is one of my heroes. He inspires me in so many ways. His fury and his anger, like, even penetrated my nightmares as a kid, right? And that was like his one big flaw. And so I was like, okay, I'm not going to be like my dad. And when I found myself as every time that I was able to stay calm, even when they were having tantrums, I felt such a level of pride in that accomplishment. And afterwards, I would reflect that and be like, you did it. Okay, next time you're going to be able to do it again, right? And it's exactly that idea of the evidence.

And so they see them having a tantrum, and I'm like, I know what I'm doing. I know exactly what I have to do here. I have to stay calm. That's the number one goal that I have here. And then if I do stay calm, I feel really good about myself. Now, we want to do better the next time, but we also, if we fail occasionally, we also don't want to feel shame. And we can come back to that later, but I've studied that.

the concept of shame and why shame tends to be a particularly destructive emotion, whereas guilt is a more constructive emotion. And I know people say, oh, he feels shame and guilt. Yeah, yeah. But there are two separate things and they have, you know, really important different consequences. I did want to hit back one more piece of the Tammy Joe story. Yeah, yeah. Okay, the pilot. She did something actually before the flight that I think helped prepare them for the adverse situation they found themselves in, which it's not always just about reacting in the moment or responding in the moment. It's about what you do leading up to the moments. Can you share more about how she collectively found some commonalities among her crew and the people she was working with that helped? Yeah. So one of the most fascinating thing,

by the way, the first thing I ever did in my research career was I, the professor that I worked with as a research system in 1992, if you can imagine how long ago that was, had this incredible grant from NASA to study Cockpit Cruz. and looking at like, and this isn't even in the book, but it's like he studied, you know, about when they make errors and everything. And he found this, and I used to open all of my lectures around this, this example, which is that think of like a 20-hour flight, you know, from here to Singapore, where it's 19 hours, or, you know, like L.A. to Australia, right? Chicago to, you know, Buenos Aires. Like, when is the cockpit crew more likely to have an air at the

beginning of the flight or the end of the flight? And everyone's like, oh, the end of the flight, because they're tired or they're bored or they're complied. But it turns out there's more errors at the beginning of the flight. And there's a reason why is that in most cockpit crews, they have never met each other before. So they have no idea how to work together. And it's only over time, over the course of them being inside this cockpit, that they start to coordinate their behavior effectively. And so that was also the case with Tammy Joe Schultz. She had never met the flight attendants before.

And I'm not even sure if she'd ever met her co-pilot before she might not have. And they had, it was fortunate, it was luck. They had about 20 minutes of extra time before the plane boarded. And so she just chatted with them and started talking. And she, one of the ways that she started the process is she shared a little bit about herself. She could ask people questions, tell me about yourself, but that's also a little awkward. And she said, hey, you know, I just want to get to know you all a little better.

Here's something I'm going through right now. I have a child that's about to graduate from high school and I'm trying to pick like, you know, a good gift for them. And then her first officer says, my kid's graduating from high school too. I've been thinking about the same thing. And then someone mentioned, I just got this great gift. I'm in this Bible group and we're doing a study on Psalms. And then Tammy Jones, like, I'm doing a study on Psalms.

And then they start talking about, like, what's their favorite passages in the Bible? And so they start having this conversation and they get to know each other better. There's this old company, and I don't even know if there's songs. I used to teach this 20 years ago. Ingersoll Rand, and there's this great video about how they used to take them like 18 months to do no hand grinder. And a client said, you got six months to get us like a better hand grinder than you currently have. To do what? I'm sorry?

