636: William Von Hippel - Why We Need Both Autonomy and Connection to Find Happiness (The Social Paradox)

Go to www. LearningLeader.com https://www. LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global http://www.insightglobal.com/learningleader. If you need to hire 1 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 have the hustle and grit to deliver. Go to www. InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader https://www. InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader William von Hippel grew up in Alaska, got his B. A. at Yale and his PhD at the University of Michigan, and taught for a dozen years at Ohio State University before finding his way to Australia, where he is a professor of psychology at the University of Queensland. He's the author of multiple books. A few months ago, he published The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. Notes Why do people who have comfortable lives filled with freedom and abundance still feel unhappy? Need two things… Connection and autonomy. Are leaders born or made? Yes. Like most things, it's not a black and white answer. The key is to use your unique strengths to effectively inspire others to do the work that must be done to achieve the goals of the team or company. How happy is Bill? He scores high on the genetics polygene(?) score. Some people are more genetically wired to be happy than others. You can fight against your genes and win. It's just harder for you than others with better genetics. What's my path of genetic least resistance? If you have low willpower, get the potato chips out of the house. Know yourself. Be yourself plus 20%. Overconfidence can be a good thing. Especially earlier in your career. Fake it til you make it. It can be good a lot of the time. He was overconfident as a new assistant professor, and it helped him. How you receive feedback is critical. Be honest, be kind His dad moved the family to Alaska because he didn't love being told what to do. He was a heart surgeon. Bill moved to Australia. A hard place to make friends because they don't move around much. He made connections with others who had moved there from out of the country. Life/Career advice: Too many choices can be bad. What are the elements of a job that I enjoy? What are my strengths? Leaders - It's lonely at the top. You need a group you can trust and enjoy their company. Google study - They do everything in teams. What's needed? Psychological safety. You need to be able to disagree with each other. Give feedback. It's on the leader to create healthy disagreement. And receive feedback in a way that encourages more of it. I was surprised by how much of our happiness, health, and strength were based purely on our genetics. Some people are just born happier, healthier, and stronger than you. It doesn't mean you can't be happy, healthy, or strong. It just means that you need to work harder to make it happen. That's life!

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

• 0:00Ryan Hawk?

  This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. I love the leadership team and the people at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. 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 have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com/learningleader today to learn more. That's insightglobal.com/learningleader.

• 0:46Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Go to learningleader.com for all show notes. Now, on to tonight's featured leader, William Von Hippel. Grew up in Alaska, got his undergraduate degree at Yale, and his PhD at the University of Michigan, and taught for a dozen years at Ohio State University before finding his way to Australia, where he is a professor of psychology at the University of Queensland. He's also the author of multiple books, including The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection,

• 1:29Ryan Hawk?

  and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. During our conversation, we discuss why people who have comfortable lives, full of abundance and freedom, are still unhappy, and what we can do to change that. Then Bill shares his thoughts on the, quote, "fake it till you make it" mentality, and how it could actually be good for you. This part surprised me. Then near the end, we focus on how to create a culture that is psychologically safe for your team to give critical feedback to everyone. It's really tough, but super important. We cover that and so much more.

• 2:12Ryan Hawk?

  Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Bill Von Hippel.

• 2:21Ryan Hawk?

  So I'm curious about your friend Steve and people like him. Why is it that someone like your buddy Steve, who has a comfortable life filled with freedom, choice and abundance, still feel so unhappy and unfulfilled?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the $54 question. And that's actually the question that motivated me to write this book was, and the truth of the matter is, I have to admit, this sounds bad, but I have to admit, it made me feel a little superior to my friend, right? Because here he is, he's this guy who's earned a zillion dollars. He's showing me around his remarkable home, and then in the same breath, he's admitting he's not happier. And I remember thinking, well, if I had this kind of fortune and I were in this situation, I would be thrilled. So I have the capacity to appreciate something that you don't. And so I was feeling a little superior at the time. But I, and this is a common problem that we see where people are very well-to-do or not necessarily happier. And then what really kind of was eye-opening to me is I'm reading Frank Marlowe's book on the Hadza.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  It's this really wonderful ethnography on, on people who are direct return hunter-gatherers. They, they only, they have almost nothing. They eat today what they catch today, kind of thing. And I'm reading the story about them and they, they're a pre-medical society. They have no healthcare to speak of. They have no worldly goods. There's no worldly comforts either. They live in these very minimal shelters and they bury like almost half their children before they grow up. I mean, everything is hard about their lives. And I'm realizing, holy crap, I'm a multimillionaire compared to them. And I'm, not only am I no happier than them, but on average, those guys seem like they're happier than we are. And so I realized it was, I, I'm not superior to my buddy Steve. I, I'm no better at appreciating the good things in life than he is.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  And it's this, it's a worldwide problem. It's not just a problem of the, of rich, really coddled people in our society. It's our society as a whole. There's something wrong here that's causing us not to be happy despite the enormous comforts and wealth that we have.

• 4:21Ryan Hawk?

  What are the two things that we need?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  So, from my perspective, the two most important motives that we have as humans are the need to connect, which is evolved from when we first left the rainforest six million years ago and separated from our chimp ancestors. As we moved down into the ground, we became suddenly we're prey for lots of animals that weren't a threat to us before. Because we were up in the trees and we were just uncatchable up there. And so lots of animals could now catch us in the ground because chimps and chimp-like animals are very slow on the ground. And so we resolve that threat by connecting with each other and cooperating. And so that's our most fundamental motive and we have it much stronger than chimpanzees do. And in fact, my favorite evidence for the importance of connection and cooperation in human is the whites of our eyes.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  You know chimpanzees are very, they're cognitively very clever. They can discern what you're looking at by looking at your face and then they can look over there themselves, which lots of other animals can't do that. They're not smart enough, but chimps disguise what they're looking at by having brown eyes. Their entire eye is brown, so it's harder for another chimp to figure out where they're looking. Now, the whites of my eyes advertise the direction of my gaze. The second I look over there, you say, oh, Bill's looking lower left. And so what that tells me is that my ancestors benefited by advertising what was going on in their minds because other ancestors would have helped them. They would, if that was a threat, they would help them deal with the threat. If it was an opportunity, they would help them grab that opportunity. And chimps are the opposite. The other ancestors were a competition.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  If they were looking over there, they would compete to get it first or they would run away faster or whatever. And so cooperation is just baked into our physiology. It's baked into our psychology. That's our most important need. Now, that's not the only need we have though, of course. And what I would argue is the second most important need is the need for autonomy. The need to be self-governing, to direct ourselves. And the reason that matters so much for humans is that we have so many routes to success. You know, if we're like a dung beetle, all we do in life is roll a big ball of poo. And if the bigger the ball of poo, the more successful we are. There's one goal. You don't need a sense of autonomy to say, today I'm going to roll a ball of poo, right? That's just your job. But if you're a human, like let's say that you and I are in the same group and I'm thinking, oh, I've got to do something to differentiate myself from Ryan

• 6:35Speaker 01

  so that a mate will choose me or the guys will want me to hunt with them instead of him. But Ryan's a better hunter. I keep practicing, but he just does better than I do. Maybe I could be a better arrow maker. And so my sense of self governance allows me to choose a path where I think I have the best prospects for, you know, standing out in a positive way in my group. So on the one hand, I have a need to connect. On the other hand, I have a need to differentiate myself, to self govern, to go my own way. So that I can, in the end, come back to connection and be of value. But that's my route to get there, to find my own pathway. Those, I believe, are our two most important needs.

