The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

• 665: Pat Lencioni - Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Fear-Based Success, Working Genius, Anticipating Objections, and The Hidden Cost of Proving Yourself

  Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Patrick Lencioni is the founder of The Table Group and a bestselling author of 14 books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The 6 Types of Working Genius. Behind his achievements (valedictorian, straight A's, business success) were childhood wounds that drove him to prove himself. Key Learnings "I think I'm really good at anticipating people's objections." I think about what they might be thinking and what I need to put out there. Whether talking interpersonally, giving a speech, writing a book, or on a podcast, I like to think about what the other person might be objecting to. Lean into empathy. I always felt like I needed to prove myself in order to be successful and to feel safe. That's not healthy.  "When people tell you they got straight A's and were the valedictorian, the student body president, and got accepted to all the schools they wanted to get into, there's a wound there." Based on my personality type, I shouldn't have done all those things, but it was out of the need to prove myself. Which wasn't healthy for me. My parents had a hard time being affirming because of their own lives. It wasn't until I was 55 years old that a friend who's a psychologist said, "You, my friend, have childhood wounds you've never dealt with." I got good Christian counseling and realized that the way I grew up, I wasn't supposed to grow up that way. It's common in athletes & CEOs to feel like they haven't done enough. They need to do more. "You're a noun, not a verb. You are enough, and you're not defined by what you do." Great achievements come out of fear, but "true greatness is best when it's only in the things that you're meant to be great at, and that you're doing it out of freedom and passion and love, not out of fear of failure." I remember seeing Tiger Woods on the Tonight Show when he was four years old. He was being groomed to be a golfer when he was four. It's best in life when we discover who God means us to be, then we do the things we're supposed to do and we're okay with not being good at the things we're not supposed to. Are we too affirming now as parents? People who are pretty darn good at everything it's usually because they're doing something out of fear. When I was a kid, my parents came from World War II and the Depression. It was like, hey, you got a roof over your head. There was a lot of suffering, and they weren't really attuned to that. Now we are hyper worried of our own kids suffering. No, suffering is actually good. They need to know they're loved and safe, but they're not gonna be protected from what is necessary for their development. The mistake I made was, oh no, I don't want them to feel like I did. Thankfully at my age, I'm now interacting with my mostly adult children and explaining to them what I did wrong. The Teammate Trifecta - How should we use it?: When I wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team right after 9/11, I thought, "That's the book on teamwork." Then we realized you need The Ideal Team Player (humble, hungry, and smart) to hire people that fit on teams. Years later, we came up with Working Genius: Are they in the right seat?  3 steps to building a team: Don't let people on the bus if they're not humble, hungry, and smart. Make sure you have them in the right chair based on their gifts. Then teach them the Five Dysfunctions. Pat's Two Working Geniuses: Invention and Discernment "Invention means I love to come up with ideas out of nothing. Discernment means I love evaluating things, curating things. God wired me to do that kind of thing." When people say, "Pat, we have five minutes, and we need a new idea," I just take a deep breath and smile. One man's trash is another man's treasure.  Every new idea I've come up with has been in the field, working with people. I asked Jim Collins, "Jim, you do all this research with data. I go into a room with leaders and just think, What's going on here?" He said, "Pat, that's just as valid as what I do. That's called field research and face validity."  What is Pat terrible at? Finishing things. People say, "Well you finished 14 books." And that's because I had the help of others to make me finish those.  I got a 4.0 in high school. That wasn't my personality. I went to every class in college, never blew off classes. My personality is the kind that should blow off classes that don't matter. But I was so afraid of failing and disappointing my parents and teachers that I did anything they asked. That was not natural; that was fear-based. Can we use fear as useful fuel? "You can use it in the short term, but if you're doing it in your life, no." "We should celebrate what other people are better than we are at things. We should literally celebrate what we suck at." If we have two kids and one's creative and the other's disciplined, we tell the creative one to be more disciplined and the disciplined one to be more creative. No. We have to say, understanding that you're not creative is good for you. That's not who you're meant to be. The hardest thing about being a parent is constantly asking yourself, "Am I pushing them too hard or not enough?" The hardest question you ask yourself as a parent is, "Am I pushing my kids too hard or not hard enough?" This question also applies to yourself.  In Working Genius, should I work on my working frustrations? The short answer is no.  Working Genius is all about knowing what you love to do. Enablement and Tenacity are my working frustrations, and so many of those things fall into parenting. I'd say to my wife, "Hey, Laura, let's outsource some of these things." Out of fear and guilt, she said no because she felt like she'd be a bad mother. Outsource the work you don't enjoy, and when you have to do it, try your best and don't feel guilty with the result. The electrical company turned off our power for not paying the bill. We need to accept our deficiencies and need to be able to laugh at the things we're not good at.  