Adam Galinsky on How Great Leaders Inspire Their Teams | EP 560
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Coming up next on Passion Struck. Leaders are made because there is a universal set of characteristics that make someone inspiring. We can study those, learn those, practice those, and develop those skills. It also means that it's our current behavior that inspires or infuriates. So that means that you could be inspiring today, but you could slide towards the inferior end of the continuum tomorrow. But it also means no matter how bad you are today,

Tomorrow you can be a little bit better. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the passion

power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hey, passion struck fam. Welcome back to

Episode 560. Imagine waking up every day with a clear sense of purpose, feeling deeply connected to the people around you, and knowing that your contributions truly matter. That's what we're all about here at PassionStruck. Each episode is a step toward creating a life filled with meaning, intention, and growth. And this week has been no exception. Earlier, I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Rick Hansen,

who shared profound insights on resilience happiness and building an unshakable inner core if you haven't caught that episode yet i highly recommend it dr hansen's wisdom is truly transformative as always i want to begin by thanking you for being here and for your commitment to living more intentionally and passionately whether you've been with us from the beginning or are joining for the first time you're part of an incredible community focused on growth purpose

and igniting passion in every area of life. If you're new here, we know that over 560 episodes can feel like a lot to navigate. That's why we've curated episode starter packs to help you dive into topics like unlocking creativity, the psychology of belonging, the rise of generative AI, navigating conflict, the science of happiness, emotional health, human-powered leadership, and self-mastery. You can find them on Spotify or at passionstruck.com slash starter packs.

And don't forget to subscribe to my Live Intentionally newsletter at passionstruck.com for weekly inspiration and tools to help you live with purpose. You can also join our growing YouTube community to watch every episode with engaging visuals. Today, I am thrilled to introduce a conversation that will help you unlock one of the most transformative tools in life, the ability to inspire others. My guest, Dr. Adam Galinsky, is a world-renowned social psychologist and leadership expert

whose work has been cited over 64,000 times. He's the co-author of Friend and Foe and his latest book, Inspire, The Universal Path to Leading Yourself and Others, reveals the science of becoming an inspiring leader. Leadership often feels like an overwhelming challenge, especially in a world where the stakes are high and the pace is relentless. But Adam's research shows that inspiring leadership isn't a mysterious gift reserved for a select few. It's a skill that can be learned, nurtured,

and developed. In our interview, he provides a roadmap for transforming how we lead by focusing on three universal dimensions, being a visionary, an exemplar, and a mentor. You'll discover practical strategies for creating a big picture vision that motivates others, modeling the behaviors that you also want to see, and empowering those around you to achieve their potential. Adam combines fascinating research with real-world applications to show us how leadership isn't just about managing tasks, it's about creating meaning,

fostering belonging and driving positive change in our teams, families and communities. Whether you're leading at work, guiding a family or simply striving to make a difference in your relationships, this episode is packed with insights to help you inspire those around you and live with greater purpose. Let's dive in. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

I am absolutely honored and thrilled today to have Dr. Adam Galinsky with me. Welcome, Adam. Thank you so much. The honor is all mine. So Adam, I've been viewing your work for a long time. I remember your TED Talk from a few years ago, and you've really had an impact on many people. But I wanted to go back to your own story and talk about impacts you have.

And I know we have in our lives a series of defining moments that end up shaping who we are. Is there one in particular that's meaningful for you?

That's a great question. I think that there are so many different moments that we can think of in our lives that really, you know, matter. To me, probably one of the biggest moments of my life was not just a single moment in time, but a little bit longer is when I was a junior, after my junior in high school, before my senior high school, I went and lived with a family in Yogyakarta, Indonesia for three months.

And that was just such a transformative experience to be on the other side of the world, to be in a very different culture. The family I lived in was solidly middle class, but I had to use the bathroom and a hole in the ground. I had to share a bed with my Indonesian brother because they didn't have more space. But it was just a time in my life that really changed who I was and helped me really identify. I guess that changed who I was, helped me identify who I was.

Well, I think those identities can come to us at various different points of our lives. And so much of that is influenced by how we're brought up, our self-confidence, etc. And I also think it's through the inspiration that we get from mentors and other people in our lives who are guides. And this whole topic of inspiration is something that we're going to be talking about a lot today.

What inspired you to explore this concept of inspiration as a leader's key trait? And how has your own perspective on it evolved over the years?

So there are sort of two events that happened back in 2006 within a couple of months of each other. The first was very sadly, I was on a plane at the time, but my dad was walking to a basketball game in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, got hit by a car and killed. And I found out when I landed to go to a conference in Los Angeles about midnight. And the one saving grace from that moment, I was just...

You can imagine how wrecked I was emotionally and torn apart. My dad's only sibling lived in Los Angeles, and so I was able to go to her house, my aunt's house. And I still remember very clearly when she opened the door, we hugged in the sense of sorrow, but also this mutual comfort that we're giving each other. And I plaintively said to her, I can't believe I've lost my dad. And she said,

We've all lost a dad. I was his big sister, but he was my dad. And that was such just an incredibly transformative comment. And I just kept coming back to it. I kept asking myself, why did that ring so true? Why did that sense that he was the dad to many matter so much?

And I realized that his memorial service, which was about a month later at the university, he was a professor, like about 500 people showed up. And how many people told me stories about the impact of my dad had. And then about two months later, I was teaching the FBI and I was with 60 FBI agents. And one of them started talking about a leader that inspired them.

And I still remember that moment too, because he stood up in his chair. He got big in his posture. His eyes lit up. He used his hands. He leaned in. And it was just like, and there's almost like this sense of this like,

all an admiration emanating from him. And so at that moment, I turned to the rest of the FBI agents and I was like, well, can any of you tell me about a leader that inspired you? And they all could. And so I started that like literally changed everything I do in teaching. That was the first thing I started to do whenever I taught leadership. I started asking people, tell me about a leader that inspired you.

Now, about a year later, I was again teaching the FBI, but this time one of the agents didn't want to talk about a leader that inspired him, but wanted to talk about a leader that infuriated him, that made his blood boil, the seething cauldron of rage and resentment. And so over time, I started asking people those two questions.

