Leading People
Gerry Murray talks to leading people about leading people. Get insights and tips from thought leaders about how to bring out the best in yourself and others.
Leading People
Discover the Universal Factors Behind Inspiring Leadership
In this episode…
What makes some leaders genuinely inspiring while others leave us frustrated and disengaged?
In this transformative conversation with Columbia Business School's Professor Adam Galinsky, we discuss his latest book: Inspire – The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others
Along the way, we uncover the hidden psychology that determines whether you'll inspire or infuriate the people around you.
Adam reveals the "Inspire-Infuriate Continuum"—a powerful framework showing how every interaction we have falls somewhere on this spectrum.
Through compelling stories and research-backed insights, he demonstrates how life naturally slants us toward the infuriating end but offers clear pathways back to inspiration.
The conversation takes fascinating turns through real-world examples, from the contrasting leadership styles during two famous crises to how a simple coffee machine placement can transform organizational culture.
Adam shares the three universal factors that determine our position on the continuum.
Perhaps most eye-opening is the "Leader Amplification Effect". To illustrate this, Adam recounts how Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's offhand criticism devastated him as a student, while a simple compliment weeks later has sustained him for decades.
This awareness of our impact as leaders becomes the foundation for designing more inspiring interactions.
The discussion provides practical strategies for moving toward the inspiring end of the spectrum.
Adam's insights extend beyond traditional leadership contexts - executives report becoming better spouses, parents, and friends by applying these universal principles.
Ready to transform your impact on others?
🎧 Listen now to discover the universal path for bringing out the best in yourself and everyone around you.
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Welcome to Leading People with me, gerry Marais. This is the podcast for leaders and HR decision makers who want to bring out the best in themselves and others. Every other week, I sit down with leading authors, researchers and practitioners for deep dive conversations about the strategies, insights and tools that drive personal and organizational success. And in between, I bring you one simple thing short episodes that deliver practical insights and tips for immediate use. Whether you're here for useful tools or thought provoking ideas, leading People is your guide to better leadership. Thought-provoking ideas Leading People is your guide to better leadership.
Speaker 1:Have you ever wondered what makes some leaders truly inspiring and others impossible to follow? In this episode of Leading People, I sit down with Columbia Business School's Professor, adam Galinsky, to unpack the hidden psychology of influence and inspiration. During our conversation, we explore many things, including what Adam calls the Inspire-Infuriate Continuum, how you can shift your impact as a leader, and the three universal drivers of motivation that every leader should understand. Whether you're leading a team, an organization or simply want to inspire more in your everyday interactions, this conversation is packed with science-based, practical insight. So let's dive right in. Adam Galinsky, welcome to Leading People.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me so, Adam you're coming in from?
Speaker 1:where are you coming in from today? New York City, new York City, the big, the big apple. Yes. So I was introduced to your work by a previous Leading People guest and colleague of yours, stefan Mayer, and he said to me you should talk to this guy. So I was introduced to your work by a previous Leading People guest and colleague of yours, stefan Meyer, and he said to me you should talk to this guy. And then I invited you on the podcast today to talk about your latest book on leadership called Inspire, which happens to be very well aligned with the mission of leading people, which is how to bring out the best in yourself and others. So we'll get to the book shortly, but first, so my listeners can get to know you better, how did you get to being a leading professor of leadership at Columbia Business School, and what people, places, events or anything else stands out on your journey to where you are today? And were there some epiphany moments on the way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll say a couple different things. The first thing is, I think one of the keys to success in life both you know is finding that intersection where your talent meets passion right, so that you're both you love what you do and you're good at what you do. And my dad was a clinical psychologist, a psychotherapist, you know. He was also a professor too, but you know. And so I became a psych major in college and, you know, I always thought, okay, I'll become a therapist, you know. And I got a job at Mass General Hospital doing psychiatric research after I graduated from Harvard University, and three months after I was hired, I was fired. And my boss because you have like three months where you can fire people for for, you know, for calls for, for for nothing and he just said I don't think your heart's in this, you know, and it was humiliating, it was embarrassing, it was crushing, it was all the things you can imagine. You know, like I mean, I always did great in school, I'd gone to Harvard, you know, and then getting fired for my first job, and then I started reflecting a little bit. Oh well, I'll say one more thing. The story so I'm getting a job, I love photography. I got a job at a photo store and then one day I just put a sign up in the psychology department at Harvard and said, if you need resources and call me and a guy who had an incredibly unique position he was halftime Harvard psychology in social psychology and halftime in the business school and he ended up, seeing my sign, or his research coordinator, did hire me and then I eventually became his full-time RA and what I realized in retrospect was something really interesting.
Speaker 2:While I was an undergraduate I had never taken a single clinical psych class. I'd never taken abnormal psych, I'd never taken a psychotherapy class. I'd never done anything. However, I had taken many social psych classes, including advanced social psych. So my own behavior was telling me that I love social psychology and that I did not like clinical psychology and abnormal psychology. But because I had this prior of what psychology was and all my dad's own experience, I did that. So that's a great example where my passion and my talent did not lie in clinical psych. It lied in social psych.
Speaker 2:So then I get a job. I get a PhD at Princeton University in social psychology. I go on the academic job market. I applied to 50 psychology departments and three business schools and I got zero interviews in the psychology departments and I got two interviews of the three business schools and one of them was Northwestern Kellogg School of Management and I was there for 12 years and just really thrived in the business school environment and I'm getting tenured offers from Harvard and from Berkeley and Wharton had interest. But after a certain point I came to Columbia. I came to Columbia because I was single in Chicago and I thought I might find love in New York and I met my wife three months after I got here and now we have two kids. So you can see these three critical points getting fired right. Only a business school showing interest in me coming to New York to find love. And here I am with a family, two kids and a job the best job in the world.