Ryan's Learning Leader Team: When your whole team has Tenacity as their working genius, your team loves to finish things. You will never be flaky. You might stick to something that needs to be changed way before it needs to be. In my company, we're always up for a change in plans, but not great at following through. If your team doesn't have Wonder and Invention, force yourself to borrow from others outside the organization to get new ideas. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Vulnerability-based trust changes everything in teams. Eric Spoelstra uses Five Dysfunctions with the Miami Heat. He started when they acquired LeBron James. He said, "I don't know what offense we're gonna run this year, but I know we're gonna use the Five Dysfunctions." I love it in basketball, especially because you see them on the court. When people can be so vulnerable that they can say it was my fault, or I need help, or I'm sorry I was kind of a jerk yesterday at practice, it changes everything. But when you have a player who doesn't admit when they made a mistake or who blames everybody else, the ceiling of that team being great is so low. Humble, Hungry, Smart has been a great tool for athletic teams. I define it: no ego, it's about the team (humble). Hungry means I go above and beyond. Smart means I have emotional intelligence. I have the team members say, "Which of those three is your lowest?" It is crazy how people will call out. The goalie said, "I'm not smart. I yell at guys on the field, and I demean them. I gotta get better." Another kid said, "I need to be hungrier. I don't do the workouts at home." Pat phrases it this way when meeting with athletic teams. "Okay, everybody, look around at your teammates and think about the thing they want to get better at. If you want to be a good teammate, when you see your teammate doing the thing he just admitted he wants to get better at, you need to call him out on it." Once people start to have that language, it's amazing how they're coaching each other. And if as a coach yourself, I think you should tell people, "When I was a player, this was mine." They're gonna go, hey, if the coach admits that, I'll do it too. For leaders with Enablement & Tenacity as top geniuses, how do they avoid burnout? You have to be willing to start with "I am prone to burnout if you guys aren't aware of what's going on." The people with enablement and tenacity will say, "I'll just do it," and then they do. We had 12 employees and only one had Tenacity. We said we are going to kill her because every time we have to get something done, we're gonna say, "Jackie will finish." When people have enablement and tenacity, they and everybody else need to say, let's not abuse them. How do we assess a company in a short amount of time without focusing on their financials?  When I go into a company, I find out what their meetings are like. If there's no disagreement and they're not exhausted at the end of a meeting, that's a red flag. If good people are leaving an organization, that's a massive red flag. I like going around and checking interactions. Is there an intensity with people together? Or are they alone and quiet? Also, keep an eye on customer reviews. What are the customers saying? There are two extremes of humility problems: arrogance on one end, and lack of confidence on the other. I first identified humility as a problem when I saw a CEO who didn't care about his company's results, but if he went on TV and answered questions about why they didn't meet their numbers, he would make jokes and make others laugh. If he was happy from that versus getting the results they needed, that's an issue. What specific traits do leaders need to have to get hired? A leader has to simultaneously believe they are no more important than the people they lead. They also have to accept the fact that their behaviors and words ARE more important than others in the company. "The one thing the leader has to do is break the tie." This past Friday, I was in a meeting trying to deal with a strategic issue between two great people. I dropped a curse word and said, "Listen, I'm pulling the CEO card right now. I don't do it all that often, but since I am the CEO, this is where we're going." Because I don't pull it every time, people are glad to have a CEO that will do that. If you're doing it every time, you lose credibility. Advice for young professionals: I wrote a book called The Motive, and what I say to leaders when they're young is: make sure your motive for being a leader is about sacrificing and suffering for others. "I want to help this organization, or I want to be the kind of person that takes on more than others for their good." Leadership is a lonely and selfless thing. It's wonderful, but the personal economics of leadership are not good. If you don't sign up for that, don't be a leader. Too many people say, I want to be a leader. And if you really scratch below the surface, they'll say, I think it would make me feel important, I'd get attention, maybe I'd make money, I'd have power. When that's your motive for being a leader, you're not gonna be a great leader. Reflection Questions Pat says people who were perfect students (straight A's, valedictorian, student body president) often have childhood wounds driving them. What in your past might be driving your current achievements? Are you operating from freedom and passion, or from fear and the need to prove yourself? He teaches his kids' sports teams to identify which of Humble, Hungry, or Smart is their lowest, then hold each other accountable when they see teammates struggling with that area. What would you identify as your lowest, and who in your life could you invite to call you out when you're not living up to it? Pat says the motive for leadership should be "sacrificing and suffering for others," not feeling important or controlling what you work on. If you're honest about why you want to lead (or why you currently lead), what's really driving you? Would people who report to you say you're other-motivated or personally motivated?