Oh, a hand grinder. To grab a machine that grinds things down. I don't know exactly. The details aren't that important, but some type of tool. So that they made tools and they needed to update their tool to be a better tool. And usually it would take them like two years to do prototyping. thing, and a client gave them six months. And the CEO says the single most important thing, the transformative leadership thing that I did that changed everything and made all this possible

was we had a pre-project barbecue at my house. And again, like Tammy Joe Scholl is talking to her people, and she's like, you know, I got to meet people and know their first names. And they got to relax and they got to come to my house and they got to see me in a natural. environment. Now, there's a couple of things related to leadership that they did is that they actually put them all the people working on together. So they took marketing out of marketing and put them here. They even involved people from the factory floor and moved so they created a real team, a diverse team, but made them cohesive by co-locating them. But this idea that we forget that we are social human beings that want to connect with others. And sometimes what's going to help you in a

crisis is, did you have a coffee with that person before? Did you go to their house for a barbecue. Did you talk about something deeper than the weather before your flight took off? Isn't it weird, man? Like at the end of the day, if we show that we care and have love for one another, regardless of what the task is, the odds are better that we're going to do a better job if that exists. And some people, I feel like, think that's the soft stuff. I get made fun for this at times when I bring this up when I'm working with leadership teams about how have you shown that you care for each other? How have you shown that you have love for each other? What have you done specifically to build those genuine relationships out of curiosity,

out of a desire to know one another versus just saying, look, this is the problem, do it. And at times they're like, dude, we need to skip over. We don't have time for that. We just need to get to it. And I'm like, this is it. This is it. You can't skip the stuff because you think it's soft. It's the real stuff.

It's the human element of solving problems of trying to do something big that's really hard. If you're doing it with other people, which you almost always are. I don't think you can skip this stuff. I don't think you skip the barbecue, right? Some people would say, ah, that's for the soft people. I don't know, man. I love that the science and the research backs this up. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, team building is a real thing. Now, team building doesn't work if you isolate all of that care into this one team building activity and it doesn't then infiltrate the rest of your interactions. You have to genuinely care. Yeah, genuinely, not just looking for some outcome. I think that's also. part of maybe what happens is you get a transactional style leader who reads Inspire or they listen to this podcast and say, oh, they tell their admin assistant, hey, book a barbecue, I'll show up,

I'll be there for it so I can kind of transactionally show that I care for my team. And then they just go on to the next thing. Like, it does have to come from a genuine place because we've probably all had a boss at times. If you worked in corporate America who that it's been, I know I have, I have the thought bubble right in my head of this specific person of the transactional check the box person as opposed to the transformational leader who genuinely does care and wants to do it the right way. And usually over the long term, those persons, that person who genuinely cares, their outcomes are far better than the transactional one. Absolutely.

You know, and that's, it's a long term investment. And so you might not even see that, that positive effect until years later. But there's two things that I've always talked about when I. teach about leadership and investment in other people is there's a term in economics called prado optimality. And prado optimality is like there is no other better approach to a problem than the one you're taking. If you did anything else differently, you would be on our, you would be worse off. And investing and other people is the prado optimal solution because it is morally the right thing to do, right, to be kind of the people to invest in them to grow, elevate people.

It's also in your long-term best interest for doing so, right? And so, yeah, yeah, long-term, right. And that's what the heart of inspire. So I have in my research, what I do is I compare, I basically ask thousands of people across the globe a very simple question. I just say, tell me about a leader that inspires you. And I say, you know, I want you to be a scientist, and I want you to pinpoint, what was it about that person that inspired you? right and people say you know and ask them to describe what is that feeling of being inspired like and people use words like you know warmth and and light and energy or one of the someone used a phrase that i still used today which is a wellspring of hope and possibility right which i just think really just

but capture that but i also asked them about another leader in their life and i've already sort of mentioned this person is tell me about a leader that also changed you inside and that's the key like leaders changes inside but this time instead of creating that wellspring of hope and possibility, they created a seething cauldron of rage and resentment, right? And one of the things that I found in my research is that those inspired infertian leaders really exist on a continuum where they are mirror images of each other. So like just as one, aspiring leader is courageous, and inferring leader is cowardly, right? Inspiring leader sees the big picture. Inferiting leader is sort of lost in the weeds and pessimistic, right? Inspiring leader is sort of generous versus, you know,