• 7:10Ryan Hawk?

  So when it comes to the first one, how does the Harvard study, right? The Grant and Gluck, the Harvard longitudinal study over, I guess, maybe 90 or 100 years studying lots and lots of people. Right. And it feels to me like the simplification of that study was that what leads to a happy life was love, relationships, connection, which is part of your answer. How does that that study play into the work that you do as well?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. So the thing is that we've got this unfortunate battle between these two forces. Because to the degree that I connect, I have to set aside what I personally want. And so I want to practice my arrow making today. But you say to me, hey, Bill, come on, we'll go for a hunter, we'll go for, we'll go out to the lake and see what's going on, whatever. And I have to now compromise. I've got a relationship with you, and so that requires me to put my needs sometimes, at least in the backseat. And then the other way around, when I, if I want to express my autonomy, unless it happens to be exactly what you want to do, then then I have my relationships are going to suffer. And so these two things are in tension with each other. And the problem is that when we pursue self improvement, when we try to follow our own pathway,

• 8:22Speaker 01

  we disconnect a little bit. And if we remember that the whole reason we evolved this need for autonomy is to be of greater value to our group, then we could step back and say, all right, I do want to work hard, I do want to self improve, I do want to do those things. But they're in service of my relationship goals. They shouldn't replace them. And for many of us, they do the opposite, they replace them. And the Harvard study is a great example because what you've got is a bunch of really high achieving folks who can go out and do anything, can, you know. Their autonomy is well served. They they become successes in life. But in the end of the day, does that is that what makes them happy? No, it it turns out that that being a success doesn't make you happy in and of itself. Being a success only makes you happy if it facilitates your connections.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  If it allows you to then go back and be a better parent, a better brother, a better friend. You know, the kinds of things because now you're successful in life and you have resources and you're comfortable, etc. And so the Harvard study is really a nice example of material success for its own sake gets you almost nowhere. It's only valuable to the degree that it then serves our need to connect with each other.

• 9:29Ryan Hawk?

  I I can't help myself. You're a guy who studies this stuff for a living. How about you? How how happy are you?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Well, I have the good fortune that I have. I have a very strong, what I would call a positivity offset. You know, a lot of happiness is just genetic. And so if you get if you get lucky and in that genetic lottery, you've got what there's poly, what we call a polygenic score. And so we used to think that that one or two genes had a big impact. And now we know that thousands, even millions of genes have a small impact. And so what what we do is we build these things called polygenic scores where we add in all the genes that matter and we just weight them by how much they matter. Because each one only plays a tiny role. The in in Robert Plomin's terms, we thought we had gold nuggets, but we have gold dust. So lots of little dust determines your outcome, right? And and I have the good luck that a lot of my dust landed on the happy side of the equation. And so, you know, when

• 10:22Speaker 01

  when when things are humming along as they always do, I just generally am happy in my day to day existence. Probably more so than than my my friends might even find mildly annoying.

• 10:32Ryan Hawk?

  So you're saying like the this nature versus nurture thing when it comes to happiness is I is it's just kind of wild to think about, man. In some ways, it's It's upsetting. In other ways, it's like, okay, you know, because like my whole thing is I'm a learning leader. Right. It's the name of the show. No matter where I'm at, no matter what situation I'm in, I want to believe this is really growth focused, growth mindset stuff. Right. I really want to believe I can fix it. I can work on it. I could develop the skills to be happier. But I'm thinking about this. Can you go a little bit deeper on this?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:08Ryan Hawk?

  Like you're born with it in this, this, this polygene score. Is that the right?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Polygenic, yeah.

• 11:15Ryan Hawk?

  Polygenic score. Okay.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  So this, you, you ask a great question. So let, so let me back up a tiny bit. When we do the behavioral genetics, we can do it both molecular genetics where we actually look for the genes. And we're getting really, really good at that. They're called GWAS, genetic wide association studies where you look at every gene in your entire body. We're getting really good at that, but what we're better at is just saying, okay, you're an identical twin versus a fraternal twin. Therefore, we know that you're 100% related versus 50% related. And then we can track how much your traits go in common. And so that literature is more developed because those genes are complicated. There's so many of them. And they also interact with each other in ways we don't understand. So let's set aside the molecular genetics, but we can come back to that. All right. So if we look at these twin studies, what they teach us is that across the spectrum,

• 12:01Speaker 01

  from happiness to health, to longevity, to intelligence, to friendliness, anything you agreeableness, anything you want. On average, 50 years of research has shown us that about half of your trait is determined by your genes, about half.

• 12:18Ryan Hawk?

  Wow.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  I know. And so, so, but you raise an excellent point. So wait a minute. I, I, I'm a believer that I, I've got a growth mindset that I can do something about it. Well, half is still a lot left. Right. If you look at some guys go to the gym, they lift one weight and they're suddenly jacked and they're like, what happened to you? And other guys go to the gym every day and it hardly has any effect. And so you can still get stronger by going to the gym every day, but if you have the good luck that your genes are power genes, you're going to build really big muscles really easily. So, so let's look at this in, in, in, in terms that really matter. If you look at the genetics of obesity, about this is, it's unfortunate, but it's true in today's world, and it'll vary by the food's weed. But in today's world, about 70% of your, of your weight is determined by your genes.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  You, you, you have control over less than half of it. If, if by control, you mean your behaviors now.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Genes always interact with the environment. And so we know full well, like when I was a little kid back in the seventies, almost nobody was obese. And now obesity is a huge problem. And so what that really is telling us, it's not that you have a gene to be obese, but that you have a gene that makes you very, or genes that make you very sensitive to modern foods or lifestyles or something like that, that make it highly likely for you to become obese. So that will change over time. But for now, what we know in today's world, obesity is highly genetically determined. Yet, if we do a polygenic score on you, so we look at your molecular genetics, and we say, if you have genes to be thin, to be middleweight, or to be overweight, we can see that they're hugely powerful. If you're most likely to be what your genes are,

• 13:55Speaker 01

  but what you're second most likely to be is in the direction you want to be away from your genes. So if you have obese genes, or let's put you in the overweight category, if you have genes to be overweight, you're more likely to be thin than you are to be obese. Because of course, people want to be thin. They want to work hard at it. And so you're right, that growth mindset matters a ton. It's just that for some people, if you, if God endows you out of good luck with, with thin genes, it's effortless. You eat a bunch of potato chips, you go for a light walk and Bob's your uncle, you're nice and thin. But if you've got the bad luck of obese genes, it's hard yards to get there. But people do. And they're more likely to get there than they are to stay where they don't want to be.

