673: Daniel Coyle - Opening Yellow Doors, Mastering Your Craft, World-Class Storytelling Techniques, Great Questions to Ask, Building Your Community, The Power of Curiosity, and How to Flourish in Life

Go to www. LearningLeader.com https://www. LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global https://insightglobal.com/learningleader/. 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: Dan Coyle is a New York Times bestselling author who's spent the last two decades studying what makes great teams great. He wrote The Talent Code, The Culture Code, and now Flourish—books that have shaped how millions of people think about skill development, team culture, and meaningful connection. He works with the Cleveland Guardians as a special advisor on culture and performance. We recorded this one together in Cleveland. Notes: Find your yellow doors. Most of us go through life looking for green doors (clearly open paths) and red doors (obviously closed paths). But yellow doors are different. They're out of the corner of your eye, things that make you uncomfortable or feel brand new. That's where life actually happens. We think life is a straight line from A to B to C, but it's not. Life isn't a game... It's complex, living, shifting. Yellow doors are opportunities to create meaningful connections and explore new paths. "Life deepens when we become aware of the yellow doors, the ones we glimpse out of the corner of our eye." The craft journey always involves getting simpler. Simple is not easy. The great ones have their craft to where there's a simplicity to it. In this world of clutter and noise, it's easy to want to compete with energy and speed, but the stuff that really resonates is quieter and simpler. Be a beginner again in something. With climbing, Dan's at the very bottom of the craft mountain. With writing, he's somewhere in the middle. It's fun to have a couple of zones in your life where you're a beginner. It's liberating, but it also develops empathy. Some stuff looks very simple, but isn't. Every good story has three elements. There's some desire (I want to get somewhere), there's some obstacle (this thing standing in my way), and there's some transformation on that journey. Teaching teaches you. Coaching Zoe's writing team helped Dan, and then Zoe ended up coaching Dan. It was never "let me transmit all my wisdom to my daughter." It was a rich two-way dialogue that helped both of them. Suffering together is powerful. Doing hard things together with other people, untangling things together (literally and figuratively), and being vulnerable together. That's culture code stuff. Whether it's skiing with your kids, seeing them fall and get back up, or being trapped underground like the Chilean miners. Behind every individual success is a community. Dan dedicates all his books to his wife, Jenny (except one). Growing up, he had this idea of individual success, individual greatness. But when you scratch one of those individual stories, what's revealed is a community of people. Jenny is the ecosystem that lets Dan do what he does. Going from writing project to writing project, hoping stuff works out, exploring... it's not efficient. It's not getting on the train to work and coming home at five o'clock. It's "I think I need to go to Russia" or "I need to dig into this." She's been more than a partner, an incredible teammate. Great organizations aren't machines; they're rivers. The old model of leadership is the pilot of the boat, the person flipping levers who has all the answers. That's how most of us grew up thinking about leaders. But Indiana football, the SEALs, Pixar... when you get close to these organizations, they're not functioning like machines. Machines are controlled from the outside and produce predictable results. These organizations are more like energy channels that are exploring. They're like rivers. How do you make a river flow? Give it a horizon to flow toward (where are we going?), set up river banks (where we're not gonna go), but inside that space create energy and agency. Questions do that. Leaders who are good at lobbing questions in and then closing their mouth... that's the most powerful skill. Great teams have peer leaders who sacrifice. Since Indiana football's fresh in our minds... Peer leaders who sacrifice for the team are really big. Fernando Mendoza got smoked, battered, hammered, and he kept going without complaint. In his interview afterward, he talks about his teammates. That's the DNA of great teams. Adversity reveals everything. The litmus test: in moments of terrible adversity, what's the instinct? Are we turning toward each other or away from each other? You could see it in that game. The contrast between the two teams. When things went bad, they responded very differently. The coach isn't as important as you think. Coaches can create the conditions for the team to emerge, but great teams sometimes pit themselves against the coach. The US Olympic hockey team of 1980 would be an example. They came together against Herb Brooks. So coaching sets the tone, but it's not as big a part of DNA as people think. Curiosity keeps great teams from drinking their own Kool-Aid. The teams that consistently succeed don't get gassed up on their own stuff. They don't believe in their success. They're not buying into "now I'm at the top of the mountain, everything's fine." They get curious about that next mountain, curious about each other, curious about the situation. They're willing to let go of stuff that didn't work. Honor the departed. When someone gets traded in pro sports, it's like death. Their locker's empty like a gravestone. What the coach at OKC does: on the day after somebody gets traded, he spends a minute of practice expressing his appreciation for that person who's gone. How simple and human is that? How powerful? What makes people flourish is community. It's not a bunch of individuals that are individually together. Can they connect? Can they love their neighbor and support their neighbor? That's magical when it happens. The Chilean miners created civilization through rituals. 33 men, 2,000 feet underground, trapped for 69 days. The first couple hours went as bad as it could. People eating all the food, scrambling, yelling. Then they circled up and paused. The boss took off his helmet and said, "There are no bosses and no employees. We're all one here." Their attention shifted from terror and survival to the larger connection they had with each other. They self-organized. Built sleeping areas, rationed food, created games with limited light. Each meal they'd share a flake of tuna at the same time. When they got contact with the surface, they sang the Chilean national anthem together. They created a little model civilization that functioned incredibly well. Stopping and looking creates community. What let the miners flourish wasn't information or analysis. It was letting go. Having this moment of meaning, creating presence. All the groups Dan visited had this ability in all the busyness to stop and ask: What are we really about? What matters here? What is our community? Why are we here? What is bigger than us that we're connected to? They grounded themselves in those moments over and over. Getting smart only gets you so far. There's a myth in our culture that individuals can flourish. You see someone successful and think "that individual's flourishing." But underneath them, invisibly, they're part of a larger community. We only become our best through other people. We have a pronoun problem: I, me, when actually it's we and us. Self-improvement isn't as powerful as shared improvement. Ask energizing questions. "What's energizing you right now?" is a great question. "What do you want more of?" "What do you want to do differently?" (not "what are you doing poorly"). "Paint a picture five years from now, things go great, give me an average Tuesday." What you're trying to do is get people out of their narrow boredom, let go a little, surrender a little, open up and point out things in the corner of their eye. When things go rough, go help somebody. Craig Counsell on how to bounce back when you're having a bad day: "I try to go help somebody." That's it. Create presence conditions. The ski trips, the long drives, the shared meals, no phones. Schedule them. This is how connection happens, whether it's with your family or your people at work. Leaders who sustain excellence are intensely curious. Dan walked into the Guardians office expecting to pepper them with questions. The opposite happened. Jay, Chris, and Josh kept asking him question after question, wanting to learn. Leaders who sustain excellence have this desire to learn, improve, get better. Ask better questions. Actually listen. Ask follow-up questions. Curiosity is also the ultimate way to show love. Reflection Questions Dan says yellow doors are "out of the corner of your eye, things that make you uncomfortable or feel brand new." What's one yellow door you've been walking past lately? What's stopping you from opening it this week? The Chilean miners' boss took off his white helmet and said, "There are no bosses and no employees." Think about a moment of adversity your team is facing right now. Are you turning toward each other or away? What's one specific action you could take this week to help your team turn toward each other? Dan emphasizes we have a "pronoun problem" (I, me vs. we, us) and that "self-improvement isn't as powerful as shared improvement." Who are the 2-3 people you could invite into your growth journey right now? What would it look like to pursue excellence together instead of alone?