Speaker 1:Right. So how do we follow that? Well, one of the things I liked about the book was that you, you do these. Can I use the phrase self-effacing you actually talk about like you, you go, I got fired, you know, but you frame it in such a way that, you know, maybe it was the best thing ever happened to me at that point in my life, because I I've, you know. I've noticed that coming out quite strongly in the book. But let's get to the book then.
Speaker 2:Now the full title is inspire the universal path for leading yourself and others. Can I just follow up on one thing you just said because I think it's really important? You know is one of the things like I I talk about my, my um, fairs a lot and, and part of it I do it, you know, psychologically because it helps me deal with that. You, you know like. So I'll give you one example Three years ago. I'm a great teacher. I've won teaching awards.
Speaker 2:I taught two sections of the leadership class. One of them I got near perfect scores and the other section gave me the lowest scores I've ever received. You know, just shocking, like they hated me and you know some people would probably stuff them in the drawer and like never, you know, like try to avoid it. But like I literally walked out of my office to one of my colleagues and said I'm like look at this, and so we talked about it and like that helps me deal with it.
Speaker 2:But the other thing is I think it's really important to tell people that I almost got fired, I almost got kicked out of grad school, and the reason why is because people see the finished product right, they see me today and they look at me and think that's impossible, you know, um, but they don't realize the path that got you there.
Speaker 2:The other reason why I think it's so important is you say I got fired, um, but this is how I recovered. And so someone else who's going through a difficult situation they might say, oh, adam recovered this way, I could recover that way. And that's why I tell people talk to lots of different people, because the way that I recovered might not help you, but the way that Jerry recovers might help someone right, and so we can start to see how this. So I think there's incredible value in talking and your question is such a great and brilliant and important question. How did you get here? Because the path tells us so much and that path also provides opportunities that other people might take, yeah, and help them deal with their own travails.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and those of us who've been on many journeys in life know that, um, you know, flights get delayed, trains get cancelled, and we don't give up because we, we know where we want to get to. So we either put up with whatever's happening or we find alternatives and and, and you know, find all the ways to get. It's quite, quite useful when you kind of know what lights your lights floats your boat and lights your fire for you, you know. So, um, yeah, I think anybody out there who's maybe a little bit um, lost in in in that aspect of their life can take some inspiration from yourself. Uh, that's, you know, to pursue the things that make you happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah and and um, you know and and you know it's so. Example of like it's hard to know what you love without knowing what you don't like. Like that comparison is really helpful. Like the clinical to social psych comparison. Like maybe I would have gone on social psych and I would have liked it and when happy with it, but because of my experience of clinical psych I knew I loved social psych and then that made me even more, you know, passionate and embracing and you know, joyful from it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's go to the book. The book is packed full of brilliant stuff, and the first question I have for you is who is this book for and why no?
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, first of all, I think the book is for everyone. You know, it's, technically, I think, a leadership all. I think the book is for everyone, you know it's, technically, I think, a leadership book, right, the Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. I've been doing research and teaching on leadership for 20 years, but I think one of the things that most shocked me about the book is, like you know, a CEO reached out to me and said, you know, reading the book made him a better spouse right, you know. A Fortune 500 executive said that the principles in the book made her a more motivating parent, right, you know. Or people say, you know, I'm a better friend, a better colleague, from reading this book.
Speaker 2:Because the book is really about life. Right, it's about how do we navigate our world and we are inherently biologically conditioned as social beings right, we're interacting with people all the time and how do we act in ways that inspire other people rather than create infuriation and resistance and reactance and seething cauldrons of rage and resentment. And I think one of the things that just you should know is that anytime someone's paying attention to you, you're going to have an impact on them, and that impact could be positive or negative. It could inspire or infuriate. Oftentimes we don't have a choice of whether to have an impact, but we always have a choice of the type of impact. So what I'm trying to do in this book is give people a set of skills and a mindset and a framework for going through the world, where they are going to spread the seeds of inspiration and make themselves other people in the world a better place.
Speaker 1:So let's unpack a little bit of that now, because you divide the book into two parts. The first part is reimagining inspiration and then designing inspiration. So let's maybe start with the first part, sure, and so one of the things you do quite nicely is you you sort of capture a lot of probably more complex stuff in simple enough to understand principles, like one of them, which is the inspiring, infuriating continuum. So what is this?
Speaker 2:yeah. So so I'll take a step back and tell you. You know, how did I get here? Like the reimagining stuff and even the designing stuff. But so you asked about my story.
Speaker 2:A number of years ago I was teaching the FBI the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the top law enforcement agency in the United States and one of the participants just happened to start talking about a leader that inspired him. Participants just happened to start talking about a leader that inspired him and I was so struck by the transformation in his, in his voice, right In his eyes, in his face, his body, you know, and I was like it was. It was like this person was, was you could see the inspiration filling them up, you know. And so I turned to the rest of the the, the class, and said can anyone else tell me about a leader that inspired you? And everyone could, and everyone was excited to talk about it. So I literally changed my teaching that day forward and my research and I started asking people all over the world tell me about a leader that inspired you. Now, of course, the next time I was teaching the FBI, someone was like I don't want to talk about a leader that inspired me. Let me tell you about this bastard that made my blood boil, that infuriated me, created a seething cauldron of rage and resentment. So then I started asking people all over the world to tell me both about a leader that inspired them but also that infuriated them, and I discovered that they really exist on a continuum, and I think this is really really fundamental.
Speaker 2:I mentioned before that anytime you give someone attention, you're going to impact them, and the impact is going to be positive or negative. It's like our brain has been preconditioned to sort of pay attention along this continuum, and so, just to give you what I mean by this is like the inspiring leader is an optimist who sees the big picture right. The infuriating leader is pessimistic, pedantic right. The aspiring leader is calm and courageous in a crisis. Right. The infuriating leader is an anxious coward. The aspiring leader is generous, elevates others right. The infuriating leader is selfish and diminishes others. And so what you can really see is that this exists on a continuum.