• 14:34Ryan Hawk?

  Man, I learned this firsthand when I went to college. I played football in college, Bill, and a couple of my teammates, you know, I, I've been lifting weights heavy. My dad had us in the basement since probably seventh-ish grade. And I think we have pretty good genes, but nothing like some of the guys I played with in college. And then, and I remember the very first day at Miami University, my freshman year, they have this test, like to get a baseline squat, bench, you know, cleans, all this stuff. They want you to max out that first day just to kind of see where you're at. So hopefully then the strength coach can show you go through my program and you get way stronger, which is, is usually what happens. Some of my teammates had never even been in a weight room before, had never lifted a weight. They were really good players. They were, they had insane muscles, like their bodies

• 15:19Ryan Hawk?

  were jacked, never lifted weights. And I remember one of them, a defensive back, who ended up going on to play in the NFL later when we got done with college. He squatted like 500 pounds on the first day when he had never lifted his weight. And I remember I'm like struggling to get 375 or something, you know, I've been lifting my whole life essentially. And I was like, geez, man, like they're just, you're just built different. Like you were just came out like built different. He's a great player, good attitude, everything, you know, hard worker, but like just didn't lift weights, yet was massively strong. And we, he, he actually weighed less than I did, but massively stronger just from genetics. And it was, it was so frustrating, honestly, to watch.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. It, it is frustrating, but it's also empowering, right? Because you're like, wow, that's a great role model. I may never be able to get there, but like, it's nice that somebody can, right? I, I remember I was traveling with my son in Ghana and West Africans tend on average to have higher quick jerk musculature. You know, there's just big ethnic differences. And across Africa, you've got some ethnic groups that are thin and tall and some that are heavy and strong. And West Africans tend to have heavy musculature. So we, there we are in Ghana. These guys are not lifting weights because they're, they don't have much money. They're just carving wood and eating, you know, relatively poorly compared to an American athlete. And every one of those guys is completely jacked. And my son's like, Dad, look at these guys. How are they so strong? I said, well, they've

• 16:45Speaker 01

  gotten, they got good luck, right? They've got genes for power.

• 16:49Ryan Hawk?

  What do we do about this though? Not just with being jacked, but just in general, because this is a growth focused group we got here, Bill. These are people who firmly believe I can do the work to be happier. I can do the work to be a better leader. I can do a work to make a positive impact in the world. What do you say to that person when some of this genetic stuff can bum people out? Well, maybe I just got the wrong end of the stick. Maybe I just, I, I'm not, I'm not set up to be happy. What's your advice to them?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's a great question, and my answer is this. First of all, remember that more people who have overweight genes are thin than are obese. And so you can fight against your genes and you can win. It's just you have to understand it's a daily fight. And so that'll that guy with overweight genes works a lot harder than the guy who has thin genes to be at the exact same place that they both are. That's answer one. But answer two is sometimes what you ought to be thinking about is all right. What's my path of genetic least resistance? Where where do my strengths lie and where do my weaknesses lie? And how can I work around my weaknesses? So we know, for example, that if you look at self-control, people of high self-control have way better outcomes across their entire lives than people who are low in self-control.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  In fact, the effects of self-control are stronger than the effects of IQ. It matters more that you can control yourself than that you're super duper smart. But when we look at the daily lives of people with high self-control and ask how they do it, it turns out it's super interesting. They don't stare down the bag of potato chips and say, I'm not eating you. I'm not eating you, and they resist temptation. They don't do that at all. Rather, they avoid temptation. So there are no potato chips in their house. They walk, they don't even walk down that aisle in the grocery store. They do the things that they need to do in order to design their lives in ways that they can be a success. And what that means is that you have to know your own strengths and weaknesses. You come back to the Socratic know thyself thing. And so if you know yourself and you know, okay, here's the five things that I do really poorly.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Here's the areas where I struggle. How can I design my life so that I can make those as minimal of a handicap as possible? Because we all can. And one way to do that is, well, don't pursue, you know, I have a growth mindset. I'm going to be great, but don't, don't push so hard against something that's just not in your wheelhouse. In my own case, I'm the worst basketball player who ever lived. Well, I'm a towering five foot six. It's no surprise, right? And so why should I waste my time on the basketball court unless I just really enjoy to play? You know, put my effort somewhere else. And so you can, yes, you can be great at anything you want to be great at, but some things you're going to be greater at than others. And sometimes you can take a different route to greatness because you're instead of trying to push through

• 19:31Speaker 01

  where your genes are against you, push a route where your genes actually help you out.

• 19:35Ryan Hawk?

  How about for leadership? The question that's brought up a lot to me. Are leaders born or are they made? And of course, the answer is probably a bit of both. But I'm always like, well, we can make them though. We can make them listen to this, like we'll work with you. We'll do, we could, like, I really lean heavy to we can make you. We can work on it. We can get better. It's not necessarily a born thing. Where do you stand? Are leaders born or made?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  I agree with you that they're both, but I would answer it ever so slightly differently to say, there's many ways to be a great leader. And so if I'm funny and charismatic, leverage that strength. Use my humor as, and my charisma as part of my leadership to draw people to my cause. If I'm organized and methodical, use that strength. Always have my, every morning at the start of the day, everybody on the team knows exactly what needs to be done. Their jobs are easy. Everything's set up for them. Use your own personal strengths and leverage those into being that kind of a leader. If you're quiet, introverted and methodical, you're never, probably never going to be the charismatic, funny leader. That's just not in you. But that doesn't mean you can't be just as great of a leader because there's many ways to slice that pie. It comes back to the fact again, that we're not dung beetles.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  You can achieve your goals in so many different ways. There's so many ways to be a successful, empowering, important leader. Just like there's so many ways to be a successful, empowering, important person. That just choose, leverage your strengths and try to do things that minimize the impact of your weaknesses.

• 21:00Ryan Hawk?