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

• 0:02Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader, one of my favorites, Dan Coyle, New York Times bestselling author, who spent the last two decades studying what makes great teams great. He wrote The Talent Code, The Culture Code, and now Flourish. These are books that have shaped how millions of people think about skill development, team culture, and meaningful connection. He works with the Cleveland Guardians as a special advisor

• 0:44Ryan Hawk?

  on culture and performance. We got together in Cleveland to record this one in person. So glad I got to spend half a day with Dan. A few things we discussed, the craft of writing and storytelling, including the advice Dan gives to his 24-year-old daughter who wants to be a writer. Love it. And then the Chilean miners story. Before we talk a little bit about this with Mike Deegan, 33 men trapped underground for 52 days who should not have survived, but did, and what that reveals about human resilience and group flourishing. And then I love this concept called Yellow Doors. They are about spotting opportunities to create

• 1:29Ryan Hawk?

  meaningful connections and exploring new paths, including a new story that Dan tells about rock climbing. I think you'll find it useful. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Dan Coyle.

• 1:46Ryan Hawk?

  This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to providing amazing people to their clients and taking great care of them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight

• 2:10Ryan Hawk?

  Insight Global can get you the people you need and help you develop them to reach their full potential. Developing your people can be tough, but having productive employees can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com/learningleader. That's insightglobal.com/learningleader to learn more.

• 2:35Ryan Hawk?

  Who are you reading lately that like you're loving?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  You know, a sky and it's more in the writing area, but George Saunders bump into his stuff.

• 2:45Ryan Hawk?

  I've heard that. Yeah. What's, what's, what's something he's written that you really like?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  It's called A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. He teaches a class on writing, but it's really kind of about life.

• 2:56Ryan Hawk?

  What's that, what's that book?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  A Swim. It's terrible title. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.

• 3:03Ryan Hawk?

  And that's a nonfiction?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Nonfiction. It's based on a class he teaches on Russian short stories. So it's super abstract.

• 3:09Ryan Hawk?

  Oh my God.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think of something that's more in your, in your world or our world.

• 3:15Ryan Hawk?

  Are you, so you're studying writing?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 3:19Ryan Hawk?

  Is that like your favorite thing?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  I'm always looking to deepen that skillset. Yeah. Look at that. Dude.

• 3:28Ryan Hawk?

  That is.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  A clapper. This is elite. I had no idea this would be a clapper. Fucking hell.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  It's not the $10,000 cameras. It's the, it's the $15 slate from.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  You clapped it. You clapped it. It works. It's got the colors on it.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Hey, I love it. You're not alone.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 3:49Ryan Hawk?

  So you, so you still feel like you're, I have an official start, but I'm too curious.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:54Ryan Hawk?

  You're still, you're still deep into learning about being a better.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 3:58Ryan Hawk?

  Really?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 3:59Ryan Hawk?

  What do you mean? Like?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  There are people that, you know, you sort of mountain. Top of craft, right? Like you work your way up it, you learn, you relearn. You have the strange experience of reading something that you wrote and thinking, oh, hey, that's actually pretty good. Who wrote that? You know?

• 4:14Ryan Hawk?

  Your own stuff?

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Your own stuff. And you also see how you've decomplicated things over the years. Like I think in the journey of craft always involves getting simpler. Period. Right? And is there an end to that? I know that I could definitely be simpler because simple is not easy. Right? And I think the great ones are always, they've got their craft to where it is. Where there's a simplicity to it. And I feel, I feel hungry for more of that. Like, especially in this world we live in where we're all trying to communicate. And there's so much clutter and noise and it's easy to want to compete with that and bring a lot of energy and speed to your communications. And yet the stuff that really resonates is quieter for me and is simpler. And he,

• 4:59Speaker 01

  George Saunders, this writer we're talking about embodies that. And he really deeply has a beautiful explanation for how he does what he does. So it's just, it's like reading, it happens to be about writing, but it sort of could be about archery or chess or baseball.

• 5:13Ryan Hawk?

  What about like, how does climbing play a role with any of that? Or does it?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it does. There is.

• 5:19Ryan Hawk?

  Or is that just a challenge, like hard, do the hard thing with other people, develop relationships, doing hard things? I mean, that's some culture code stuff, right? Like doing hard things together with other people.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Completely. Suffering, for instance, like suffering together, how powerful that is. Untangling things together, literally and figuratively is, is super powerful. And being vulnerable is super powerful. For me, if there, if it is, we're talking about this mountain top of craft with climbing, I'm at the very, very, very bottom. Like, how do I tie that knot? And with writing, I'm somewhere in the middle. So it's fun to feel, to have a couple of those zones in your life where you're a beginner again. And it's kind of freeing, liberating, but it's also develops empathy. Because there's some stuff that is really, really, it looks very simple, but it's not. And so it's, it gives you empathy for, for people that are learning.

• 6:09Ryan Hawk?

  You said one of your daughters wants to be a writer, but she's fiction, right? Right? She come to you and say, Dad, how do I do what you did in a little bit different way? But or is she is she old enough now where she's mature to say, my dad's actually really, really good and legit and great. Cause you know, teenage years, you're kind of, they're gonna make fun of you and all that stuff. That's how it works. How was that?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, interesting. We've always had kind of a, I think, a good relationship. I've got, I've learned from her a lot, actually. Yeah, she's reads really deeply. She's interested in kind of Greek myths and writing fiction off of that. And so that was a total education for me. So there was, it was a kind of a two way dialogue. She doesn't ask me my opinion very much, which is kind of a relief. I don't really know how she does what she does. But it's been kind of fun. I've had to lean on her sometimes and she leans on me sometimes.

• 6:57Ryan Hawk?

  But the craft of storytelling is you're one of the best in the world at that element and then weaving the stories together to help other people, I would say, to simplify that as much as I could.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:09Ryan Hawk?

  What about that part, this craft of storytelling?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've, I've been, I've edited some of her stuff and I've tried to, there was a, is a thing in Ohio. It's kind of strange. It should be everywhere. It's called power of the pen. It's where you take writing and you turn it into like a high school varsity sport.

• 7:23Ryan Hawk?

  Heard of this, Corey?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Okay. Right? It's the thing. Oh, wow. It's the thing. And the way it works is you have a little team from a different schools and they're all middle school kids, I think. And you all go to a gym and you get a prompt 20 minutes, go. And then there are judges that rate all the essay, all the, they're short stories. They're like, the prompt is a tree in spring. Go write, go. A prompt is my dog is sick, go. And everybody writes a story based on that prompt. And then those stories are judged and you write three of them in a day and then the winners get trophies. And it's just this crazy fun thing. Well, I happened to coach the middle school team when my daughter Zoe was there. And then Zoe went on to become the coach of the team when she got older. So, and she was a way better coach than I was because she was closer. She was more of a peer of the kids. And, you know, storytelling is

• 8:09Speaker 01

  a craft because there always is, there's some desire, there's some obstacle, and there's some transformation in every good story, right? There's like, I want to do, I want to get somewhere. There's this thing standing in my way. And then there's some transformation on that journey. It's like everything, like teaching it teaches you. And so being the coach there really helped me. Being the coach there really helped Zoe and then Zoe ended up coaching me and I ended up coaching Zoe a little bit. So it was never this like transmit, let me teach all my wisdom to my daughter. It was much more of a rich two-way dialogue that I think ended up helping both of us a little bit.