inferior leader is selfish. And sometimes being infuriating, aggressive, using coercion, leading by compliance is actually, in the short term, very efficient, right? You want someone, I want my kid to pick that thing up on the floor. I yell out enough, they're going to pick that thing up off the floor, right? And so we get immediately rewarded by being infuriating sometimes, right? but we start to create these sort of seeds of infuriation that then start to grow and fester and churn into resentment over time and sometimes that resentment eventually explodes. And so we're kind of, you know, Danny Kahneman, this very famous Nobel Prize winning, he won the Nobel Prize in economics, his psychologist, he had this great phrase about, we are rewarded for punishing

and punished for rewarding, even though rewarding people is the far better long-term strategy. but immediately the punishment seems to be the better approach. And so we have to like in some ways keep part of the book, one of the three universal factors that really separate the inspiring for a leader is this concept called visionary and seeing the big picture. And part of what we have to do as a leader, the big picture really is what's going to lead to the best long-term outcome. So I like this kind of great boss, bad boss exercise,

have done something similar. We're a favorite boss, best boss, worst boss. All right, let's list it out. Let's their qualities, right? So a few of them that you mentioned are the best ones, right, inspiring ones, they're courageous, they're optimistic, they're generous. The worst ones are cowardly, pessimistic, selfish. Yeah.

I feel like we all know that. Yet we've probably all done chapters of our lives in the wrong column. Hopefully not long chapters, but we probably all have. So we know this, I think intuitively. And you go deeper to help. Yet if we know this, how do we go more from understanding it to then putting it into play, to be the inspiring leader, the inspiring boss for our teams, to be more courageous and optimistic and generous as opposed to being cowardly, pessimistic and selfish?

Yeah. Two things I'll say about the first is that the name of the book, right, is Inspire and the subheading is the universal path for leading their social. and others. And I use the word path very deliberately, right? Which is like in some ways, there's this path between the inspiring and infuriating person and you can walk in this direction and walk in this direction. But the second thing I think is really important. If you look at this path right now, it's like flat, right? But what does life do to us? Life tilts it towards the infuriating end of the spectrum. And if you look to see, when I ask, I do another exercise

people. It tilts it? Hold on. I'm sorry for interrupting. It tilts it? What do you mean? So here's a good example. So if I ask people, Think about time when you were infuriating. What were some of the precipitating variables or factors? What was the contextual things that led you to be more infuriating? And first thing that almost everyone brings up was I was exhausted. I was tired. Another one, I like to show the Snickers commercial Joe Pesci goes crazy, right?

You know, it's supposed to be a college kid, but it's Joe Precies, he's screaming, yelling at people because he's hungry, right? Or, you know, when we get anxious in a high-stakes situation, or, were in a new situation, or we got angry at her spouse and then we take it out of someone at the office. People are more infuriating when they're in novel situations that they've never been in before. When people are yelling at us, right, we start to yell at others. And so that's what I mean by tilting is that like life pushes us towards the infuriating end of the spectrum. So we need to have ways to tilt it back, right?

And even to tilt it this way. And I think one of the things that you mentioned evidence, which I think is a really, important thing and we can use that evidence. But another is, and a lot of psychologists have talked about this, is, you know, one of the single best things we can do for ourselves is build in habits, right, that make us more inspiring. And, you know, a good example is, I floss my teeth every night. I have a ritual. I floss my teeth, then I brush my teeth, then I use mouthwash, and then I put in my retainer from, you know, when I had braces. And my wife does not floss as much as she should.

And she's been told that dentist, you're at risk of developing cavities. And I just keep telling her, just build it in as a habit. Like, anytime you want to brush your teeth, floss, make yourself floss first. And then eventually, if you don't floss, you're going to feel naked. It's kind of like the old days where people used to put on the seatbelts and be like, oh, my God, I feel like I'm being trapped. And then if they get used to it, they don't put on the seatbelt. They're like, oh, my God, I'm going to fly out the window.