  What have you done to understand your strengths, to know yourself better? What type of reflective work? What questions? What prompts? How have you gotten good at understanding where you're at? What you should be doing and how to lean into your strengths?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  That's, that's hard. And a big part of the reason it's hard is that we evolved to self deceive. You know, we, I believe that I'm billed plus 20%. And why do I believe that? Because the regular bill wouldn't get all the things in life that, that the person I am wants to have. And so if I believe that I'm 20% more than I really am, I can probably get away with it. And so the, when I come into a confrontation with you, if we're evenly matched, but I'm billed plus 20 and I look like I believe it. You say to yourself, I better back off. This guy seems pretty confident and he knows himself better than I do. And so what it comes down to is whenever cons specifics, members of the same species, come into conflict with each other, they don't actually want to fight. What they want to do is know who would win.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  And so if you and I come into the same bar stool, we just want to know who's going to win this fight over this bar stool. And then I don't want to get punched, nor do I want to punch you because both of them hurt. Both of them are cellular costs. Let's know the answer and avoid the conflict and one of us will defer. And we see that across the animal kingdom. But of course, what that means is now that there's space to claim to be more than you are, so that I get you to back off when you really are the stronger person. And it should be your bar stool because I've convinced you that I'm not to be trifled with. And what it comes down to is that we all end up being about self plus 20. And the test that you can do to see if this describes you is just ask yourself this question. When my friends take a candid photo of me where I'm not posing, I didn't know the photo was being taken, what are the chances that I like that photo?

• 22:45Ryan Hawk?

  Zero.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  And in my case, yeah, exactly. It's like 5% at best. And I'm like, what are my friends that just have been taking these terrible pictures of me? Well, no, they're not. That's what I actually look like. But in my mind's eye, I'm a better looking guy than that because when I walk by the mirror, I only get that perfect angle or perfect lighting. And that's the picture that I post and I look at the most. And so I'm self deceiving to think I'm better looking, stronger, smarter, nicer, whatever. So why is that a problem? Well, part of the reason that's a problem is that it gets me things in life, so I do it. But now it makes it really hard for me to look objectively at myself and say, well, what do I suck at? And the truth is that we all suck at everything. Well, lots of things. We don't all suck at everything. That's not true at all.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  And so for me, the eye opening moment was when I started graduate school and I'm in this seminar with all my fellow PhD students, brand new, I know nothing. And I asked this professor a question and he answers it. And then other people are asking him other questions. And suddenly I'm realizing, if we look at all the answers to all the questions, what he said earlier to my answer must be wrong because the way he's answered these other questions. So I said, wait a minute. It seems based on what you just said, that what you earlier said was wrong. And he goes, oh, you're absolutely right. I was wrong before when I said that. It's not that. And he just did this right in front of the class on day one. And so I sought him out to be my supervisor. It's like a guy who can just admit he's wrong in front of a class full of students who know nothing. That's a scientist who I want to learn from because he's humble, right?

• 24:11Speaker 01

  He wants to know the truth. He's not trying to put his ego first. And it's hard. And I just tried to do that every day. When somebody asks me a question, my first... Instinct is to defend my theory. And then I I try to push my second, all right, wait a minute. I I know I'm I'm trying to defend the theory, and that's good, because you should rigorously try to defend your ideas. But I also need to stop and see, is there value in their criticism? Because usually there is, right? And so it's a it's this battle you fight with yourself every day. But I've gotten really good at at just trying to model his behavior and say, well, when I'm wrong, just admit it as quickly as possible. Fix it and move on.

• 24:49Ryan Hawk?

  How comfortable are you responding to a question by saying, I don't know?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Well, I used to not be good at that at all, because I felt like that was a sign of weakness. And so I give this, I I gave this talk, I was in Amsterdam, actually, on this giving a series of academic talks. And this professor comes up to me afterwards, this big deal guy, and he goes, I really loved your answer to to this question. And I couldn't remember anymore. I said, I'm sorry, I I I don't remember how I answered that question, because you said you didn't know. I said, oh, I was kind of embarrassed, but I don't know. He goes, no, no, people never say that. It's really nice when you can just say you don't know. And and I was pretty early in my career, and I was like, oh, that never occurred to me that that was a plus. I felt like I'd been boxed into a corner, and I had no choice but to say I didn't know. When when here's this eminent person telling me that was the best answer you gave all day.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  And so, again, you it's surprising how people respond to admissions of humility and lack of knowledge and error. But by and large, they respond much more positively than you than you think they will. And by and large, those are actually admission, those are strong things to do to admit you're wrong rather than weak things. And the farther I go in my career, the more happy I am to say I'm wrong, and I don't know, because I am wrong, and I don't know.

• 26:06Ryan Hawk?

  Well, you know what people really respond to? Authenticity.

• 26:12Ryan Hawk?

  Real, whether it's a coach in sports, a teacher, a podcast, I just sense this kind of fake, inauthentic, tough guy leader mantra that some people have that I've worked for. I'm thinking of one right now. I'm sure everybody can. Doesn't work, right? You have a coach who's trying to be like the other coach, maybe that mentored them instead of being like figuring themselves out and then, you know, taking bits and pieces from other coaches and then mashing it together with their personalities to still be authentically them. Yes, that's the good thing to do. But, but I would love to hear what you think about this idea because I sense it from you. I've sensed it from the second we connected on Zoom and you got here early and just the way you've talked about why you moved to Australia, like everything.

• 26:57Ryan Hawk?

  Like I just sensed this like, oh, this guy's just real. He's authentic. He's just kind of saying what he thinks and what he believes. He's not trying to put on a show. What is it about authenticity that is just so attractive?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Well, remember what I said earlier, that we all are trying to be ourself plus 20%, right? And that's a deceptive strategy to get more things in life than you would get otherwise. It's kind of the equivalent of lying. It's, it's overconfidence and, and, and we all do this and I'm just as guilty as the next guy of doing this. But I'm also, I'm 61 years old, right? So I've been down this road a long time and, and over that, one of the nice things that age gives you is you become more comfortable with who you are and what you are and are not going to achieve, right? You're not going to get some of those things that you wanted and you will get others and you learn to be satisfied with that. And so, yes, what we really resonate to is people who we think are telling us the truth. And it's, it's hard to tell the truth, particularly when you're in the early stages of the game.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  But I think you hit the nail on the head and that is when you go through life, you're going to have mentors and teachers who have lots of great strategies and some of those are going to fit you well. And you should incorporate them, just literally steal them because nobody is going to take your class and their class. Nobody's going to be your employee and theirs. It just doesn't happen, right? And so borrow, you know, that's the, the most sincere form of flattery. Borrow the things from your mentors that actually resonate with you, that you think you could do and make sense to you. But don't try to pretend to be something you're not, you know, we thought, I've had so many awesome professors who are just things that I'm not. And I go, well, I wish I could do that, but I can't. And so you let it go, right?