• 8:41Ryan Hawk?

  Man, I love hearing stories like that. I'm gonna pepper you forever about your, since you're a little bit ahead of me. And so I'm always gonna be like, oh, this is, seems like you've figured some things out in this really hard game of being a dad with daughters. And it's the most important thing in the world and the coolest thing in the world. Talk about suffering together. That's why I love skiing together. I don't believe I'm, maybe it's just so, I don't know what you feel about this, but like this idea of skiing with your kids and seeing them fall and then they gotta get themselves back up and then keep going. And then by the end of the day, to see the smile on their face and they've kind of conquered a hard thing and you did it together and you got in the hot tub together afterwards. Like, does it get better than that?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  It's the perfect day.

• 9:21Ryan Hawk?

  Does it get better?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  It does not.

• 9:22Ryan Hawk?

  I don't know if it does. With your kids and your wife, like, I don't know if it gets any better than that.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  No, no, it's a perfect day. And, and, and they have the, me, the perfect amount of like freedom and togetherness. It's like every run is like freedom and then togetherness, freedom and then togetherness. There's such a great pulse in that. It is like the pulse of family. Yeah.

• 9:37Ryan Hawk?

  It's so good. Okay, Flourish. So it was so cool to get this book from your team. I appreciate you sending it to me and they sent me the PDF too. So I was devouring it and taking so many notes. I gotta start at the, actually the very beginning.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:50Ryan Hawk?

  We were just talking about Jenny.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:51Ryan Hawk?

  You guys are now empty nesters. You're still figuring it out.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:55Ryan Hawk?

  But you dedicate it to her and it just says for Jenny, like a simplicity in that.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:00Ryan Hawk?

  How does she help you, Dan Coyle, Flourish?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. In every possible way. There's not a book, uh, deep enough or long enough to tell that story. But yeah, it being, you know, one of the lessons of getting older, and I just turned 60. So it's like, this is like, uh, this is like, uh,

• 10:21Ryan Hawk?

  It's hard to believe.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  It is. It's, it's, you think, you think it's hard to believe.

• 10:24Ryan Hawk?

  I'm looking at you.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  It's hard to believe.

• 10:25Ryan Hawk?

  I'm saying you look great.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. No, it's, it's one of the things is like, I think growing up, I always had the idea of kind of individual success, individual greatness. It's like we were fed all these stories about kind of heroic journeys of improvement and, and a lot of the information we get is how we can get better as individuals. And over and over again, I keep seeing when you scratch one of those individual stories, what is revealed as a community of people? And it's a community of people who support in ways that they don't even realize they're supporting. But we're all deeply enmeshed in these kind of ecosystems. And so Jenny is like the ecosystem for me to be able to do what I do. Cause what I do, similar to, I think a lot of careers, it's like, it doesn't actually make that much sense.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  You know, going from writing project to writing project, hoping stuff works out, exploring some of those explorations work out, some of them don't. It ain't efficient. It ain't like getting on the train and going to your work and then coming back and getting on the train and coming home at five o'clock every day. It's not that. It's, I think I need to go to Russia, you know, it's, I think I need to spend some time digging into this. It's, it's not knowing where the next check is going to come from. It's, you know, hoping that that works out. And so she's been, you know, more than a partner during all that time and being an incredible teammate, incredible support. So all my books are dedicated to her, with the exception of one. I don't have to think long about who to dedicate books to.

• 11:50Ryan Hawk?

  That's cool, man. I love stories like that. And when you look at people who have sustained excellence over time, it seems like that's one of the commonalities. Is either their, their who in general, or in your case, that plus this rock of a support system at home that you love unconditionally and have built a life with. The other thing you write about is yellow doors.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:14Ryan Hawk?

  I loved reading more about yellow doors.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:16Ryan Hawk?

  Can you explain this idea of what yellow doors are and how you're trying to make the most of them?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I mean, most of us go through our lives. This is by the way, it's an idea from a Columbia University psychologist named Lisa Miller. And what she points out is that most of us go through our lives looking for the green doors that are open. Clear, go. Let's go. Not to be too McConaughey. I don't know how he would even say his own name. Green lines.

• 12:41Ryan Hawk?

  It's a good book, especially.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 12:43Ryan Hawk?

  Audiobook's really good.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll bet it is. Yeah.

• 12:45Ryan Hawk?

  He's a, he's a voice actor. I mean, he's great. Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Incredible. Most of us go through life looking for the green doors that are open and the red doors that are closed. Like, that's clearly a path forward for me. That's clearly a path I should not go. And there's a lot of those in life, right? But that I have yellow doors is that there's another kind of door, right? That's kind of out of the corner of your eye. It might be something that makes you uncomfortable. It might be something that's brand new, but that's where life actually happens. One of the reasons that that's true is that, you know, we tend to think and perceive things in straight lines. We tend to sort of go from A to B to C to D and sort of think of life as this big, I don't know, like a big game, right? A big, a big game that has rules and you should analyze, follow the rules, make good decisions.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  But in fact, that's like a misperception. I think I've come to believe that that is absolutely wrong. Life is actually not a game. Games are machines. Life is, there are elements of life that are like a game. Parts of it are, but deep, deep down, it ain't a game. It ain't. It is just something, it is, it is a living thing. It's complex and complex things don't have straight lines. They've got like little doorways and pathways and it's like this jungle trail that keeps shifting and moving and you're moving along with it. There's some weird science connected to this that is, basically says it's about complexity, right? All of life's problems, there are two kinds of problems in life. Some are complicated and some are complex. And we typically use those two words like interchangeably,

• 14:16Speaker 01

  right? They're not. Like, complex is really different than complicated. And I found this to be really, really useful. Complicated things come together the same way every time. A goes to B goes to C. There's cause and effect. It's unchangeable. Like, I could, if I told you to build a Ford Mustang and gave you all the information and all the materials and a set of instructions that was accurate and you followed those instructions, you would have a Ford Mustang every time, right? That's, that's complicated. It takes, you have to analyze. It takes expertise, but it's complicated. Complex are problems where when you involve yourself in them, they change.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  So the difference is, is this more like building a Ford Mustang? Or is this more like raising a teenager? There's no script I can give you, as we know. There is no set of instructions. There's no A to B to C to D. It ain't complicated. It's freaking complex, which means everything I do changes the relationship. Right? Complex things live in relationship. And so that's where the yellow door idea really resonates for me. Cause it's like, when you think of your life as complicated, you think, oh, what's the next good move? I just need to make one good move. It's straight lines. It's I'll be able to figure it out and to analyze it more. I need to think about it more. Complexity is like, wait a minute. There's like something opening up over here. Let me check that out. Like, that seems interesting. Let me probe. And to go back to ground it in the science.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  If you've got a complicated problem, you need to analyze. Find out where, where are you in that list of instructions? Like, get the next best instruction. Find the expert. Follow, follow the guide. But if you're in a complex problem, information is not helpful. If you're in a complex problem, you gotta probe. Like, you gotta test out, take a step into that yellow door and be like, huh, that sucked. I'm gonna turn around or whoa, that's kind of cool. I'm gonna keep going and see what the next step is. And so what I see in highly kind of thriving people, especially in people that I studied for this book, was this willingness to kind of let go of analysis, kind of let go of information and let their experience guide them. Say, let's try that.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  It seems kind of stupid. I can make all kinds of logical reasons why it won't work, but I'm gonna let go of logic for just a second. And I'm gonna actually probe and see what happens. I'm gonna actually live it. And then I'll get some information by doing that. Right? So they're living their way forward into these questions, into these yellow doors. Like, you're living into the question. That's the way that there was a poet a long time ago, Rilke, the poet. Somebody asked him, he got older, they asked him, it was a young, letters to a young poet. So somebody wrote him, how do I live my life? And he wrote back and Rilke said, live the question. That's how you should live your life, live into the question. And that's what I kept seeing in these flourishing groups that I've been spending the last five years

• 17:07Speaker 01

  visiting, like they're, they're not about the answers. And we live in this day, in this age where answers are as cheap as tap water. Right? Like AIs will give you the answers.