Tell me about a leader that inspired you. Tell me, what was that feeling? That sense of warmth and energy and light and that sense of awe and admiration, that wellspring of hope and possibility. And then I also ask people to tell me about a leader that infuriated them, right? That made their blood boil.

And part of the reason why I did that is because in psychology, we know that when you make comparative analysis, you learn much more deeply and you discover things more unique and real. But one of the things I realized after starting asking hundreds of people

And then thousands of people and probably tens of thousands of people at this point on that same question is they started to realize that the inspiring leader and the fearing leader were actually mirror images of each other. Right. Someone talk about a leader that empowered them, but someone else would talk about a leader that micromanaged them and infuriated them. Or they talk about a leader that could see the big picture versus the leader that was small minded or the leader that was courageous versus the leader that was cowardly.

And so I started to realize that they existed on this sort of enduring continuum. And then the second thing I realized was that all of these examples from every country in the world, every continent, regardless of where I was, they tended to make up these three, what I call universal factors.

And they really captured what it means to be in the spotlight, to be a leader, to be impacting other people. And I can tell you more about those or we could talk about. But basically, the transformed moment was this moment where my dad passed away. But my aunt said he was my dad, even though I was his big sister. And then this two FBI experiences. And here's what's the crazy part is I went back and I looked at the memorial speech I wrote for my dad. Right.

Right. I looked at it like two or three years later and I realized that the entire speech was actually structured around these three universal factors that I hadn't even discovered yet. So I talked about how the way my dad saw the world, like that he was a visionary. Right. I talked about how my dad was in the world. Right. How he was passionate, but also courageously protected people. Right.

And I talked about how he interacted with people in the world, about how he empathized people and encouraged them, but also had high expectations and really challenged them to be the best person they could be. And so it's those sort of moments together in my dad's passing, these FBI moments that really led me down this path.

Adam, thank you so much for sharing that. And I'm so sorry about your father's tragic death. Thank you so much. Well, what you're describing there is something that Dacher Keltner, who I'm sure you know who Dacher is, describes as moral beauty. We see awe the most when we see other people performing acts of kindness or empathy to others. Yet we live in a world where so many people don't express that.

And today we're going to be talking about your new book, Inspire, the universal path for leading yourself and others. And I just wanted to note that a friend of mine, Dan Pink, gave you this quote, the best book on leadership I've read in years. So I wanted to put that out there. The audience will go and grab a copy of this fantastic book that we're going to discuss today. But congratulations on bringing this into the world. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

I think one of the best ways to describe this continuum is by actually going into the beginning of the book. In your introduction, you pose two strikingly different responses to crisis. On one hand, you profile Southwest Captain Tammy Jo Schultz,

who turned a chaotic situation into calm. And then you also profile the opposite, Captain Francesco Schettino on a yacht, creating chaos through his actions. And I was hoping you might be able to explore those because I think this example is really a great way to explain the duality that you talk about in the book and how each of these shows the essence of inspiring leaderships in moments of high pressure.

Yeah, absolutely. It's so funny to me that Schultz and Schettino both start with the same sort of pronunciation, right? Schultz, Schettino. But Tammy Jo Schultz was flying. She was the captain of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 going from LaGuardia to Dallas when...

Suddenly, as she described it, she thought she'd had a midair collision. It literally felt like a jet, a Mack truck had crashed into her because there was this incredibly loud jolt of the plane. And then this like loss of pressure, loss of oxygen, rushing sound. And she eventually realized what had happened, which was the left engine had exploded and tore a hole in the side of the plane.

And this was not something that she caused or not something that she had planned for, right? But she did so many different things in that moment in time that were really remarkable. The first thing she did was she stayed calm. She tried to figure out exactly what was going on. Her first officer, Darren Elliser, was there and flying the plane. So she told him, continue to fly the plane, that he was in charge of moving the aircraft. Eventually, they realized that she described it, the plane wanted to descend.

So we left the plane do what it wanted to do. So she, she paid attention to what was happening in the moment and they started descending. Now here's the second thing that she did that is really important and really powerful is she uttered 10 words to the passengers. Those 10 words were, we are not going down. We are going to Philly. Now Philly,

That might seem like a simple comment, but she recognized, right, as they're descending with a hole in the plane, that the passengers might be freaking out. And they were. They were sending messages, emails, telling their loved ones, I may never see you again. I love you so much. And the passengers afterwards talked about how transformative those 10 words were.

And it's really powerful because I describe in the book a number of other instances where there wasn't quite as much of a tragic situation, but planes precipitously dropped thousands of feet and flight attendants were injured and babies flew up in the air and were caught miraculously in more than one flight. And the pilots never said a word.

So, Tammy Jo Schultz knew that she needed to reassure her passengers. And then she landed the plane in Philadelphia. And then the other remarkable thing is that she kept thinking about what was best for her passengers, right? Not just telling them, we're going to Philadelphia, but she parked the plane so that the fire trucks were on the side where the engine exploded in a place there was fire that needed to put out. She

put the wing flaps down a little bit. So then in case anyone panicked and went on the wing, they would have a little slide. And then she went row by row and looked every passenger in the eye and said, how are you doing? She checked in on them. And I think that was such a powerful thing that she did that was so important. And she said afterwards, I find it remarkable that more people have talked about what I did after the plane landed, which is talking to the passengers, each one, than the passengers

Remarkable feat that it took to actually land this crippled plane. And so you can just see that this was a crisis, but she turned it into something that was more routine. She was calm. Even the EMT actually made a joke to her when he was checking out. He said, how did you get through security? She's like, wait, what are you saying? He said, how did your nerves of steel not set off all of the security alarm?

And she was calm. And because she was calm and she was so good at her job, she could see the bigger picture. So she could see, let's go to Philadelphia. That was actually recommended by her colleague, Darren Elliser, her co-pilot. She knew that she needed to speak to them. She knew exactly what she needed. She let the plane descend. She knew exactly what she needed to do to land this plane. And then she made sure everyone was okay.

Now, Francesco Schettino, he was also captain of a vessel. This was a cruise ship. And this was a situation where they were embarking on a seven-day trip through the Mediterranean, and he got too close to shore.