Speaker 2:I think this continuum is incredibly valuable as a metaphor, for two reasons. Here's the first reason Life slants us towards the infuriating continuum. We get tired, we get hungry, we have strong emotions, we're under pressure, we're in uncertain times. All of those push us towards the infuriating end of the continuum. But because it's this continuum, we have a pathway back to the inspiring side. Right, we know if I'm feeling anxious, I can be more inspiring if I can find calm. Right, I know that, oh, I'm a little self-focused here. Wait, I can get back to the inspiring by focusing on other people, and so I think that's really instructive.
Speaker 1:On leading people. The goal is to bring you cutting edge thought leadership from many of the leading thinkers and practitioners in leadership today. Each guest shares their insights, wisdom and practical advice so we can all get better at bringing out the best in ourselves and others. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share a link with friends. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share a link with friends, family and colleagues, and stay informed by joining our Leading People LinkedIn community of HR leaders and talent professionals. So, adam, can you maybe tell us a bit more about this continuum?
Speaker 2:And I believe there are some universal factors that you discovered in your research. Yeah, exactly so this inspiring, infuriating continuum is made up of three universal factors, and I actually just previewed those factors for you. The first factor is how we see the world, and I call it being visionary, right, and that is that optimistic, sees the big picture, visionary, right, and that is that optimistic, sees the big picture, communicates effectively. The second factor is I call the exemplar. That's how we are in the world, that's our calm courage, but also our authentic passion. And the third is how we interact in the world. That's what I call the mentor, and that's how we elevate others and empower others and empathize others.
Speaker 2:And each one the visionary, exemplar, mentor are universal because they each satisfy a fundamental human need. So what we need, um, when we're feeling uh, we have fundamental need for meaning and understanding and a sense of coherence, and so that's what visionary provides. We have a need to feel safe and protected, but also energized. That's what the exemplar provides. And then we have a need to feel like we belong, but we're also valued and respected. Right, and that's what the exemplar provides. And then we have a need to feel like we belong, but we're also valued and respected right, and that's what the mentor provides. And so you can see that there's this enduring continuum right that's made of these three universal factors, because they each satisfy a fundamental human need.
Speaker 1:And in the book you actually use two contrasting examples. Maybe people should just go and get the book to find out what those are, because they're pretty powerful examples from two crises that you show the contrast between somebody who showed the vision, the exemplar and the mentoring, versus the other person who didn't. Will we leave that?
Speaker 2:I think it's worth us doing really quickly, I think, because it's I write it in such a gripping and engaging way that people want to go read it. But I'll just say so. There's two captains of vessels that both had giant holes in their vessels. So there was a captain, tammy joe schultz, of southwest airlines 1380, and the left engine exploded and tore a hole in the side of her passenger plane. And there was a guy named Francesco Schettino, who's captain of Costa Concordia in the Mediterranean, and he got too close to shore because he was trying to impress his mistress who was on shore a Moldovan dancer and they tore over a hundred foot hole in the side of his ship. That eventually led to the capsize and they just acted so differently.
Speaker 2:In this situation and I'll just tell you I won't give you all the details, but I can just give you one example is that when the hole tore on the side of Southwest Airlines plane you know the 150 passengers on board, as Captain Tammy Jo Schultz would later say the plane wanted to descend, so I let it descend and she dropped about 20,000 feet in five minutes. Now, if you're a passenger on a plane and there's a hole in your plane and your plane is dropping 20,000 feet in five minutes. You probably think you're going to die, you're going down. But this is what made her so remarkable, is she recognized that she was not just the protector of them physically but also the protector of them psychologically. And she went on the intercom and she said 10 words, that's it. But those 10 words were so profound, so transformational, so fundamental, and she just said we are are not going down, we're going to philly. Now I want to just point out we have a fundamental need faced with uncertainty, with a need for understanding, she gave them a meaningful, coherent framework for understanding what was happening, they're experiencing right, and that it wasn't as scary as it might seem. She also did it in a very calm voice, you know, which also was very soothing for people. She did lots of other things which you'll have to read about in the book, but Francesco Scintino I'll just tell you one thing that he did is we hear him talking to the Coast Guard. We hear Tammy Jo Schultz talking to the air traffic controllers in incredibly calm voice like she's ordering soup, but we hear Francesco Scintino talking to the Coast Guard. Now the remarkable thing is he's talking to the Coast Guard from a lifeboat.
Speaker 2:The captain of the ship was in a lifeboat while over 100 people were dying on board, and it just incensed, infuriated, this Coast Guard person.
Speaker 2:But the two great things about him being in the lifeboat is, he claims he didn't intend to be in the lifeboat, he stumbled and fell into it, so it was just a pure accident that he was being saved from the sea.