• 17:17Ryan Hawk?

  Sure.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  We have the answers, but do we have the questions? And are we noticing the questions that are just in the corner of our eye? And are we able to live into those questions in ways that help us to grow? Like, that's what flourishing is.

• 17:31Ryan Hawk?

  This idea of being, I found you since, I don't even know how many years we've been talking now. From that first meeting, dinner, breakfast, all of them. When you asked me to come up and hang out, at the time, I think they were still the Cleveland Indians. Chris Antonetti, Jay Hennessy, you, there were some others in the room. And I was just, one, I thought this is the coolest thing just to be in this room. You're the president of the, of a baseball team who's crushed it. You, a guy who I idolize as a writer, Josh Gibson, another brilliant guy, like. And the level of curiosity just blew my mind. Because those are the guys who should be telling me everything. I showed up like trying to learn and learn.

• 18:15Ryan Hawk?

  And all that Chris and you and everybody in the room was doing was peppering me. I couldn't believe guys that had this stature and this level of excellence that they have sustained over time. And yet they were as curious as anybody I've ever met.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:31Ryan Hawk?

  I'd just love to hear you kind of riff on the level of curiosity amongst the leadership with the Cleveland Guardians, the guys that you are an intern for.

• 18:40Ryan Hawk?

  I mean, just to hear more like, and how, how, how cool it is to be in an environment like that.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  It is, it's totally energizing, right? Like, like the.

• 18:47Ryan Hawk?

  I feel like that's a part of this too, though. Like, it's kind of like that, you know, like a curiosity about life.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, I know. Well, I mean, if we really, you know, we can, we can dig into the Guardians some more. Because they, for me, they really do embody that curiosity. And it's really easy, especially in sports, especially in high performance stuff, to focus on those answers. The thing that I like about hanging out with them is that they raise everybody's level. You know, answers stop conversations. And by stopping conversations, they kind of. They don't fuel relationships. Yeah. They don't. Questions bring people together, right? And the ability to really, especially as you move up in the world, as we get, as you get older, as you have a higher status, it becomes increasingly tempting.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  If you have the model of leadership, that a leader is the, is the pilot of the boat and the person who's flipping the levers and has the answers. And that's how I grew up thinking of leaders. Sure. Right? They were the ones with the answers. Yeah. It becomes tempting to become that. And all the other signals you get in the organization reinforce that. So it takes a really special person, I think, to realize and a really different model for what a business is, for what a high-performance organization is. You know, we typically think of them as kind of machines. You know, Indiana football last night looked like a freaking machine, right? They win the national championship. We think of, of the SEALs as a machine. We think of Pixar as a machine. But actually, when you get close to those organizations, they're not functioning like machines.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Machines are controlled from the outside and they're very predictable and they produce a predictable result. That's why they're machines, right? But what we're having in here is like more of an, an alivening, an animating of energy that's hidden. Those questions, why are they powerful? Cause they bring out people's energy and curiosity. Why is curiosity so powerful? Because it creates these explorations. And, and leaders who are good at, at like lobbing that question in and then closing their mouth. It's the most powerful skill because, because it's not a machine. Because these organizations are actually more like these energy channels that are exploring stuff. They're more like rivers. It's like a river. How do you make a river flow?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Well, you give it a horizon to flow toward, like where are we going? You set up some riverbanks, which is where we're not going to go. We're not going to go to either side of this. But inside this space, I want to create energy and agency. And questions do that. And it's a super interesting skill too, because, you know, in the book I write a little bit about Peter Bloch, who's like one of the best ever answering, asking these, these questions and exploring these questions. And The questions aren't that work in these situations, whether it's at the Guardians or somewhere else, they're not questions that are kind of fact-based. They're more like deep questions, like what makes a great player? What happens in championship locker rooms? Like, there are questions that are impossible to simply answer. So what they do is they

• 21:42Speaker 01

  kind of spark more exploration. And in that exploration, something bubbles up, usually. And the funny thing about those conversations that I've had in the Guardians a million times is like, you'll be in a meeting, somebody will put in a question, like, how do great hitters recognize pitches? Whatever it might be. And this conversation will happen, and some ideas will bubble up. And later on, no one will know where those ideas came from. It wasn't exactly you. It wasn't exactly me. We were building on ideas. You threw out an idea, and I built on it. Somebody else built on it. Somebody else propped on it. And all of a sudden, you walk out with not only energy, but agency and a fresh idea. And so it cracks me up, actually, to go, you still can go to some places, and they're

• 22:24Speaker 01

  still in that old model of leadership where it's like, I'm the answer man. I'm the answer woman. I will speak first. I will speak last. I will not invite conversation. And my role is to deliver the truth. And I can see how that would have worked. Like, that would have worked on Mad Men. That would have worked in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, when we didn't have so many answers around, where we didn't have the challenging, changing landscape that we're in. Like, but now, the landscape's freaking moving. And the idea that one guy can have all the answers is actually kind of insane. I think that doesn't work. So how do we create those conversations?

• 23:00Ryan Hawk?

  Team dialogue. I think I learned this, like, dialogos. Was this from Jay and you, probably? Is it Peter Senj? How do you say his last?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, Senj.

• 23:07Ryan Hawk?

  Senj. So the fifth discipline, I've used this a lot, that I learned, I believe, was from you and Jay, when I was in that meeting, about this, the power of, I want to get into like, the DNA of excellent teams, because this is something you're good at to go along with this, is this team coming together, doing exactly what you said, but you can't do it if you're not open-minded, if you're not curious, or not willing to ask questions. Again, you talk about asking good questions.

• 23:34Ryan Hawk?

  And maybe it's context dependent, but I am curious to learn from you. What are some of like the best questions to ask when you're in a team environment and you're trying to figure things out? You got complex or issues happening? What are some of your like your favorite questions to ask in those situations?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I think we're doing it, dude. I think what's energizing you right now is a really good question.

• 24:00Ryan Hawk?

  Didn't you ask me that right before we started recording?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  I think I did. I only got one question.

• 24:05Ryan Hawk?

  I loved it.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  That's the one.

• 24:07Ryan Hawk?

  Well, I mean, it led to like a 10 minute monologue, but yeah.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  It did, yeah, right, right.

• 24:10Ryan Hawk?

  It's great.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  You know, and what else is a really good question? I think people tend to, you know, there's, there's usually like something underneath the surface. Asking the same question again is a really good question because sometimes the first time doesn't go. What are you really curious about right now is a, is a good one. And there's always the double header, which is like, what do you want to do more of? I think that's a really good question, like, cause what we're talking about here is like where your energy is going and where do you, where do you see you're going really well? What do you want more of? I want more of this, I want more of that. And what do you want to do differently is another good question. Like, what do you want to do differently? Because I'm not, you're trying to create space here, which is such a groovy phrase. Like, we're going to create space right now.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  But it kind of captures what it is, which is like, I want to make you feel like I'm not interrogating you.