Now, there's a lot of debate about why he did. He said he wanted to salute mariners on shore. Other people said he was trying to impress his mistress, a Moldovan dancer who was on board. But this was a routine cruise ship that now became a crisis. When they went too close to shore,

There was a massive hole, just like Tammy Jane Schultz, a massive hole was put into his vessel. But he wasn't visionary. He was actually small-minded. He spent the first hour trying to figure out how to protect his own reputation. He was only focused very small on this. It took him over an hour to contact the Coast Guard and then took him 20 minutes to come clean. He was trying to tell them that the blackout caused the accident rather than the accident causing the blackout.

And then when it was time to start like getting the passengers to start doing this, he wasted 90 minutes, right? Which led dozens and dozens of people to pass away. I think more than 100 people passed away on this trip. And it would have been very few if he had just acted immediately. But when the Coast Guard started communicating with him again, he wasn't on the ship.

He was actually in one of the lifeboats. And that just incensed, infuriated the Coast Guard. They demanded he go back on. He claims he fell into the lifeboat by accident. But you might not actually have recognized him in the lifeboat because somehow, despite all the chaos,

despite him being captain of the ship, he somehow found time to remove his captain's uniform and put on civilian clothing before he fell into the boat. And so you can start to see just the dramatic difference between these two people. Schettino was

sorry, Schultz was visionary, right? She could see the big picture. She could understand what she needed to do. He was small-minded, right? She was calm and courageous protector. He was cowardly, right? And then she was generous and empathic and he was purely selfish. And at the very end, the person from the Coast Guard basically tells him, "I

I am going to make you pay for this, Schettino. And he did. Schettino paid. He spent time multiple years. I think he was sentenced to over 10 years in prison. And so you can really see, but that's the infuriation that this person was experienced from that. So we really see these three universal factors, right? How we see and talk about the world, how we are in the world, and how we interact in the world between you want to be a Schultz and not a Schettino. Well, thank you for going through that, Adam. I think it's a really good depiction and

I'm going to go into something I've never really talked about on this podcast before. When I was nine years old, I was living in Palatine, Illinois, which is close to O'Hare. And

I remember it was a Friday. My mom had picked me up from school and we were driving to the mall where as a young kid, I observed the crash of American Airlines 191 in front of me. And this is the one where it was taking off. It lost the engine and quickly crashed. And it basically happened right before my eyes. And after that, I was scared to go on an airplane

for many years. I would go on it, but I would always be white knuckled. And when I was at the Naval Academy, we had these great leadership talks. And one of these was the crew of another plane

that suffered similar but different incidents, same aircraft, DC-10, but this was United Airlines Flight 232. And I'm not sure if you remember this or not, but it happened in 1989. And what ended up happening is they had a complete hydraulic failure caused by the loss of their tail engine.

And I remember this so fully because the team ended up through the actions of the captain and his inspiration. It's a case study in teamwork, crisis management, and human factors in aviation and

Because he inspired the team to work together, they were able to pilot the plane simply by using the engines because they had no way to fly it on hydraulics. And although a number of passengers died, he saved the majority of the people on board. And to me, it's similar to the story that you talk about with the Southwest pilot, where this crew, because of their actions and how they

attuned to the situation ended up saving so many people, including themselves. So I think all of these are great examples. Thank you so much. Yeah. And there's another also amazing example as I look out on the Hudson River to my right at my office here in New York is Captain Sully who landed, who lost both engines coming out of LaGuardia with bird strikes and basically glided his plane to land in the Hudson with no injuries, which is another remarkable story.

I just saw a LinkedIn post that he put out that he just had a grandchild. Such an inspiring story and you're right. And another one where someone used their instincts and inspiration in a moment where they had just seconds to decide. And the interesting thing is in both his case and in that case that I mentioned in Sioux Falls, they put so many people through

the same simulators and in both cases, the vast majority, like 90% of them did not land the plane in either case. It really shows you how that inspiration pays off in these moments of intense decision-making like that. So I wanted to take this in a little bit different direction. As I was describing to you before, I think there is a huge role between leadership

And how you make people feel like they're valued, like they're seen, like they're contributing. And I think this is becoming a huge black hole in corporations and one of the major reasons why so many of them are facing such huge disengagement. And I was hoping you might be able to talk about it because it's a core aspect of your book.

Absolutely. One of the things that I've wondered about and thought about for almost two decades now is why are these the three universal factors of inspiring leaders or inspiring people more broadly, right? Why is being visionary, being exemplar and being a mentor, right? And I use these sort of as descriptions to describe the ways that we can inspire others, but also infuriate others is because each one of those satisfies a fundamental human need.

And one of the fundamental human needs we have is a sense of meaning and understanding. That's where visionary comes from. Another is a sense of protection and energy. And that's where being an exemplar comes from. And one of them is to be a sense of belonging and a sense of status or being respected. And that's where being a mentor comes from. And so what you just described is really that third factor, being a mentor and what it means to be seen and valued and recognized.

And the way that I often describe what are the characteristics of being someone who's an inspiring mentor, and I use it not in a formal sense, but just in the sense of how we interact with other people, right, and can fill them with that sense of inspiration or infuriation between those interactions, is that inspiring leaders empower people. And empowering is really about trusting other people.

If I'm going to give you responsibility, I trust that you can live up to the moment. Part of it is elevating other people and really recognizing what they do well and really celebrating those. And then also empathizing with people, like really understanding the context and their situations that they're

Now, that doesn't mean, because we empathize people, that we have low standards. We have high standards, and that's what I mentioned earlier about my dad being able to encourage people and elevate them, but also challenge them to be the best person they can be. And it's really this fundamental human need. You mentioned Dr. Keltner earlier. One of his PhD students is a professor at Berkeley now in the business school, Cameron Anderson.

wrote a seminal paper basically demonstrating that we have a fundamental need to be respected by other people, to be elevated by other people, to be seen as having characteristics or traits or tendencies or talents that we can recognize in other. I have a paper under review right now where we're looking at the fact that so many people in the workforce are really freaked out about AI.