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• 664: David Adelman - 664: David Adelman - Campus Apartments CEO and 76ers Co-Owner on Losing a Big Bet, Bar Mitzvah Real Estate Deals, His Grandfather's Holocaust Survival Story, and Building Philadelphia's New Arena

  Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My guest: David Adelman is the CEO of Campus Apartments, founder of Darco Capital, and co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers. During our conversation, we discussed how losing a basketball bet at age 11 changed his life, investing his bar mitzvah money in real estate, becoming CEO at 25, his grandfather's Holocaust survival story, and why it gives him perspective on struggle, embracing failure, the trade-offs of building something excellent, and what he looks for when hiring leaders. Key Learnings "Why not me? Why not now?" David's mantra cuts through all the overthinking and excuses we make. When he saw other people building national real estate portfolios, he didn't wonder if it was possible—he asked why he couldn't do it. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for the perfect moment. Ask yourself: why not me? Why not now? Make mistakes, just not the same one twice. David doesn't expect perfection from himself or his team. He expects learning. Fail fast, fail forward, but don't repeat the same failure. That's not growth—that's negligence. Embrace the suck, but evolve through it. David's grandfather survived the Holocaust after his wife and children were murdered. He escaped, joined the resistance, and rebuilt his life from nothing. When David thinks about that, he says: "No matter what, I don't know struggle." That's perspective. Most of what we call struggle is just discomfort. Understanding that doesn't make your challenges disappear... It makes them manageable. If your grandfather could survive the unthinkable, you can handle the hard day in front of you. At age 11, David challenged family friend Alan Horwitz to a basketball game and made a wager. Horwitz didn't let the kid win, and David lost his basketball, football, and baseball glove. To get them back, he had to go to Campus Apartments every Saturday to sweep sawdust and stack lumber. This losing bet became his entry into a billion-dollar career. At 13, David gambled his $2,000 bar mitzvah money by investing it with Horwitz in a building at 45th and Pine Streets in Philadelphia - a property his company still owns today. By age 17, he bought his first solely owned investment property. David was accepted into Temple University Beasley School of Law but chose to become a Property Manager at Campus Apartments instead. At age 25 in 1997, he became CEO of Campus Apartments. His grandfather, Sam Wasserman, was captured by the Nazis in 1942 and taken to the Sobibor concentration camp, where his wife and two children were immediately executed. Wasserman escaped during an organized revolt, joined the resistance, was wounded in battle, and was cared for by a woman named Sophie, who became his second wife. David said, "I feel a deep connection to him and what he went through. It's more like a sense of duty to honor him." David says, "I bet on jockeys, not horses. I ask, 'If the thing fails, would we support them again?' To be clear, a lot of our [investments] are going to fail.' He learned the hard way: "Friends would say, 'Here's a deal, put in X amount,' so you know, it's $250,000 or $500,000 or $1 million. I realized very quickly that it's probably a money-losing prospect to just invest in a friend of a friend's idea or because someone at your country club is investing in it." "It's called working off your debt." I literally lost everything to my "Uncle" Alan in 30 minutes when I was 11. My baseball glove, football, basketball, even my bank book. Every Saturday, I had to stack lumber and sweep sawdust to get one item back. Two years later, at my Bar Mitzvah, my parents asked if I wanted to give my gift money to my grandfather, who was good at picking stocks. I said no, I want to give it to Uncle Alan and buy real estate. At 13, I drove around with him, picked the biggest building he owned, handed him $2,000, and became a partner. My grandfather was in Poland with a wife and two kids when the Nazis rounded him up. There were two lines. One for men, one for women, and children. He never saw his wife and kids again. He escaped from the Sobibor prison camp, became a freedom fighter, got shot, and was in a hospital recovering when a woman checking on her brother saw this lonely soldier and went over to check on him. That was my grandmother. My mother was born in a displaced persons camp after the war. "No matter what, when I'm getting the crap kicked out of me in business or anything else, I don't know struggle." I think about my grandfather and what he went through. "That guy knew pressure and made it through the other side. So I have to stop being a little bitch about it and lean in." Uncle Alan always said, "Whatever you do in life, it shouldn't feel like work." I have never said I'm going to work. I say I'm going to the office. Now, am I tired sometimes? A hundred percent. Did I miss a lot of stuff with my kids? Absolutely, and I have deep regret over that. With success and money comes a price, too. Becoming a CEO at 25. "Why not me and why not now?" I live my life by this mantra. In the 1990s, no one was doing student housing at large scale nationally. I saw this white space, and I'm like, fuck it, let's do it. "I'm not afraid to fail. And I think if you're not afraid to fail, it's a freedom." "Embrace the suck." Not everything's gonna be fun. Some things are hard. But sometimes when you push through them, you get to another side. Sometimes you don't, and pulling the plug is okay if it's not working. I've gotten good at understanding that a business might be a great opportunity, a great idea, at the wrong time. When building something…If you aren't willing to make sacrifices earlier in your career and build that foundation for the future, being an entrepreneur might not be for you. I made choices to miss things with my wife and kids. Were all those things I missed worth it? Probably not. My daughters are 21 and 23 now, and I missed a lot of their early growing up. Four years ago, I apologized to my older one, and she said, "You know what, we remember this dad more than that dad." "It's never too late to make a change." After you've done okay financially, it has to be about something else. The guys and women I roll with—"it's not about money. You either are wired to get up and work hard every day and do it, and it has to be about something else." It could be about providing opportunities for the people who work with you, or solving complex problems, or creating a business you're excited about. "I don't think I'm the smartest guy in the room." You have to be open to learning.  