#142 Marshall Goldsmith: The Essentials Of Leadership
01:34:39 Share

See, when you're in school, you take test after test after test after test. You have to prove you're smart over and over, thousands of times. You have to prove you're smart. It's very difficult to stop. You have to learn to quit being right all the time and quit being smart all the time and quit thinking this is a contest about how smart you are and how right you are and realize that I'm here to make a positive difference in the world.

And me being smart and me being right is probably no longer the way to do that. Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. The goal of this show is to master the best of what other people have already figured out. To that end, I sit down with people at the top of their game to uncover what they've learned along the way.

Every episode is packed with timeless ideas and insights that you can use in life and business. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like special member-only episodes, access before anyone else, transcripts, and other member-only content, you can join us at fs.blog.com. Check out the show notes for a link. Today, I'm speaking with Marshall Goldsmith.

Marshall is one of the top leadership coaches in the world and the author of the New York Times number one bestseller, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. I wanted to talk about leadership with Marshall so that I can add to my leadership repertoire and we could all become better leaders. We talk about how to gain confidence, motivating others, where leaders go wrong, why it's easier to change behavior than perception, and how you can specifically go about changing others' perceptions and

The three words that kill any conversation, decision-making, environment, the relationship between intensity and consistency, and so much more. Leadership isn't a position. It's a series of actions. And this episode will not only give you the tools you need to become a better leader, but it will help you upgrade yourself. It's time to listen and learn. ♪

The IKEA Business Network is now open for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Join for free today to get access to interior design services to help you make the most of your workspace, employee well-being benefits to help you and your people grow, and amazing discounts on travel, insurance, and IKEA purchases, deliveries, and more. Take your small business to the next level when you sign up for the IKEA Business Network for free today by searching IKEA Business Network.

I want to start with something simple and then we can build up from there. So let's start with what is leadership?

Leadership, number one, I never like to get into semantic debates. So when I give you a definition, just look at it as my definition, not the right definition. Paul Hersey, my old mentor, taught me that. He said, there are many definitions of words, so don't get into semantic arguments. Just define what you mean and just leave it at that. So for me, I like his definition. Leadership is working with and through others to achieve objectives and

And the key word in the definition is others, as opposed to doing it by yourself. Can anyone be a leader? Oh, yeah. Anyone can be a leader, assuming they have basic qualities to get along in life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm often asked a question, are leaders made or born? A common question. And I can answer one thing definitively. Are you ready?

100% of every leader I've ever met, and I've met many, have been born. They've all been born. So the only question is, can leaders become more effective? And the answer to that is a definite yes. I have research from thousands of people that leaders can definitely increase their effectiveness. Do we hold any sort of self-sabotaging beliefs about leadership? Yeah, I think we have a lot of self-limiting beliefs about

And the self-limiting beliefs, a lot of these come from inside us. Basically, I can't do this. I can't do that. This is just the way I am. One of the most common problems is this is just the way I am, as if we have some real, quote, real fixed identity that lives throughout time. And I have to really work on people to change that. Even smart people say things like this. You know, I can't listen. I can't listen. I've never been able to listen. I can't listen.

Well, look in their ears. Why not? You got something stuck in there? Why can't you listen? Do you have any curable genetic defect that is prohibiting you from listening? Well, you know, yeah, as long as we tell ourselves that's the way I am, two things happen, both bad. One, we inhibit the odds on ever getting better. Two, even if we do change our behavior, we don't seem authentic to ourselves. We feel like a phony because if the real me can't listen,

And you say I'm a good listener. You know what I'm thinking? Well, that's not the real me. I'm just pretending to be a good listener because the real me is no good at that. So a lot of our beliefs are very self-limiting. And by the way, this is not limited to people at the bottom of the food chain.

People I coach are at the top of the food chain, and they still do this. That's just the way I am stuff. So when it comes to changing our behavior then, and I want to speak more about this a little later as well, are we changing our beliefs about ourselves or are we changing our habits? How do you think about that? Both.

Both. I mean, you can definitely see if you don't change your beliefs about yourself, it can be hard to change your behavior. Or as I said, even if you do change your behavior, you don't feel real or authentic. So that's why I think it's really important to look at both.

uh the way you do look at yourself that you identify your self-concept your identity whatever that might be and also your behavior talk to me a little bit about how you go through that process with someone do you start with the belief do you start with the behavior how do you get that earned confidence to sort of say that i can do this even though you haven't done it or you don't believe that about yourself well what i do is i give everyone confidential feedback

So every leader I work with gets confidential feedback from their colleagues. The average person I coach gets feedback from 18 people. So, you know, this is, and these reports are very, they're hard to hear sometimes because they're not used to getting honest feedback. And so they get feedback from a lot of people. These might be board members, they might be direct reports, peers. And then they get this feedback and they say, okay, I feel good about X, I want to get better at Y.

I said, fine. Then they need to talk to, if they're not the CEO, they talk to the CEO. If they are the CEO, they talk to the board, say, all right, is this, are these the right behaviors and the right people? And they say, yes. And then the next thing is I teach people how to respond to feedback. They go back and talk to everybody and say, for example, you know, thank you so much for participating in this process.

The first thing I want to say is, you know, how grateful I am. I don't know who said what. Many people said many things to try to help me. I have nothing to lose and much to gain. Second, much of my feedback is positive. Ethical, dedicated, hardworking. I care about the company and our customers and creative and getting results. And these are important things to me. I hope mine score high and did. I do not know who said what. I know a lot of people took the time to help me. I just want to say how grateful I am.

Then they don't say but, they say and there's something I'd like to improve. For example, I'd like to be a better listener. If I haven't listened to you or the other people in the past, I'm sorry. Please accept my apologies. There's no excuse. I'm not going to ask you for more feedback about the past. I'm going to ask you for ideas for the future. If you have ideas to help me be a positive and open-minded listener in the future, what might they be? Whatever the person says, sit there, shut up, listen, take notes, say thank you, don't judge, and don't critique.

And then they listen to the ideas and they say, thank you. I cannot promise to change everything everyone says. I can't promise to listen to everyone to think of these ideas and do what I can. I cannot change the past. I can change the future. You know, I can't get better at everything. I get better at this. And I'm going to involve you and ask you if you don't mind to help me get better.

So that's responding. And then the next thing is they focus on changing. I had been in business 12 years before anyone asked me the great existential question. What was it? Does anybody ever really change? Well, I have a background in mathematics. I said, I have no research to prove it, so I guess I don't know. Well, for 45 years, I've been answering the question. Now I do know. I know who changes, who doesn't change, why people change, why people don't change.

And the key to making change lasts is, and by the way, I've done a research study called Leadership as a Context Board.

If anyone would like to see a copy of the research, send me an email, marshall at marshallgoldsmith.com. I'll send you a copy of it. And it's 86,000 people from all around the world. And the key to making everything work is you have to follow up and stick with it. What's that sound like? You know, Mr. Colleague, two months ago, I said I wanted to be a more positive and open-minded listener. It's been two months. Based on the last two months, give me ideas for the next two months.

Four months ago, I said I wanted to be a positive and open-minded listener. Based on the last two months, give me ideas for the next two months, six months, eight months, 10 months, 12 months. Well, what happens when you do this is, this is a research study from 86,000 people, leaders that don't follow up and don't talk to people, guess what? Don't get better. Improvement looks like random chance. Leaders that do talk to people and follow up to the degree they make it a systematic process, huge improvement.

And what I've learned is people don't get better because of me. They get better because of themselves and the people around them. I'm a facilitator more than I'm an expert. One of the things that strikes me about that approach that's really interesting is that if I have a colleague and the colleague doesn't think I'm a good listener and I go to them and I say, okay, I'm going to change my behavior. And do you have any ideas for what I can do? And they still are going to see the world through this eye. I could be a great listener for six months.

And then that one time that I don't listen, they're going to key in on this. Well, this is a very, very critical point. This is why follow-up is important. Take scenario A and scenario B. Scenario A, you get feedback. I'm going to pick a simple example, making destructive comments. I picked that because you couldn't get simpler.

So I get the feedback. I make too many destructive comments. Okay, quit doing it. Just quit doing it. I go seven months and never make a destructive comment about anyone. Now, back to your good point. Seven months later, I say, idiots in finance, stupid bean counters. How do you get anything done in a stupid company that's run by accountants? You hear me. Your reaction is he's never changed. Here's what happens, though, when you do follow-up. I come back immediately and I have this conversation. You don't believe I'm going to change.