It's very disempowering. They're worried about losing their jobs. They're worried about losing status. And so we did a study where we used the classic manipulation. And I use the same manipulation in some of my studies. It's one of the best ways that we can get into a visionary state of mind. We ask people to think about a time when they, sorry, think about what are their most important values in their life and how they've demonstrated those values and why they're important.

And this is shown to make so many things better, right? In their lives, it can motivate people. I showed that when people reflect on their values and that with their unemployed, they're twice as likely to find a job in the next two months than, you know, if they hadn't reflected on their values. But in this case, in the workplace, around AI, that

values reflection task had no effect. It didn't impact. It didn't make people trust AI, more likely to experiment with AI. They were still ostriches putting their head in the sand and wanting to avoid it because they were scared. But then we did something different and we asked, what is it? What are they worried about? Why is this value affirmation, this value reflection task not working? Is they're really worried about losing standing in their organizations, of not being valued, of not being respected.

So we went back to the drawing board and we did a different manipulation. And we asked people to think about the things about themselves that other people value in them. What is it about you that other people value, that they respect you for? And then that sense of getting their standing, their sense of being seen, recognized, valued, respected,

affirmed and confirmed in their own mind, then they started to open up to the possibility of looking at AI, understanding what it is and utilizing it. That's fantastic research. And I think it goes to really the core of

what mattering is all about. When they don't feel like they're seen, when they think AI is going to take over their prominence in an organization, it creates a huge threat, a barrier to them thinking that they're going to hold value in the future and that they're going to be able to progress. I think it goes right into so many of the things that are bringing people fear right now. Absolutely.

So I wanted to go into this chapter a little bit more and I'm going to read from it. You write, identifying the motivation of others isn't a one-shot solution. It's a dynamic and ongoing process. And you crafted a phrase to capture this principle. Different people have different needs at different times. And when I think about that,

I remember I was in a job interview one time and I was interviewing with the CEO of this major company and he asked me, "What is your leadership style?" And I told him, "It's situational." And he said, "What do you mean it's situational?" I said, "Different situations require different leadership depending on what is going on." Meaning, if you have five or six different employees, you can't approach each of them with the exact same manner.

you've got to look at what their motivations are and it's understanding those motivations, which is going to get them to do the actions that you want them to do. And also you've got to create a reward system for them based on knowing them. So in each situation, you're going to act differently. And you go on to say that this phrase encompasses a key insight about inspiring others.

Just because you understood your colleagues or your spouses or your friends' needs yesterday, it doesn't mean you will automatically be good at identifying them today. And even if you understood them today, the person's preferences may grow and change over time.

That is why we need to really listen to others and carefully observe their behavior. It helps us recognize their evolution and changing desires. And this again goes into this whole situational leadership, because if people react differently over time and you have to adjust to it, but how big a gap do you think this is in most organizations and the way the leaders lead their teams?

I think it's a big gap. And part of the gap is a complicated one, right? Because at one level, we want efficiency, right? And we want equity, right? And fairness. And so the question is, when we start tailoring or personalizing motivation or rewards, we can get into those problematic areas. But let's just start off with like, how do we understand the motivations of others? The single biggest mistake we make is we think,

Everyone's a mirror image of ourselves. One of the examples I give in the book, which I really love, is that I've been dating my now wife for about just over two months. And I had to give a talk in D.C. and she was going to come down. It was a birthday. And I found out that one of my favorite comedians, Demetri Martin, was going to be performing, but the show was sold out.

So I spent like 36 hours doing everything I could. I had like friends of mine with Amex cards trying to get tickets, like whatever I could do. And I finally was able to get two tickets and I thought I'd hit the boyfriend jackpot, but it turned out

My wife hates stand-up comedy. It's just like, I love it. She hates it. She loves opera. I hate opera, right? So if you can imagine getting me opera for my birthday, right? And so one of the biggest problems is we really have to let go of our own perspective. And so one is they're not just like me, but they're also not just like each other. And anyone that has two kids immediately recognizes her.

They come from us, but how different each of those kids are. It's just one example. My older son, he's generally outgoing, but you can go to a party and he'll just walk right in and start interacting with people. And my son, Aiden, it'll take him 45 minutes to go in that party. So here's one of my great leadership inventions I did as a parent is I realized I just have to get to every party 30 minutes early.

Because if I get to the party on time, it's going to take him 30 minutes to go in. But if I get there 30 minutes early, then he's finally going to be ready to go in right when the party starts. So that's just one small example.

Now, one of the questions is how do we create equity in the fact that different people value things differently? Right. Just as one good example is some people may want more money. Other people may want more flexibility in their job. And so one of the things that I think is really important is how do we create rewards for people that are

are equal value or cost to you, but can tap into their different needs and desires that they have. And actually one of the first consulting projects I ever worked on in my life was back in the mid 2000s out there. I was at Northwestern University Chicago. There's a little company that you might've heard out that's headquartered out in the suburbs there called McDonald's. You might've heard of them. And so anyway, I was working with them and another professor, Huggy Rao, because they

They were trying to figure out the fact that they had two different types of workers. They had like teenagers, college students, and then they had people that were like mothers and fathers who were, this job was actually what they needed to feed their family and to give housing to their family. And so the question is, how do you set up a set of rewards that cost the company the same, but are equally valuable? And so one of the things that we talked about was, well, what do the younger people want?

Well, they might want money for education. So you could give them as a reward, right? For every six months, we'll pay X amount of dollars towards education. What are older people? Well, maybe they want health insurance, right? To help their family be healthy and safe. And so part of it is we want to think the things that we can offer and give people a choice.

And that is probably the single, I think, biggest thing that I've done in my own research. I've shown in negotiations one of the best ways to get the best possible outcome for yourself

while leaving the other side satisfied is giving people a choice between different options that are equal value to you. And then that allows you to be ambitious or even what some people might call aggressive in your offers because the choice is signaling flexibility, is signaling your desire to reach a deal. That means the other side is going to trust you more. And so you're going to get this great outcome. They almost always don't get a worse outcome. You've expanded the pie. Most of it's gone to you, but they walk away satisfied.