That's the changing of a habit. And so what do I think the important things is develop habits? I'll tell you two things about that. So I was delivering a lecture once about this, and I always give people this call to action. And I call it the leader amplification-ship effect call-to-action. I can tell you more about that in a second. But essentially, I just ask leaders,

they say, pick three people who have less power than you're an organization, and send them an email, praising them for something they did really well recently, or thanking them for their contribution in some way. And I say, you know, be specific. So it's genuine, right? Because it's infuriating when it's not authentic. And I did this once with a group of CEOs, right? 50 CEOs in the room at 10.15 were taking a break at 1030.

1028, one of the CEOs raises his hand and says, I already sent all my three emails. I've already got three emails back. They were like, oh, my God, thank you so much. One of them, it was a Friday one of them wrote, I'm finally going to take my spouse to that restaurant, the new restaurant they always wanted to go to. And I like this story for two reasons. One is I've done research, and I've shown that, remember I talked about how does power affect people? Power basically freeze the reins and makes us impulsive.

So power actually shifts us towards infernity end of the spectrum because we don't pay as much attention to other people. And so this guy could have waited to the break rather than not listening to me. But instead of listened to me, he immediately did this thing. But it also didn't take them almost any time at all. And so I was telling this story once, and a president of a bank, Joseph Stigliano, He's got 1,400 employees. I think it's 1,200 or 1,400. I can't remember exact number, but somewhere in that rate.

I know it's over 1,000. And he said, oh, yeah, I built this into a daily habit. And I was like, tell me more. He says, every morning over my cup of coffee, I send an email to every one of my employees who has a birthday that day. And it takes me about 10 minutes. And I was like, wait, let's calculate. So he's like, that's like five emails a day every day of the year.

He said, yep. And then he said, he four and he said, he four. me. He said, well, I'll show you one of my emails. So he said, hey, Lissage, hey, Ryan, happy birthday. How did bowling and track go last week? That's it. It's one sentence. And then he showed me the response that came back from the person. It was like a novel. Oh, let me tell you all about bowling. I did this. I did the split. You know, blah, blah, blah. I don't even know if you read the email, right? But, like, they were so excited to A, B, wished happy birthday by the president of the bank, but he knew something about that person. He knew they liked bowling, you know. And so

obviously requires some setup, but he built that as a daily habit. And he's like, he's like, I can't drink my coffee without doing it now. Like, it's just like, I'd be like, what am I doing with this coffee without sending my emails? And so, you know, how do we send that daily habit? Now, I was telling this in another time, and a CEO said, actually I do that. And I said, well, tell me more what you do. And he says, every single day over coffee, I do the same thing. I just pick one person and I try to elevate them in some way. And he said something at the end that really, really resonated with me. And this gets back to Pareto Optimality. He says, you know what? My email would say, hey, Ryan, that podcast you did last week, you hit it out of the park. I loved it.

You know, he said, I just put a skip in their step. But he says, Ryan's going to send me back an email. And Ryan's going to be, oh my God, thank you so much, Adam. Like, that means so much to me. that's going to put a skip in my step. So, by sending out this praise, I'm actually elevating myself because, like, I get so much joy from their responses. He said, and this was really changed me because, you know, people say,

face-to-face communication, always communicate in thing. And he had this great response. He said, look, if I praise Ryan to his face, Ryan would kind of feel a little embarrassed. He'd be like, oh, thanks, man. And then it's kind of awkward. Do we hug now?