You don't believe in change. You think, well, I went to this course, temporary religious experience. This will never last. What happens, though, two months later when I come back and say it's been two months? I want to do a great job of not making destructive comments, be a good team player, give me ideas. Now you think about it. You think, wait, you've done a good job. Four months. Good job. Six months. Good job. Seven months. Idiots in finance.

You know what you would say then? You've really worked hard. You went seven months without doing that. You shouldn't have said that. I said, you're right. I'm going to apologize. Situation A, did behavior change? Yes. Did perception change? No. Situation B, did behavior change? Yes. Did perception change? Yes. And you're making an excellent point. In leadership, it doesn't matter what we say. It only matters what they hear. If they don't hear it, it doesn't matter if we said it or not. One of the other points you made about leadership was working through others. And

I think that's really interesting because often we transition into leadership. I mean, formal leadership in terms of running a team or an organization or a department. And we're going from a job where we're a high achiever, but that achievement is often individual. So how do we transition from being an achiever to a leader?

What you've just said is one of the biggest challenges of going into leadership because we're used to doing it ourselves. Now, you have to learn to quit being right all the time and quit being smart all the time and quit thinking this is a contest about how smart you are and how right you are and realize that I'm here to make a positive difference in the world.

And me being smart and me being right is probably no longer the way to do that. See, when you're in school, you take test after test after test after test. You have to prove you're smart over and over, thousands of times. You have to prove you're smart. It's very difficult to stop. We are programmed to prove we're smart, and it's hard to stop. So I was interviewed in the Harvard Business Review and asked a question related to your question. What's the number one problem of all the successful people you've coached over the years?

My answer, winning too much. What does that mean? If it's important, we want to win. If it's meaningful, we want to win. If it's critical, we want to win. If it's trivial, we want to win. If it's not worth it, we want to win anyway. Winners love winning. It's very hard for winners not to constantly win. I'm going to give you a case study of winning too much that almost all of my clients fail. You will probably fail and almost all the listeners will fail. Case study number one, you want to go to dinner at restaurant X. You

Your wife, husband, friend, or partner wants to go to dinner at restaurant Y. You have a heated argument. Do you go to restaurant Y? It was not your choice. The food tastes awful and the service is terrible. Option A, you could critique the food. Point out our partner was wrong. This mistake could have been avoided if only you listened to me, me, me, me, me. Option B, shut up.

Eat the stupid food. Try to enjoy it and have a nice night. What would I do? What should I do? Almost all my clients, what would I do? Critique the food. What should I do? Shut up. Case study two, even worse. You have a hard day at work, a hard day. You go home. Your husband, wife, friend, or partner is there. And the other person says, I had such a hard day today. I had such a tough day. And we reply.

You had a hard day. You had a hard day. Do you have any idea what I had to put up with today? Do you think you had a hard day? We're so competitive, we have to prove we're more miserable than the people we live with. I gave this example to my class at the Dartmouth Tech School. A young guy raised his hand. He said, I did that last week. I asked him, what happened? He said, my wife looked at me. She said, honey, you just think you've had a hard day. It is not over. I said,

It's not over. Well, it's hard not to win all the time. And the other thing is it's very hard for technical people not to add value constantly. So what does that mean? I'm young, smart, enthusiastic, and you're my boss. I come to you with an idea. You think it's a great idea. Rather than just saying great idea, our tendency is to say, well, that's a nice idea. Why don't you add this to it?

Well, the quality of the idea may go up 5%. My commitment to execute this idea just went down 50%. It's no longer my idea, boss. Now it's your idea. Incredibly difficult for smart, successful people not to constantly add value. One of my good coaching clients was JP Garnier. He was the CEO of a very large drug company called GlaxoSmithKline. I said, what did you learn about leadership as the CEO of this huge company? He said, I've learned a very hard lesson.

And every time your listeners get promoted in life, this lesson becomes more real. He said, my suggestions become orders. Now, he said, if they're smart, they're orders. If they're stupid, they're orders. If I want them to be orders, they are orders. And if I do not want them to be orders, they are orders anyway. My suggestions become orders. For nine years, I trained the admirals of the United States Navy. What's the first thing I teach the new admirals? You get that star?

Your suggestions become orders. Admirals don't make suggestions. Admirals make a suggestion. What's the response? Aye, aye. That suggestion is an order. So I said, JP, what did you learn from me when I was your coach that helped you the most? He said, you taught me one lesson and helped me be a better leader and have a happier life. I said, what was it? He said, before I speak, breathe, breathe, and ask one question. Is it worth it?

Is it worth it? He said, as a CEO of this company, 50% of the time I've had the discipline to stop and to breathe and say, is it worth it? What did I decide? Am I right? Maybe. Is it worth it? No. Oh, there's two follow-ups I have to this. The first is sort of reprogramming that the stop adding too much value is, is

It's definitely something that I've had to catch myself doing when I used to lead a team of people. And it is what is the when you catch yourself in that moment and you know you can make this idea better and you swallow it, you don't say anything. It's sometimes good to add value. I can't tell you when it is or isn't good. Now, JP didn't say he never added value. What did he say? Half the time he didn't add value.

In the old days, he always added value. See, if you just stop and think, you're probably going to come up with a pretty good answer. In real world, we don't stop and think. We just talk. By the way, if you have to ask at work, I'll give you a technique. Breathe. Is my comment going to improve this other person's commitment? If the answer is yes, fine. If the answer is no, breathe again. Is it worth saying? Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it's not. At home, breathe, breathe. Is my comment going to improve my relationship with the person I love? If the answer is no, should I say it? Well, at work, about half the time, if you have to ask, it's not worth it. At home, it's almost never worth it.

If you have to ask, there's a good bet. Don't even think about it. You know, if you have to ask, is this going to be a good idea? It probably won't be. There's an enormous amount of research and overwhelming amount of advice for leaders out there on how to motivate other people.

What do you want leaders to know about motivation? Well, let me give you advice for coaching. Now, I'm not going to speak about all leadership because I'm going to speak just about coaching. Okay, you ready? In my coaching for years, I didn't get paid if my clients didn't get better. Better is not judged by me or them. It's judged by everyone around them. Now, there's a great way to test if someone believes what they're saying. Ask them a question. Want to bet on it? Do you want to bet on it? Now, they say, I believe it, but I wouldn't bet on it. You know what you just learned? They don't believe it.

They don't believe it. If they believe it, they bet on it. Here's the money. I bet on it. Well, when you get paid for results, you learn humility. The client I coached that I spent the most amount of time with did not improve at all and did not get paid.

The client I coached, I spent the least amount of time with, improved more than anyone I've ever coached. 200 people got better and I did get paid. A very humbling lesson. I made a chart. On one dimension, it was called time spent with executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. The other dimension is called improvement. There was a clear negative correlation between spending time with me and getting better. Well, I thought this is troubling. So I go talk to my client who improved the most.

who I spent the least amount of time with. By the way, I spent hours with him. He's a great friend of mine over 30 years, but actually coaching very little time.

He improved the most, and he was great to start with. His name, Alan Mullally. Alan went on to be the CO for it. The stock went from $1.01 to $18.40, 1,837% appreciation in stock value. He also had a 97% approval rating from every employee in a union company, CEO of the year in the United States, and ranked number three greatest leader in the entire world. Amazing man. So I talked to Alan, my good friend.

I said, Alan, of all the people I've coached, I spent the least amount of time with you coaching you, and you improved the most, and you were great to start with. Now, I said, Alan, I made a chart. On one dimension, it's called time spent with the executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith. The other dimension is called improvement, and there seemed to be a negative relationship here. Now, Alan, I said, the way this chart looks, had you never met me, you would really be good. Yeah.

So I said, what should I learn about coaching from you? Well, he taught me a lesson that changed my life. He said, your biggest challenge as a coach is one thing, customer selection. You pick the right customer, your coaching process always works. You pick the wrong customer, your coaching process will never work. And he said, never make the coaching process about yourself and your own ego and how smart you think you are. Make it about those great people you work with and how proud you are of them.

Then he said, as the CEO of Ford, my job ain't that different. I don't design the cars. I don't build the cars. I don't sell cars. I got to have great people. And every day I drive to work, I tell myself leadership's not about me. It's about them. Well, if you ask me a lesson, you know, I got ranked number one coach in the world for years. Nobody knows I'm a good coach. I can't sit there and say I'm a better coach than everybody. How do I even know that? I don't. One thing I have got though, I get the best clients. How do you go about client selection?

Well, number one, I talk to my clients. I say, if I work with you, you will do the following. You will get feedback. You will talk to people. You will follow up. You will work hard. You will, will, will, will, will. And then I say, guess what? If there's any that you don't want to do, it's okay. I just won't work with you. I just won't work with you. Now, one thing I'm real proud of in my new book, The Earned Life, is the first six pages. First six pages are my clients.