So choice really matters in the psychology of people. It absolutely does. And that's one of the core things that I try to talk about here all the time on the podcast is the power of choices and especially our micro choices or micro decisions that we make. And as in behavior science, there's this thing called choice bracketing. I think people make narrow choices instead of looking at them as you would through choice bracketing.

and on a longer horizon. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's not just thinking about the choice. Like one of my favorite movies is a movie by called Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh. And it's got George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez and so many amazing actors. But there's one point where Vin Rains says to George Clooney, they put a gun on you're going to prison. He's like, they put a gun on you still have a choice.

right? And this idea that sometimes we don't see choices and options. And part of that sometimes is just the routines that we follow through. And so part of it is how can we see the bigger picture? This is where visionary comes in. I'll give you one example, which I really love from my kids. So I took

I take my kids to school every morning. My wife picks them up in the afternoon. This is a special time we have together. And my one son was in a kindergarten. He was in second floor and my first grader was on the third floor. So naturally, I would walk up to the second floor, drop off the kindergartner, and then walk up to the third floor, drop off the first grader. But there is a big problem. The problem is my kindergartner, the second born, is more relaxed.

He likes to take his time. He liked having a big goodbye ritual with me. And my older son, older son, firstborn, type A, he hates the possibility of being even late. Even if he still had 10 minutes to get to his classroom, he'd be like, "Aiden, hurry up!" He would get so incensed and I would get so frustrated. I'd be like, "Asher, just be patient." And then he would storm up to his classroom.

So after about, I don't know, a few weeks of this, I was just thinking about how could I make this go more smoothly today? And then I realized we actually have a choice. And I said to the boys, I said, hey, I have an idea. Why don't we try something different today? I'll drop Asher off first. So I'll walk up to the third floor, drop Asher off first, then walk and do Aiden on the second floor. And it solved everything.

everything. So Asher was now happy. He got to class without stress on time. He'd give me a hug goodbye. Now he just gives me a high five. And then we walked downstairs. Aiden got to take as much time as he wanted. Big hugs. And to me, I was in my own world. I didn't even recognize that like

like the teacher was observing Asher's behavior in the dynamic. And so about day three of our new routine, she said to me, she's like, wow, it's really an amazing success dropping Asher off first. And I was like, oh my God, you noticed all that? But even she noticed what a difference it made. And that's, I think, a great example of,

Every time we're in a difficult situation, we want to take a step back and ask yourself, what's going on here? How can I meet the needs of both people without a huge dramatic shift? Sometimes you need a dramatic shift. But in this case, all we had to do was get the younger one to walk up an extra flight of stairs and then come back down. But it changed everything. So Adam, I want to explore this concept of being a visionary in more detail. In my book, I

I came up with this metaphor that I call the bee and turtle effect, and it goes something like this. We need to incorporate both of these principles into our leadership style. And in one regard, we need to be like the honeybee who goes out 100 times from the hive on a daily basis, really fanatical about the daily execution that needs to be done.

on behalf of the queen and the hive. And on the other side, we need to be like the sea turtle who is willing to travel thousands of miles because of their vision and is very patient about this. And a good scenario I'm going to bring to highlight this is let's go back a number of years before there was any payment type of solution that was mobile. And you had this glass blower

named Jim McKelvey, who had this amazing piece of art that he wasn't able to send because the person didn't have enough cash, didn't have a check, wanted to pay for it, and he had no way as a small business owner to take it. So he and his friend Jack Dorsey come up with this idea that they're going to create this vision for this reader that's going to make mobile payments a possibility in the form of Square.

And yet, although they have this incredible vision, they run into obstacle after obstacle where they have to be like the bee to overcome them. So my question for you is, how do you balance being that visionary with driving the execution that's needed to close the gap? Because sometimes as a leader, you can have that vision and it can be far out, but others on your team

don't see the vision or your shareholders don't see the vision. So how do you close that gap? That's a great question. I love the metaphor. It's such a great example. I think there are a couple of things that I think are really matter. One of the benefits of being visionary, of having a vision and sharing that vision, that's really important. It's not just to have it, but share it and repeat it so that people really understand it, is it gives context for people's work.

work. And you talked about earlier about wanting to be seen, be valued. People want to know how their individual effort is contributing to the larger whole. So part of that really big vision really matters. If you go back, a great example of that is John F. Kennedy says, by the end of this decade, we will walk on the moon.

And so then people always even, and it took a lot of little steps for NASA to get to the point where they were capable of doing that. But it was always in the context of, we know why we're doing this because it's in the service of this larger one. And one thing that you're bringing up is the difference. Sometimes people contrast between the CEO, the chief executive officer, and the COO, the chief operating officer, right? Where that person is really tasked with the daily execution and operation of the.

in kind of some ways, mini visions that build up to the larger vision that someone has. And so I think that, yeah, we need to find, to be visionary means you have to find ways to implement your vision, right? And help people take those individual steps towards achieving that goal. But I think the larger goal is still really critical for helping people make sense of those individual steps that they're taking part of. Okay. And I want to go back to mattering here for a second. In leadership, often there's this

balance between holding people accountable and a reward system and making people feel seen and valued. So how as a leader can you ensure that you are making people feel that they matter, but it doesn't come at the cost of accountability or challenging them to grow?

Yeah, I think that's right. I think people generally, not everyone, wants to achieve their full potential, right? And they want to be challenged to do that. And there's something that they really value. But there's this balance between challenging people, right? And let's say crippling

crippling their self-esteem, right? And so how do you challenge people, but also encourage them at the same time? And there's actually, there's a famous study that I don't cite in this paper because I didn't make this connection until right now in my book. But Jeff Cohen did this research, a guy at Stanford with David Yeager also. And they just wanted to understand what's a type of, and Jeff Cohen's in the School of Education. He's a social psychologist in the School of Education at Stanford. How can teachers give the best feedback to students?

and especially ones that can transcend different genders, different races, et cetera. And so part of it is that it's this three-step process is the leader sets the standard that they expect of people. They highlight the ways that people have met the standard, but also ways they haven't.

but also they show encouragement and belief in the other person. I know you can reach that standard, right? And they help them maybe with a little coaching. So it's really this idea of setting high standards, documenting where people have and have not reached that standard, but also believing that they can reach that standard and expressing that encouragement to them. And so I think that is really the key.