I continue to want to learn about other people's businesses. If I meet somebody, I'm like, tell me about that business. If you have that inquisitive mind, some guy tells me he's in the widget business, and I'll think of ten things they should try to do. "I am never too embarrassed to say I don't know something." When we were selecting architects and contractors for the arena, I spoke to owners of the newest stadiums. Just lessons learned about the process. When I mentor kids, I tell them most people are afraid to say "I don't know" or "I don't understand." "If you're embarrassed for looking stupid, isn't it worse if you don't know what you're doing down the road because you didn't ask?" "People don't know how to listen anymore. People wait to talk." They don't listen. When I have dinner with my youngest daughter, I hand her my phone so I won't be on it. I want to be there, I want to be attentive. Why are you wasting time meeting with people if you're not gonna listen to them? "Make lots of mistakes. Just don't make the same one twice." Try hard. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. The worst thing that happens is someone says no. I met my wife in a bar, literally in line for pizza. Turns out she was the school teacher two different women had told me I needed to call. The funny part is my buddy was talking to her best friend. He married her, I married Hailey, and our kids are best friends. When it comes to sales. "Don't bullshit people. That's my number one goal." People can tell. Even at an early age, I had the humility to say I don't know everything. Here's my business plan, here's why I think I can scale Campus Apartments across the country when that wasn't being done. When I'm hiring or promoting leaders, I look for three things. One is trust—I need to trust them. Two is creating an open line of communication. Three, "I don't think you're a successful leader or CEO if you're not willing to listen." There are a lot of dictator type CEOs. That's not me. Some of them work. "I don't manage from fear, I manage from bringing in opinions." For me, it's about having people who, in their individual swim lanes, are better at those jobs than you are. The DeSean Jackson situation taught me about leading with curiosity. He made some anti-Semitic comments, and people came to me saying we need to cancel him. "Before I get there, I actually just want to find out what his intent was." The things he said were based on him being uninformed about the hurtfulness of those words. Not only was he willing to understand that, but he said, "Can you take me to your Holocaust memorial and actually educate me?" He came with his mom, no press. "It would be nice to take a moment before you're ready to convict somebody and actually have a conversation." When I'm looking at investments, I really have to understand the product. I joke, "Do my kids at least understand it?" Number two: Who's the founder? People matter. I ask myself, if this thing goes bad, and as long as the guy's not a crook, would I invest with them again? "I have to be more than just money in the deal." I like knowing when my influence and input can help make a difference. I think it's strategic thinking, introductions, and being a sounding board. The hardest part about being a founder is that they're afraid to tell investors bad news. "Bad news doesn't get better with time." Advice to young professionals. "Try to get noticed for the right reasons." Show up and go to work. Go get coffee when you see your boss's boss there. Don't be afraid to introduce yourself. Ask lots of questions. Be the person who says, "Could you explain that to me?" Folks in my position really respect that. "Don't be afraid to put out a bad idea." I hate working from home because I think people are screwed by the opportunity to interact with people and better their career and learn things. You're robbed of chance encounters, of overhearing conversations, of learning by proximity. We're building this arena in downtown Philly, not taking any city capital, and doing good things for the city. We came together with Comcast who owns the Flyers. "It's gonna be the best live entertainment venue in the world, located in Philadelphia." We're opening in 2030 with a WNBA team. For those counting Philly out, you're wrong—we're doing great shit here. Reflection Questions David's grandfather survived the Holocaust, which gives David a profound perspective on what real pressure and struggle actually look like. What experiences in your own life or family history could you draw on to reframe the "struggles" you face in your work or personal life? He lives by the mantra "Why not me? Why not now?" and says that not being afraid to fail is a freedom. What opportunity are you currently overthinking or waiting on "permission" for? What would change if you asked yourself those two questions right now? David regrets missing parts of his daughters' childhoods while building his businesses, but his daughter told him, "We remember this dad more than that dad." Meaning it's never too late to make a change. What relationship in your life needs you to show up differently, and what's one concrete thing you could change this week? More Learning From The Learning Leader Show #126: Jayson Gaignard - Mastermind Talks #273: Chip Conley – How To Be Wise Beyond Your Years #476: Kat Cole - Reflection Questions, Humble Confidence, Building Trust Time Stamps: 01:51 David Edelman's Early Lessons in Business 03:58 Investing at a Young Age 06:12 Family History and Holocaust Survival 09:53 Balancing Ambition and Family 18:17 Sustaining Excellence and Learning from Others 25:38 The Art of Listening and Being Present 26:16 Lessons from Childhood and Parenting 26:47 The Story of Meeting My Wife 28:23 The Importance of Taking Risks 29:52 Sales and Leadership Philosophy 30:54 Building a Nationwide Business 32:07 Hiring and Promoting Leaders 35:34 Handling Controversy with Compassion 38:15 Investment Strategies and Favorite Ventures 41:36 The Future of Philadelphia's Arena Project 44:05 Advice for Young Professionals 46:45 EOPC

