How to be an inspiring leader, with Adam Galinsky, PhD

What’s the difference between an inspiring boss and an infuriating one? What qualities do the best coaches, teachers and mentors share? Adam Galinsky, PhD, author of “Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others,” discusses why leaders often have even more power than they realize, the universal qualities of good leadership, and how anyone can learn to become a more inspiring leader in their work, as a parent, and in other aspects of their lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:27Kim Mills?

  We've all had people in our lives who have inspired us. Maybe it was a teacher who sparked your curiosity about a new subject or gave you the confidence to learn a new skill. Perhaps it was a boss who offered support when you needed it and helped you do your job better. So what was it that set those inspirational leaders apart? What qualities do the best coaches, teachers, bosses, and other leaders share? Are the most inspirational leaders born or made? Do you have to be in a position of power to be a leader? Or can anyone lead from any level? And what can you do to become a better and more inspiring leader in your work, as a parent, or in any aspect of your life?

• 1:12Kim Mills?

  Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

• 1:25Kim Mills?

  My guest today is Dr. Adam Galinsky, a social psychologist and the Paul Calelo Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. His research and teaching focus on leadership, negotiations, diversity, decision-making, and ethics. Dr. Galinsky's new book is called Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. It provides a research-based framework that people can use to become better and more inspiring leaders. Dr. Galinsky is a sought-after speaker and has delivered keynotes and workshops to organizations including Fortune 500 companies, nonprofit organizations, the FBI, and local and national governments. He's author of more than 300 scientific papers and chapters,

• 2:09Kim Mills?

  and his research has been featured in media outlets, including CNN.com, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Dr. Galinsky, thank you for joining me today. I am thrilled and

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Inspired to be here.

• 2:21Kim Mills?

  So let's start by talking about how you open your book where you talk about leaders having even more power than they realize. You call this the leader amplification effect. What is that? Why is it important?

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And thanks for that incredible intro. You got you got all the questions you asked were like all teasing the heart of the books. I really appreciated that. So basically, the leader amplification effect represents the idea that when we are in a position of leadership, all eyes are on us, right? Because of our authority, because of our power, because of our standing. And as a result, we know from the basic tenets of cognitive psychology that anything that we put our attention on, that's going to have more amplified signals, and that's going to produce more intensified reactions. And so the leader amplification effect basically says that when we're in this position of leader,

• 3:13Speaker 02

  everything we do, verbal, nonverbal, you know, small and big, good and bad, gets amplified and has this intensified impact on other people.

• 3:24Kim Mills?

  So what should a leader do to moderate this effect and turn it into something that's helpful?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  So let's just take a step back and I'll give you a couple of examples of what I mean by the leader amplification effect. And then we can think about both how do we solve it, but also how do we leverage it? One of the examples I give in the book is I was a first year doctoral student at Princeton University. And I was literally taking the very first class at Princeton with a guy named Danny Kahneman, who would one day win the Nobel Prize in Economics, a psychology cognitive psychologist. And, you know, I raised my hand, I said a comment, and I still remember 30 years later, the four things Danny did that day. He crossed his arms, he shook his head, and he scrunched up his face and he spit out, that's not right at all. You know, and then he smiled his beatific smile and moved on and the rest of the class moved on.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  And I, you know, I was frozen in humiliation, right? Like those words, that's not right at all. Just like they echoed inside it, like it reverberated inside of me. And it literally took me weeks before I could speak again in his class or any class. So I remember this 30 years later. You know, I wrote about it in the New York Times, you know, I shared it with Danny and Danny's like, you know, first he, you know, he joked, I'm a monster, you know, but, but, you know, he doesn't remember that. Like it was just, she didn't think the point I made was right and he matter-of-factly said it and then he moved on and, um, but because of his position, right, that, that criticism became humiliating criticism to me. But I also tell another Danny Kahneman story is, I was literally walking down the hallway about six weeks later,

• 4:58Speaker 02

  and Danny said without stopping, just kind of casually over his shoulder, he turned to me and said, "Hey, Adam, I'd love reading your reflection papers. You're a great writer." Um, and they turned the corner and I was so filled with elation, you know, the opposite of humiliation, like I literally skipped down the hallway. And so these two very different Danny Kahneman stories, like represent the same underlying phenomenon, this leader amplification effect, like that compliment became literally like glorious praise, right? You know, that has nourished me for 30 years. Um, and so that tells us two really, really important things to get at the heart of the question you asked, um, which is, what can we do about it?