Speaker 2:But the second thing was is, you might not know, he was a captain, because he also somehow tripped and fell out of his captain's uniform and stumbled into his civilian clothing before stumbling into the lifeboat. You know, and so that's just you know, he basically tried to hide that he was the captain, and so you can just see these two very, very different people. In the end, tammy Jo Schultz landed the plane with no further injuries. One person did get fatally injured when the hole, just from the immediate explosion in the hole, but no one else was injured, whereas cetino had, you know well, over 100 people pass away, none of which should have and should have been saved if he acted um in a more expeditious and inspiring way so, just apart from the vision, extemporamental aspect there, there is this notion of owning something, uh, taking responsibility for, for something maybe it's unintended consequences and at the same time, you know, trying to walk away like he did.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's probably not very inspiring, to say the least.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay and he spent time in prison. I mean, I think the furiation was so large. Right, he was charged with manslaughter, dereliction of duties, a number number of other you know crimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that might actually be a nice segue into this notion of the leader amplification effect and the whole role that self-awareness plays in that. And you also give a personal example from the late great Danny Kahneman where you were on theahneman, where you had some experience with that great man at one stage in your early career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I got a PhD at Princeton and the first class I ever took was with Danny Kahneman. It was a three-hour discussion class, you know. We did a bunch of reading 11 people in the room, 10 other first-year doctoral students like myself. So it's my first class ever. I'm a little intimidated, want to prove that I belong right and I find an opportunity to say something I think is insightful, will impress Danny and the rest of my classmates. And I still remember what he did that day, which is the exact opposite of that FBI agent. Remember I talked about the FBI's transformation. When talking about inspiring, danny crossed his arms, shook his head, scrunched up his face and spit out that's not right at all. And then he moved on and the rest of the class moved on, but I didn't Like I was frozen in place. Those words just reverberated inside of me. I was humiliated. Right, it would take me weeks to speak again in his class, but it took me weeks to speak in any class. But six weeks into the semester I was just walking down the hallway and Danny, without stop, while you're walking, kind of over his shoulder, offhand said hey, adam, I love reading your reflection papers, you're a great writer. And they turned the corner, I was filled with so much unbridled joy. I literally just started skipping down the hallway, like you know, the old Heidi skipping thing. And, and I realized later, I coined this phrase, this construct, I invented this construct, I guess, if you will, called the leader amplification effect. And Danny personifies it completely right, he's like that's not right at all, which for him was an offhand criticism. That was not that consequential. Like you know, it's not right, let's think about what is right, you know. But for me that became humiliating criticism. But at the same time, you know that phrase, you're a great writer, right, that was just an offhand compliment, but to me that became glorious praise. I mean, that phrase has nourished me for 32 years, right, and so you can really see, like the power of you know the leader's words, but it's not just our words.
Speaker 2:Like I tell a story in the book about the CEO of Deloitte, barry Salzberg. Now, barry Salzberg was CEO of hundreds of thousands of employees around the world and he became CEO Six months into it he realized there was bananas at every meeting. He's like huh, I've been at Deloitte for 30 years. Is bananas a symbol of Deloitte that I didn't know about? Who really loves bananas. So he went to his executive assistant and he said hey, why do we have bananas at every meeting? And she said because you love bananas. So he went to his executive assistant and he said hey, why do we have bananas at every meeting? And she said because you love bananas. He said, wait what? I don't love bananas. So what happened was in the first meeting he ever went to, she was watching him like an eagle, right Cause she wants to know what is Barry Salzberg like and he picked up a banana and he smiled and looked a little positive and the executive just the assistant coded that as Barry Salzberg loves bananas, let's have bananas at every meeting. And it's such a great example because that's not even a verbal thing. He didn't say anything, he just perked up a little bit.
Speaker 2:And so when we are leaders, we're on stage, we're under the microscope, people are paying close attention to us and one of the things we know from cognitive psychology is attention is the currency of impact. So anything we pay attention to, the signal from that thing will become amplified, it will have a greater impact on us and our reactions will be intensified. So from amplified signals to intensified reactions, that's what happened to me with Danny Kahneman, right. And so another example I give in the book, which I really love, is if your friend texts you and said hey, I need to talk to you today. You'd be like, huh, I wonder what's going on. Is it good, is it bad? Does it involve me? So you probably worry, but just a little bit. But now imagine you get those same six words from your boss hey, I need to talk to you today. Then you're like oh my God, armageddon. You know, and um, you know, someone told me this great story. Um, that's not in the book, but I love it.
Speaker 2:Um, afterwards that they got an email from their boss that said hey, can you come by my office next Tuesday at 2 pm? I need to talk to you. She didn't sleep for five days. Like what is going on? She walks into the person's office and he said hey, I just want to go over the agenda for about five minutes with you for the meeting on Friday. Make sure that you're on board. And she's like why didn't you just say that in the text message? You know she was freaking out like oh my God, am I being fired? Am I losing resources? Is something else going on? You know, and you know it would have cost them nothing to say, um, hey, come by us at 2 PM to go over the agenda.
Speaker 2:Like it's like four extra words, you know, um, but one of the problems with the leader amplification effect is we're not aware of the impact we're having on others and we can't. We sometimes forget that we're cursed by our own knowledge. He knew it wasn't scary. It never occurred to him that she would not sleep for five days, right, because he knew inside his head it was trivial, straightforward, bureaucratic, meaningless. You know, pedestrian, I guess, is a better way of saying it. And so one of the key things as a leader is we just have to recognize that all of our behavior, when people are paying attention to it, is going to have impact. It's like the beginning of a relationship, right, a romantic relationship. Like we are scrutinizing every. You know we pour over this text message for six hours. Like you know, they use the word. But what does the word but mean in this message? You know?
Speaker 1:it depends how they spell it. Huh, that's true too. That's true too, that's true too, that's a good one, but uh, just. But I use the word, but you've inspired me the one thing.
Speaker 1:When you tell that story, I immediately can identify situations I found myself in where, as you say, you completely mind read the situation and it's completely wrong. You've distorted it out of. It's completely wrong. And I'm sure a lot of the listeners out there probably identify with that. Probably nearly everybody has had that experience where we thought it was going to be like X but it turned out to be more like y, yeah, and at the end of it we were asking ourselves why did I get so upset? You know, why did I get so? I guess what? What is the?
Speaker 2:um, I want to just go back to exactly this is also speaks to the power of being visionary and communicating effectively. Right, because we effectively right, because we fill uncertainty with our own mishigas, if you will, right. And so if we don't communicate effectively, we don't give people that vision, we don't give people the lay of the land. They're going to fill it with whatever they have, and you might fill it with, you know this horror and someone else might fill it with a different horror, and then you're both horrified, but you can't coordinate because you're horrified about different things and neither of you should have been horrified by anything, right? So it's a great way of thinking about that yeah, and, and our brains don't like this.