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• 663: Priya Parker - The Art of Gathering with Purpose: Power, Preparation, Magical Questions, and the Psychology of Bringing People Together

  Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes Join tens of thousands of leaders pursuing excellence: https://ryanhawk.kit.com/profile This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My guest: Priya Parker is a master facilitator, conflict resolution expert, and author of the bestselling book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Priya has spent decades facilitating difficult conversations in boardrooms, communities, and conflict zones. In this conversation, she reveals the mechanics of meaningful gathering and why most of us are doing it wrong. Key Learnings A facilitator is interested in the life of a group. I think of facilitation as working with people who are interested in the infrastructure of three or more people who need to come together and are ideally changed for the better by what transpires between them. A facilitator thinks deeply about how to set up the conditions to increase the likelihood that transformation happens. Great facilitators are obsessed with language. There's listening to make someone feel heard, but the difference between green facilitators and seasoned ones is an obsession and ability to hear, recall, and play with language. You have to understand what people are actually saying and be able to reflect it back in ways that unlock new meaning. Understanding power is essential to facilitation. You need to know how decisions are being made, who is talking more than others, when to allow for that, and what your own relationship is to holding the group. When do you shut up? When do you pull people out? When do you push back? All of this is fundamentally about understanding power dynamics. I'm a third-generation ostrich. On both sides of my family, when conflict arises, we stick our heads in the sand. Nothing to see here, folks. But I've cultivated the ability to hold heat. Even now, when facilitating a reckoning and the heat rises, my palms still get sweaty, I can feel my heart racing, blood rushing to my cheeks. But I've learned how to stay present with that discomfort. Counterintuitively, having deep empathy for people who want to flee makes me more effective. "90% of the success of what happens in the room, and as a facilitator, happens before anybody arrives." This is what my mentor Randa Slim taught me, and it's absolutely true. The construction of the house happens before anyone gets there. Dr. Hal Saunders changed everything for me. He was an American diplomat who served five presidential administrations and was part of the Camp David Accords. After leaving government, he realized that while governments can create peace treaties, people's perceptions of each other on the ground haven't necessarily changed. He trained me as a teenager in sustained dialogue, and I learned facilitation the way it should be learned—through apprenticeship. Even in his seventies and eighties, he always believed he had something to learn. The first questions people ask you signify what they value. When I arrived at the University of Virginia, people kept asking, "What are you?" I learned quickly that they meant racially. My mother, an anthropologist, had taught me that the first questions a community asks reveal what matters most to them. Race was clearly very important there. I made myself a conflict resolution facilitator. Growing up between two vastly different households—toggling every two weeks between a vegetarian, Buddhist home where the word "God" was never mentioned and an evangelical Christian home where we never ate before saying Grace. I became deeply interested in when and why and how people come together, what they think of as normal, how they create and change cultures, and how they come apart. Your highest real estate is when people are together in the same place at the same time. Wasting time in the room figuring out what to say or do is actually wasting everyone's time. A huge part of preparing for any gathering is figuring out what the right conversation is for this group to have, and how to equip them to have it well. Think of military pre-mission briefs. They're really good at setting mission objectives. This is the goal, this is what we're striving for. Then they debrief afterward to learn and do better next time. That same discipline applies to any gathering, whether it's a leadership retreat or hosting dinner at your house. Every gathering is a social contract. You're creating a temporary constitution. At a dinner party, there's an implicit rule: bring a bottle of wine. People find out they've broken the constitution when someone says, "Wow, they didn't even bring a housewarming gift." We have all these implicit norms, and in diverse groups... Which is every group, not just racially, but people with different assumptions about how things work—you need to make the contract explicit. Elizabeth Stewart ran a startup networking organization and wanted it to be a true community, not just a shark tank for pitches. She created a pop-up rule: you can't talk about what you're selling. No pitches. Super counterintuitive for a networking night, but it created exactly what she wanted... Trust and long-lasting relationships rather than transactional encounters. The rule signified what she was trying to create. Using your power as a host means protecting your guests. You're temporarily equalizing people so they can coordinate group life. Gathering is fundamentally a coordination problem: helping people understand what the rules are, protecting them, and connecting them. There are moments when you should surprise people. If a team is stuck in a 50-year-old institution that's always done things the same way, and they'll die institutionally if they don't change, maybe the purpose is to build their skills for discomfort and navigating uncertainty. In that case, maybe you don't tell them the full roadmap because the practice itself is learning to navigate the unknown. Making things explicit and transparent equalizes the room. Showing the roadmap is deeply