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Well, the first thing that we can do about it is, we have to become aware of it, right? And so, you know, a basic tenet of psychology is that knowledge is power, awareness. Without awareness, we have no capacity to make change or to control things, right? Um, another example I give in the book is, imagine your boss saying to you, "Hey, Kim, come by my office tomorrow at 3:00 PM. I need to talk to you." Right? You're like, "Oh, my God, why do they need to talk to me? What did I do wrong? What's going on?" Right? And in their mind, they might know, "Oh, it's totally inconsequential. I just want to tell them about, um, a meeting I'm going to or share an idea," you know, um, um, but, you know, when we're left in the dark, like, and because of that power, that potential portentousness, which happens anytime someone needs to talk to you, but it gets amplified, right?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  And, and really reverberates inside of you. So, so we have to start recognizing the power of our words, but even the power of our silence, right? You know, I gave, I, I give this example how, you know, at a university, Professors have more power than the computer tech support guys, right? You know, we're bigger fish in the university pond, if you will. But when our computer's broken and they have it, they're in power. They control this resource. And one of the things when I was at Northwestern is we wouldn't hear from them for days. You're like, oh, my God, is my computer ruined? Is it is it lost? Are they even paying attention to it? And we we put a little rule into place to really solve the leader amplification effect,

• 7:10Speaker 02

  which is we told the computer people every single day, sometime between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m., you have to memo every person whose computer you have and just give them an update. And maybe it's something like, we're still backing up your hard drive is taking longer than expected, or we're still looking for this part, but just keeps people in the loop. Now, going back to Danny Kahneman's criticism of me, one of the ways that we can solve this, right, is that we can hold our tongue in public, right? Or we can soften the blow. One of the things I discovered when PhD students do their first big research presentation at Columbia Business School, like, I would often go up to them like, oh, you did this well. Oh, and but here's three things you could do better.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  And you could just see it was like sticking a pin in their balloon, you know, and just deflating them after this incredibly momentous experience that they've gone through. And so now I try to withhold any criticism until the next day. Let them celebrate the accomplishment. But the Dan Kahneman story also tells us how we can leverage the leader amplification effect for good. Right? We can reach out to people and compliment them when they've done something well. Right? We can express gratitude. And I tell this story in the book, which I really love. I was teaching to 50 CEOs. And at 10:15, I gave them a leader amplification effect call to action.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  I said, I want you to write three people who have less power than you in your organization. And I want you just to be sincere, right? Because it's infuriating when we're not sincere, right? And explicitly say, you know, specific details, something they did really well. Like you hit that presentation out of the park, you know? Or something they really helped you with, like, I couldn't have done that great project without you. So at 10:30, we're about to take the break. So this is 15 minutes later, and one of the CEOs raises his hand and he says, I've already sent my three emails. I've already gotten three emails back, just effusively, joyfully saying how much my email meant to them. One person even said, I'm finally going to take my spouse to that new restaurant they always wanted to go to to celebrate.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  And I like this story for two reasons. One is it confirms another piece of my research, which is that CEOs and powerful people are impulsive, right? This guy couldn't even wait to 10:30 to the break. But the upside is it took him almost no time at all.

• 9:35Kim Mills?

  And that raises the question of people who have that combination of of high power and low status. I mean, and I was thinking of that when you were talking about the computer guys, you know, how they had a lot of power once they have your computer, but they didn't have the same status. How do you work with such individuals to improve that relationship?