• 25:02Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  That like, I'm not judging you. If I say like, what are you doing that you think's going poorly? It's, that's a crappy question, but what do you want to do differently is, is not a bad one. It creates space for you to go, yeah, um, here's what I want to do differently.

• 25:16Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Those are all good. And then other questions kind of about the future, I think are really, are really liberating and good. And all these questions, you know, paint a picture for me, describe for me, if five years from now, things go great, give me an average Tuesday. Like, what do you do on that day? And you're probably obviously skiing with your daughters.

• 25:38Ryan Hawk?

  That would be one of them.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  My family's right alongside you. But, you know, something in, in all of those. What you're, I think, trying to do is get people out of kind of their narrow bore attention.

• 25:50Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  And let go a little bit, surrender a little bit and open up and point out things that are maybe in the corner of their eye.

• 25:57Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. So Dan, I was recently asked to give two talks to the same company. One was just the salespeople and they asked me to talk about excellence and habits and routines and rituals of high performance. Right. Stuff I learned about on the show. The second was with the entire company and they said, we want you to title it. I don't usually do this. I'm sure you don't either, where they tell you what they want you to talk about.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:19Ryan Hawk?

  They say it needs to be titled, "The DNA of Great Teams."

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 26:23Ryan Hawk?

  And I said, initially I said, no, I don't know if I have that talk in me or whatever. And then I thought, well, it might be kind of a

• 26:30Speaker 01

  It's kind of a cool topic. Yeah.

• 26:31Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. So anyway, so I did that a couple, like a month ago now. And I would be curious if you were asked to give a talk titled, "The DNA of Great Teams." What are some of the, I don't, you don't need to give the talk right now, but what are some of the bullet points that would immediately start popping up in your mind of, oh, this is, yeah, this great team is great. I mean, you're maybe the foremost guy to ask this question to. So.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  No pressure, huh? Yeah, right.

• 26:54Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. So this better be good.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Freaking great.

• 26:58Ryan Hawk?

  I expect perfection.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it's good. You know, part of my mind there goes right to kind of these core things of, of deep, deep belonging, sort of sacrifice. But I'll get a little notch. So you got the big principles there that I think are true in every great team. But I'll go like since Indiana football is fresh in our minds after seeing that, there is something, you know, if we notch a little bit deeper, it's like peer leaders who sacrifice for the team for me is like, is like really big. Seeing that.

• 27:32Ryan Hawk?

  You see, Mendoza got smoked.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Smoked.

• 27:35Ryan Hawk?

  I mean, he was battered and he just kept going.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  That guy.

• 27:39Ryan Hawk?

  He was getting hammered and he didn't complain.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  And interview talks about his teammates.

• 27:44Ryan Hawk?

  I mean.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. How do you respond? And that, and so that leads to the second one, which is like that moment of, of terrible adversity. What is the instinct? Are we turning toward each other or are we turning away from each other? To me, that is like such a litmus test. You could actually see it last night. You could see the contrast between the two teams. When things went bad, they responded very differently. Right? That response is just, is just so.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  So important to DNA of great teams. And I don't actually don't think the coach is that important in a way. Really? Was Siggeti? No, I think, I think he obviously sets the tone and everything, but when we and it's part of the DNA, but it's not as big a part as people think. I think great teams, coaches can create the conditions for the team to emerge. But the thing where the great teams have, because they sometimes pit themselves against the coach. You know, they can sometimes see the coach as we're going to come together against this guy. The US Olympic hockey team of 1980 would be an example of that. So I would put that on there. And I would also put a shout out to this curiosity is at the very, very, very core of it. Because that

• 28:54Speaker 01

  that keeps you going. And it's really hard to consistently succeed. And I think the teams that I've seen do that are ones that do not get gassed up on their own stuff, do not drink their own Kool-Aid, do not believe in in their success, actually, in a way, sort of in a, it's not skeptical exactly, but they're not buying into it in a like, oh, now I'm at the top of the mountain, everything's fine. And they get curious about that next mountain, and they get curious about each other, and they get curious about the situation, and they're willing to let go of stuff that that didn't work. OKC is really good at this. The basketball team, I mean, they, they are incredibly intentional about how they evolve

• 29:35Speaker 01

  and how they lead. And they were here last year, and I had a coffee with with their coach and their shooting coach, Chip Englund, who's a brilliant, brilliant shooting coach, and Mark Dageno. And they told me something that was kind of cool that I hadn't appreciated. When someone gets traded in pro sports, it's like a death. Like, this is locker room, everybody knows each other, trade deadline's coming, somebody got traded, and then their locker's empty. It's like a gravestone. And what the coach at OKC does is, on the day after somebody gets traded, he spends a minute of practice, expressing his appreciation for that person who's gone. Takes like 10 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever. But it like,

• 30:13Speaker 01

  what, how simple and human is that? How powerful is that? And it really, I think what I'm seeing in these places, it's the same thing that I see in these flourishing groups that I wrote about. The word is community. Like, the thing that makes people flourish is community. It's not a bunch of individuals that are individualing together. It's like, can they connect? Can they? I mean, the, the way that some people would say it would be like, love your neighbor. Are they loving their neighbor and supporting their neighbor? And that is, that's just magical when that does happen.

• 30:48Ryan Hawk?

  One of the groups that I was blown away, reading about those Chilean miners.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:54Ryan Hawk?

  Man.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:55Ryan Hawk?

  I didn't know and understand the full story until reading about it in your book. Tell me about how they somehow, after what seems like one of the worst things that could ever happen to you.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:07Ryan Hawk?

  Flourished.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:09Ryan Hawk?

  Together.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:10Ryan Hawk?

  And survived, all of them, together.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Incredible. I mean, yeah, if you had to trade places with anybody in the history of the world, these guys would not be in the top list.

• 31:18Ryan Hawk?

  No.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  They're a couple thousand feet below the surface, happened in 2010, most of us remember it, I think. You know, Chilean San Jose Mine caves in, there's, you know, a hundred million tons of rock on top of them. They're in a, a room called a refugio and there's probably no escape. They're, they're probably thinking this is it. And there's a little cabinet with some tuna fish cookies, spoiled milk, like not much, not much food. Thirty-three people down there. And for the first couple hours, it went as bad as it could have gone.

• 31:47Ryan Hawk?