And the one thing I did in this book that I love is it says, in my 50-year career as an executive educator and coach, I've been blessed to work with many of the greatest leaders in America. In theory, I'm supposed to help them. In practice, I've learned far more from them than they've learned from me. And then I go on and talk about how great they are. Well, they talk about how great I am. I talk about how great they are. You know what? However great I am is because of them.

Anybody would look like a good coach if he coached the people I coach. Jim Kim, president of the World Bank, saved 22 million lives when he was head of partner in health. My friend Alan Mulally, I mentioned, CEO of the Air in the United States. Hubert Jolie, CEO of Best Buy, spectacular leader, turned the company around.

Albert Berlus, CEO of Pfizer, did a few important things last year. Francis Heselbein won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Peter Drucker said it's the greatest leader he's ever met. Oh, you know, Ashish Advani just got nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. James Downing, head of St. Jude's Children's Hospital, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you know what?

Key to being a great coach, work with them. And the other thing is, if people don't care, don't waste your time. Have you ever attempted to change the behavior of a husband, wife, or partner who had no interest in changing? How's that working out for you? And I was teaching my class, you ever try to change mommy and daddy that had no interest in changing? How'd that go?

One woman raised her hand. I said, are you trying to change mommy or daddy? She said, daddy. I said, what's daddy's problem? She said, he doesn't have a healthy lifestyle. I asked her, how old is daddy? She said, 94 years old. I said, leave the old boy alone. You want to smoke a cigar, old man, smoke two. Who cares? He's 94. Well, you know, people don't care. Don't waste your time. Put your time as a coach in with people that do care. You don't know when it's going to get better anyway.

So on that note, you've worked with some of the best people in the world and thousands of them. I thought I'm curious as to what you've learned about what really matters in life from that. Well, this is a different question than corporate success. If you look at life, my new book, I talk a lot about that. And I talk about three things. What's it take to have a great life? All right. And to me, great life is not measured by how much money you have or how much status you have.

What does it take to have a great life? First, I'll talk about three things I don't discuss in my book, and then three things I do. The ones I don't discuss are, number one, it's health. You need to have good health, but I'm not writing a book on health. Two, you need at least a kind of middle-class level of income, and I'm not writing a book about that. And you need to have great relationships with people you love, and this book is only partially about that. Assuming you've got that, you need three things. One, your aspirations.

You have to have something. Why am I doing this? Some reason for existence that's beyond just getting things done. You need a why. Two, your ambitions. Those are the achievements that you have. And then number three is your day-to-day activities. That's the life you're living every day. And to the degree these three things are aligned, you're probably going to have a great life, which not always as easy as it sounds. And what happens is if you look at the history of the world,

Most people in the history of the world were kind of stuck in the action phase, that day-to-day activity. We didn't have a lot of control in our history. We kind of much did what we were told. We're born where we're supposed to be, played our role in life, and we just lived from day to day. Not a bad thing. That's the way it was. Some people are lost in the aspiration phase. They have lofty ideas and dreams. They don't achieve much, but they think a lot about big things.

The people I coach and most of the people on this podcast, if they're not careful, they overweight ambition and achievement. They're lost in achievement. And the one thing I really focus on in my new book is this, never make your value as a human being conditioned on the results of what you're trying to achieve. Never do that. It's a fool's game. It is a fool's game for two reasons. One, you don't control the outcomes.

There are a million variables impacting anything we're trying to do in life today. You don't control that. And number two, what happens if you do achieve stuff? How much satisfaction does that give you in life anyway? A week, a month, a year? Not much. As soon as you achieve something, if that's all that matters, guess what you're going to have to do? Achieve more and more and more and more, and you never get there. So it's really, this is counter to Western philosophy.

We have been hammered that achievement is good. About 98% of all self-help books tell you achieve more, delay gratification. Here's how you can achieve more. On the assumption that once I achieve more, everything will be okay. The great Western disease is it's all going to be defined when, followed by when. I get the money status, BMW, condominium, everything's going to be okay after that. There's no when. That's all nonsense.

It's all going to be a great win. When is an old person waiting to die? That's when. There's no when there. And one type of book always ends with, and they lived happily ever after. That type of book is called a fairy tale. That's not the real world. That's a fairy tale. In life, we're constantly reinventing ourselves. And the first thing I talk about is never place your value as a human being on the results of what you're trying to achieve. I mentioned Albert Burla, who endorsed the book from Pfizer.

I called Albert. How'd you do last year? Pretty good. You know, came up with his vaccine, saved a billion or so lives. That's pretty good. And stocks an all time high and CEO of the year and book and on and on. Pretty good year. So what's your problem in life? He said, I have a huge problem next year. Next year. If his value as a human being is he has to do better than last year, pack it in. He will never do better than last year.

What happens to the Super Bowl champions? Disaster. Michael Phelps won 25 gold medals, more than anyone in history. What do you think about doing after you won his last medal? Killing himself, killing himself. If that's it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. So what I talk about in the book is it's great to try to achieve things, but don't become fixated on the outcomes. One of the most brilliant people I've ever met is called, his name's Safi Bakalp.

Safi, who's a small business guy, started up 10 or 12 companies, made tens of millions of dollars. Has a PhD in physics from Stanford, has an IQ probably equal to mine and yours combined. He, you know, just a brilliant guy, wrote a book called Loon Shots. He's consulted presidents, on and on and on. So Safi is one of the people I spent time with over COVID during Zoom calls every weekend. And he said he finally realized something. He's a scientist. He said he finally realized that

I always thought happiness was a dependent variable based upon achievement, that I will be happy after I achieve. And he said, I finally realized happiness and achievement are independent variables. You can achieve a lot and be happy. You can achieve a lot and be miserable. You can achieve nothing and be happy. You can achieve nothing and be miserable. They're independent variables. And when I talked to Safi, I told him, how much do you have to achieve? We need two PhDs from Stanford? What, another 100 million bucks?

start up some more companies, consult a couple more presidents. What does it matter? On achievement, you're a 99.999 now. You think it's going to matter you get to a 99.9999? It's not going to matter. You're just going to find something else to do. And it was a great breakthrough for him because he realized you can be happy without dependency upon the next achievement. Can we teach people this or does it have to be learned?

Yeah. And the way you do it is you love the process of what you're doing. You do your best. It's connected to a higher purpose and you achieve what you achieve. You win, you win. If you lose, you lose. Yeah. And this comes back to focusing on the process instead of the outcome. Exactly. I tell a story, the golfer in the beer can. So there's a golfer going to his little country club. He's playing for the club championship, right? Last hole.

Noisy people in front of him drinking beer. Oh, very annoying. But he concentrates. He hits a drive. Almost perfect. Somehow the ball goes over into the rough. A terrible lie. What happened? He walks up to the ball. A beer can. The idiots in front of him left a beer can on the fairway. He is so angry. What does a golfer need to do? Forget about the drive. Forget about the beer can. Forget about the idiots.

Come up with a strategy. Breathe. Focus on the process. Hit the shot in front of you. Hit the shot in front of you. That's it. Let all that other stuff go. It's just a distraction. Don't think about winning the tournament. That's a distraction. Don't think about the results. Hit the shot. And the other thing is, forgive the other people for being who they are and forgive yourself for wishing they were somebody else. Let it go.

Don't make yourself miserable because people in front of you are idiots. How important is it to have people around you, to have good company around you while you're doing this? Well, you know, I think it can be very important. Let me give you the background of what I did over COVID, which led to my last book.

That is this. We ended up with 50 or 60 amazing people. And I can mention their names. They're all in the book. One of them was Pau Gasol, who's a great basketball star. Curtis Martin, NFL all-star. Telly Leung, Broadway star. We had the head of the Olympic Committee. They had Russell Investments. They had Ancestry.com. We had all these CEOs, president of the World Bank. Just an amazing, amazing group of people. And every weekend, they talked about their lives.

And every week they would say, here's what I feel good about in my life. And here's what I've done wrong. And please give me help. I just help me. And they try to help each other over and over and over and over again. Well, they loved it. Why? There's an old saying, it's lonely at the top. It used to be lonely at the top. Today it is lonely-er at the top. People are lonely out there. People are lonely.

And just having a group of people to talk to where nobody's going to put you on social media, make a fool of you, where you can just be a human. One person said, I get to be human one hour a week. It's a big deal. So I think having a support group is more important today than ever. Having people that help you, that try to kind of support you, they're not trying to put you down. And also very few of us live in the community that we were brought up in. Most of us don't.