• 9:54Speaker 02

  One of the things I've discovered in my research is that when we have power, so you could think a bouncer at a club, a reimbursement clerk, you know, a tech person, right? We control some important resource. But sometimes these bureaucratic posts, right, aren't very respected, right? They don't have a lot of status in them. And so one of the things I've found is that it's that combination that is particularly toxic and is tyrannical. It makes people into little tyrants because they're so seething, right? At the lack of the respect they receive, but the power they have allows them to control other people.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  So I first discovered this, literally my postdoc, I got to Northwestern University, and there was the reimbursement person in charge of reimbursements. And she was like the soup Nazi on Seinfeld, right? If you didn't give your thing in the Exact handed the right way. She had literally a red line in her cubicle, like do not cross into my space. Um, and um, you know, she would berate you, you know, just like the soup Nazi on Seinfeld. No soup for you, you know? But then I discovered something about her, which is that she really loves snow globes. But she couldn't travel. She had a kidney um, disease um, which made it difficult for her to travel, but also economically it was probably difficult.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  And so it wasn't my idea. Someone else had given me this idea, but they said, if you want to get in her good graces, every time you go somewhere, bring back a snow globe for her, you know, of that. Um, and once I started bringing her snow globes, like all of my reimbursements miraculously expedited. Um, but but with the snow globe was signaling was respect. It was saying, you're you matter? You know, I'm thinking about you. I value you. Um, and when she she passed away, I went to her her funeral service. Um, and there at the back was all of her snow globes. And you could pick them up and she had written who had given it to her.

• 11:59Kim Mills?

  Wow.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  So she said, if any of you ever gave her a snow globe, go to the back and see if you can, you know, find yours and you can take it home with you, you know? Um, and so they really meant something to her, you know? And so what I tell people, if you're seeing someone acting in a tyrannical way, it could be a boss, right? It could be someone like a reimbursement individual, um, someone who has some power. Ask yourself this question. What are they feeling insecure about? And can I make them feel a little bit more secure, a little bit more respected, a little bit more feel like that they matter?

• 12:35Kim Mills?

  Now, your book talks about the three tenets of inspiring leadership that you've identified in your research. And they're being visionary, being an exemplar, and being a mentor. Talk about each of those and how you came to the conclusion that these are the sweet three.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, the sweet three. I like that. I never, no one's ever used that phrase before. Some people call it the trifecta, but I like the sweet three better. So I'm going to steal that from you. The reason why these are the, the sweet three, or the universal three is like to call them. I discovered it by asking thousands and probably tens of thousands of people across the globe to tell me about a leader that inspired them and a leader that infuriated them. And from those many things, I discovered three really valuable insights. The first one is that the inspiring leader and infuriating leader really exists on a continuum. And to understand that, let's go back to leader amplification effect, right? When you're in this position of leadership or eyes are on you or people looking up to you,

• 13:35Speaker 02

  you have power, you control a resource, because those eyes are on you, neutrality isn't an option. So your behavior is going to impact people. And is it going to be positive on the inspiring end or negative on the infuriating end? So the first big insight is, you know, we don't really have a choice of whether to inspire infuriate. We're going to do that. And the second insight, as you just mentioned, is that there's these three universal characteristics. And each one of them sort of describes how we see the world, since visionary. And that kind of involves this optimistic, big picture that we also simplify and articulate in an engaging way. There's how we are in the world, and that's what I call the exemplar.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  And that's like being a calm and courageous protector, being authentically passionate and being super, but also human in our behavior. And the third is being this inspiring mentor, which is how we interact with others in the world. And that's really about empowering people, elevating them, but also empathizing with them. And then the third insight is that the reason why these are the three universal factors of inspiring or infuriating others is because they each satisfy a fundamental human need. So being visionary satisfies the fundamental human need. For meaning and understanding. Being an exemplar satisfies the fundamental human need for a sense of security and protection,

• 15:04Speaker 02

  but also like, you know, energy and propulsion. And the last one, being a mentor satisfies a fundamental human need that we've kind of already talked about, the sense of being valued and celebrated and respected and seen.

• 15:17Kim Mills?

  You talk about these being universal, that they don't really vary across culture, but I'm wondering, are there additional characteristics that you might find in other cultures that are important to leadership, to being an inspirational leader?