Speaker 1:That's what sets us off. We don't like ambiguity, we don't like uncertainty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and so it's corrosive yeah, that little bit of clarity, that extra little bit of clarity for anybody out there who's found themselves as a leader, noticing that they get a reaction that they didn't expect, like probably that person in that particular story did. There's some useful insights there. And then you talk about something kind of contrasting with that, which is the leader silencing effect. Yeah, I couldn't help but be a little bit aware of the work of Sunstein and Hastie with you know the book Wiser, where they talked about who goes first and that. But tell our listeners a bit about that impact. We get back to the word impact again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the leader silencing effect is basically just an offshoot of leader amplification effect. So leader silencing effect basically says is that when we're a leader, our power, authority, our position tends to silence other people's voices, because speaking up when you have less power is risky, right, like to me, I was tempted to speak up in front of Danny Kahneman. I did speak up. He had such a strong negative reaction like it silenced me. Now the issue is it might also silence other people, right, you know because of that, and so I tell the story in the book. But, like I was asked about a month before my first son was born, by a company that was on three different continents, to travel, basically to go from New York to San Francisco, to Singapore, to London, back to New York and give lectures all around the world on how to speak up for yourself. Now, why did I have to do this? Because they had a company-wide meeting and the president was so dismissive towards some comments that no one felt they could ever speak up again. So people in the audience who saw him be dismissive, to like Stefan right, would say, ok, I know not to speak now, because I saw what happened to Stefan right, and so then I had to like do? I did two lectures three hours in the morning to more junior associates to help them learn how to speak up effectively, and then a three-hour session in the afternoon to all the senior leaders and senior vice presidents on how to help other people speak up.
Speaker 2:And so one of the things that we have to recognize is that our power really silences other people's voices. Now it's so powerful that we don't even have to criticize people to have the effect. So I give you the extreme example where Danny Kahneman, you know just, is like Simon Cowell on American Idol, just dismissive, you know, rolls his eyes, you know, etc. But you know, when the leader speaks first in a meeting, everyone just then acts consistent with the leader, right? So one of the ways we can reduce the leader silencing effect is just having the leader withhold their own opinion or judgment to later in the process.
Speaker 2:But sometimes even being present as a leader is enough to silence other people. And so President Kennedy discovered this in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the world has come to nuclear war, right, all-out nuclear war. He noticed that in initial brainstorming meetings people would say something and look to see his reaction. Kind of like Barry Salzberg, like, is he smiling, is he frowning? And so he realized they can't talk if I'm in the room, so I just have to leave the room, you know. And so sometimes that really helps us think about it, so we can help people speak up by praising them when they do, acknowledging their ideas, following up on them, right. But sometimes people are going to only feel free when we're not there.
Speaker 1:You're listening to Leading People with me, gerry Marais. Today's guest is Professor Adam Galinsky, and we're talking about his recent book on leadership Inspire the Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. Coming up, adam shares what his insights mean for managers, teams and cultures. What his insights mean for managers, teams and cultures, and how even small changes can dramatically improve your ability to inspire others. So back to our conversation. You're practicing what you preach with your doctoral students, isn't that right?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say a couple of different things about that. Well, one thing I do is in all my doctoral classes is I have a co-leader. So what I do is I have someone else lead the class with me each time and that helps give them voice and helps them to recognize. But there's another story that I love, which is I had a student of mine who just could not speak well with me. And another thing I talk about in the book is about where do you sit. Like that can make a difference. If you sit at the end of the table, you're saying I'm in charge. Right, if you put someone else in the end of the table, you give them some authority.
Speaker 2:So this doctoral student just couldn't articulate any ideas with me and finally I had this brain inside. I said let's just switch seats. You sit in the professor chair, I'll sit in the student chair. And then I like to say he became like the Muhammad Ali of ideas. Right, you know, just like there's something about being in that bigger, higher up chair enabled him to speak more effectively. So one of the things and this is you know you talked about first half of the book is about what is inspiration. Second half of the book is how we design it. That's a good example of design, like I've just talked to you about three design features. It that's a good example of design, like I've just talked to you about three design features, like where you sit are you at the meeting? Where do you sit at the meeting? When do you speak at the meeting. Those are all ways that we can think about in advance and design how that meeting is going to go in a way that's going to promote certain outcomes or not.
Speaker 1:So that's actually. I think you talk quite a bit about how our behavior tends to also convey the message of where we are on that continuum, doesn't it? As, depending on how we behave and as a leader, you have to be much more aware of how our behavior is impacting people and you actually do. I remember a nice example in the book where you talked about this distinction between status and power and how it affects our sense of security or insecurity and how that impacts our behavior. Can you unpack that a little bit for the listeners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know I've been studying for 20 years social hierarchy and about status and power, and we often use these words interchangeably right, and often you know, like the president of the United States obviously has a lot of power and they're obviously a high status person. But status is really about how we feel, how other people treat us Like. Do they respect us, Do they value us, Do they admire us? And it turns out that I've discovered something pretty remarkable in my research is that the most infuriating leaders in the world and a lot of people make their own judgments about their own CEOs or politicians in their particular countries or organizations the most infuriating leaders tend to be people who have a lot of power but also feel very insecure. They don't feel like they're treated with respect, and so they tend to enact revenge then on people and they notice any slight and they put people through hell, and so sometimes that's purely based on bureaucratic positions. So, like in most organizations, the person in charge of reimbursements has tons of power, but they're not very well respected by others, and so they often put people through, you know, a type of bureaucratic hell.
Speaker 2:There's a. If anyone's seen the TV show Seinfeld, there was a character called the Soup Nazi and he had the best soup in New York City, but you had to like follow this precise regimen, and if you did, you had to like hold your tray this way. And you had to follow this precise regimen. And if you did, you had to hold your tray this way and you had to move this way and you had to hand the money this way, and if you messed anything up, he would take your soup away and say no soup for you. And so that's what a lot of reimbursement clerks. Okay, you had a scribble on your form.