We don't have this community anymore and we're lonely. So I think it's, you know, the support group really important. And over COVID, I spent 400 hours doing this. I think, too, the things that you hit on there that are really important are a sense of community, a sense of purpose, and also feeling like you're part of something larger than yourself.

And I think that that's missing from so many of our lives, right? Not only the connection to our community, but also feeling part of something meaningful that's larger than us. And if you're not, what's the point? So why exactly am I working 80 hours a week? Why? Well, if there's no larger purpose, why am I doing this?

How do we deprogram ourselves then from the sort of focus on results and, you know, getting to the next step and then the next step and the next step and being better and better and better? And how do we get out of that to the point where we can take pride in the process and focus on the next shot and trying to make the next shot better or the next practice better? Well, I'm going to share a technique I talk about in the book, and this is called the Every Breath Paradigm.

So I'm a Buddhist. I'm not a religious Buddhist. I'm a philosophical Buddhist. I've probably read 400 books about Buddhism. So I know more about Buddhism than I know about what I got a PhD in. Buddhist belief is every time I take a breath, it's a new me. So you breathe, new me, new me, new me. Everything that happened before this second in time was done by an infinite set of people. They were called the previous me's. So the first thing is you breathe and you think about all the previous years.

Think of all the gifts they've given you that's listening to me right now. Think about how hard they tried, how many people they helped. If anybody did that many nice things, what'd you just say to those good people? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, did they make some mistakes in life? Of course they did. Let it go. Let it go. So one thing is don't live in the past and beat yourself up over the head for things the previous versions of you did.

And there's a great story in the book, a guy's riding in a car with his wife and they had a great time with the kids over the weekend. They're so happy. And she starts in on, well, you know, 10 years ago, you were never around and you didn't do this and that and the other. And he said something, he said, you know, that was a different person. He said, I'm not the person I was 10 years ago. Hopefully I'm a better person. I've tried. And the person 10 years ago made some mistakes. I'm not that person. And you know what she said? You're right. You aren't that person. That's not fair.

Well, we all change. We're not the same person you were 10 years ago. And the first thing is just let go of that. Let go of that and just realize I could be the person I need to be now. I mean, I went to UCLA and had a pretty great basketball coach called John Wooden when I was there. And John Wooden never focused on results at all. You know what he said? All I focus on is the process and do your best. If you do your best, you know what? Be proud.

If you lose, be proud. You win, be proud. If you don't do your best, you have nothing to be proud of. And he said he never focused on the outcomes. The coach of Duke, same thing. Coach K, what does he say? You have a terrible play. You feel bad. You know what he says? Next play, next play, next play. You have a great play. You're going like this. Next play. You don't jump up and down and live in the past. You don't put yourself down about the past. It's over. It's over.

And one of the things I talk about is vicarious living. One of the huge problems in our society today is vicarious living, living our lives through others, not living our own lives. The average American kid that's flunking out of school spends 55 hours a week on non-academic media, video games, movie, TV, non-academic media. They're living someone else's life.

I was talking to my son about this, about wasting your time playing video games. He said, oh, you think video games are bad? It's nothing. He said people spend over a billion hours watching somebody else play video games. I mean, how vicarious is that? You know who PewDiePie is? No. But PewDiePie is his internet star. People have probably spent a billion hours watching him play video games, some sarcastic Swedish guy.

Over a billion hours have been spent watching the Kardashians. For what? They don't care about you. You're living someone else's life. And one of the key points is live your own life. And by the way, when you live in the past, you're living someone else's life too. The guy sitting at the bar talking about Super Bowl III, he wasn't in Super Bowl III. A kid was in Super Bowl III. A young version of him 50 years ago was in Super Bowl III, not him. Well, that's just another form of vicarious living.

He's living with what he used to be. So I've done nine programs in my house with retiring CEOs. And first thing I tell them is, you can't live in the past. You can't sit there and say, I used to be the CEO of something. You got to be where you are. You got to find meaning now. And what you did was great. You did it. That was nice. The previous versions of you did that. Good for them. That's not you. What are you doing now? How do you coach people to turn the page?

I have an idea that I've written about recently called the 24-hour rule, which is no matter what happens in your day, you get that day to celebrate or cry or the next day you have a new page and it's a blank page and you have to move on. You can't hang on to yesterday's wins or yesterday's losses. You just need to go forward. That's it. And you just breathe and you say, all right, it's a new day. Forgive yourself for whatever happened. Make peace.

Move on. Like Coach K, next play. Move on. And don't live in the past. And again, there's this assumption that when I get this stuff, everything's going to be okay. What is the Great Western art form? We've been hammered. Millions of times you get hammered with the same message. The Great Western art form sounds like this. There is a person. The person is sad. Oh, very sad.

They spend money. They buy a product and they become happy. This is called a commercial. Have you ever seen one of those before? How many times have you seen that message? There was a person who was sad. They spent money and became happy. Millions of times it's hammered into your brain. No wonder people get fixated on this stuff. They're given the illusion that somehow this is going to make them happy.

So as we sort of look to lead more inclusively these days, how do you coach leaders to think about privilege, bias, and blind spots? Well, being more inclusive, I think, is very important. I am not an expert on unconscious bias, but let me tell you what I do teach people. The book is dedicated, my new book is dedicated to Roosevelt Thomas, who was the world's expert on diversity.

And he taught me a lot. I'm not an expert on the topic, but he did teach me a few things. And the first thing is realize different people have something called different referent groups. They have different heroes. They look up to different people. And it doesn't mean they're good or bad. But if you understand that, you're much less likely to hate people or discriminate against people. The other thing he said is you always differentiate between what he called a preference and

and a requirement of the job. He uses the example of Phil Jackson coaching the Chicago Bulls and Dennis Rodman. And Dennis Rodman, you know, had yellow hair or purple hair, but Phil Jackson didn't care. He led the league in rebounds. And maybe Phil Jackson did or did not love his multicolored hair. The point Roosevelt made is, so what? He didn't care. That's his choice. Whether I like his hair or not is irrelevant. This is not a fashion contest. It's a basketball game.

And really sorting that out is another helpful way. The other thing is, though, ask people for input about yourself. And you focus on you getting better more than just judging everybody else. So Peter Drucker, I was on the advisory board of the Peter Drucker Foundation for 10 years. Now, Peter Drucker, I got ranked number one leadership thinker in the world. My intellect compared to Peter Drucker is that of a 10-year-old. I can tell you, this guy was smart. He was playing with a different deck than I was.

And he taught me many things. He said, you know, in the past, the leader of the past knew how to tell. Leader of the future is going to ask. Like you said, they're going to be inclusive. They're going to ask why. In the past, it was a different world. In the past, the leader knew more about what they were doing than the followers.

In the future, the followers know more than the leader. If I get a CEO who knows more about marketing than the marketing person and more about finance than a finance person, more about HR than the HR person, they do not have a leadership problem. They have a selection problem. They get the wrong staff. You want them to know more about what they're doing than you.

Well, if I manage you and you know more about what you're doing than I do, I can't tell you what to do and how to do it. I have to be inclusive. I have to listen. I have to involve you. Why? Because I don't know enough to tell you what to do. And back to the other example, I'll probably do more harm than good. I'll probably do more harm than good. So shut up. How do you think about the difference between managing and leading?

Very interesting question. Now, I just wrote an article in Chief Executive Magazine about this very question. And what did I say? Feedback on leaders is worse and worse and worse than it's ever been. Behavior of leaders is better and better and better than it's ever been. Leaders today are more effective than any time in history.

I mean, people say, are leaders bullies today compared to the past? Hello? Did you ever read a history book? Wake up. We used to have things like slaves and we used to have people building pyramids and we used to have kings who would chop your head off for no reason. That was the world we were brought up in. Were leaders worse then? Of course they were. Were they bullies then? There was no question about being a bully. How about negative feedback? Did you give them negative feedback? What happened? They chopped your head off if you gave them negative feedback.

Leaders today are much better. Here's the problem. The standards are much different. As leaders' behavior has actually improved, the expectations of leaders has actually gone up far faster than their behavior change. So today, companies can't tolerate bad leaders because employees won't put up with them. In the old days, nobody liked being managed by a bully. Nobody liked a bad leader. Nobody likes being talked down to, treated like an idiot. But they had to put up with it.

They have a choice. Today, people have a choice. And you know what they'll say? Goodbye, especially after COVID. Goodbye. They're not going to put up with that. It doesn't mean leaders are worse than they used to be. It just means the expectations are higher than they used to be. And employees have a lot more power than they used to have. One of the things that sort of seems to have changed during the pandemic is how we give praise or sort of recognize people for their contributions.