beneficial, particularly to people with less power and knowledge. For newer people who don't know how things work, for people with other obligations like tending to an elderly parent or being a student athlete with fixed schedules, transparency helps level the playing field. But it may not always be your purpose. Before you default to a dinner party, ask what you actually need. If the goal is to laugh hysterically and create memories with friends you don't see enough, a dinner party might not be the best form. Maybe you should play kickball in the park, stage a made-up pickleball championship, go to a morning rave, or take a party bus to a concert. We're so boxed into thinking about how adults must hang out. When hosting dinner parties, keep the menu relatively simple. Increase the meaning dial and it decreases the pressure on food quality. Think about food that tells a story. The invitation matters deeply. I could send an invitation: "Come enjoy my best attempts at Ruth's BLTs." My grandmother's recipe that takes me back to childhood. I tell the story in the email, narrow the expectations, and create a social contract. This is for BLTs. If you're a vegetarian, you can take out the bacon. And please don't bring your mushroom penne, not in this context. Then I ask: bring a story of a dish that takes you back to childhood. The whole night plays itself. Magical questions are questions everyone in the group is interested in answering, and everyone would be interested in hearing each other's answers. It's a magical equation. It's subjective and relative to each group. My seven-year-old daughter once asked at dinner: "What's the naughtiest thing you've ever done that was worth it?" We laughed and shared for two hours. My son asked my elderly father: "What's the meanest thing you ever did to anybody before the age of 15?" That caveat, before age 15, temporarily equalized everyone at the table. Testing and practicing are how you develop the muscle. I test questions on my team, I think through social arithmetic: what do these specific people have in common, what don't they have in common, what's the right level of vulnerability? I ask my community on Instagram and Substack to share their magical questions. Someone from Brazil sent me: "Would you rather spend 10 minutes on the moon or one year traveling through Europe?" It inspires heated debates in his friend group. My favorite question for virtual groups: "What was the first concert you ever went to, and who took you?" People pause, then you see a waterfall of answers—Bonnie Raitt, Madonna, New Kids on the Block. Everyone's interested in seeing everyone else's answers. You realize who's here, you see there's someone behind everyone (my sister, my mother, my college girlfriend), and you increase the likelihood that people realize these are real humans.  Creating psychological togetherness on Zoom is my single most important skill. During the pandemic, I lost all my physical facilitation tools. I couldn't chase someone into the bathroom to convince them to come back, couldn't use my body to signal it's time to quiet down. I was just a little green square. Magical questions became my most powerful tool for creating psychological togetherness when people aren't in the same room. Ryan's champagne question works because it's visceral and emotional. "We're meeting exactly one year from today and popping bottles, what are we celebrating?" That's not "what's your goal for the year." That's boring. You pop champagne for something that matters emotionally. It's a somatic, physical question that forces people to think big because you're not popping champagne about something boring. The responsibility of gathering is about both connection and power. Particularly in work contexts, you can ask questions that are too vulnerable or that aren't appropriate. You need to protect your guests by ensuring questions relate to the purpose of the convening. Asking "what's a core experience from your early life that connects to why you do the work you do today?" helps people understand motivations without crossing lines. Questions can open up the world. They're a sequence of words that, if you ask them in a specific way, can fundamentally change what's possible. Being genuinely curious and fascinated about people and their stories and life experiences will change your life. Full stop. Writing The Art of Gathering let me articulate what deeply frustrated me about gatherings and try to convince other people it should frustrate them too. What's been beautiful is that people are starting to get fed up with mediocre gatherings and expect better of how we spend our time together. They're realizing we can change it with some thought, some temerity, some bumping around. The pandemic made the book even more relevant. The paperback came out in April 2020, when gathering was banned, which was super awkward. But by taking gathering from us, we began to see it. We began to see that this thing we took for granted shapes our lives—how we wed, fight battles in court, host funerals, host galas. People started asking first-order questions: when and where and why should we meet, and who decides? That's a powerful question to be asking. Anyone can gather. Many of the hundred gatherers I interviewed for the book identified as introverts, loners, people on the outside of things, people with social anxiety. As one person said, "I create the gatherings I wish existed in the world. And other people seem to like it." Reflection Questions What gathering in your life, whether a team meeting, family dinner, or community event, would be transformed if you paused to clearly define its purpose before diving into logistics and form? Think about a group you're part of where people come from different backgrounds and assumptions. What explicit "social contract" or ground rules could you create to help everyone understand how to show up and what's expected? What's a magical question you could ask in your next gathering that everyone would be interested in answering and everyone would want to hear each other's responses to? More Learning From The Learning Leader Show #126: Jayson Gaignard - Mastermind Talks #273: Chip Conley – How To Be Wise Beyond Your Years #476: Kat Cole - Reflection Questions, Humble Confidence, Building Trust