• 28:35Ryan Hawk?

  Well, I read that you did a study, I believe in 2017 on overconfidence. What did you learn from that study on overconfidence?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Well, so overconfidence is a strategy that we use and we do it when we do it under a variety of circumstances. We do it when we think that it's going to benefit us. And so if I'm communicating with you in a way where my confidence will come across, then I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna puff myself up in a way that gets you to see me as something more than I really am. But the, but we're strategic about it. If I'm in a context with you where that's not gonna work, I don't do it. And what's really remarkable about it is that we believe our own story. You know, sometimes we know we're bluffing. I'm playing poker. I got a terrible hand. You can't see it. I'm just gonna go for it. But most of the times in life, we actually, we believe the stories we tell ourselves.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  And so that's why we do a lot of things that might otherwise seem kind of illogical. So for example, we often avoid seeking additional information if we're worried it might be bad news. Like so, the, the simple version is I go, I've been trying to decide forever which product to buy and I make a purchase. And then somebody says to me, oh, you should check out their prices over across town. And I don't even wanna know. Like I've made my purchase, I, it's too late, right? But we do this in lots of ways where we don't. If I encounter the bad news, then I would have to admit to you, oh, I made a bad decision. And maybe I'm not as good of a leader as you thought, or as decision maker, whatever. And so we try to organize our lives where we minimize the degree to which we get that bad news. And that allows us to believe our own stories.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  And that's important because it, it does determine who's successful in life. Because Bill is who he is. He can try to improve himself, but it's a whole lot easier just to bold bluff and, and bluster his way through than it is to actually self-improve. Self-improves hard work. Bluster is easy. And so if I can get myself to believe my bluster, I'll, I'll go a long way. And, and you can think of politicians who are full of bluster and it, it works, right? And, and leaders as well.

• 30:37Ryan Hawk?

  Does it work?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  It doesn't, well, it works for the short term.

• 30:41Ryan Hawk?

  Okay, yes.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Somebody eventually pops that bubble and unfortunately the whole thing can collapse. But again, because it's easier to do the bluster than it is to do the hard yards of getting it right. It's a strategy that people are always going to pursue. And so the for for me, the thing is that, you know, we we can't help ourselves. That's just in our nature to be overconfident and and it works. It attracts members of the opposite sex, it attracts coalition partners. It does the things that are evolutionary important.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  But if you lean on too hard, you can someday find yourself like I would have been far better off spending these ensuing years self improving. And actually now having the skills that allow me to do what I want to do rather than pretending for so many years.

• 31:22Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I think real confidence needs evidence. So you just got to go do the thing and create some evidence for yourself. I am fascinated. How how did you meet your wife? What was that story like?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Oh, so the

• 31:34Ryan Hawk?

  I'm thinking of being overconfident in these situations. Maybe I'm projecting a bit here, Bill, but I'm I'm just I I'm curious about the story.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  In that particular case, it wasn't an overconfidence case. I was just a I was a young academic at Ohio State and she was a student in my lab. And so she approached me and asked me if, you know, sort of asked me out, but in a way that has enough ambiguity so that, you know, you it wouldn't be awkward if I said no. And I didn't know if as a

• 32:00Ryan Hawk?

  She was overconfident.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  And she she was. This is this is thirty some years ago. And so I actually went to the there's an ombuds person and I said, am I allowed to date a student? And they said, yes, Owen's not your student. But they said, you know, if it goes pear shaped, it's on you. No matter what happened, the university will blame you. So just keep that in mind if you're going to go down that road. And but so was that's a slightly different kind of case. But but I can tell you that, you know, I if if I look at myself, here's a for example, I remember when I was trying to grow a beard the first time. And it looked a little bit like moss on the south side of a north facing tree. I mean, it was this patchy ridiculous thing. And I but I was keen to see what it would look like if I could literally grow it out. And so I, you know, I'd be I was like sixteen or something, right?

• 32:47Speaker 01

  And so I'd go, I'd be at the shops and I'd be kind of flirting with the person behind the counter, maybe. And it'd all be going fine. And then I'd suddenly remember that I had this absurd looking growth on my face. I would just clam up and get nervous and it would all go, you know, it would go arrive. And so you need to believe in yourself, even if you shouldn't, because I I shouldn't have at that point. I looked ridiculous, but by believing in myself, it it it went smoothly anyway.

• 33:12Ryan Hawk?

  Yes, I know that feeling as a quarterback, especially a younger quarterback and the power of coaches pouring and adding confidence on you that maybe you shouldn't even have, but the coach needs you to have it because you're his guy. You're our quarterback and they pump you up so much to the fact where you start believing it and then hopefully, you know, you make a play or two and then you've created some evidence for yourself and then you're kind of riding high. The problem is if you keep that kind of ego for the rest of your life outside of, because I think you need a little ego as a quarterback. When you get on the field, you've got to feel like the baddest dude on that field. It's part of the deal. You've seen Baker Mayfield and Tom Brady and these guys, they're the baddest dudes on that field and they kind of need that edge. The problem is if you let that carry off of the field, you can run into some problems. You can make

• 33:57Ryan Hawk?

  poor decisions. You could treat people maybe not as equals and I think that could be an issue. I have a question, Bill, about a phrase that is said often that I'm not sure how I feel about it and that is fake it till you make it. What do you think of fake it till you make it?

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, I think that's actually good advice under most circumstances. There's going to be demands. Yeah, there's going to be demands that are too important and you shouldn't, the costs of, you have to ask yourself, what are the costs of success versus failure, the relative costs? And, and sometimes failure has such a high price and, and success is such a low benefit that you don't want to risk the failure to gain a little bit of success. But in the front end of any job, when you first start out, people need to believe in you. And so I remember when I was a brand new assistant professor at Ohio State, I'm like, you know, what, 27 years old. I know very little compared to all my colleagues. And I remember getting in an argument with this lovely guy, who was a senior colleague of mine. And in retrospect, there's no question in my mind, he was right

• 34:58Speaker 01

  and I was wrong. But I didn't know at the time and I just looked completely confident. And I remember when we walked out, it was a fun argument. It wasn't a mean one or anything. But we walked out of that meeting and essentially half the students had decided with me and half decided with them because they couldn't tell. And so, and I just looked like I was perfectly confident and going back and forth with him. And so it allowed me not to be humiliated in a circumstance where I probably would deserve a little humiliation. But at the front end of your career, it's like you going out in the field as a quarterback. A little humiliation doesn't actually help when you're already nervous and have an imposter syndrome and worried that maybe this isn't for you. You need that little bit of boost, even if there's some untruth to it. So long as you're not doing neurosurgery where the costs of getting it wrong are are super duper high.