Like, what happens? you know, like, you know, but if I do it over email, two things are beneficial. One is Ryan gets to savor it. Ryan can go back and read it. He can, Ryan can send it to his best friend, significant other, his parents. But I get that email back, right? And I'm going to get a much more positive response if I do it to Ryan in over email. Like the other day, I got a, and I got a text from a student who just accepted a job at Harvard. So she just got a job at Harvard. And, you know, the working with her for five years, and she just wrote this incredibly nice text to me that was like, I couldn't have done it without you. And I was with a postdoc who just got a job at University of

Pennsylvania, another job. And he was like, I just want to say, like, I feel the same way. And also I'm like, oh, what are you taught? Like, I just felt so awkward hearing it in person by getting my text. I was so, like, overjoyed by it. So I think, but again, those are two examples. Joseph Stigliano, right, this president of this bank, and he gave me approval to use his name. I don't have the approval from the CEO that I mentioned earlier to use his name in the story, but both of them, exact same thing. They're doing something over their coughing that elevates someone in their orbit, but by doing that, they also get elevated themselves. Well, it also changes their default setting to be looking for moments of greatness. I have a few friends who do this really well.

Brooke Cups does this with his basketball team where after practice and games, they have a set of core values and the team goes into the meeting and they say it's called moments of greatness where each player has to recognize moments of greatness for others. And so they know that they're going to be asked this question. So they're always looking for their teammates living up to their core values. Another friend of my name, Rob Kimball, who runs a company. He's a CEO and owner of 800 plus people. Their executive team meets once a week and they open each meeting with every member of the

exec team writing a thank you note to. somebody at the company who lives up to their company core values. So that's happening 52 times a year where those people, roughly 12 people a week, are getting a thank you note. And it almost shifts the default setting for each of those members of the executive team to be on the lookout for people doing great things. So they're always looking because they know they're writing this note on Tuesdays.

And so it just almost changes the way you view the world instead of being pessimistic or looking for people doing bad things, not that doesn't happen because you do have to correct things that aren't good but they're looking for people doing it great for living up to their values and I think that makes them a more inspiring leader that makes them on the end of the spectrum where you want to be versus the one who's upset all the time or pessimistic or looking for people who are doing it wrong. You're totally right and I think there's a lot to be learned from leadership in sports teams because it's high performing and it's complex.

There's lots of team dynamics going up. And that's where you really learn what it means to be a leader. We have the Columbia football coach who recently retired from health reasons. But when he came in, Columbia hadn't won a game in over two seasons. It was one of the longest losing streaks in the history of Columbia. And this is when I was here. I arrived in Columbia 2012. And Coach Magnoli came in.

He'd been one of the winning his coaches. He had retired. But then he was brought out of retirement to do this. Their first year, they won three games. and then second year they won seven. And then he retired just last year, but the coach that took over, they were the first time in their history tied for the Ivy League championship, or first time in 60 years, I think it is, you know, something just incredible.

And he did lots of different things to transform the team. But he said something to me that I still remember to this day, which is, he says, here's the single biggest decision that I have to make as a leader each year, is who can I yell at? Because sometimes people mess up. And you got to say that wasn't the right thing. And we need this habit instead of that habit. We got to go this way instead of that way.

And sometimes you got to do it strongly. You got to do it forcefully. And if I pick the wrong player and that person crumbles, whole team turns against me. I pick the right person, the whole team gets on board. And so he said, and so I don't know if you saw it at the beginning of the year, Steve Kerr, for the Golden State Warriors, preached from training camp day one, fewer turnovers, fewer turnovers, fewer turnovers.

We cannot win. We can't do what we did. when we were the most talented team and we could throw crazy passes behind our back and throw them into the stands. That's okay because we're better than they are. And it was like the fourth or fifth game of the year. And Steph Curry threw some crazy pass from one end of the court to the other. It got stolen and they got an easy three-pointer like three seconds later. And Steve Kerr called a timeout and just lit into Steph Curry. And Jess was like, and obviously became a huge topic of conversation afterwards. And he's like, look, we have a value. We've preached at a value from day.

one and our most important player violated that value. And I had to let him know that he can't do that. But I also knew that he could handle it. Right. And like everyone commented, like Steph Curry didn't get upset. He didn't pout. He didn't act. He's like,

you're right. I shouldn't throw that pass, you know, and I'll do better next time. I think that's high levels of emotional intelligence. I remember my offense coordinator, Ron Oliverie, pulling me aside after my junior year,

going into my senior year. We had a very talented team. And he said, look, this is one-on-one. And I will never forget it. He said, look, the guys need to see me publicly ripping you. They need to see it because if they see me ripping you, the kind of the guy, I was scholarship type guy, all this stuff.