  Sure.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Like, people are eating the food, people are running around scrambling, yelling at each other. And then they, they sort of tire out, they circle up. And it's funny, and you know, we all know that they survived, we all know that they, they ended up kind of creating a little civilization down there. And the original thought when they came out was like, oh, they had great leaders. They had like these two guys that seemed to be leaders and those leaders had a plan and they had a strategy and they, they did it. And they were like steering the ship. And it turns out that wasn't the case. What happened was that they, they sort of circled up and they stopped and they kind of paused. They just stopped. And they said, look, we're in the shit, like this is it. We're not getting out of here. And then the boss stepped forward, it was a boss everyone was kind of afraid of. He wore a white helmet, his name was Luis Urzua. And he took off his white helmet and he said, there are no bosses and no employees.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  There's no bosses and no employees. We're all one here. And then there's another pause and somebody else pointed out that there were thirty-three of them, which is the same age Christ was when he died. And so they saw that as being, they're mostly Catholics, saw that as being as symbolic. And from those pauses, like, they weren't actually trying to do anything, but what happened in those moments is their attention shifted from this terror and this task of survival to this larger connection that they had, this relationship they had had with each other and with this moment. And they started to kind of self-organize at that time, like, just, let's build a little sleeping area. Let's, let's get the food sorted. Let's figure out how much lamp

• 33:12Speaker 01

  battery power we have. And they started this set of rituals, rituals, and they almost, like, each meal, they would get out a certain flake of tuna, and they would all share it and eat it at the same time. They built small games out of little reflectors, and they would play these games with their limited light. And it didn't, like, it didn't, it wasn't easy. And it was, there was an incredible amount of shared suffering down there, but it was shared. And when they finally got contact with the surface, one of the things that they did that kind of blew everybody away was they, they sung the Chilean national anthem together. So they're down there, no food, you know, very little supplies, dark infection, it's super hot, and they end up kind of creating this little model civilization

• 33:56Speaker 01

  that functioned incredibly well for the situation that they were in. And what let them do that was not information, it wasn't analysis, it was letting go. It was having this moment of meaning, of making meaning and creating presence. I saw that pattern in all the places that I visited. They were able to create meaning, because you can have all the information, you can have all the success, you can have all the productivity, but if you don't have the ability to, like, stop and create relationships and create community, all that stuff is, we say it's meaningless, because it's meaningless. And community is how we do that. And so they were just a beautiful example of, like, all right, they don't have anything, how did

• 34:37Speaker 01

  they create community? Well, they did it by stopping and looking to something bigger than themselves. Stopping and looking. And that moment of stopping and looking is something that I saw. In all the groups that I visited, they had the ability in all the busyness of this world to be like, wait a minute, stop. What are we really about? What matters here? What is our community? Why are we here? What is bigger than us that we're connected to right now? And they grounded themselves in those moments over and over and over again. And that's what creates growth and that's what creates connection. That's what creates community.

• 35:13Ryan Hawk?

  So that's an extreme story. What about for the person who has a pretty good life? And they're a mid-level VP-ish leader at a Fortune 100 company trying to hit an aggressive goal, hire well, fire when needed, you know?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:31Ryan Hawk?

  Different than being stuck way down there with thirty, thirty-two years.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 35:35Ryan Hawk?

  Well, yeah. What would you take from that experience and all of these stories?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:41Ryan Hawk?

  Flourishing groups and people?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:43Ryan Hawk?

  That could help the person who doesn't have it terrible. In fact, they have it pretty good.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:47Ryan Hawk?

  Maybe not excellent or great, but they're doing fine. What could they learn from those guys, the Chilean miners, to implement into either their place of work or their life at home?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:58Ryan Hawk?

  To flourish, to do really, really well from a team perspective, from a family perspective, and as individuals?

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think the thing, there's a lot of lessons to learn and one of them is getting smart. Smarts will only get you so far.

• 36:10Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  It's kind of one, one big one. To really have this sense of fulfillment. We only flourish. I think there's a myth in our culture right now that individuals can flourish. Like you think of, oh, that person, you see them as a, as a single person, as a, as an individual, and you hear about their success and the appearance, by all appearances, like that individual's flourishing. But underneath them invisibly, they're part of a larger community. Flourishing is only part, we only become our best through other people. So we have this pronoun problem, basically. I, me, when actually it's we and us, right? Self-improvement, we talk about self-improvement. Actually, that's not as powerful as shared improvement.

• 36:54Ryan Hawk?

  Hmm.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Right? So this idea that we're actually pre-wired to flourish through community.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Pre-wired. And one way to access that, I think, is to think about times in your life, moments in your life, when you have felt the most alive, the most connected, the most growing, that have challenged you and that have made you who you are. I'm going to say those moments didn't happen when you were by yourself in a sauna, when you were training alone. Those were relationships. Those were moments when you're in community. Those are moments when community was lighting you up in some new way and challenging you to grow and creating conditions where you could grow. So the challenge to somebody in a Fortune 100 is a mid-level is who's your community?

• 37:38Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  How are you nurturing it? Life looks like a game every day. Guess what? Sorry, it's not a game. It's a garden. And long-term, growing the garden of your career is going to benefit you, it's in your self-interest, way more than playing the game of your career. Growing the garden of your career. So the question to ask every day is like, who's in my garden? Who can I learn from? What relationship do I need to feed and nurture? And who can I feed? Who can I help? We had Craig Council in to interview for the Guardian's manager position a few years ago. And somebody asked him what he did when he was feeling down. Like, hard job, lonely job, like a lot of jobs. Talk about, sort of, the loneliness

• 38:21Speaker 01

  of the manager. His answer was, I go find somebody I can help. Go find a rookie I can help. Go find a clubhouse person I can help. That's my cure. It's like, that really stayed with me. Because it's his problem, right? You'd think he'd want to sort of self-gratify and, oh, I need to fix myself. It's like, no. It's, community comes down to, like, serve thy neighbor. It comes down to helping other people. And that instinct, which is kind of the opposite of what we really want to do, in some ways, right? It's hard to do that. It's freaking hard to get out of your own head. But that instinct to flip it and say, wait, who can I go help, is a really powerful question. Talk about powerful questions.

• 39:00Ryan Hawk?

  It's like when Jeff asked you to go rock climbing.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:04Ryan Hawk?

  It's kind of a yellow door, isn't it? Because initially, if From what I read at least, you're thinking, I don't, I don't think I want to do that.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 39:12Ryan Hawk?

  But, but now, since you said yes to that invitation, how has it changed your life?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's given me this whole new, whole new community, really.

• 39:21Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Really, you know, and just, uh, yeah, I didn't want to go indoor rock climbing. That is a stupid sport. Like, let's be frank. It is a, you put on these stupid shoes and you go some indoor thing with painful grips and chalk and all these bags and the stupid harness that I put on backwards when I first put it on. And it's just, you feel like an idiot. But my friend who would, you know, he was looking to, to create some new friends and friendships. He recently been through some changes in his personal life and I wanted to show up for him, right? And so I ended up getting involved in this and now five, six years later, here we are doing trips and playing music and going skiing. And it's this whole new group, a whole new community of friends. So that yellow door and reaching out, I mean, through that yellow door is really what.

• 40:06Ryan Hawk?

  Has that changed for you? Cause I'm with you. There are days, you probably have introverted tendencies as a writer. I definitely do. Especially if you go on stage, you need to recharge and it's usually by yourself. But

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:16Ryan Hawk?

  That Craig Council, which I'm going to borrow forever now too of, you know what? When I'm feeling down or when something happens, like let's say your daughter gets temporarily hurt on the soccer field. Like it's the worst feeling in the world.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:28Ryan Hawk?

  What makes that better? Having a conversation with you, trying to help somebody else, trying to do something I think is going to make a positive dent in the world.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:35Ryan Hawk?

  Help someone one-on-one. It seems obvious, but it's almost harder now than ever.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:40Ryan Hawk?

  Because we have devices, these incredible computers that we all carry in our pockets. And if we can take it out and look at it forever and always have an unlimited supply of things to look at. But what are you doing when you're doing that? You're completely by yourself.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:55Ryan Hawk?