Okay, thank you for sharing that. And another area I wanted to go into that you write about is the leader amplification effect. And

I have seen this play out so many times, meaning when I was working at Dell, Michael could enter a meeting and based on what he said, it could change the whole dynamics of the entire meeting and sway it one way or the other. I've seen the same thing when I was at Lowe's where we had this president and chief operating officer, Larry Stone, who had been with the company 40 years, was highly respected. And if he came into a meeting and said,

shot down the idea, it could create a ripple effect that would take months, if not years, to recover from. And in the book, you highlight the fact that you had a really dynamic and incredible mentor, Danny Kahneman, and you learned this leadership amplification effect through his mentorship. Can you describe what happened to you and how it highlights what this can do?

Yeah, let me just say one thing about the leader. So this is a phrase that I coined the leader amplification effect. It really captures the idea that when we're leaders, we're on stage and everyone's looking at us. And so that's the big thing is that psychology tells us something really important.

Anything that we're paying attention to, that we're looking at, whatever that stimulus is, it's going to have an amplified reaction on us, and we're going to have a more intense reaction to it. And so that's really what the leader amplification effect is. And that can be good or bad, right? Like an offhand compliment versus an offhand criticism can have hugely monumental effects on people. That's also why Tammy Jo Schultz's phrase, we're not going down the

We're going to Philadelphia was so powerful because she was that leader. Everyone was paying close attention to everything that she said.

I started my PhD at Princeton University in 1993. And the first class I ever took was with Danny Kahneman, who is the only psychologist who would one day go on to win the Nobel Prize in economics. And he just arrived with incredible fanfare from University of California, Berkeley. He was one of the top five paid employees in the entire university. Like, I think he might have even been second or third, like after the president and general counsel, I think he was third actually. Anyway, so there's,

11 of us, so 10 other classmates that are first year doctoral students at Princeton in psychology. And in the first day of class, I raised my hand and I'm eager to prove that I belong, that I'm valued and respected, as we've talked about already. And I still remember the four things Danny did that day. He crossed his arms, he shrunk up his face, he shook his head and he said, that's not right at all.

And then he smiled and he moved on and the rest of the class moved on. But I was frozen in place. Like I felt humiliated, right? His offhand comment, that's not right at all. It reverberated inside of me, right? But then, and it took me weeks before I felt comfortable speaking in any class, little on Danny's class.

About five or six weeks later, I was walking in the hallway and Danny's walking this way and I'm walking this way. And Danny just over his shoulder says, hey, Adam, I love reading your reflection papers. Then he turns the corner and you're a great writer. He said, I love reading your reflection papers. You're a great writer. And that offhand compliment filled me with so much joy. I literally skipped down the hallway. I didn't know what to do with my energy. And so what I'd like about this example is these are two casual people.

offhand, inconsequential comments by Danny Kahneman that he doesn't even remember to this day. But because of his position of authority, but also because of the respect, so much eyes were on him paying close attention to what he said, right? What he said got magnified, amplified, intensified, right? So that that's not right at all became like humiliating criticism, right? Crushing criticism. But that

your great writer became glorious praise and so i realized in that moment how

These offhand comments can have a huge impact, right? You mentioned the percent lows, who's well-respected. One comment could like green light or red light a project, right? One of my favorite examples of this is a man named Barry Salzberg, who was CEO of Global Deloitte. And after he, you know, there's tens of thousands of employees. And after a few months, he realized there was always bananas at important meetings. And he's like, huh, okay.

Are bananas a symbol of Deloitte that I didn't discover my 30 years here? Does someone really important love bananas? So he asked his assistant, why do we have bananas at every meeting? And she said, because you love bananas. He's like, wait, what? So apparently the first meeting he ever attended, the assistant was like paying close attention to whatever he did. And she saw him pick up a banana with a little bit of enthusiasm and eat it.

And so she coded that as Barry Salzberg loves bananas. We have to have bananas at every meeting. And that's such a great example of how he didn't even say anything. It was so incidental. It was so offhand, but it had this massive impact. Yeah. And I'm going to take you through a scenario that my daughter and I experienced. And as I go through this, I think this is a one-off

thing that happened, but it happened to occur at one of your alma maters, Harvard. I took my daughter at the time she was between eighth grade and freshman year in high school, and she's one of these women who is extremely driven. She wanted to go to an Ivy League school and she was already thinking about where she might want to end up. So during the summer,

We go up to Boston to go tour MIT and Harvard. And we go to Harvard on our first visit, and we are in this huge auditorium, probably 300, 400 people around us. And the guidance counselor stands up, I guess it was an admissions counselor, stands up in front of everyone and says, I want you to look in front of you to each of your side and behind you.

She goes, "Now I want you to turn your gaze to me, and I want to realize that probably no one in this room is going to get into Harvard. And because of that fact, the way we conduct our tours of the campus is that we don't go into any of the buildings. We're not going to show you any dorms, anything like that, because it'll be a waste of time to you and to us. So we're going to just walk around the campus." Next day, we went to MIT. Same room, same number of people.

And in front of the room was an admissions counselor, and then there were about 20 students of different ages and etc. And this guidance counselor said, we want to give you the full experience of what it's like to be at MIT. And to guide you on this, I can talk about it up here all day, but we're going to

bring you into small groups where you can actually go on a tour with a student who's here. We got a student who was from Brazil. She had already graduated and was working on her master's. She took us into the labs that she was working in. She introduced us to professors, took us to the student union, took her into our dorm room, etc. And to me, this is an example of the leadership amplification effect.

of how those two different ways of approaching admissions create such a different experience for those and their desire to want to attend those two universities.

Yeah, and I think it also ties into so much of what we've talked about because, you know, I said there's these three universal factors, right? Being visionary, being exemplary, and being a mentor. And you've just highlighted how being visionary and being a mentor go together. What's the vision for campus visits?

The vision for campus visits is, I think, twofold. One is to present your university in an optimal way, right, positive way. But two is to make the people that are visiting feel excited and valued and respected.