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• 662: Nicholas Thompson - The Atlantic CEO on Growing Up With a "Precariously Insecure" Genius Father, Hiring Leaders with an Edge, How Running Builds Discipline, and Why Moving at an Uncomfortable Pace Built a Million-Subscriber Media Empire

  Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My guest: Nicholas Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic and former editor-in-chief of WIRED. He's the author of the best-selling book (and one of my favorites of the year), The Running Ground. Nick shares why great leaders must balance being decisive with staying open to being wrong, how to build teams that challenge your thinking without creating chaos, and why the most important skill for the next decade is knowing what questions only humans can answer. Key Learnings Consistency Over Intensity Creates Results - If you go out there every day, six or seven days a week, and a couple days you push yourself really hard, you get faster. There's no two ways about it. If you don't do that, you don't get faster. It's a very good reminder that you can get a lot done if you just go and allot time to pushing yourself. Recommendation letter written by the Stanford faculty about Nick's dad to be a Rhodes Scholar: "Scotty Thompson is the kind of young man that comes along only once in approximately ten years. I cannot recall ever having known a student who possessed the same combination of intelligence, creativity, energy, drive, and dedication. He has attempted more, achieved more, than anyone we have studied– including some who now hold high office. He is generally conceded among those who have observed the student body since World War II to be the outstanding leader of the era. I think it likely that in the entire history of Stanford campus life, he has had no near rival since Herbert Hoover as an undergraduate." Also about Nick's Dad: Tracy Bennett, one of his graduate students, said, "He was flamboyant, gently endearing, annoyingly arrogant, piercingly intelligent, entertaining, and more. I'd never met a man, nor had a professor, who was clearly so brilliant and at the same time so precariously insecure." His grandfather, Frank Thompson, placed second in the Southern California extemporaneous speaking contest held at Whittier College. First place was Richard Nixon. Parenting — "Nothing makes me more worried about failure than parenting." "Parenting is suffused with regrets, confusion, and mistakes. But when I run by, I know my children are rooting for me to succeed with infinite love and enthusiasm." Running hard... Pushing yourself. Why do it? "Discipline builds discipline. Discipline is cumulative." Sometimes You Have to Trick Yourself - I ran 10:48 because the track was bigger than I thought, and I didn't realize how fast I was going. If I had known I was running at a 5:23 pace, I would've shut down. My body would've started to hurt. Sometimes you can't let yourself know what you're actually doing, or you'll get scared. Hiring at The Atlantic - The people he hires at The Atlantic share four must-have attributes: A spirit of generosity. A force of ideas. They're relentlessly hard workers. And they have an edge: an anxiety about getting great work done. That last one stuck with me. The best people aren't just talented... They're driven by a productive anxiety to do work that matters. Becoming CEO of The Atlantic: The Search & Selection: The Atlantic conducted a yearlong search after President Bob Cohn left in fall 2019. When owners Laurene Powell Jobs and David Bradley announced Thompsont in December 2020, they said "Nick is singular; we've seen no one like him" and that he brought "a surround-sound coverage of relevant experience." Move at an Uncomfortable Pace - You don't get anything you want by being comfortable. If you're working in a way that feels easy and setting deadlines where everything seems smooth, you're not growing, you're not learning, you're not getting there. That's a lesson from running, and it's a good lesson for work. Set Audacious Goals - We're setting two extremely big goals at The Atlantic. Our projections don't suggest we're going to hit them. But the same was true last time when I said we're gonna get profitable and a million subscribers in three years. We got there. Sometimes having a really big goal motivates you and forces all the tough choices. Continuous Forward Motion Matters Most - When I realized yesterday's marathon was going badly, I kept telling myself: continuous forward motion. Sometimes the goal becomes just finishing. It's better to make a full drop in pace and hold that than to slowly slide backwards every mile once you know you won't hit your goal. Every Extra Word Is an Opportunity to Lose People - Every extra word, every extra thought, every extra detail that doesn't propel the story needs to be removed. This book is 75,000 words, but there's 60,000 words I cut. Is this sentence absolutely essential? No? It's gone. That's storytelling, and that's leadership communication. The Cocktail Party Test for Storytelling - If you describe what you're writing at a cocktail party, do people come towards you or walk away? I can talk about my 2005 cancer diagnosis and 2007 marathon, and people lock in. I talk about my 2009 marathon, and no one cares. Test what has emotional resonance with your friends. Write and Speak To Help People SEE a Movie - When somebody's reading, they're visualizing it in their mind's eye. Can you see it? Can you feel it? If you can't run a movie in your head about what I'm writing, it shouldn't be on the page. Help them visualize it—the little white house in Concord, walking around Walden Pond. Hiring: Spirit of Generosity and Force of Ideas - Spirit of generosity means can they work with people? Will they be territorial or figure out what's best for the org? Force of ideas means are you smart and sharp? I also want edge—a little bit of productive paranoia. Not complacent, but kind to everybody. Discipline Can Show Up in Different Ways - My editor-in-chief hasn't run a mile in 25 years. Is he disciplined? Hell yeah. Works all the time, focused on every sentence. You can have mental discipline without physical discipline. I try to get the most out of different kinds of people with different strengths. Keep Going - This is the hardest time to graduate because of AI and uncertainty. Find things you're passionate about and really focus on them. My twenties weren't