In the sense of it used to be you'd run into somebody at the coffee machine or the water cooler and you can say, hey, you did a great job on this. And now it's more scheduled meetings and back to back and not everybody's in the office. How do you think about that? Well, I'm going to make a couple of reflections on this because you really brought up a couple of different issues. I'm going to give you all your listeners one suggestion on giving recognition. And it works just as well in a virtual environment as it does an in-person environment. And I've never seen it fail.

One of my clients taught me this. He went from a six percentile and provided recognition to a 94 percentile in one year, six to 94. So what'd you do? It's not too complicated. He made a list of everyone that was important in his life, friends, family, direct reports, colleagues, twice a week, once on Wednesday, once on Friday, look at the page. Did anyone on this page do anything I should recognize? If they did, email, voicemail, say thank you, little note, nothing too fancy.

If no one did anything, he didn't say anything. He didn't want to be a phony. One year, six to a 94. That's all he did. To me, you don't have to have fancy programs to recognize people. You need to have the discipline to ask yourself, should I be recognizing people? That's one thing. A second technique is start asking people a question. Tell me what are you proud of? So when you ask people what are they proud of, they often tell you great things you didn't even know.

And it's another great way you can recognize people. So I think, you know, a couple of things on giving recognition. The other thing you talked about, though, is this ongoing Zoom call after Zoom call after Zoom call thing. One of the great leaders in our group is Margot Georgiades. Margot was the CEO of Ancestry.com. Before that, CEO of Mattel. She turned Ancestry around. She sold the Blackstone for $4.75 billion. An amazing woman. She said, you know, this may be the least important Zoom call of the week for me.

It may be the most important one for them. And what you need to do as a leader is you need to stop and breathe. Before every different interaction, breathe, stop. If you don't, they all start to blur together. You need to breathe. You need to, where am I? What's important now? Who's here? Breathing, breathing, breathing. Slow down, start over. Slow down, start over. Slow down, start over.

If you don't, everything just becomes a blur. Is the nature of how we communicate with people, I mean, the tools that we're using has changed. But where do leaders go wrong with communication in person and over Zoom? And what are the ways that we can correct that? Well, I think the best way to improve our communication with people is not to ask me for suggestions, but to ask them questions.

So let's say you want to do a better job of communicating with Mary. You know, the best person in the world to help you that might be, it might actually be Mary. Ask them, you know, I can give you generic answers, but that may or may not fit your issues. Ask the real people that you work with. Now, one thing I talk about in the new book is empathy. And it's related to this concept. Empathy is an interesting thing. Up until a couple of years ago, I just saw empathy as a good thing.

Sounds good. Fuzzy, warm. He has lots of empathy. I thought, well, that sounds good. And I started studying empathy. I realized it's sometimes good, but too much empathy can be a disaster. So I talk about four types of empathy, and it's good to look at all four. And it's back to your question about others and connected to them. The first type of empathy is called the empathy of understanding.

Now, empathy simply means putting yourself in the other person's frame of mind and understanding the world from their perspective. Well, or feeling the world for the way they feel it or all that. The first empathy is empathy of understanding. Understand you. Understand why you feel the way you do. Well, that's good, you think. Very positive. Could be good. Could be bad. It could be used to help you. It could easily be used to manipulate you. Let me give you an example. Budweiser beer.

They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on ads with a little dog and a horse. Now, why do they do that? How many men actually go into the bar and say, you know, I want a Budweiser beer. Why? I love that little doggy and a horse. So cute. I love them. Zero. How many buy beer because of the dog and a horse? Lots. They're not spending that money for no reason. They know the trigger.

They know that that little story is going to have you buy beer or they wouldn't be spending the hundreds of millions of bucks. So understanding where other people are coming from could be good, could be used to help them, could be manipulative, could be used to trick them or manipulate them. The second type of empathy is the empathy of feeling. You know, I feel your joy. I feel your pain. Could be good. It makes you understand people better, connect with them. Could be a disaster.

I'm the coach of the head of the St. George Children's Hospital. He gets to see kids die of cancer every day. He gets to see their parents. He can't carry that home. He can't live with that pain. If he does, he can't do his job. So it could be good. It could be bad. The next is the same thing, the empathy of caring. You think caring is good? Well, caring can be very positive. I care about you. I try to help you. It can be very negative.

I have a very fun example in the book about the empathy of caring with, of all people, a hedge fund manager. Now, you think the last person to worry about caring about people too much would be a hedge fund manager. You know, the stereotype of a hedge manager. Everybody doesn't care about people. They would be at the top of the charts. This is one of those famous hedge fund managers in the world. And he's being interviewed by another hedge fund manager. I'm just sitting there because I was a previous speaker before him. I'm just sitting there kind of just curious to listen. And he asked the guy, why don't you have a fund anymore?

And the big guy said, I'm not as good as I used to be. The other guy said, well, why not? He said, well, you know, I've made obviously tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars for people, but I've also lost tens or hundreds of billions. I probably made 51 or 52% and lost 48 or 49. That's pretty good. And obviously I have a few billion left over for me. That's pretty good. He said, I never cared.

I would just make investments. And I was an analyst and didn't play a game. And I was good at it. And he said, one day I started caring. I started thinking, you know, wow, this is somebody's retirement account and their health care. They need this money. And I started caring. He said it became much less effective. Afraid to take risks. He said, I don't invest other people's money anymore. I just invest my own. If I lose, I lose. I win, I win. It's not that big of a deal. I don't invest money because I'm not as good.

Medical doctors, you can't operate on your family. Why? Care too much. Care too much. Sometimes you got to let go of that caring. And then the final is empathy. The vital part of empathy is doing. I not only maybe know what you're coming from or care or feel your pain, I'm doing something to help you. Could be good. But one of the people in our group, she said, I'm a fixer. I fix everybody else's problems. I create dependency.

They become like children and they don't take responsibility because I'm always taking care of them. So if we look at empathy, the key, and this goes back to recognizing people how and when, is I talk about the term in the book called singular empathy. And what does that mean? I'm going to be who I need to be for the person I'm with now. I'm going to be who I need to be now. I'm not carrying around the past. I'm not sitting there trying to prove how heroic I am.

I'm going to be who I need to be now. And one of the guys in our group, Telly Leung, I don't know if you ever saw the play Aladdin. But anyway, he played Aladdin on Broadway for three years, literally a thousand performances. He did Aladdin. So I asked Telly, how'd you do it night after night after night? He said, I had to become the role. Now he said, I'm gay, but I had to fall in love with that princess every night. And the way I motivated myself is he said, when I was a little boy, I was eight years old and I went to a play.

And it was so touching and singing and music and lights. And I just loved it. And he said, every night I get up there on stage, you know what I think? That eight-year-old kid. This is for you. This is for you, kid. And maybe I've done the play a thousand times, but the kid has not seen it a thousand times. Wonderful story. So I have him work with people at the children's hospital to help him. And let me give you an irony. I'm working in a children's hospital in San Diego.

with him as volunteers. And he's teaching a class, we're teaching a class about empathy. And I said, well, I'm sure you must have had, you medical doctors have had, you know, lots of training about this topic. You know what the answer was? Zero. Never been trained at all on this topic. And they're around dying kids. So, you know, you really need to think, what does empathy mean? When is it useful? When is it not useful? And they were so appreciative of

Do you even have somebody try to teach them about this? To your point about the first part of empathy there, we can understand without agreeing with somebody else too. And I think there's a nuance there where we can see the world through somebody else's eyes. We can smell what they smell and feel and think what they think, but we don't actually have to agree with them. That's right. That's right. That's right. And you can...

be in touch with someone, but you don't have to agree with them. And also you can't live there. See, the people I coach, they may play like nine roles or 10 roles in a day. I mean, they wake up, they have to do a performance appraisal. They have to make a board presentation. They have to go to a funeral. They have to have an award ceremony. All day, they're in these different roles and they just can't carry it with them.

They have to let go of that previous role. I got to be where I am now. I'm in an award ceremony. Okay, somebody died. That's not now. It's not fair to that person who's getting the award that I'm still at the funeral. I'm not at the funeral anymore. I'm here.

I'm here. Where do I need to be? Here. When? Now. And it's very hard to do this. It takes a lot of discipline to do this, but it's really a sign of someone who's a great leader that has the discipline to do that. That goes to what you said earlier about the woman, I forget her name, sorry, who was on the Zoom call and said, you know, this isn't the most important call for me, but it might be for somebody else. Yeah. And frequently, a lot of people don't understand this or the people I coach, you think their jobs are glamorous.

A lot of their jobs are boring. They're listening to presentation after presentation after presentation. Everything has been sanitized. They've already seen everything 20 times. They probably know what the person is going to say, yet they need to be upbeat and positive and appear interested. That's not easy to do.