• 35:41Ryan Hawk?

  Hmm. Super interesting. Many leaders are like, for let's say for those who are at the top end or the higher part of their companies. So the CEO, they're the owner, SVP, right? Lots of people. Those jobs are lonely. I work with those leaders. They're all, they often can be lonely. They don't necessarily have people they can go to that are their peers or equals. They may have one or two. In some cases, they have none, no. And so they can struggle with this isolation. They have probably have some autonomy, but they need more meaningful connections. So what advice would you give to those leaders who are at or near the top? Where they're isolated, it's a bit lonely and they're lacking in connections.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So your individual circumstances obviously are going to be particularly important in cases like that. And, and from my perspective, you have to step back and ask yourself, well, how did we evolve and where did we come from? And what would, how would our ancestors deal with that problem? And the way our ancestors dealt with that problem is that there were, there was never one overall overarching leader. And when we talk about immediate return undergirded societies, which is where we started. There are people who don't have any gardens. Everything changed once agriculture and those things came around and not necessarily in good ways. But if we look at how we started and how we spent 99% of our time as a species. You might be the hunt leader today. I might be the song leader. I might be the medicine leader. And so nobody was peerless.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Everybody had somebody else who was as good or better in other domains. And so from my perspective. You know, they're very happy people and they always felt like they had someone to talk to and bounce advice off and stuff like that because they weren't this, they weren't the tip of the spear in every domain. You know, you could run a company or a sports team or whatever and be the number one person across all the domains, even though really your expertise is in one particular domain, but now that's your company, you're the CEO, whatever. And so from my perspective, what you need is a group of people that you actually trust and, and um that you trust and you enjoy their company ideally. And those are the people that you ought to be bouncing ideas off all the time. And what the data show most clearly.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  So um to back up a ten bit, and this is something that, that you might already be very familiar with, but you might not have run into it. Um, when Google does everything in Teams and they're super data oriented. And so they eventually decided, boy, we've, we've run thousands of teams. We've, we've, we collect a ton of data on how all of teams, what's going on in the team. And we also know how well the team succeeded, how well the product worked out. Let's see if we can predict that success. And the single most important variable that predicted the success of Google Teams across all the teams they'd ever run was what, what's called psychological safety, or the degree to which members of the team felt like they could be themselves and say what's really on their mind.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  And so what you want to do is create a group of people, if you're a CEO, who feel psychologically safe, saying, Bob, you're full of shit. That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard and here's why. And people are afraid to tell Bobby's full of shit if he's their boss. And so I don't know how to build that team. I can't give any advice on who those people are and where they come from. But if you enjoy their company and if you think, if you value their opinion, now you've got that group that our hunter gatherers always had. Because they always were leaders in different domains. And so they always had each other to bounce ideas off and talk to. And it makes you less lonely and it also makes you do a better job. That's what the Google data shows. You know, human beings are pretty special. We're pretty damn smart. But what makes us special is not the, the trillion connections inside our own brain, but the fact that we can now connect that to all the other brains.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  And now we've got, you know, quadrillions of connections where ideas can get just improved as they bounce around among different humans.

• 39:26Ryan Hawk?

  What are some practical ways? CEO, for example, what are some practical ways a CEO can create psychological safety at their company?

• 39:39Speaker 01

  You could tell people, for example, in every meeting that we hold, you have to disagree with me at least once, and you have to have reason for disagreeing. You can't just say, Bob, I disagree. You have to say, Bob, I think that's wrong, and here's the data why I think that that's a bad idea. And so if the rule is that I have to do it at least once, well, then everybody's going to do it, and it becomes a norm. And B, if I'm disagreeing with you, it's not because I don't like you, it's not because I don't trust you, it's not because I don't value your leadership, it's because that's the rules of engagement. And so whenever you create rules of engagement that require disagreement, that, or you could play the devil's advocate, somebody gets assigned that role every meeting. You know, you choose how you want to do it, but the key ingredient is disagreement. And, and, and, look, it's important to, to put it in its place.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  If you divide decisions into their component processes, they really come into two different phases. You've got what we call deliberation, and then implementation. And deliberation is when we're all sitting around saying, well, what should we do? Do we introduce this new product? Do we go after our competitor, whatever? And so that's the time for disagreement. That's the time when everybody should pipe in and give opposite things. Then, once we agree on the answer, now we're implementing. And now, nobody wants to hear your disagreement with the original goal anymore. That's, that time has passed. And so you have to be sensible about the nature of the disagreement. Once you decide, let's say that there's 10 of us, and we, we have to decide whether we're going to introduce this new product, and I'm dead set against it. And I, during the deliberation phase, that's my job.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  I keep telling you why it's a bad idea. All right, fine. We've now decided 8 to 2, we're going to do it. I have to put that aside. I'm not arguing anymore, we shouldn't do it. Now, we're implementing. Now, we just have to decide the best way to actually make it happen. And so a good board member puts aside their concerns about stage one, because they've been overruled, and now focuses on stage two, and does their best. They, well, if we're gonna do this, how can we do it the best we possibly can? And so what you want to do is build teams where people do disagree, but of course, they have to disagree in the ways that make sense by virtue of the decision stage that you're at in the process.

• 41:41Ryan Hawk?

  Disagree and commit, that's huge. Great teams are able to disagree and then commit, even if they choose not your... The one thing, though, Bill, I think is important, when I'm working with leaders, we talk about this specific area when it comes to feedback. When you're the CEO or the senior leader and let's say you get feedback that is critical of you or critical of how you're running something from someone who works for you, a peer, anybody. I think it is so important how you receive it. The feedback you give to them, the response you give to them, because I've had bosses, we've probably all had bosses who say, "I love feedback. Give it to me. Disagree. Tell me when I'm wrong."

• 42:26Ryan Hawk?

  We probably all had that person. And then you do it. And you give them some critical feedback that is honest and real and it could be helpful. And they're, and they get super defensive and they start explaining why you're wrong. When that happens to me, and I'm the subordinate in this case, giving feedback, I immediately say, "All right, not doing that again." He can't handle it. He can't do, he, he says he wants it. He's lying. I don't trust him as much. He can't handle it. So as leaders, sometimes that stings. Sometimes if someone gives us critical feedback, it hurts our ego or we really believed in the thing and now they're telling us that we're wrong and there's a chance that they're right. Right? There's a chance that feedback's good. So what do you think about that for the leaders who then say they want it?

• 43:11Ryan Hawk?