If they see me doing it to you in public, they know I can do it to anybody. And so just so you know, I'm going to do that. And I need to do that for the betterment of this team. I want to make sure you're aware, you're on board. It's not fake. It's going to be real. I'm not going to do it just to do it. I'm going to do it when you make a mistake.

sake, but I'm going to rip you in front of your peers in front of your guys. So they know if I can do it to him, I can do it to anybody. And I never forgotten that one on one. It was like 10 minute conversation before it happened. And he definitely did it regularly. And I felt like he brought me in. I felt like we had this deeper relationship of trust. And I was like, not that I was like in on this little tool because I definitely felt

bad when he was ripping me because I messed up or threw a pig or did something stupid. But it was like, as a leader, I just thought that was such a smart move, such an astute thing for somebody to bring me in. And I think it helped our team in general because then he would rip other guys too. And they knew, well, hey, everybody gets this. That's just the way, that's the way it is on this team. And that's how our coach operates. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, I'm going to come back to what I've used already once.

And I've called it the, you know, one of the three core universal factors. And we can talk about the other two, which we've brought up in not explicitly is he share with you his vision, right? And so that's part of what it is. I'm going to share with you a story right now that I've never, I've never shared before on a podcast or anywhere before. But it's a good example of how the effect when you don't share the vision, but also about picking the right person. When I came up, so when you're at a university, about in your six year, usually, you come up for what's called tenure. And if you get tenure, you have a lifetime appointment for like the next 30 years. That is guaranteed income. You know, that is, your life is about as good as you can be of any job in the world,

right? And I was coming up from my mid-tenure review at Northwestern University, but I had been at another university before, so I was in my six-year post-PHD. So in some ways, it would have been the normal time that I might have come up for tenure if I just started right at Northwestern. And my department voted enthusiastically to recommend me for tenure. And when you come for tenure, your packet, and your research gets sent out to about 10 to 15 people out in the world who evaluate it and make a recommendation. And I got emails from multiple of these people saying, hey, I got your packet for your mid-tenure review, but I said, you should totally tenure this person. He deserves tenure. So I go into my meeting with the deans where I'm thinking I'm getting tenure.

My departments told me they want me to get tenure. Outside people told me I want to get tenure, and I didn't get tenure. I got promoted to untenured associate, but not to a tenured position. And it was unbelievably shocking. And I asked for explanations and I was getting poor, like, inconsistent responses back. Anyway, so I leave the dean's office. I go in the stairwell and I cry. Probably cry for about 10, 15 minutes. I mean, I was so shocked and overwhelmed.

I go upstairs, my department has a cake for me, says, congratulations. And I just look at them in the eye and I'm like, it didn't happen. And I go into my office, close the door. And they, of course, run downstairs to the dean's office, like, what the, you know. But anyway, I went to go to the, I took the initiative. I went to go talk to the dean the next day. I said, hey, maybe can we talk a little bit more? And he said, absolutely, come on in.

And he actually told me what happened with you. He said, look, this mid-tenure thing has been causing us so many problems because people come in and they're like, well, this person got early tenure. Why am I not getting early tenure? And he basically said, we kind of wanted to reset the bar. And you had one of the best records of seen at that point. He was like, well, if we don't give Adam early tenure, then no one else is going to ask for it. Now, the difference is they didn't share that vision with me in advance, right?