• 15:30Speaker 02

  You know, I really haven't, and that's what makes it so surprising. Like, there's not a single characteristic. So let's say I get 60 people in a room and I say, "Tell me about a leader that inspired you." And I always say to them, "What was it about that person? Like, tell me the one thing that really, you know, solidifies either their inspiring or infuriating effect on you." And there's not a single trait or characteristic that is mentioned in one country that isn't mentioned in every other country in the world. Now, not everyone mentions each one, but like, as a collection of 100 people, every single one is going to be mentioned. Someone's going to be inspired by their leader's optimism, or seeing the big picture, or their ability to communicate in a straightforward, simplified but engaging way.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Someone's going to be, you know, inspired by someone's calm courage in a crisis, or their ability to be passionate, or the fact that they're so good at their job. And someone else, you know, is going to be inspired by the fact that their boss trusted them and empowered them and gave them responsibility, or always let them share success, right, and elevated them, or really understood the context in which they're coming from and were able to empathize with that.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies. 18 plus.

• 17:07Speaker 03

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• 17:35Kim Mills?

  Can a bad or a not so good leader learn to be inspirational?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And this is, I think, you know, if I were going to, I said three insights, it's really four insights. And the fourth insight you mentioned in your intro, which is, I think my research definitively answers a centuries old question. Are inspiring leaders born or made? Right? And I think I have emphatically demonstrated that they are indeed made. Because here's the thing, because there's a universal set of characteristics that distinguish the inspiring and infuriating leader, those can be learned, they can be developed, they can be nurtured, they can be practiced, so that we can become more inspiring over time. Fundamental to this idea is this really, the seed or the heart of it is the fact that we are not inspired or infuriating people.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Our current behavior inspires or infuriates others. And so that means that we could be behaving in an infuriating way today, but the good news is we could be inspiring tomorrow. Now, the bad news is, it's hard to stay on the inspiring side of the continuum. We could be amazing today and slip tomorrow and be infuriating. So it's a lifelong journey, if you will.

• 18:50Kim Mills?

  People with power often have to negotiate with others who may or may not be equally powerful, but how can somebody with power negotiate well? And what are some of the pitfalls that they have to avoid?

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, the one thing that I've studied the longest in my career, my dissertation was actually titled Perspective Taking: Debiased Social Thought. And one of the things that I've discovered in my research is Probably the most powerful tool that we have as humans is, and really distinguish us from other species, right, is the capacity towards perspective-taking. And we can perspective take over time, reflect on our past and plan for the future, but we can also get into the minds of other people. And one of the things that I've shown in my research is that when we take the perspective of others in a negotiation and really try to understand what it is that

• 19:44Speaker 02

  they want in a negotiation, we are able to offer that, but in a strategic way that also benefits ourselves. So one of the things I've shown, one of my favorite papers I ever did, came out in 2008, was I showed that pure empathy negotiation is a bad idea. It's a win-lose. You just give away the farm, you lose, they win. But perspective-taking actually helps you find that balance between meeting the other side person's needs and fulfilling your own. And one of these, like, you might call it peer-reviewed tricks, you know, that, or tools, maybe peer-reviewed tools is a better term, is that one of the things I've shown in my research, and another one of my favorite projects, is that we can get a

• 20:26Speaker 02

  huge advantage in negotiations, but have the other side, at average, not worse off, and feel really great about the negotiation if we just give people a choice between two options. So one of my favorite examples is, you know, a car dealer says, "I can give you this car for $25,000 and a five-year warranty, or $24,000 and a three-year warranty." Now you're giving them a choice. And they can decide, "Do I value two years of warranty or $1,000?" Now, for me, the dealer, each year of warranty is worth $500. That's why we call them multiple equivalent, they're equivalent to me, simultaneous offers or mezzos. And what we've shown in our research is that I can be more ambitious or aggressive,

• 21:11Speaker 02

  if you will, in my offers. When I offer a choice, the other side sees me as wanting to reach a deal and be generally interested in them, you know, completing a deal that's good for both parties. They trust me more. I also come to trust them a little bit. Little bit more, we create a better climate, but I walk out with a better outcome than I've had given us either one of those alone. And most of the time, not always, but most of the time, they walk out no worse off. So we expand the pie, we get a lot of that. And then it also helps us with innovation and creative agreements too, because one of the best ways that we can sometimes solve negotiation problems is coming up with an idea that's not even on the table, but it satisfies the fundamental underlying needs of each person. So the kind of deal where