  What are the best ways for them to receive it in a way to continue to have a culture of psychological safety?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  And look, it's super difficult because we all feel that sting when we make a mistake or have an idea that everybody shoots down. The, the one thing I would say is that practice and receiving negative feedback is key. And I reflect back on, on my own dad as a, for example, he was the perfect father to somebody who wants to take negative feedback because he dissociated two things. Every idea I ever had in my life was stupid as far as he was concerned. He would always shoot it down, but at the same time, he made it clear that he thought I was a wonderful guy. And so I learned that, you know, my idea and me are two very different things. And yes, every idea is imperfect and every idea can be approved, but that's not a statement about me. I'm this lovely guy who he thinks the world of, who just happened to say a stupid thing yet again, right?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Or not a stupid thing, but a, a, an imperfect thing. And so if you get this, if you learn, all right, well, my ideas are not me. And what will make the best me is the one who has the best ideas that are the most successful. It's not an easy lesson to learn. It it it's a painful one that you have to go through time and time again, and I don't blame leaders. They say they want feedback because what they're really hoping is that you'll say, oh, I love the idea, but maybe make it a blue one instead of a red one. You know, they want they want tweaks on the margins, they they and they want the overall idea to be appreciated. And and that's not necessarily the accurate feedback. Because maybe the problem is actually the idea itself, but not the margins. It's just that it's harder than people realize for us to take on that negative feedback.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  And and I would say there's there's nothing like practice to make it. You're better at it and and the way to practice it is to actually require it. And so if you go back to the earlier point that we're making, if the rules of every meeting are every person has to criticize at least one thing, or where there's always a devil's advocate whose job the entire meeting is to disagree and and say, what about X? Then you you guarantee you're going to get practice at dealing with it because it's going to happen every time you and your team get together.

• 45:13Ryan Hawk?

  It's just got to be so intentional in those moments. Like, as the leader, everyone's paying really close attention to how you respond to things. Good news, bad news, feedback, praise. People are paying really close attention to you. And so it's really critical that you're aware of that, that you're really intentional. You're not fake, right? And I'm not I'm not saying don't be a phony or don't have like a fake response. Be authentically you, but just be aware of the situation when you're in a meeting or you're with your people. That the way that you choose to respond as a dad, I know this feeling, the way that I handle adversity within my family is going to reverberate throughout all my children and my extended family.

• 45:57Ryan Hawk?

  They're like, they're paying attention to see how I handle that situation. I remember when I got pulled over for speeding, my intentional thought was be kind and be honest. Be kind and be honest to the police officer, right? Don't lie, right? Don't be mean, don't be agitated. I really wanted them to see, man, this sucks. I hate that I got pulled over, but I'm going to be kind, I'm going to be honest, because that's what I want them to be when adversity strikes. And I just think that's important from a leadership perspective is of being very thoughtful and intentional of how you respond to any stimulus, because those people are watching closely.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right. People pay way more attention to somebody above them in the hierarchy than they do to somebody below because the person above them has things that they can give you or opportunities and the person below typically doesn't. It's just human nature. And the thing is that what that does mean, so if you're the above and and let's say I'm running our team and you tell me, Bill, that idea sucks. It's a nonstarter. Here's why. There's no harm in my starting it going ouch. Okay. Now, what I really ought to do after I admit that that feedback hurts is I should pause for a second and ask myself, okay, is there value here or is he wrong? Because a good leader has to go ahead anyway, even if their team members disagree with them. If they're convinced they're right.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  If they're, if they're considering the other argument, but but disagreeing, they have to put it on the line and do it anyway. Right? That's their job. That's literally what their job description is. And so, but what you want to be able to do is pause for a second and say, well, hold on. Is that criticism valuable and ought I take it on board and either bend in the whole project or mend it in some way, et cetera? And in my mind, when everybody's looking at you, there's only one way to do that. And that is first admit ouch. And then say, give me a second to think that through and then go, actually, no, I'm, that's not a problem. And here's why. Or you may be right. Let's, let's back up and rethink this.

• 47:52Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I think it's also important just to thank people for giving you feedback. Say thank you. Like even if you don't have an immediate response, you create a little bit of a buffer, but just be genuinely grateful when someone chooses to give because not all feedback is going to be right, by the way, like it's not, they're not always going to be right. But I do think you should show gratitude. I'm curious, you brought up your dad. Was your dad also genetically a happier person? What was your dad like? What was your upbringing like with your dad?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he's a genetically happy guy, but he's also this, he was the sort of young and aggressive bulldozer type person. He was a chess surgeon and he couldn't get along with anybody. And so we, he literally moved the family to Alaska because it's sort of wide open spaces. And, and you know, you can. You don't have to be as political up there and and get along with everybody. He just wasn't very good at getting along. He's kind of a disagreeable person. But as hard, he was a genuinely good guy and a very happy guy. And he had too much work because he's the only heart surgeon in the state. So and anyone who got in a car accident or stabbed or shot or just a cardiac arrest went to him. But when he could, when he had time away, you know, this is nineteen sixties and seventies. So dads

• 48:59Speaker 01

  are busy in those. You know, they don't spend time in the family the way they do now. But when you had time away, all he always wanted to go skiing with us or go ice skating or do something, you know, that that we'd all get together and kind of, Steve, life is a ton of fun and you ought to take those moments and enjoy them when you can.

• 49:15Ryan Hawk?

  What was it like growing up in Alaska?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Okay, it's it's in some ways, it's just like anywhere else except darker and colder. It's not that different from Minnesota or Maine or any of those places. The big thing is that at least when I was a kid, there was so little infrastructure that it's a great place if you like to do things on your own and backwoods. And my dad, that was his thing. So we would just go to a mountain that there was not a single human on it. We're in the middle of nowhere. And then we would ski up it and ski down it. That was our whole day because it takes a long time to climb a mountain where the snow is twenty feet deep. And so, you know, you if you don't enjoy those kinds of activities, you're you're in the wrong place.

• 49:54Ryan Hawk?

  And you go from Alaska to eventually Australia. Walk me through. I know we we briefly talked about before we recorded, but but walk me through the decision to move to Australia.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Well, so I'm first of all, I'm soft and weak weather wise. I don't like to be cold anymore at all ever.

• 50:14Ryan Hawk?

  So you kind of grew out of that? Like you grew up tough and strong and I can handle the cold and and ski anywhere, but now that's gone?

• 50:21Speaker 01

  I I look, I I could do it. And I was tougher as a kid than I was an adult, which is weird. But I also, I always was cold. I always felt cold. And so I remember walking to school in the morning and it's always dark. And so you would know how cold it is by how crunchy the snow feels under your feet because there's mostly snow. But if it's soft snow and forgiving or is it gritty? Cold icy horrible stuff and it just goes right through your bones. Anyway, I was always, I always disliked that and when May came around, I was thrilled that, that the snow was melting and the summer was here. And now I, I live so, I'm in Brisbane, Australia, where in the winter, the high every day is seventy degrees and that just suits me so well, but I have to admit, I'm such a weenie that when it's

• 51:02Speaker 01

  only seventy degrees outside, I've got a jumper on, I bundle up because I, I find it cold if it's below eighty, eighty-five degrees.