And so Harvard lost the vision, right? The vision isn't to be realistic, right? The vision is to create a sense of excitement and wonder in these people. Sure, they're probably not going to get in there, but the dreaming of getting in there is also something that's really positive and powerful. And so why kill someone's dream, right? Why not? That dream, they might not get into Harvard, but maybe they're going to get into Harvard.

But maybe they'll get into Princeton or Cornell or Penn or Duke or UNC or Texas or UCL, other great schools. And so there's like the idea of like killing someone's dream.

is just so unnecessary. It's cruel, it's selfish, it's patronizing, it's small-minded, right? And so to me, what I see in that and what happened to you and your daughter was they didn't have a vision that was generous towards the people that they were interacting with, right? And I'm sure it would have a huge impact. And you can just ask yourself like,

What was the point of the Harvard person saying that? Like, what purpose did it really serve? And so I think that's one thing that we learn as leaders is after, we could be honest, but one of the things you talked about visions, you talked about goals, you talked about

You could, someone at NASA could have said, look, the odds of us ever walking on the moon are so low and it's certainly not going to happen for 20 years, right? But like, what's the purpose of doing that? Let's work towards a goal. And maybe instead of 20 years, it becomes 12 years. It's not 10, but that's okay. We're still better off than we were by not having that ambitious goal. And there's a famous phrase, there's no point to rain on someone's parade.

Absolutely. And I think the other thing you don't realize, and this happens in corporations or nonprofits alike, when you take that approach like Harvard did in that situation, not only are you stifling things in that moment, but you could change the trajectory of how a high school student approaches everything. If they've just lost the hope that they're never going to be able to get in, it might change their whole approach to education.

I'm not saying it would, but it could. And I think the same thing a leader does, how you, I have this principle that we speak with our feet. And when you're out there and you're talking to people and you're showing up,

it's how you do it that matters so much. It's the inflection in your voice. It's how you personalize the response. It's remembering something that an employee told you about their family or something. It's the way that you show up that really motivates people to take the hill, so to speak, or not. Yeah. And I think there's different ways that we can try to create

reward and motivational systems that matter for people. I personally, based on everything I know, am very much against Rankin-Yank systems. And the Rankin-Yank system would be something where like every year, 10% of people have to be fired and only 10% of people get promoted or something like that.

And those systems are horrible for collaboration, for teamwork. And Microsoft was famous at one point for doing that within teams. So you have a seven person team. One of you is going to be out of here. How are you going to collaborate with each other? But that's different from still having very high standards. So Netflix is famous for their keeper test, where like when you decide whether to retain someone at the end of the year is what I fight to keep this person.

And what's better about, like you can say it's cutthroat, but what's better about that system is you're just competing against yourself, right? You're not competing against anyone else. That means you don't have to undermine anyone else. We could actually help each other all be kept, right? And so I think that's part of it is how do you create high standards that don't lead to cutthroat competitiveness and all the downsides that occur with that?

You're so right. When I was at Dell, the average tenure of a VP was between three and six months. And they had adopted a lot of the GE Jack Walsh philosophy. And one of the things was we had

mandatory 10 to 15% were gone every year. And when I was there, what I saw was you were trying to bring in all these visionaries with different perspectives. And yet the old guard who were in most of the leadership positions were protecting the old guard. And so the people that they were taking out were the very people that were coming in to bring change. So it had a negative effect.

And Adam, I want to use that to go into the last topic I wanted to explore with you, which is the power of perspective. And you write in Chapter 7 that highlighting expertise is so critical because people feel more comfortable speaking up when they possess unique knowledge or insights.

When people feel they know what they're talking about, they're more likely to talk about what they know. Along with feeling supported, having expertise is one of the biggest predictors of speaking up when in a low power position. In fact, when people feel they have a unique and relevant perspective, they are often compelled to put their insights or information on the table. It's why expanding the status pie is a key solution to making wise decisions.

I think this power of perspective is one of the most important things that we can bring, and it's one of the most undervalued superpowers. And I was hoping you could go into this and explain its power.

So I've been studying this concept called perspective taking for almost 30 years now. And actually, 1995, I started my dissertation and that was what I ended up studying. And the title of my dissertation was Perspective Taking, Debiasing Social Thought. And one of the things that I've discovered over the years is that perspective taking really is this superpower.

power. And it functions in so many different ways. One of the ways it functions is it helps us navigate a diverse world, right, by understanding the different perspectives. So I've shown in my research, my award-winning dissertation, right, that perspective taking decreases the tendency to stereotype others.

I've also shown in negotiations that when we're really good at understanding the other side, we can propose creative solutions that not only get us what we want, but also solve whatever issue our partner or opponent, the other side, is experiencing. It's also really helpful for innovation to take perspectives. And sometimes we're taking the perspectives of individuals. And other times we're taking the perspectives of what we might call a class of people.

So one of the things I've studied in my research, and you mentioned in my TED talk earlier about how to speak up for yourself, is I've studied power dynamics. And so one of the things that we know is there's a term, I mentioned the leader amplification effect. I have another term that I coined called the leader silencing effect. And the leader silencing effect is that

Because of our power and our authority and our position, we tend to silence the perspectives of other people. But those perspectives can be incredibly valuable. They can carry the critical insight, even if someone's like lower down in the social hierarchy. And so one of the things we have to do to get to wise decisions or innovative solutions as a leader of a group is we got to leverage.

lower the risk of speaking up. We got to reduce the leader silencing effect. And so one of the ways that we can do that is we can take the perspective of what prevents low power people from speaking up. And if

And if we can identify those things that prevent them from speaking up, we can counteract them. So one of the things that you mentioned is, and I mentioned this word elevating other people before, elevating. If you know someone in the room has unique expertise or experience, you want to highlight it, say, hey, I know Jane over here has worked for 20 years in this industry, and I'd love to get her perspective on what might be a solution as we try to enter that market.

it, right? And so by highlighting that is letting, it's elevating that person saying their opinion really matters. It's lowering their risk of speaking up, right? Versus Danny Kahneman telling me my point wasn't right at all, right? That was so shattering to me of my confidence. It increased the risk of my speaking up for a very long time. And so that's one of the things we want to do is we want to take the perspective of our opponent negotiation, of our interaction, the person we're trying to motivate, like what's going to motivate this person, but

But also, because I'm a leader, what is the perspective of someone with less power than me? And how can I mitigate some of those constraining forces that prevent them from sharing their perspectives and therefore not allowing for wise decisions or innovative solutions? Adam, I want to end on this as a tribute to your father. At the end of the book, when you were giving your salulation speech at high school graduation, you wrote something.

read something from the great Gatsby that goes like this. And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. And one morning, so we beat on boats against the current.