And explain it afterwards. Now, he also said something. He said, I took a calculated risk. Like, I was like, of all the people that I've met, I figured you would, you know, understand this, but also not be, you know, go off half cocked and like, you know. And he was right. And I was like, yeah, I get it. You know, I'm not happy about it. But like, and three years later, I got a full professor, tenure.

offer from Harvard. And I said no, and I stayed at Northwestern. And so he was right. Like, he had made a good calculation, you know, pick the right person to yell at, you know, or to not give the greatest reward to. He's like, look, we have so much confidence in you. I think you know, we know you're going to get tenure in three years. Some people think you already deserve tenure. And I get it. It's like, yeah, I love what I do. I'm not going to change my behavior. But I think the difference between what happened to you and what happened to me is you were given the vision. You were brought into the vision. eventually it was, but it was after the fact, after it already had this emotional reaction. And I think it just comes back to something so fundamental and so essential that we said at the very

beginning. What did Tammy Joe Schultz do? She didn't just fly the plane well. She told the passengers what she was doing. We're not going down. We're going to fill it. Right. And that was like without those 10 words, without, if this person had yelled at you, without telling

you that they're going to do that and why they're going to do that, you would have had a very different reaction for it. And so I think letting people in on your vision is critical. And one of things I talk about in the book is that sometimes we're really good at letting our second in command or vision, but not the wider organization. People want to know why they're doing what they're doing. Visionary is an interesting term. You hear like visionary integrator in this EOS system. I've had Gino Wickman on to talk all about that stuff with the book traction. And I feel like, like, this is a personal question, Adam, that I am like a plotter. I am a put my head down and do the next thing in front of me. And then the next thing. And I, and one of my core values is consistency.

And I do have the skill to consistently do the work every day. That's how this podcast has never missed the Sunday in a decade. I've never missed a mindful Monday in that amount of time as well. Like no matter what, like sickness, travel, I can do that. But the visionary stuff of like thinking long term of like what is the what's happening with the learning leader in five to 10 years what's your plan i'm like i don't know i'm going to keep doing this i'm going to keep following my curiosity and having smart people like adam on the show and ask them questions and try to be a good listener and ask follow-up questions what are like some of the the tools or the ways for those of us who are the plotters who are the consistent get-to-work everyday type people who don't always pick their head up

and look down the road five years. How can we become better visionaries? What can we do? Yeah, I think the word visionary, and the way that I define it in the book is like big picture, optimistic vision of the future that's simplified and visualized and repeated, right? And so really what it is, it's just putting in a context for your behavior, right?

So here's one question that you might ask yourself, what it means to be visionary is like, why is consistency so important to you? like consistency is the value but what's the purpose of that value just in some ways instead of saying thinking long term i would say thinking broader big picture right as a good example of i'll give you an example that we're experienced right now in our and our own life is we've been very fortunate in my life i've two young kids seven and eight my mother and my wife's mother came to the hospital when my son was born and helped out and essentially never left so she's lived up for

eight years and now she's leaving she's going to go she's moving out to los vey is a great new chapter in her life. And my older son is so attached to her. We had two kids, you know, essentially 14 months apart. So we really needed all hands on deck. And so like my wife was, you know, taking care and breastfeeding the younger one. Lola and I were really taking care of the older one. So he's, Lola is the Tagalog work for grandmother. My wife is Filipino and born in the States, but Filipino. Anyway, she's moving in next week. And about three weeks ago, my son just started being really mean to his mom, to my wife. Just like, you know, I don't want you to be near me, get away from me, blah, blah, blah. And this is a good example where the big picture really matters.

He's mad that Lola's leaving. He can't express anger towards Lola. In fact, he and his grandmother never thought, right? She's his safety valve, right? And so he's angry. He can't express anger of this person. He's displacing that anger to my wife. And I keep saying, you can't take it personally, because you've got to see the big picture. What is going on here? You're a safe person that he can express this to. So rather than thinking, he's being mean to me thinking, I'm someone that he can be mad at

and so that he can deal with the loss that his grandmother's moving to their place. And so part of it, when I say visionary, it's just contextualizing, you know, wise consistency matter important to you. Why do you do the podcast every single week? What's the larger thing that you're trying to accomplish, which is you're trying to help everyone in this world

be a better leader. And if they're a better leader, they're going to make someone else slice better. And then that person's going to make someone else's life better. So the bigger picture is, you know, by being consistent, is that the long-term goal of actually maybe even seeing it? You're not going to see the number of people that have benefited. The broader goal is by being consistent and giving people the opportunity to learn. And that creates the potential for everyone to be better off. I appreciate that. I like how you close the book. And I wanted to ask you about that. And that's the story about the Great Gatsby and your parents, specifically your dad. And I know you gave this salutation speech at your high school graduation about this as well.