  In fact, it's worse because you might be watching videos or pictures of people who are together and you're not.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  I know.

• 41:01Ryan Hawk?

  You know what I mean? So how does that play a role into this community and flourishing?

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Oh my God. I mean, I sort of think of these places I've visited as being the cure for this kind of AI dystopia that we are, we're moving toward. I mean, we're clearly moving toward that and there's a lot of structures in our society that really want to. Want to divide our attention and keep us individualized and keep us apart from community or provide a fake artificial friend for us to talk to, which is absolutely hilarious and dark and wrong. But the idea that the cure is we're pre-wired for this stuff. There are these huge meta-studies that show, are you happier when you get a gift or give a gift? Guess what? You're happier when you give one. Like, we all know that already. We're increasingly learning. It feels like there is this sort of humanist revival.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe, maybe I'm gassed up on my own, on my own research, but in visiting these places, these communities that have kind of come back to life, these businesses, like Zingerman's Deli, for example, like that have, that have absolutely thrived by not scaling. Like, we think of scaling as being this, oh, that's good to do. Oh, always good to do. They had an offer. This is this little deli in Ann Arbor that I write about. They were very successful, you know, just the best Reuben you've ever had. And a lot of your listeners may have even been there. It's very, it's very famous. It started in 1982. They've grown and grown and grown. And at one point Walt Disney came up to them. And part of their values is to be in Ann Arbor. That's where they are. That's where they do their business. And Walt Disney came up to them with a $50 million offer to say, we want you in our park.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Like, you guys are a great deli. We want you in our park. And for most businesses, that's a no-brainer. Like, we're gonna do it. And for Zingerman's, it took like 20 minutes. They're like, nope, we're not interested. If you ever come to Ann Arbor, if you ever have a Walt Disney World in Ann Arbor, we will be in it. But short of that, this is where we get our meaning. This is where we get our purpose. This is the ground in which we grow our roots. And they have got this community of businesses there. There's a creamery, there's a travel business, there's a wedding planning business, there's a Korean barbecue. There's all these connected businesses, this family of businesses that is deep in Ann Arbor and has all kinds of deep connections with that community. So.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Not to say every business has to follow that model, but there are models for creating those kinds of relationships that can actually lead to a much deeper sense of thriving than simply the present model we're given where it's like, go, go, go, go, go and be narrow in scale and.

• 43:33Ryan Hawk?

  I like the question too. What do you, James Clear has said this. I had dinner with him recently and he said, what are you optimizing for? He asks that all the time. And Corey and I were talking about this before you got here and I said, I'm optimizing for this.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:46Ryan Hawk?

  For amazing experiences with great, great, high-character people who've put a positive dent in the world and being with them.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:56Ryan Hawk?

  We had this scheduled on Zoom. I remember and I emailed like with the day before or maybe it was the day of you and your team and said, wait a second, Dan might be in Cleveland. I'm just going to go up there and see him or Clark Lee's down in Nashville. I'm going to go see him or Will Goddare is down there too. And to me, this is the community building that is hard to do. You can do it a little bit on Zoom. Like you can still feel some of it, but there's nothing like meeting you down in the lobby, hanging out for a little bit, talking. I think that brings me so much joy.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:25Ryan Hawk?

  Like this flourishing is being with people, being together, connecting, developing friendships and relationships. That's what I'm optimizing for.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  I know.

• 44:33Ryan Hawk?

  And you hope, you know, you got to make money, right? I got a family. We all have to do that. But that's what I feel like, is there anything better than optimizing for those big relationships that can be transformative over the course of your life? To me, that's, that's been the number one thing that I'm shooting for.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  I love it. I love it. It's so good. And optimizing is a, is kind of a good word because it kind of implies too, that you have to leave some space. It's imperfect.

• 44:55Ryan Hawk?

  Right.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Right?

• 44:55Ryan Hawk?

  It's definitely not efficient.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  I'm aiming for it.

• 44:58Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  It's not efficient. Like you had, you had a better way to spend, you had a more efficient way to spend your morning.

• 45:02Ryan Hawk?

  Sure.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Driving up here and I had, I probably do too.

• 45:04Ryan Hawk?

  Sure.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  That's not where the, you know, the value is not evenly distributed here. Like there's, you're aiming and that's the thing that the flourishing groups have. They're kind of, it's about moments. It's not measurable in conventional ways, right? It's measurable in terms of value or in terms of joy or in terms of feeling connected or in terms of relationship. And like, relationship is so mysterious. All these studies show us it's the most important thing to a life, relationships, right? The Harvard study of longevity that we've all read about Harvard study of development. You know, what is it? It's relationships, full stop. Like that's it. That distinguishes health and happiness more than. Nutrition, more than exercise, more than IQ, more than genes, like it's relationships. And yet, there's not a playbook for it.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Like, what is the playbook for relationships? It involves curiosity, it involves risk, it involves looking at people who are good at it and learning from them. It involves community. You could probably make a case that communities are where we learn how to play that sport. And that's why they're so important, and that's why isolation is so detrimental.

• 46:11Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Like, communities teach us how to be in a relationship. And that's the cool part of it. And as dystopian as the world can feel sometimes, that's just part of us. We're pre-wired for community. When it, when some of these places that I visited, they were inspiring because they were kind of able to flip the switch. It wasn't like a lot of work to get people to click on that way. And, you know, when you walked into the Guardian's office and people started asking questions, it clicks on. Like, people have that quality in them. It's not predetermined that we're going to be in this, like, tech dystopia forever. It's like, there really is a possibility for kind of a community revival.

• 46:49Ryan Hawk?

  Well, one of your, the things I love about your style of research is you can learn a ton by using AI tools, by reading books, online. You just go there, though. You go there, you, you, you kind of embed yourself with these groups of people. You've done it for multiple books now. I'd just love to hear your decision-making of, okay, I should go see those people, or I should go there. I should, what, the Navy SEALs, you know?

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:16Ryan Hawk?

  Pixar. Can you just walk me through like the way you think about, okay, I should go study them or study that. I'm going to go there. And I got to imagine there are times when you go study somebody and you, and

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Whoops.

• 47:26Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. It's not a waste of time, right? It's part of the deal, but like, I am curious how you think about that.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Totally. No, I, I used to think I had to go someplace where I already knew the answers, right? I need to, I would go like, oh, it's definitely there. It's definitely, I, I know it. As I got older and as I made mistakes, I end up going to places that are most mysterious. Like, it's the mystery that draws me. For example, for The Talent Code, somebody had told me about a Russian tennis club in Moscow called Spartak that had produced more top 20 women players than the entire United States over a span of time. And I called a filmmaker who'd been there and he just made a sound over the phone. He was just like, dude, like you won't believe this place. And right at that moment, I'm like, I'm going, I'm going. Like, there's no question.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  My curiosity gets the best of me and it's like, I'm looking for places that are credibly unique. They stand out for some reason and often it's a performance difference. Like, what is going on? Zingerman's Deli. I've heard about that a lot, but not every deli grows into a $90 million community of businesses. What is going on there? And then you have your first, your probe, to go back to our earlier idea, like it's complex. So you have a call, you have a couple of interactions. If that is still resonating for you, it's like a guitar string, right? Can you still hear it? Is that mystery still there? And then you go. And for the Spartak thing, it was not an easy thing to fly to Russia and it was not

• 48:51Speaker 01

  an easy thing to sort of get a translator and get there and, you know, it was dead of winter and it was in a very strange place. It was in the middle of this giant park and it was an old, old kind of Quonset hut building and it was a little narrow door and you just kind of keep exploring and you keep going in and there's an old lady in there, moving in slow motion, teaching kids how to hit and she had been teaching there for 50 years and you start asking questions and, you know, and you give enough time to where people will open up a little bit. But what I've found is that when people come up to you and say, hey, I find what you do kind of fascinating, can you tell me about that? Most people are like thrilled to, to share that. Now, there are some where they're not.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  The San Antonio Spurs famously closed culture. They don't like people to write about them because they're a great culture and part of what makes a great culture is they don't brag and they don't sort of spotlight their own greatness. So in approaching them, I ended up having to take sort of a side door and appeal to their curiosity about learning. R.C. Buford, the G M, he's like one of the most curious people I've ever met. I sort of explained what I was doing and that kind of opened a door because he wants to learn about the SEALs. He wants to learn about the Guardians. He wants to learn about the U.S. Olympic hockey team of 1980. Like, so I end up sort of serving as a bridge a little bit so that those conversations can happen.