And you write that Gatsby's and my dad's green lights speak to the universal, inspiring, infuriating continuum. The life worth living is one where we perpetually store strive towards the inspiring. And so my last question for you would be, we all have the capacity to inspire others. What's the most significant shift people can make to unlock this potential in their own lives?

It's a great point. I still remember when I was reading The Gatsby, my dad, without skipping a beat, could quote that entire last page. And that's, again, an example of being in awe of his competence, right? But he also, that was part of his vision, right? And I write in the book that my parents had infuriating flaws.

but really inspired me about both my mom and dad is they wanted to be a better person today than they were yesterday. And they wanted to be more inspiring tomorrow than they were today. And so just like that green light, they strove towards that. So I would say the single biggest thing, maybe the core of this book is that it answers centuries old question, right? Are leaders born or are they made?

And I think that I've shown definitively that leaders are made because there is a universal set of characteristics that make someone inspiring. We can study those, learn those, practice those, and develop those skills. It also means that it's our current behavior that inspires or infuriates.

So that means that you could be inspiring today, but you could slide towards the inferior end of the continuum tomorrow. But it also means no matter how bad you are today,

tomorrow you can be a little bit better, right? You can strive towards that green light of inspiration. And so part of it is that we have to stay the course, right? Even when the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the winds of chaos are all around us, we have to keep going forward. And here's a final thing that I think is really important from my research is that don't be too hard on yourself, right?

One of the things I've shown in my research is shame is a particularly destructive emotion. It makes us into defensive monsters or hiding ostriches, putting our head in the sand. And so none of us are perfect. We're all going to make mistakes, right? I'm going to...

be an infuriating person tomorrow, even with the best efforts. And so the question is, how do we recover from that? And how do we become more inspiring tomorrow? If we dwell on those moments and we beat ourselves up, right? We're going to be incapable of seeing the big picture, right? Of being that calm, courageous protector and really empathizing with others. So we got to focus outward. We got to strive towards that. And one thing I think that all of us can do is once a month,

reflect on times when you were in purity, but also when you're inspiring and also to reflect on the people in your life and when they inspired you and how you might emulate those behaviors. And then just once a month, take whatever you've reflected on those emulations and reflections and just make

one commitment for the next month. Here's one thing I'm going to do better. What I'm going to do is I'm visionary, but my message is too complex. I'm going to simplify it. I'm going to do this next month. I'm going to try to be calmer even when I'm experiencing time pressure. Now I'm going to do this month. Every couple of days, I'm going to elevate someone and point out what a great job they're doing.

If we can do those reflections and emulations into intentions, right, we're going to be more inspiring, more of the time. We're going to spread the seeds of inspiration and we're going to make the world a better place to be. Well, thank you for ending on that because this podcast is all about intentions. And Adam, where's the best place for people to go to learn more about you? AdamGalinsky.com. Awesome. Well, it was such an honor to have you today and congratulations on such a fantastic book. Highly encourage the audience to pick up a copy.

Thank you so much. It was such an honor to be here and thanks for all of your generosity today. What an extraordinary conversation with Dr. Adam Galinsky. His work on the science of inspiring leadership is a testament to the idea that we all have the potential to lead and influence with purpose and intentionality. Through his research and insights, Adam reveals how becoming a visionary, exemplifying desired behaviors and mentoring others can transform not only how we lead, but also how we live.

Adam's message is a powerful reminder that leadership isn't just about managing tasks, it's about creating meaning, fostering belonging, and empowering others to thrive. As you reflect on today's episode, consider this. How can you inspire those around you through your words, actions, and presence? What steps can you take to shift toward the inspiring end

of the Leadership Continuum. Remember, as Adam shared, inspiring leadership is not reserved for a select few. It's a skill we can all develop with intentionality and reflection. For more on Adam's groundbreaking work, including links to his books, Inspire and Friend and Foe,

as well as his viral TED Talk, visit the show notes at passionstruck.com. Be sure to check out today's episode on YouTube and explore exclusive offers from our sponsors at passionstruck.com slash deals. Supporting our sponsors helps keep the Passion Struck community thriving and allows us to bring you conversations like this one.

You can connect with me on Instagram and Twitter at John R. Miles or find me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear how this episode impacted you and what steps you're taking to become a more inspiring leader in your life. Looking to take your growth to the next level? Head over to passionstruck.com and take the Passion Struck quiz to see where you are on your journey to living intentionally. And don't forget to sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter for weekly tools, exercises, and insights to help you apply these lessons to your everyday life.

If you found value in today's episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show with five stars and share it with someone who could benefit from Adam's incredible insights. Your support helps expand our mission to empower people worldwide to lead intentional, impactful lives. Now, here's a sneak peek at what's coming up next on PassionStruck. I'm joined by Dan Heath, the bestselling author of Upstream and The Power of Moments to discuss his transformative new book, Reset, How to Change What's Not Working. Dan shares powerful strategies for identifying what's holding us back

and actionable steps to create lasting change in our lives, teams, and communities. You won't want to miss it. We're looking at the employees who gave a one or two or three out of 10 because they're very disengaged. They may be in danger of leaving. And so we've got a fire. We've got to put out the fire. It's an emergency. And what we don't do a lot of times instinctively is say, well, hang on a second. Yes, it's important to pay attention to problems, but do we understand that

why the nines and tens, the employees who are super duper happy at the far other end of the curve, do we understand why they're happy? Thank you as always for spending your time with us and for being part of the Passion Strike community. Remember, the lessons you learn here are only as powerful as the actions you take. Live life Passion Strike. ♪