Speaker 2:I can't submit it. You have to redo it. They have right to do that, and because they don't feel respected, they want to demean people and punish people, and they almost get a joy out of infuriating other people. And so one of the things that I say is you want to make sure that the leaders you select are deserving of respect. Right, that's one thing, and then two is you want to treat them with respect. And so I had a reimbursement clerk at a university that was just like that. She was like the soup Nazi, but I discovered she couldn't travel for health reasons and also probably economics, but she loves snow globes, and I didn't discover this. Someone tipped me off to this. They're like you know, if you get her a snow globe from your conference, she'll expedite all of your reimbursement. So every time I traveled, I'd buy a snow globe at the airport and I'd give it to her. And then, you know, I became one of her favorite child, and so, instead of being no soup for you, it was extra soup for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually found that as well in like the person at reception. Often in a company, you know they're often just treated as the person that you go to when you want a pen or a. You know they used to do the storeroom as well and, yeah, you know, please put me through. These were the days when you, you know the reception would put you through to somebody and you know there's tendency to come up and give them commands and at some point then they'd say you know what I'm gonna get you, mate.
Speaker 1:Uh, whereas if you went up and talked to them and asked them just little things, polite things like how was life and and how they were getting on, and you just remembered their name, for example, that's another polite thing to do, in a way, just show them that they've been seen as a person, as a human being. It it kind of elevated that sense of status, as you say. The status thing went really up and they felt, oh, this person shows me respect, they, they, they know me as a human being and and I will, I will help them.
Speaker 2:I've noticed that over the yeah well, I have a great story from my own life. So when I was at princeton there was um, uh, two administrative people for the department, um and um. Just because you can probably tell I'm a curious person, I like talking to people. So, you know, very early on I started talking to them and I discovered one of them loved going to Atlantic City and Gamble. The other one had a special needs child and so, like I'd come in, you know, on a Monday and I'd say to Vera I'd say, hey, vera, how was Atlantic City this weekend? Did you go? And she'd tell me stories. And then, you know, I talked to the other one about, like you know, what her son was doing and how, like some of the struggles but also some of the little moments of joy.
Speaker 2:And then, a few years into my doctoral program, I noticed that every single doctoral student at Princeton psychology had an envelope in their mailbox but me. So I asked one of them what's the, what's the? What are these letters? They're like oh, that's our monthly bill. I was like for what they're like, you know, for phone, for copying things like that. They had never charged me because they liked me Right, and so they could, they could, they could just put it under probably some departmental code. And so for I probably, you know my being nice to these people, generally being nice to them. You know it wasn't strategic, you know, probably saved me hundreds of dollars in my you know my graduate career because they liked me and wanted to do something nice for me.
Speaker 1:I'm a big believer in treating everybody with respect. I mean, I've been on, worked on building sites. I was a bus boy in Chicago once for a few weeks. No-transcript. Every human being, uh, respect for who they are and what they do yeah, and I think what they do you can.
Speaker 2:You know we can talk about perspective. We can also talk about experiencing it Right. And so one of the Southwest airlines I don't know if they still do this, but I know that they did this at some point in their career, especially when they were the number one ranked airline, you know, for customer satisfaction, for, as they had, everyone had to do like one of five jobs at one day a year. So you know they didn't make people be pilots, of course, but, like you know, even the pilots had to load bags one day a year. You know they had to be a flight attendant. You know they had to be a reservationist, so you got to see what it's like to be on each point of the process. So if you might get so angry at the baggage, you know handlers are like, okay, I get it because I know what they're going through, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So let's just now segue into this second part of the book a bit more. How can we become more inspiring, and what can architects teach us about how to do this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think that what architects really teach us is that they design a building to really inspire certain types of interactions with people and reactions with people. And we want to think like an architect in what's the end goal for an architect, right? Is this beautiful building, et cetera. But like what do we want to happen? And you know, I actually shared a story, you know, an earlier time with you and we were talking about, which I really love it, from a design feature, which is that in our old business school building it was like a bus terminal. It was disgusting.
Speaker 2:But there was this one place on the third floor, the faculty lounge, that had this beautiful espresso coffee machine maker and everyone would gather there to get coffee. Even the dean would walk up two flights of stairs to go get the special coffee. We move into this beautiful, amazing building. I got my coffee right here and they put one of these beautiful coffee machines on every faculty floor. Now no one leaves their floor, no one sees each other.
Speaker 2:I never see any of my colleagues, and so I think one of the really interesting things is this idea that if we thought about what and we designed this building to increase spontaneous interactions with people, like the whole building was signed this way and then at the final step, they gave us this perk that trapped us in our own silos, and so I actually recommended and I don't think it's really no one's listening to me, but I said we should take out all the coffee machines on every faculty floor and just have a faculty lounge. So I honestly think you know this is what I would do and I honestly really believe it. I think it would make the business school a better place to be if there's only one place to get coffee for all the faculty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it would. That would amplify the social effect that you get from from people. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that's kind of what I mean by designing. You know things. I'll give you just one other quick example that I think is really profound is that when I was at another university we used to fight so fiercely about hiring other faculty. It's the only time I've ever felt homicidal where I just wanted to kill my colleagues, you know, and part of it was that we were all trying to change the voting rules every time to fit what was going to help our candidate. And so one of my colleagues had this great idea.
Speaker 2:It's from John Rawls, it's called the Veil of Ignorance. It's let's meet in the summer, when we have no idea about our jobs or who the candidates are, and just come up with a set of voting rules in advance. We're going to design our process. You know, we created a three-step voting process and after that I would lose votes, but I didn't feel homicidal. I felt disappointed, but I felt it was fair. And so that's like setting up in advance what's our role, what's the processes we're going to use to make decisions, and if we don't do that, we get chaos.