• 21:55Speaker 02

  where the salesman says, you gotta make make this purchase today because tomorrow it's all gone. That's not an effective way to to negotiate, I take it. Oh, it could be. I mean, I think, you know, Bob Choudini would say a fundamental principle is is the the value of scarcity. And so I would always tell people, if that's really true, you should use it. You know, you don't want to lie to people because then they come back to you and you're like, you could still give them the same deal. What you're picking up on there is cornering people isn't the best way to get the best outcome because when people are cornered, they get aggressive, right? And so you're trying to get them out of the corner, but still in the space that's in the best situation for you. You've also studied the characteristics of the best mentors. What are they?

• 22:39Speaker 02

  I've mentioned them already in some ways. I use the word empower, I use the word elevate, and I use the word empathize. And one of the things about empowering is when we give people an increase in responsibility or give them opportunities, we're signaling something really important, which is that we trust the person, we believe in the person. And if you ask people, this comes up all over the world about an infuriating leader. They micromanaged me, right? It's they tried to control me. So they're not satisfying my fundamental human need for control. But when we we let someone else make a presentation, for example, we let them sit at

• 23:20Speaker 02

  the head of the table. We invite them to an important meeting. You know, there's a line from Confucius, I'm not sure if I can get exactly right, but it's something like, you know, if you tell me, I will forget. If you show me, I may understand. But it's only when you involve me that I truly understand. And so getting people involved is really, really valuable. And, you know, I've shown that in my research, I've shown that the feeling of control is so fundamental for people's psychological states that when we lack a sense of control, we try to regain it psychologically through superstitions, through conspiracies, right? Through, you know, false patterns in data.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  And so what we want to do as leaders is help people feel in control, because that's going to help them have the right psychological mindset. Elevate really, it comes down to this simple principle, which is that we're inspiring when we share success and take on, protect people from burden and punishment. And we are infuriating when we still success and blame everyone else for everything else. And, you know, if you ask people around the world about a time when they got so angry at their peer, so this isn't about leaders, it's when they feel like a peer stole their idea, right? You know, they tried to take ownership over something that was theirs. There's something so infuriating about that.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  And just simply, you know, sharing success. And so one of the things I've shown in my research, I have a paper coming out in JPSP this month, January 2025, called "The Vicious Cycle of Status Insecurity." And going back to my example of, you know, the person at Northwestern who was insecure, right? And then they kind of viciously, you know, react towards people. And when people are insecure about their status, they desperately want to claim credit for everything. But my research shows is that's really a vicious cycle and counterproductive, because when we share success, we actually gain in status. I call it expanding the status pie, like negotiations, expanding the pie.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  When we celebrate others, we acknowledge their contributions to our success, they rise up, but so do we. And so that's a really, another valuable tool is just to look out for, acknowledge people. I mentioned the CEO earlier, right? He just sent those three simple emails, took them a couple of minutes and just transferred. Form people's lives by acknowledging that. And then finally, he's empathizing with people, which is really about understanding the context in which people find themselves. My eight and seven year old sons are really into the Wings of Fire graphic novel. If you, if you know anything about those, about these dragons and there's a kind of a dragon that everyone kind of like pooh-poohs on because their name is Sunny and they always see the optimistic sunny side of the equation.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  In the end, they end this, this dragon ends up being the hero. But like at some point, you know, someone's like, you know, they're trying to kill you. It's like, yes, but they're trying to get their own brother out of prison. And if they kill me, they can't. So it's always able to understand that, you know, doesn't want to be killed, but it's also not angry at the person's behavior because he understands it's driven by a positive constructive need on their side.

• 26:40Kim Mills?