One of my favorite lessons from you is you've said in the past that there's three words that kill conversations, no, but, and however. And I'd love to talk about what impact these words have and how do we learn to stop using them? This is a great tool to help you be a better listener and be more open-minded. Just never start a sentence with three words, no, but, or however.

If you talk to me and I say, no, first word, no. Shut, you're wrong. But what does but mean? Disregard everything you said. Just erases whatever you said. A terrible habit. So one of my clients is stubborn and opinionated. And by the way, my clients, if they do this, I find them $20. So he says, but, and the money goes to the charity. So he says, you know, and now you think $20, what do they care about $20? They're rich people. You know, you're right. A lot of them are men. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to help you.

Somebody said, would rich old men like to lose small amounts of money? No. Rich old men don't like to lose any money, I can tell you. They hate losing money. So it's amazing how well this works. And the money goes to a charity they choose. Like one guy going, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100. And he said, this is expensive. I said, you made 35 million bucks last year.

This $20 is going to a little homeless child. Shut up. Shut up. Just pay the money. Shut up. He said, you're right. Take 50. It's embarrassing. And one of the guys I've coached is Mr. Jim Rau. Mr. Jim Rau is a billionaire, just a great guy. He lives in India. He donated Bill Gates flies to India with Warren Buffett to talk rich people into giving money to the poor. Nice idea, right?

So my friend, Mr. Jim Rao, donates $340 million to poor people in India out of his pocket. Very generous man. Well,

What happens is I'm coaching him. The money goes to the same charity. $20, $40, $60. You know what he said? This is expensive. I said, excuse me, time out. You just donated $340 million to this charity two days ago. And now you're telling me $20 is expensive. What is wrong with you?

He goes, oh, I forgot. I forgot. I forgot. Sure you forget. How do you forget donating $340 million? Let me tell you the difference. My friend standing up in front of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and every newspaper in India, writing a personal check for $340 million and giving it to poor people. You know what that's called in life? Winning. Winning. $20. Losing. He didn't care about $20. He didn't care about $340 million. What does he care about though? Winning.

It's hard for winners not to win. So I've raised thousands and thousands of dollars doing this with my clients. And it just works great. The New York Post wrote a story about my book. And what got you here won't get you there when I was young. And this interviewer had a real chip on his shoulder. And business people are jerks and they have to hire some clown like me to help them. And, you know, they're all losers and idiots.

So after about five minutes, I said, you think they're bad? You're terrible. Every sentence you start is no button. However, all you do is argue and prove you're right. He said, well, that's wrong. I said, well, starting now, anytime you do this, I would say 20 bucks. I said, well, but 20, 40, 60, 80. He goes, no. I said, well, you said no. He said, well, I did not say no. I said, yes, you did. I said, no, I didn't. Well, you did.

I said, well, I did not. I said, oh, you're sure? I'm positive, he said. Well, that little box there, that's a tape recorder. Tape recorder. It has a rewind button.

Why don't we just hit the rewind button and hear you? He said, yeah, let's do this. So he hits the rewind button and he hears it and goes, oh, no. Then his story gets better. Then he goes home and he listens to the tape. He goes, what an ass, right? And then he talks to it. It gets worse. Then he says to his wife, I don't do this to you, do I? He wrote the nicest story, though, because he wrote the story. He said, this story I was going to talk about what a bunch of jerks they were.

Well, maybe I should look in the mirror. How do we learn to be disagreeable then without, or how do we learn to disagree without being disagreeable? Like this is a hardware default where we're saying this and we're having a thought, we're thinking in real time, we're not taking a breath. Now, breathing, breathing, breathing. What did you just say? This is hardwired as if somehow this is a genetic, unchangeable variable. Don't think that way. It's not hardwired. This can change.

Anybody can change. As long as you say it's hardwired, why even bother? If it's genetic, there's nothing you're going to do about it. If it's hardwired, you can't change it. We can all change. So don't think hardwired or in the DNA or any of those phrases. We can all change. Now, I'm going to teach you something that Peter Drucker taught me, and you can share this when I'm sharing with everyone who's listening. If you learn nothing from me but this one little thing,

You're going to have a happier life. You're going to deal with differences better, and you're going to be better at influencing the world. Are you ready for this great learning point from Peter Drucker? Are we ready? Number one, our mission in life is to make a positive difference, not to prove we're smart and not to prove we're right. We are not here on earth to prove how smart we are. We are not here on earth to prove how right we are. We are here to make a positive difference in life.

If we do not make a positive difference, it is absolutely irrelevant how smart or right we are. Number two, every decision in life is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that. Not the smartest person, the best person, a fair person, a logical person, a wonderful person, a rational person, or even a sane person. Every decision is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that.

If I need to influence you and you have the power to make the decision and I need to influence you to make a positive difference, there is one word to describe you. That word is called customer. There's one word to describe me. That word is called salesperson. Customers do not have to buy. Salespeople have to sell. You sell what you can sell. You change what you can change. If you can sell it, you sell it. If you can change it, you change it. If you cannot sell it and you cannot change it,

Ah, let it go. Let it go. And if you don't like it, leave. But as long as you're cashing that check at the end of the month, you sell what you can sell, you change what you can change, and you make peace. By the way, I have repeated this thousands of times to people with MBAs from Harvard, CEOs of multibillion-dollar companies.

I have just repeated this lesson over and over. So few of us ever get this deeply. One guy, I'm going to see him tonight, in fact. My buddy Fred is here in Nashville tonight. He's visiting. Fred's a great success story. So Fred's an old friend of mine.

Fred was CEO of a company. It was owned by a company called KKR, private equity. You know who KKR is? Anyway, KKR, New York people. Would you say squishy people are a little bit bottom line oriented? So Fred is the CEO. He's 41 at the time. So he's the CEO of this KKR company. You know what Fred says about KKR?

41-year-old young Fred CEO. He said, oh, they can't tell me what to do. Fred, 41-year-old Fred. Oh, no, can't tell me. You see, I'm the CEO. They cannot tell me what to do. I'm the CEO, you see. Yeah, Henry Kravitz, who's worth billions of dollars, can't tell Fred what to do. Sorry, Fred. Let's grow up, son. So anyway, they figure out how much it costs to get rid of Fred. A couple million bucks. They don't even care about the couple million bucks.

It's a pain in the butt. Now they got to hire somebody new, start over. Oh, they're in a foul mood. So they had me talk to Fred. So I told Fred this whole Peter Drucker thing about the decisions and power and all that stuff. So Fred says, well, they can't tell me what to do. I said, Fred, I'm going to help you, buddy. Is there money, you moron? Yeah.

I said, Fred, I said, Fred, not only can they tell you what to do, you know what, Fred, I'm going to tell you exactly what to do. And Fred, if you do exactly what I tell you, I may save your sorry butt. If you do not do exactly what I tell you, I got to go back to daddy and mommy in New York and say, I can't help little Freddie. And then Fred, I said, he needs a better coach. Fred, there isn't a better coach, is there? You're just screwed, aren't you, Fred? So what's it going to be, Fred? Yeah.

Fred, you know what he did? He salutes the flag. He said, thank you. That was 12 years he was a CEO of that company. He did a great job, never had a problem, got along with corporate very well. He just had a little bit ego issue. And he would tell you that conversation changed his life. By the way, I don't know exactly, but I got paid approximately $150,000 for that two-hour conversation.

Well, you know what? They didn't care. Saved them a whole lot more than 150,000 bucks. And ironically, Fred and I are going out tonight. I'm in Nashville now and Fred's kids playing a rock band. So I'm going to see Fred after I talk to you and we're going to go out and see his kids in a rock band tonight.

You brought up decision-making a little while ago, and that's a key component of sort of leadership. And I'm curious as to what you've learned about making better decisions that most people miss. Oh, making better decisions. Well, the first thing I've learned is the decision-maker makes the decision. And let's talk about when you are the decision-maker. If you are the decision-maker, this Peter Drucker thing still applies. Now, I'm the decision-maker, and you come to me. And let's say we disagree.

All right, what do I do? I breathe and I think, okay, we disagree. I can either do it my way or his way. If it's close, my advice is probably do it your way. You're more committed, you believe in what you're doing and fine, assuming it's pretty close. But let's assume I think this is really serious and we disagree and I don't want to do it your way. That's fine. That's fine. You know what I say? I'd say, you know, Mr. X, in this case, I want to do

decision Y for the following reasons, which we've discussed. You want to do decision X for the following reasons, which we've also discussed. And you're a very smart man and you've got some good rationale behind what you're talking about. In this case, I've made a decision. I still want to do Y. You say, I disagree. I say, well, in this case, we do disagree and I respect you and I still want to do Y. You say, well, I think you're wrong. You know what I say? Maybe I am.