Speaker 1:Now, Daniel Kahneman would be proud of you for that as well, because he writes about that when he talks about recruiting people, that you need to have clear criteria and everybody needs to work from the same criteria so that you can create that level playing field. Yes, so what happens, supposing we slip into the infuriating end of the spectrum here, the continuum? How do we get back? What are some of the ways we get back to the inspiring side of that continuum what's your experience with that?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think there's a couple different things. So, first is, you know, one of the core features of being an inspiring person is being courageous, and I think one form of courage and you said it earlier is to accept responsibility for your inferiority and behavior, um, and I think that's really important. But there's a caveat, and this is something my research shown is that, um, we want to accept that we act in a fearing way, but we don't want to beat ourselves up about it. We don't want to feel shame. And one of the things I've shown in my research I've studied the machine shame and guilt. And shame is a destructive emotion because it either makes us run and hide or it makes us defensive monsters externalize, externalize, it's your, it's your fault, right, and so, because shame is such a horrible feeling, and so we don't want to feel shame, we want to say yeah, I excuse my language, I fucked up, you know, and here's what I'm going to do differently in the future. And then we got to commit to that, and that's how we become more inspiring. Is we think about what's one thing we could do tomorrow, commit to doing tomorrow that will make us more inspiring.
Speaker 2:So, as just one example, like you know, columbia University we got on the phone and you're like your university has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, and you're exactly right. And I think one of the reasons why I've been in the news for all the wrong reasons is that our presidents we've had two failed presidents in the last two years have just done a horrible job of communicating right, and I think they both made the exact same mistake, which is I can't communicate till I have all the information I need. But that just creates uncertainty and people fill it with their own mishigas. And so one of the things that I was just quoted in Fortune this week about, what should CEOs do during these times of uncertainty? And they should communicate more. And they should communicate, you know, even when they don't have complete information. They should just communicate about the lay of the land and let people know they're there.
Speaker 1:Well, the example is often given that even in a time of crisis or change, if you just say I don't know what to do next, but I'm working on it, can actually at least people know that something. It gives them a sense of certainty, apparently, that they actually can say, oh, but something is actually happening, so I can at least. Obviously, if you don't go back to people and keep them updated, they're going to start wondering what is happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, rudy Giuliani became mayor of America after 9-11, right, the attacks on the Twin Towers because he simply got on every day and let people know what the garbage pickup schedule was Like. He literally was up there saying, okay, I just want everyone to know, you know tomorrow. You know, andrew Cuomo, during COVID, did a press conference every day. Some people thought he was going to become the next president until some other scandals hit him, but he basically just read whatever information he had at that moment.
Speaker 1:And Zelensky's been doing the same thing in Ukraine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, zelensky's a great example.
Speaker 1:Master communicator, if there ever was one. So what are some strategies to get better at vision?
Speaker 2:So I think one of the strategies to get better at vision is to start with your values. What are your values Like? What do you really value? And articulating those values. And everything stems from values, right, and some values then lead into this big picture. But the second thing you need to do is take that big picture, values-based idea and simplify it right. You've got to make it so it's really simple. And then there's another thing that's really important is you've got to make it grow in people's mind by making it vivid. And so, as one example I love to give, is like just a subtle difference.
Speaker 2:Drew Carton did this research at Wharton School of Business. But the difference between saying you know, our mission is to make our customers satisfied versus our mission is to make our customers smile, and that smile is more visual. And so I just did a study that we're writing up right now for publication, where we analyzed every presidential election over 100 years, and we just analyzed the convention speeches of the presidents and the Republican and Democrat nominees, and we coded for how metaphorical the language was, and one of the things we found is that we can predict the winner, who wins, based on whichever one's more vivid, more metaphorical, more visual. We control for economic factors GDP, inflation, unemployment. We control for political factors like incumbency. We even control for what their Gallup popularity polls were at the time of the first convention. So we submitted this to publication. Someone's like? Well, that's just one context. So we went back and we just ran another study with parliamentary elections in Great Britain and we looked at the party manifestos that were written. We can again predict the winners, controlling for, controlling for you know, these other external factors, and so make it vivid.
Speaker 2:And then the third thing and this goes back to what we just talked about is repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. And I'm going to tell you why you want to repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. What does every song in the world have? It's got a chorus, it's got a refrain. If every song in the world has the same thing, that tells us something about the human mind. The human mind has been designed to crave a repeated, unifying theme. So that's how you become more visionary, right?
Speaker 1:and how do we get good at priming the exemplar pump?
Speaker 2:yeah, so, so, so. So how do we become um authentically passionate and calm, courageous protectors? How do we become authentically passionate and calm, courageous protectors? How do we become super? Right as one way to do that, and I discovered something 25 years ago and this has been replicated in hundreds, hundreds of experiments around the world, all over the world that if you just take time before a stressful situation to think about a time when you were powerful, in control, when you're your best self, when you hit it out of the park, you will feel superness, start to course your veins and you're going to act and be more super. And we've shown this.
Speaker 2:For example, this was a study I didn't do. Someone did it in, actually in Europe I think they were in Switzerland, but I can't remember now exactly Um, but they had people do high stakes speeches and before the speeches they asked them to um just, uh, reflect on a time right when they felt powerful and control. You know, um versus they'd lack power and lack control, and they gave their speeches. They also measure their physiology. So people who thought about time and their powerful control had calmer physiology. They also gave better speeches. They could because of their calmness. They could be visionary. They could see the big picture, um, and so that's a, that's another way that we can do that that actually probably ties into this envisioning.