  Well, let's talk for a minute about people who are a little bit lower on the org chart in a workplace, for example, where, I mean, because a lot of jobs automatically power is conferred just by dint of the title that you have. But there are people who are newer, younger in an organization. Can those people be inspiring leaders even when they're not a boss? And how do they do that?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  One of the definitions I've come up for leadership is, you know, the capacity to motivate, integrate and enable a collection of individuals towards a shared goal. And so if you take that definition seriously, the word power, authority, rank is not in that definition. It's again, going back to, this is really the heart of everything I've said today. It's going back to your behavior, right? It's like, what are you doing that's enabling or motivating or integrating people? And so the exact same thing occurs here regardless of where you are, which is, can you engage in a behavior, right? That is inspiring. Can you engage in a behavior that helps people see the big picture, right?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Or you see the big picture? Can you be calm even in a crisis? Can you tap into your passion, right? Can you empower other people? And so in the book, I apply the three principles of inspiring leaders to. Making wiser decisions, to being a better negotiator, to creating more fair processes, to being, you know, more inclusive. But I think like a good example is where I talk about, you know, you can inspire other people to be a good decision maker when you are a wise decision maker, regardless of where you are in the org thing. And so it's really about behavior. It's about your behavior. Doesn't matter where you are. If you can be visionary, be exemplar, be a mentor, eventually that's going to have a positive impact to other. It's

• 28:31Speaker 02

  going to spread the seeds of inspiration.

• 28:33Kim Mills?

  You talk in your book about parents as leaders. What does leadership as a parent look like? And has your research changed your approach to being a dad?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  100%. You know, I already mentioned my, my seven, eight year old sons. A corollary of the leader amplification effect is the parent amplification effect. And I tell this story in the book, which I really like. One of my former doctoral students, Erica Bailey, who is now at California Berkeley as a professor, when she was 12, she overheard her mom say to someone, "Both girls are really great at piano, but Abby has a real knack for it." Now Abby was her sister. And Erica was so incensed at the sibling comparison that she never played piano again. Remember, her mom said she was really good at it. Now, her mom didn't even know this. I brought it up at Erica's PhD graduation. Her mom's like, "What are you talking about?"

• 29:26Speaker 02

  I was like, "Did you not know why your daughter quit piano?" And she's like, "No." And so that's a good example of like, this offhand comment had this huge impact and affected in some ways Erica's life course. And so one of the things we have to recognize is that what we think is sort of a casual comment, or what we're trying to push someone in one direction, like, "When you did that, that really disappointed me." Like, that may sting really deep to that person, to your child. And so, you know, recognizing the parent amplification effect is just as important as recognizing, becoming aware of the leader, you know, amplification effect. But here's two things that I think, you know, all those things really matter. So, one thing that my book

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Has helped me be a better leader is to try to take the big picture and see the larger context. So let me just give you one example of this is my mother in law, my wife's mother, came to the hospital when Asher was born from Connecticut and she never left. She left the hospital, but she, she never left our, our home and she's lived with us for the last eight years. But this December she moved to Las Vegas to start a new chapter in her life and we're really happy for her. My oldest son Asher is so close to her. Like we used to joke when he was two, like the first woman you ever loved was, you know, his grandma Lola, you know, which means grandma untalag from her Filipino background.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  And after Thanksgiving Lola over Thanksgiving went to Vegas to help sort of set things up. And her other daughters went there and sometime when before Laura came back, Asher started being really mean, especially to Jen, my wife, you know, and she was reacting pretty strongly to it. And I think, you know, in this case, being visionary and seeing the big picture, which is, Asher must be so furious at Lola for leaving, right? But he can't express it to her. He can't jeopardize their special relationship. And so Jen is sort of that stand in, you know, if you will. And so having that bigger picture does two things. One is it makes us less reactive, right? To the slings and arrows that he throws at us.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  But it also helps us think about how we can help him on this process towards transitioning to this new experience. And so doing that, you know, every time we're on the subway and someone starts acting up on the Newark subway, I go into calm and courageous protector mode, right? Like I make sure that my bodies in between my boys, I let them know that I'm in control of the situation there. You know, they're safe. And then, you know, being a mentor is really about, you know, it's hard, right? You got to find a balance between empowering people and supporting them, right? You know, I always just say encouraging them and challenging them. And so, you know, I'm constantly working on finding the right balance of like helping them be autonomous, but not putting too much pressure or responsibility on them.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  And I don't always succeed, but I'm striving at least to find that balance. So who are the most inspiring people in, in your life? I mean, you've already mentioned Danny Kahneman and his name comes up all the time when I'm talking to people because he's inspired so many folks and it's a great loss that he's not with us. But who are the other people who have inspired you? I would say, you know, both my parents in their own way, you know, my dad inspired me. He was such a creative, ingenious, you know, decision maker, always coming up with like, getting around what looks like, you know, an unscalable obstacle and coming up with, you know, fresh ways of looking at things. My mom was generous. I remember I was home, my mom was widowed at this point and we were