And by the way, if I'm not wrong this time, I'm going to be wrong sometime. I respect you. I value your opinion. I've thought about it and I've made the decision and here it is. And I want you to execute it in the best way you can. If you have any problems, tell me what they are and we'll discuss it. Yet, are we going to do this? It's been decided. As opposed to, let me point out why I'm right and you're wrong.

which is a complete waste of time. And that's most people's default sort of reaction to that, right? Is to prove that you're smart, prove that you're adding value, prove that you're right. For what? And by the way, here's the point. Let's give me in this case study the leader of the benefit of the doubt. Let's say there's an 80% chance my decision is a better chance, better decision. There's still a 20% chance your decision is better.

Now, my decision is, in theory, the right decision. On the other hand, there's a 20% chance I'm wrong. And your decision is a better decision. That's life. It's not like engineering school. We're just guessing here. We're all just guessing. And sometimes I'm going to make a good guess and sometimes a bad guess. And sometimes I make the right decision and it didn't work because of other variables I can't control. I made the best decision at the time and it still didn't work. That's the way life is. That's the way life happens.

Let's switch subjects a little bit and talk about environment, which affects our unconscious mind and creates sort of invisible defaults in a way. If we don't create or control it, it controls us. How do you think about people's environment when creating the best position for success? Well, I wrote a book about this one called Triggers.

Triggers. Now, by the way, this book I'm just doing now, The Earned Life, is number 49. And I've done six bestsellers, three New York Times bestsellers, one mega big bestseller. And I have also, though, I have published 42 books that were purchased only by my mother, my father, and my relatives. So, yeah.

Hopefully this one will get purchased by a few people. So I've sold about two and a half million books. So somebody bought a lot of them. Most of them, nobody bought. But this book triggers, I talk about that. As we go through life, there's an argument. I control it or it controls me. That's the great existential debate of life.

Two schools of thought. When we look at two dimensions, one dimension is the environment controls me. I am controlled by triggers in my environment. And what is a trigger? Any stimulus that may impact our behavior. It could be a sight, a sound, a person, a thought. Any stimulus impacts my behavior is called a trigger. So one school of thought is we are controlled by our environment. B.F. Skinner, the brilliant Harvard psychologist, thought that. The other school of thought is we control it.

So let's talk about four dimensions. Dimension one is low on control by others, low on control by self, chaos theory. And you know, some smart people believe life is basically random chaos. Number two is I control it. Now there's a ridiculous book called The Secret. Did you ever read that book, The Secret? No. It's a ridiculous book. It sold 7 million copies or more. And the essence of the book is the secret is if I envision it, it will happen.

See, that's it. That's the secret. I'll tell you what the secret is. It sold 7 million copies. If I envision it, it will happen. And they have all this studies they've done. Well, like Jimmy wanted to win the basketball team, basketball game, their championship. And he envisioned it and it happened. And Mary wanted to be a movie star and she envisioned it and it would happen. And Harry had cancer and he envisioned it and it went away and it did. By the way, every story in the book is true. Here's the problem. They didn't interview the dead people.

They didn't interview the thousand waitresses in Hollywood who envisioned being movie stars. And they didn't interview the basketball team that lost. From a mathematical perspective, this is called the survivor bias. Well, you know, they did this. They are successful. Yeah, you did this too, and you're a complete failure. So, you know, if you envision it, it will happen. Well, if you envision things, you probably increase the odds they're going to happen. But there's certainly no guarantee it's going to happen because you envision it. I mean, that's, to me, childish.

The opposite is you have no control. And B.F. Skinner, the famous Harvard psychologist, wrote a book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, years ago, a very famous book. He said, we're just strictly creatures that are a function of our environment. We're like a stimulus response machine. What I believe is we control it and it controls us. To a degree, we are controlled by the world.

And to a degree, we do make a difference ourselves. So I think the purpose of the book is just to move the scale a little bit. So you're a little bit more in control and the world's a little bit less in control. And the first thing you do is you realize, when am I being controlled by the environment? When? And then you start becoming aware of it and say, what can I do so that these unwanted triggers change my life? Because what happens is we all wake up with this

dream of what we're going to do every day. Yet things happen. And these triggers usually don't push us toward becoming the person we want to become. They usually push us away from that person. For example, you're going to go on the diet. You smell the bacon. You see the cake. You know, you're going to work out. Well, you see the TV show. You know, you get distracted. Things happen. And so it takes a lot of discipline to go through life

and just be aware of when am I controlling it and when is it controlling me? And by the way, a lot of it is unconscious. The beer example, you know, you're not aware of the fact that Budweiser is sitting there in your brain making you want to buy beer. They are. You're just not aware of it. And the more we're open to the fact that we can be manipulated by the environment, the less likely we are to be controlled by the environment. The more we deny the fact that we can be controlled by the environment, the easier it is to be controlled.

Are there specific examples or changes that you've seen people make to their operating environment, so to speak, that have a big impact on their ability to lead or be the person that they want to be? I am going to share a tool with you. Are you ready? I am now going to teach you and your listeners something that takes three minutes a day. It costs absolutely nothing.

and will help anyone listening get better at almost anything. Some people are skeptical now. Three minutes a day costs nothing. Help me get better at almost anything. This sounds ridiculous. Too good to be true. Half the people that start doing this quit within two weeks, and they do not quit because it does not work. They quit because it does work. What I'm going to teach you next is incredibly easy to understand. It is incredibly difficult to do.

I've had a person call me on the phone almost every day for 25 years to make sure I do this. Why? Somebody asked me, why do you have someone call you on the phone every day? Don't you know the theory about how to change behavior? I wrote the theory about how to change behavior. That's why I have a person call me on the phone every day. What I'm going to teach you next, my name is Marshall Goldsmith. I got ranked number one leadership thinker and coach in the whole world.

I have someone call me on the phone every day to make sure I do this stuff. Why? I am too cowardly to do any of the things I teach by myself. I'm too undisciplined to do any of the things I teach by myself. I need help. And it's okay. Who are we kidding here? We all need help.

Get over that ego stuff. Willpower. Yeah. Willpower. Grossly overrated. Yeah. Willpower. Good luck on that one. We all need help. Who are we kidding? I need help. You need help. How many of the top 10 tennis players in the world have a coach? 10. They need help. Now, how does this work? Get out a spreadsheet. On one column, you write down a series of questions that represent what is most important in your life. Could be friends, family, health, whatever it is for you. Work. You write it down.

Every question must be answered with a yes, a no, or a number. Yes is recorded as a one, no as a zero, or some number. And then you have seven boxes across, one for every day of the week. So every day you fill out the little form. At the end of the week, you get a report card. I will warn you in advance, the report card at the end of the week will not be as beautiful as the corporate values plaque you see stuck up on the wall. So I've been doing this for 25 years. You do this every day. You know what you quickly learn? You learn that life is incredibly easy to talk.

And life is incredibly difficult to live. You do this every day. You're not looking at those talk values. Those are beautiful, the talk values. You're looking at those live values. Not so pretty. Let me give you a couple examples of questions for me. For example, one of mine is, how many times yesterday did you try to prove you were right when it wasn't worth it? I don't see too many zeros on my scorecard. Kind of hard for that old professor not to be right all the time.

How about you? Have you ever tried to be right just a little too much once or twice? More often than I'd like to admit. Another one. How many angry or destructive comments did you make about people yesterday? Well, we don't want other people stabbing us in the back. Why are we stabbing them in the back?

How many steps did you take? How many push-ups? How many sit-ups? How much do you weigh? Did you say something nice for your wife, your son, your daughter, your grandchildren? How many minutes did you write? Those books don't write themselves. Just questions about life every day. This is hard. It's very hard to do. Anybody says this is easy, you've never done this. You tell me it's easy, you've never done it. It's not easy. It's hard. I work with some of the most successful people in the world. I was just coaching one of the most successful people in the world

Last week, he was supposed to do this every day for two weeks. He made it seven days out of 14. Now, he has a simultaneous MD and PhD with honors from Harvard in anthropology in five years. A normal human gets a PhD in anthropology at Harvard in eight years. He only in five years got an MD at the same time. You know what? He couldn't get it up for three minutes every day to do this after he committed to do it. Why? It's hard.

It's embarrassing. It's humbling. And we did this thing over COVID. I'm going to share six basic questions that everybody had to talk about. They talked about in every meeting, they would stand up and share their scores. It's like Alcoholics Anonymous for successful people. They would stand up and share those scores, right? And they're often not pretty. I'm going to give you the six questions I recommend for everyone. Are you ready?