Can you talk more about your dad and the Great Gatsby and how that's impacted you? Yeah, sure. My one of the thing, you know, I mentioned my dad and I mentioned his anger earlier, One of the things that really connects me to my dad is he loved both fiction and movies. And so we used to watch movies and fiction and talk about, I remember we saw the movie Brazil when I was in high school, the Terry Gilliam film. And we just had these long, deep conversations about what the movie meant. And so he really loved the Great Gatsby, and he loved the last page. And for those who don't remember, it's the main narrator thinking about Gatsby.

He had this house across the river from the woman that he always loved. And there is sort of a green light on the end of her dock. And so he's thinking about how everyday Gatsby could look out at this green light and think about how close the thing that mattered most to him was. But also how the green light was a motivator and inspire her for him, like the thing that kept him going. And there's a hopefulness to it. There's an optimism to it.

And so my dad just loved this. And so in my, I was salutatoria, I got to give a speech. And I sort of talked about the green light. in there. And I bring it up at the end of the book, because I also talk about the both inspiring aspects, but also some of the infuriating aspects of my dad. But I end the book by saying this, is that here's the thing about my parents, both my mom and my dad, that most inspired me, is they weren't perfect, but they tried to be better today than they were yesterday, and they wanted to be better tomorrow than they were today. And there's just this level of

just belief in self-improvement, the belief that, you know, we could fall off the horse, but we could always get back on and try to find a better way to ride the horse tomorrow. And I think it's really interesting. My wife lived in Japan for two years, and there's a term in Japan called Kaizet, called Continual Improvement, right? This idea that always improving. If you remember, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, you know, always be selling, you know, that Vernors has always be improving, right? Always, just all you can do in life is improve, right?

And you can't ask for anything more from anyone in the world is, all I want to do is try to be a little bit better podcaster today than when you're yesterday, a little bit better writer tomorrow than you were today. Like whatever it is that you're working on, just try to do it a little better the next time. So good, man. The book is called Inspire, the universal path for leading yourself and others. It's amazingly well written and crafted. Great stories, great science. Really good practical application. You got it all. Adam, thank you so much for being here, man. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. I would love that too. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Adam Galensky. A few takeaways from my notes. Ten words, we are not going down. We are going to Philly. The composure of pilot Tammy Joe Schultz after the size.

of her airplane exploded and somebody fell out. Leadership is needed most when things go bad. How do you respond when adversity strikes? Those are the moments when we must be prepared to share the vision and help our team stay the course. Then the 1992 cockpit study of pilots. Did more errors happen at the beginning or the end of a 19-hour flight? We all would assume it would be the end because of sheer time and exhaustion. However, more errors happen at the beginning of the flight because the crews don't know each other yet. So how does this translate to your team? It's imperative to genuinely care and get to know the people on your team.

Host barbecue parties, ask questions, and genuinely learn about the people you're leading. Those are not soft skills. Those are essential skills. Then what did Adam learn from his parents and the great Gatsby, this idea of Kaizen, which is a Japanese business philosophy that promotes continuous improvement through small incremental changes? Kaizen means good change or change for the better or improvement. And I'd ask you, what are you intentionally doing to ensure that you'll be better tomorrow than you are today.

Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Adam Galinsky. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and you subscribe to the show and you rate it hopefully five stars and you write a thoughtful review. And by doing all of that, you are regularly giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever. be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk soon. Can't wait.