• 33:03Speaker 02

  going to a restaurant. We had a really difficult reservation to get and she was taking long to get ready. I was getting really annoyed and what she was doing is she remembered the waiter at this restaurant had just had a new baby and so she was getting a gift for him, you know, and that just touched me. And, you know, my current dean, Christis McGlorius, he is just a brilliant strategic thinker. He was actually on the dean's search committee and the president at one point was like, "You're a better strategic thinker than any of our candidates. You should be dean." But he combines that with just an incredible level of like humanity and their ability to understand the deep emotional lives of others and to never forget that there's humans

• 33:48Speaker 02

  behind every decision. And, you know, I shared that with him recently in a meeting. I was like, just, it's a very rare combination. It's an inspiring combination to combine brilliant strategic thinking and deep empathic humanity.

• 34:01Kim Mills?

  But just to close up, I'd like to ask this question of researchers. What are you working on now? What are the big questions you're still trying to answer?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  That's a great question. You know, I've worked on so many different topics. I think one of the things that I'm most proud of are having some simple reflection tasks that people can do to get into more visionary state of mind, a more exemplished state of mind and more mentor. And so one example is we did a study with a Swiss employment agency for recently unemployed individuals who came in to register for employment benefits. And, you know, one of the things we know from psychology is that being suddenly unemployed is one of the five biggest stressors we can experience in life. It leads to depression and anxiety and even suicidal thoughts, you know, at times. And what we did in this is we used an intervention that Claude Steele kind of, you know, was

• 34:53Speaker 02

  the seminal person behind it and Jeff Cohen and others have really elaborated on it. But we just asked people to reflect on their most important values, to think about why they mattered to them. And to think about how they've demonstrated those values in their recent behavior. And two months later, people were twice as likely to have found a job if they were in that experimental group. And we actually ended the experiment, gave everybody the intervention at that point. This is a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Economy of Sciences last year. And so just reflecting on your values satisfies that fundamental human for meaning and understanding. And it really grounds and centers people. You know, part of being visionary is optimism.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  And I think it gives people just this optimistic energy that allows them to go get a job. Similarly, one of the things that I pioneered and was a vanguard on is this simple reflection task. Think about a time when you were powerful and in control. And shown this had transformative effects. Researchers in Europe, not a study I did, showed that if you give people that reflection before a high-stakes speech and then measure their physiology, they basically are calm, right? You know, calm in this impending crisis. It makes people see the big picture. It helps them, you know, more likely to feel authentic. It makes them better negotiators, like all these different things.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  And then finally, to be a better mentor is to reflect on what you've learned from people below you in the hierarchy. And that sort of reminds you that you can learn from anyone. And I think that each one of these reflection tasks are simple and straightforward, but powerful and transformative because they're tapping into those fundamental human needs, but they're doing so in a richly, authentically autobiographical way. You're building on your own experiences. And so if that is going to leave your listeners with anything, is that just the inspiring power of reflection to help us be more inspiring.

• 36:52Kim Mills?

  Well, Dr. Galinsky, I want to thank you for joining me today. It's been really interesting talking to you. And I have to agree with Dr. Kahneman that you're a good writer. So the book is accessible. People should take a look. It's called Inspire. Thank you.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. It was great fun being here.

• 37:08Kim Mills?

  You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org, or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe, leave us a review. For those of you who want to know more about psychology and the work of APA, you can join us as a supporter. You don't have to be a psychologist. The benefits include a subscription to our award-winning magazine, Monitor on Psychology, as well as discounts on our books and other publications. So if psychology is your passion, or if you just want to know more about the science, you can become a supporter by visiting at.apa.org/speaking. That's at.apa.org/speaking.

• 37:51Kim Mills?

  If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at [email protected]. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Thank you for listening. The American Psychological Association. I'm Kim Mills.

• 38:52Speaker 03

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