great professionally. I found journalism, but I wasn't good at it yet. Keep pushing, and eventually things turn out for the best. Reflection Questions What would happen if you moved at an uncomfortable pace in your most important work? Where are you setting deadlines that feel too easy and smooth? Are you ruthlessly cutting everything that doesn't propel your story forward? What sentence, meeting, or project exists simply because it always has, not because it's essential? Former Episodes Referenced #603 - Michael Easter - The Comfort Crisis #611 - Codie Sanchez - Main Street Millionaire #654 - Jake Tapper - Be So Good They Can't Ignore You Time Stamps: 02:05 Nick's NYC Marathon Experience 03:35 Nick's Father's Legacy 11:43  Running and Leadership 17:08 Overcoming Cancer and Running Again 19:24 The Importance of Setting "Stretch" Goals  21:30 Marathon Challenges and Lessons 27:09 The Warrior Athlete and Early Lessons 28:54 Nick's Role as CEO of The Atlantic 29:30 Unique Talents for a CEO Role 30:42 Balancing Multiple Interests 32:30 Writing 'The Running Ground' 37:37 Crafting a Compelling Story 41:24 Storytelling Tips for Leaders 44:15 Hiring the Right People 51:55 Running and Parenting 54:06 Advice for New Graduates 56:07 EOPC

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• 661: Suzy Welch - How to Identify Your Core Values, Close the Authenticity Gap, and Live with Purpose

  Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Suzy Welch is known for co-founding the Jack Welch Management Institute and writing bestsellers like 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea. Her career includes roles as an editor-in-chief for Harvard Business Review, a crime reporter, and a professor. She teaches at NYU and is the best-selling author of Becoming You.  Key Learnings Purpose Requires Realism, Not Just Passion - Everyone wants to be the drummer in Disturbed, but that guy's good at drumming. My whole methodology is about realism. You have to know what your values are, what your interests are, but you better be good at it or forget it. Otherwise, it's a hobby. Values Are Choices, Not Virtues - Most people confuse values and virtues. Virtues are things like integrity, courage, and thankfulness... Behaviors we all should have more of. Values are choices about how you want to live, work, and relate. It's a value if it would drive who you married, what job you took, and where you went on vacation. There are 16 Measurable Values - Values exist on a continuum like a DNA profile. Scope reflects how exciting a life you want. Radius is how much you want to change the world systemically. Belovedness is how important an intimate relationship is to you. Work centrism is whether you love work for work's sake or if it's just a means to an end. Men Over 32 Value Romantic Relationships Most - We just got data showing that for men over the age of 32, belovedness is their number one value. It's much lower for women. Only 50% of people have family centrism in their top five values—we assume everyone shares our values, but they don't. Your Authenticity Gap Reveals Your Pain - You could hold the value of scope as number one, but not be able to live it right now because of your job or family situation. That gap between what you value and what you're living—we call that your authenticity gap. If you've got a big one, you know it because it hurts. Gen Z's Top Value Is Self-Care - 75% of Gen Z have self-care, wellbeing, pleasure, and leisure as their top value. Their top three are self-care, authentic self-expression, and helping others. Meanwhile, hiring managers want achievement, scope, and work centrism. The overlap is 2%. Aptitudes Are Your Brain's Dominant Hand - We have nine cognitive aptitudes preset by age 15. Are you a generalist or a specialist? A future focuser or a present focuser? A brainstormer or someone who comes up with one fully baked idea per year? It's painful to be a generalist in a specialist job. Your Personality Is How The World Experiences You - Your personality is not the list of adjectives you write about yourself. It's how the world experiences you. When I did my 360 feedback, people said I was the hurricane, not the calm at the center. I had to learn to communicate better the thoughts I had, and learn to be less chaotic.  Everyone Writes Themselves As The Hero - A police lieutenant once told me: everyone writes the story of their life with themselves at the center as the hero. No matter what story we tell ourselves, we always cast ourselves as the hero. That's why self-awareness is so hard and why we need testing, not just self-reflection. The Aperture Problem: Kids Only Know Five Jobs - When kids come out of high school, they only know about five jobs, two of which are their parents. By college it goes up to seven. By grad school, MBAs are thinking about two or three options—banking, consulting, or tech. There are 135 industries and thousands of types of work nobody tells them about. Great Leaders Don't Do It For The Money - I've been blessed to know many of the greatest leaders. They're doing it for love of people, excitement, work, or impact. I've never met a great leader who was doing it for the money. Jensen Huang and Jeff Bezos are examples—clarity, vision, excellence in everything, no shortcuts. Better To Be The Author Than The Editor - When you're ambitious, you end up surrounded by voices and can become the editor of your life. You have to become the author. Paint a self-portrait of yourself standing still so that when you start running, you know where you're going and why. Reflection Questions What would the 5 people closest to you say about how you show up? Would their description match how you see yourself, or do you have a self-awareness gap you haven't addressed? If you mapped your actual daily behaviors against your stated top values, would they align? Or are you living someone else's version of success while calling it your own? Are you the author of your life or the editor? Whose voices are loudest in your head when making big decisions, and have you given yourself permission to write your own story? Former Episodes Referenced #127: Adam Grant - How Originals Impact the World #441: Liz Wiseman - How to Build Credibility, Solve Problems, & Multiply Your Impact #350 - Tom Rath - Answering Life's Great Question  

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