Speaker 1:Uh, because a lot of musicians and athletes and people they run their best race yeah, absolutely, and lots of people who go rational, almost to kind of go, yeah, but that doesn't make sense and and you know, I've been a musician all my life and and I've, you know, also played sport and everything else if you run the performance, even if it's a class, like adam, you're teaching a lot of classes. So if you run that class based on the best one you ever did, it might be a totally different group of people and you're going to get yourself into that resourceful state which is going to take you into your probably the best version of yourself yeah, absolutely, and and I think you know there's the power of of that, and I think you know it's crazy.
Speaker 2:How much are you know? Um, we live in the present and, um, and what I mean by that is that, like, whatever psychological state is right now is going to impact what we do, but we can leverage the past to get in the best psychological state today. Um, just as one other example, I, you know, talk about being a great mentor, and one of the ways that we can help people be better mentors is just to remind them to what's a time that you learn from someone that has less power than you, and then you realize, well, not only can I help this mentee, they might be able to help me and therefore you're going to. And so we show if we just ask mentors to think about a time when they learned something from someone below them, and then we follow their mentor relationship, the mentees who don't even know about our little experimental intervention will rate their mentors as being more encouraging, more empathic, you know, just more effective you talk about wire mesh mentors and terrycloth mentors.
Speaker 1:Maybe we won't unpack that one here, because I wanted to ask you about the. Read the book. It's kind of fascinating what those metaphors represent. And one quick, two quick things here the value of partnerships and how that affects inspiration, and you also talk about taking a kaizen approach to life. So maybe you can just segue into both of those and then we'll come towards the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I call them inspiring partnerships, and I think one of the keys to being a more inspiring person is self-reflection. Right Is to reflect on what am I good at? Where am I most inspiring? Where are my pitfalls? Where do I fall into the infuriating hole sometimes? And some of the ways that we can do better is we can team up with someone who's inspiring on our infuriating side. And you know, I mentioned, you know, the whole growth of Apple, right, the computer company. Right, you have these two people, steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak the Steves, if you will. And Wozniak was a brilliant technician and Steve Jobs didn't really care about the technical details, but he was unbelievably visionary, right, and super creative, and so together they were the perfect partners, right, like Steve Wozniak had no interest in communicating or selling the vision, right, so they teamed up together.
Speaker 2:And I tell the story about my wife and I. So you know, when I was in Chicago, I was incredibly unhappy because I basically I'm not a planner. I would just sit at home unless someone planned something for me, and my wife is an incredible planner and curator of experiences, and so when I started dating her, I started doing something fun every weekend. Now, at the same time I'm like the COO, like my wife is not an operationalist.
Speaker 2:And so I tell this story about how, like the first time she went on an international trip without me after we were married, we're TSA pre-checking global entries. So we go into special lines. She got in the wrong line going over and stood in line for an hour when she didn't need to. And she got in the wrong line at customs coming home where she didn't need to because she could have just gone right through because she's global entry. And so I say at the end of the book I say without Jen I'd be sitting at home doing nothing, but without me should be standing in the wrong line. But together we're standing in the right lines and having great adventures together.
Speaker 1:And the Kaizen approach to life.
Speaker 2:It's a nice concept that you came up with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So so my it's also from my wife, so so my wife lived in Japan for two years, and there's a phrase called Kaizen, which is continued improvement. And I talk a little bit about my parents and I say, you know, my parents had their own infuriating flaws, but the one thing that I think that most inspired me about them is that they really wanted to be a better person tomorrow than they were today, and they wanted to be better today than they were yesterday, and so they really listened when they failed and they really they didn't feel shame, but they committed to doing better tomorrow, and they didn't always do it, but then they try to pick themselves up and be better the next day. And so if we just take a commitment to I'm committed to tomorrow being a little bit more inspiring than I am today, then we're going to be on the inspiring path of life.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, coming to the end, what's one key insight or big idea you want people to take away from this book?
Speaker 2:The single biggest thing I want people to take away from the book is that you have an incredible responsibility in life, that you are going to go through life and you're going to impact other people, and you have no choice whether to impact people. But you have a profound choice between inspiring versus inferting people. And I guess here's the biggest insight Every single person out there can become more inspiring. Inspiring leaders are not just born, they're also made, and the reason why we know this is because there's a universal set of attributes that everyone can identify, practice, learn and work on and develop and nurture. And even if you're inspiring today, you can infuriate people tomorrow. So the key is your behavior in the moment is what matters.
Speaker 1:Right, so that's fantastic advice for people to think about. How do people get in touch with you, adam, and do you have anything special to offer them?
Speaker 2:Well, people can get in touch with me through LinkedIn, but also adamgalinskycom. You can learn more about the book. You can even self-assess your own whether you're inspiring or infuriating. Even self-assess your own whether you're inspiring or infuriating, um. But yeah, if um the first three listeners out there who uh um connect with me either through my website or through LinkedIn, you say you know I heard you um on uh, you know the, the, the leading people podcast. Um, I will. I will send you a free copy of the book.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, I wish I'd, uh, I wish I was going you going being a listener to my own podcast now so I could take advantage of your offer. So, as ever, thanks, Adam, for sharing. Yeah, Thanks for sharing your insights, tips and wisdom with my listeners here today.
Speaker 2:Great Well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Coming up on Leading People. My next guest is Amara Naeem, client Experience Director at the Top.
Speaker 3:Employers Institute. Let's talk about the multi-generational aspect. Right, the workforce today has several different generations that we are expected to manage as leaders as well. Right, and understanding what their expectations are becomes the top priority. We did some research into Gen Z and we quickly, very quickly, something that was really obvious came out.
Speaker 1:Amara shares how leading organizations are adapting to the new world of work by rethinking culture, embracing generational shifts and creating spaces where people want to stay, grow and even come back to later in their careers. It's a conversation packed with insight, data and real world examples of what it takes to be a top employer today, before our next full episode, there's another One Simple Thing episode waiting for you A quick and actionable tip to help you lead and live better. Keep an eye out for it wherever you listen to this podcast Until next time.