You just do these six questions every day, you're going to have a better life. Question number one, every day, evaluate yourself on a one to 10 scale. And every question starts with, did I do my best to? There's a reason for that. It doesn't even say you succeeded. It just said, did you even try? You see, if I said, did you do? And your answer is no, you blame the environment. It's their fault. But when I said, did you do your best to? Guess what? Uh-oh, you got to look in the mirror. Me, me, me, not so pretty.

The first one is, did I do my best every day to set clear goals? Well, you think that sounds pretty simple. All these big deal people I'm used to dealing with, they must get a perfect score on that every day. No, no. I wake up in the morning, email, phone call. One guy said, how did I do about setting clear goals on a one to 10 scale? Zero. Unless my goal was respond to crap all day, which I guess that's, I did a good job of that. That was it. All I did was respond to crap all day.

Question two, did I do my best to make progress toward achieving my goals? Well, every day we set up for these plans. When we do bother to make the plans, we have these grandiose plans about the day. We don't plan on anything going wrong or any distractions. We make these plans as if we live in some dreamland where everything today for once in the world is going to work out. It never does. And people get lost and confused and they forget what the plans were and

It's not so easy. Number three, did I do my best to find meaning every day? Rather than wait for the world to give me meaning, did I do my best to make my life meaningful every day? Not in some abstraction or theory in terms of the real humans I'm dealing with. Number four, did I do my best to be happy? Did I do my best to be happy? Now, it's amazing. Most people often never think to be happy. They're just too busy doing crap. So three medical doctors in my book, Triggers, I interview.

all individually by themselves. They all have IQs of a zillion. I said, how'd you do on an average day? Did I do my best to be happy? They all had the same answer. Never dawned on me to try to be happy. They're medical doctors. I said, did it dawn on you you're going to die? Did they cover that in medical school, that death thing? Did they bring that one up? Oh yeah, they covered that death thing. I said, do you think this is a silly or trivial question? He said, no, it's an important question. I just was too busy achieving things to think of it. Well,

Average person, did I do my best to be happy today on a one to 10 scale? 5.5 out of 10. If they were in school, these people got a 55 out of 100, they would be ashamed. You know what I tell them? The test I gave you is about a thousand times more important than a Bozo test you took in school. Raise the score. The next one is, did I do my best to build positive relationships? That is actually harder at work than it is at home a lot of times. You have a hard day at work. You go home. You're tired. You just lose it. Forget about the people around you.

Just lose it. And then the final one is, did I do my best to be fully engaged and present every day? Did I do my best? One of my personal questions is, what percent of the day was I present and engaged? Average day, I give myself about a 30. Probably lying to give myself a 30. Probably don't even deserve that. Most of the time, we're not engaged. We're not present.

You're just wandering around, stumbling around through life, you know. I mean, it's one of those days you wake up in the morning, you come home and say, what did you do today? I don't know. You don't even know what you did.

Or my favorite sort of recollection of this is sort of you interrupt somebody watching TV on a commercial and you say, what are you watching? And they're like, I don't know. Yeah. They're staring at it. They don't even know what they're watching. Yeah. One of the guys that was in my little group is a great basketball star. This is a great story. So one of his things was he wants to be fully engaged with his wife because his wife says you're checked out too much. You know, you're physically here, but mentally you're not here. He's going to do better.

So, one day his wife, terrible, terrible, terrible. So, I talked to him. I said, "Well, what was the problem?" He said, "Well, I was tired, very tired. I've been working out all day. I was tired, you see." I said, "Well, that's very interesting. I went to the National Basketball Championship finals there, and I watched you play that game. I paid a thousand bucks for a seat, and so did my son. We watched you, and you run up and down that court like a banshee." Now, I said, "Were you tired?" He said, "I was exhausted." I said, "Did you go to the coach and say, 'Hey, coach, I'm tired. Take me out.'"

Nope. Nope. He said, I never told the coach I was tired my entire life. I said, you think your wife was impressed with I'm tired? Yeah.

Not so much. Not so much. Well, sometimes it's harder to do this stuff at home sometimes because at home we just check out and lose it. You mentioned something earlier about tennis and it sort of triggered something in my mind. We talked earlier about taking a breath before you respond and thinking. And then as you mentioned tennis, it was like tennis players have a ritual between points. Basketball players have a ritual at the three.

free throw line, what they're really doing is that's their version of this breath. And that ritual counters our human nature or instinctive sort of. Tiger Woods, same ritual before he putts. Same thing. What does that ritual do? Calm down. Calm down. I'm putting. Remember, what am I doing? You know, forget about the score. Forget about the past. Forget about the previous shot. Forget about the club championship. No.

hit the shot. I think that's super important. I want to end with one final question here, Marshall. Thank you for your time. How do you define success? I define success is as you go through life, you have alignment between one, your higher aspirations in life, two, what you're trying to achieve, and three, your enjoyment of the process of life itself, regardless of the outcomes.

So as I journey through life, I've got a higher purpose. I'm doing my best to achieve stuff that's connected to that. And I enjoy the process of what I'm doing. I won. That's it. Now, let me finish now with my best advice for everybody. Are you ready? I want everybody listening to take a deep breath. Imagine that you're 95 years old and you're just getting ready to die. You're on that deathbed. Here comes your last breath. Right before you take the last breath, you're given a beautiful gift.

The ability to go back in time and talk to the person who is listening to me right now. The ability to help that person be a better leader. Much more important, the ability to help the person have a better life. What advice would the wise 95-year-old you who knows what mattered in life and what didn't and what was important and what wasn't? What advice would that wise old person have for the you that's listening to me right now? Whatever you're thinking now, do that.

In terms of a performance appraisal, that's the only one that's going to matter. That old person says you did the right thing, you did the right thing. That old person says you made a mistake, you made a mistake. You do not have to impress anybody but that old person. Some friends of mine interviewed old folks who were dying and got to ask him this question. What advice would you have? On the personal side, three themes. Theme number one, three words, be happy now.

Not next week, not next month, not next year. Not I'll be happy when I achieve this stuff or when I get this money. Be happy now. We all have the same win. That 95-year-old person, that person looking at death, that is win. We all got exactly the same win here. Learning point from old people, I got so busy chasing what I didn't have, I couldn't see what I did have, and I had everything. Well, many people listening to us call, you have your health, and you have families, and people love you, and

some money and probably almost everybody listening compared to me, you have youth. You got youth. Don't get so busy chasing what you don't have. You can't see that. Learning point number two is friends and family. Never get so busy climbing that corporate ladder. You forget the people you love. That happens way too much. And when you're 95 years old and you look around your deathbed, none of your coworkers wave and go by. You realize these people are kind of important. They're the only ones here today.

And number three, if you have a dream, go for it. Because you don't go for it when you're 30. You may not when you're 40 or 80. It doesn't have to be a big one. Maybe a small one. Go to New Zealand. Speak Spanish. Play the guitar. Other people think your dream is goofy. Who cares? It's not their dream. It's not their life. It's your life. I had an embarrassing experience a few years ago. I was teaching my class and I said, go to New Zealand. Speak Spanish. Guy raised his hand. He says, we're in Spain, you idiot. We all speak Spanish. What?

Business advice isn't much different. Number one, life is short. Have fun. Number two, do whatever you can do to help people. The main reason to help people has nothing to do with money or status or getting ahead. The main reason to help people is much deeper. The 95-year-old you will be proud of you because you did and disappointed if you do not. And if you do not believe this is true, interview any CEO who has retired. I've interviewed very many and asked them a question. Please tell me, what are you proud of?

None ever told me how big their office was, how much money they made. All they ever talked about is the people they helped. Fine advice, also the same. Go for it. Your world's changing. Your industry's changing. Do what you think is right. May not win. At least you tried. Old people, we seldom regret the risk we take and fail. We usually regret the risk we fail to take. And finally, as I've grown older, I guess my expectations and way have gone down and down, but impact's going up and up. Why? Quit worrying about what I'm not going to change.

Let me give you my goal in our little time together here. Pretty simple. Let's imagine a few people have a little better life listening to our conversation. That's good enough for me. I'm declaring victory here. Thank you so much. Thank you. The Knowledge Project is produced by the team at Farnham Street. I'd love to get your advice on how to make this the most valuable podcast you listen to. Email me at shane at fs.blog.

You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs.blog slash podcast. To get a transcript of this episode, go to fs.blog slash tribe or check out the show notes. Can you do me a small favor? Go online right now and share this episode with one friend who you think would love it. Thanks for listening and learning with us. Till next time.