• 50:18Ryan Hawk?

  It's a back and forth.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  And then. It sort of connects back to what we were talking about at the very beginning, which is like you get up to the top of these super top learning organizations and you find the most curious people you've ever met. R C Buford picked me up in his car at the airport and I, I didn't stay at his house, but I spent vast amounts of like three days with him. And I think I asked him like five questions the whole time and he asked me like 5,000 questions. It was, it was, I was wrung out when I left. I was like, I don't think I have anything else to talk about. And it ended up being a great, a wonderful experience. I got to, you know, watch pop work and meet Chip England and meet all those other people. So it was a great kind of embedding, but it really reinforced to me what's driving those

• 51:03Speaker 01

  places is that they do not think they have it figured out and they are delighted to find where they make mistakes and they are super curious about other people that do it well. And it's, it's fun to be around them.

• 51:16Ryan Hawk?

  Man, that's, that is absolutely a commonality of the elite, the best of the best. I mean, Jay's this way as well with the Guardians and the SEALs, that this just inherent curiosity is so inspiring. Yeah, man. And I think that's it. I know we gotta go soon, but one more question that I'm curious about you personally. So I learned this question called the champagne question from my friend Jason Gainard. I've asked it a million times since then. It's exactly a year from now. Yeah. And you and I are popping bottles. We're celebrating.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:47Ryan Hawk?

  What are we celebrating?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Oh, that's really good. That's really good. Uh, we just arrived at the ski resort with our nine combined girls.

• 51:55Ryan Hawk?

  Let's go.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  What, you've got five? I've got four? We have nine girls.

• 51:59Ryan Hawk?

  Just a whole football team of girls.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Just got there, right? We just got there. Okay. And we're about to spend like, like

• 52:06Ryan Hawk?

  Can you hang on the blues with me though? Like, are you gonna, you're showing the blues? You could ski backwards maybe or just make it harder?

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely. No, that kind of stuff where like the something new, new relationships, but also connected to old. That to me is very super appealing. And I think you've got this community that you've built. And to a certain extent, you know, I think we all do. And then seeing those communities kind of meld and merge and grow is exciting.

• 52:34Ryan Hawk?

  I love it, man. The book Flourish, The Art of Building Meaning, Joy and Fulfillment. How fun was it to write this thing?

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Super fun. And I'm still learning about it, too. Like,

• 52:43Ryan Hawk?

  Is there gonna be a part two?

• 52:45Speaker 01

  We're gonna change. Well, we're gonna, what I'm realizing, we'll try this out, but we're gonna, we're gonna shift the subtitle on the book, actually.

• 52:53Ryan Hawk?

  Right now, this is wrong.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  It's, we're gonna shift it at some point. It may be with the paperback or maybe in a little bit, but we've got to sell the copies we have now with this subtitle. But what we've realized in these conversations is that this is actually about the transformative power of creating community. That's what the book's about. And that gives you fulfillment. That gives you joy. That gives you meaning. But that's what people are craving right now, I think. And that is what I'm craving right now. And that's, that's what the, each story in the book is about, the power of creating community. And that's what's exciting. So, all those things will be true. Both those subtitles will be true. But we're kind of realizing, it's funny. I mean, you, a book is kind of an exploration into the world. And there's the book you write, and then there's, you get to see what people respond

• 53:38Speaker 01

  to, and you get to see where the conversation's gonna go. And so that's been really thrilling to go like, wait a minute, this is about something that I wasn't quite appreciating a year ago. And now I really see that clearly. Yeah.

• 53:49Ryan Hawk?

  I mean, do you even think about the next thing? Or are you just all in on this? Because I know some authors are already working on the next thing before this one comes out. And other ones are, I'm gonna go on in this for years. Like, how does that work for you?

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm kind of in between those two. And on the one hand, like, it is, it is really fun to kind of see this land, see people connect to it, see it resonate, see what caught, what emerges from it. And in a larger way, I've been doing that, you know, the talent code is about what's making that individual so cool. Culture code's about what's making those groups perform so well. And now it's like, what's making these communities so thriving? Like, what is going on in that group? What is that joy coming from? So each one has kind of led to the next. So what's the next one? Beyond the grave? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what it is. But life is really big and deep, so we'll see where it goes. But it has a way of leading to the next thing.

• 54:45Ryan Hawk?

  I appreciate you, man. And thank you for taking so much time off air, listening to me ask you stupid questions about everything and anything and writing and sports and everything. Yeah, it's funny. Your name comes up all the time in a lot of the work we do when it comes to like great teams and culture code type stuff, talent code, all of it. And now I know this will, this will, is going to inject its way into everything we do. So I'm super grateful for you. Thank you, man.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Thank you for what you do.

• 55:10Ryan Hawk?

  Appreciate it.

• 55:14Ryan Hawk?

  It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Dan Coyle. A few takeaways from my notes. Find your yellow doors. Those opportunities you glimpse out of the corner of your eye, the conversations that could go deeper, the friendships that could be closer, the projects that might scare you a little bit. Instead of walking past them or saying, nah, I kind of feel like being by myself. Try to go out and create some community. Say yes. You never know what could happen. And then create presence, conditions, the ski trips, the long drives, the shared meals,

• 55:59Ryan Hawk?

  no phones, schedule them. This is how connection happens, whether it's with your family, your kids, or with your people at work. And I love the story from Craig Council, what he talked about when he said, how do you bounce back when things are going rough? You're having a bad day. And he just said simply, I try to go help somebody, right? So good. So good. And then practice curiosity like a superpower. I experienced this firsthand with Dan, Jay Hennessy, Josh Gibson, their team president, Chris Antonetti at the Guardians. I walk up in their office, kind of intimidated, expecting to pepper them with tons of questions to learn from them. And that was the opposite of what happened. They just kept asking me question after question, wanting to learn.

• 56:44Ryan Hawk?

  And what it taught me is that those leaders who sustain excellence are just so curious and a desire to learn, improve, and get better. And Dan has seen the same things with all of the excellent leaders from teams that he has studied. Ask better questions, listen, actually listen, ask follow-up questions, and strive to learn more. Curiosity is also the ultimate way to show love. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Dan Coyle. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, write a review, rate it hopefully five stars, and definitely subscribe. By doing all of

• 57:28Ryan Hawk?

  that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.