• 51:10Ryan Hawk?

  How about the connection element of making a move across the world? Cause you, I imagine you and your wife had friends, you had community, you could collaborate with people, right? You're a professor. To leave all of those relationships and maybe, I don't know if you had any in Australia or you started from zero, but I feel like that could, that could impact happiness, right? Making a move across the world, I know they're great people down there, but still, if you don't know any of them, you have no relationships, that, that, that could take a while. What was that like from when it comes to the collaboration element and connecting with other people if, if you don't have a built-in network of those that you already know?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, it's a great question and, and the, I, I had the advantage that I was, and we're a family with young children and lots of work to do. And so I have limited time for socializing and outside of my family and, and I didn't know a soul. And so if ever there's a time to not know a soul, you don't want to arrive as a young single person and not know a soul because then you're bored and lonely. But if you arrive as this crazy, busy person with small children, well bored and lonely is just not in the cards, you're overwhelmed. And, and Australia is actually a kind of hard country to, to make friends in and, and the reason for that is that unlike Americans who are very residentially mobile, Australians tend to stay in the cities that they grew up in.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  And so their social networks are pretty full when they're adults. They've known all the same people in the same town, they have high school friends, college friends, and so it's, it's hard to insert a new person, you know, there's nothing wrong, they're just busy, they've got a very full network of friends. Whereas Americans move all the time and for jobs and things like that. And so they're much more open to creating new friendship networks. And so what I found was that.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  If I look at all my best friends in Australia, some of them are are native Aussies, but most of them are actually expats like myself, who arrived, who didn't have these full friendship networks and so who had spare time, and we would get a coffee and then over time we became friends.

• 53:09Ryan Hawk?

  Interesting. I'm curious, Bill, so you you work with college students, you have for a long time. Let's say you're meeting with a recent college graduate who doesn't fully know what they want to do, other than the fact that they want to leave a positive dent in the world. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them?

• 53:34Speaker 01

  So that's a super intimidating place to be, and it's this modern problem that never existed for ancestors. You know, 10,000 years ago, nobody in the history of time ever asked a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? Because there's only one answer, I'm going to be a hunter gatherer, right? That's what every single human does. And now suddenly, not only are there a zillion jobs, there's a gazillion jobs, because you could be this YouTube influencer, you could invent a new career, you can do stuff that when I was a kid just simply didn't exist. And and so on the positive side, the world's your oyster, you can be anything you want. On the negative side, though, it's a little bit like walking into a really fancy chocolate shop. And there's a gazillion chocolates sitting on the trays, they're really hard to tell apart.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  And the only way I would know which one I like is to literally try all of them. But I'm going to be sick if I eat more than 10 of those suckers, it's just not possible. And a line's going to build up behind me if I'm, well, I'm going, oh, do I want those pralines or the hazelnut? You just can't do that. And so with this this overwhelming choice is actually can be a bad thing, too. And there's some really nice work, for example, Sheena Iyengar and others have shown that if you give people an ice cream choice and you say, here's three flavors, they'll always pick their favorite, they're really good at that. If you give them 50 ice cream choices, they'll often pick an ice cream they don't really like, because they were kind of overwhelmed by choice. And the downside of the world that we live in today is we're kind of overwhelmed by choice. And so the

• 55:00Speaker 01

  it's intimidating, because you can't, it's not chocolate shop, you can't keep going and try different chocolates every day for 20 days, and then you'll do it, because careers are hard to try. And and they often require enormous amounts of training before you get to the point where you even know what it's like. One of my daughter's good friends is her dad is a doc and and he and I are standing around watching the kids play. And it's like, you know, I hate my job. And I was like, really? Because yeah, By the time I finished medical school, I was like, I don't think I like medicine. And he goes, but I put so much money and time into it. I thought, well, don't go back to law school or something. Give it a try. So I did. And then I got into my practice. And I still don't like it, but now I've got huge expenses with my practice and and I'm doing really well, but I can't just stop doing it because

• 55:42Speaker 01

  all these people work for me and you know, you you you get stuck in this burr line bear trap where things are comfortable, but but there's no escape, right? And so it's it's really hard to get around that problem. It's hard to know yourself well enough to know what you like without trying everything when you simply can't. And what I've learned is that what you can do though is back off and say, well, what are the elements of a job that I really enjoy? What do I want the day to day existence to look like? And just as a very simple, for example, am I happy in front of a computer screen? Or do I need to be face to face talking to people? Am I, do I want lots of alone time? Or do I like to be surrounded by people all day? And if you ask yourself those big questions that lots of jobs fit those various answers,

• 56:27Speaker 01

  then you can at least window it down to a series of jobs that you actually would find enjoyable. And then really, you should ask yourself, what are your strengths? You know, so where will I stand out positively? I'm not a data guy. Let's not go that way. I am a person, you know, whatever you are. And it may not get you to a career that you love. But it's, if you get lucky, it will. But it also, it's, it's, it will help you avoid careers that just don't suit you at all.

• 56:53Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. And I do think you have to have an element of experimenting and being willing to try stuff. It's, it's really, really hard to know without having done it. And so I think you have to be okay with the fact that you probably won't get it right initially. There's a good chance you won't. If you do, great. But you may not, and it's completely okay, right? It's okay to try stuff, make a move, like, yeah, be committed when you're in and really be reflective. But also know that most people don't get it exactly right, right away. And if you don't, that's okay. Bill, this is amazing. I know we're right at time, man. The book is called The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness.

• 57:36Ryan Hawk?

  I'm often have PR people sending stuff my way, asking me to have people on my show. This is the opposite. I found Bill, I found his book. I was fascinated. I've heard you on other podcasts, Rogan and Chris and these guys and thought, I gotta talk to this guy, man. And you certainly delivered. I really appreciate you being here, man. I love your work and I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Thanks, Ryan. Same. There's been tons of fun chatting about all this stuff. It's taken me in a direction I don't usually think about, which I find super interesting.

• 58:06Ryan Hawk?

  Love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, man.

• 58:11Ryan 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 Bill Von Hippel. A few takeaways from my notes. Are leaders born or made? Yes. Like most things, it's not a black and white answer. The key is to use your unique strengths to effectively inspire others to do the work that must be done in order to achieve the goals of the team or the company. You have to know yourself, learn your strengths, and double down on those to be an authentic leader to effectively

• 58:56Ryan Hawk?

  lead others. And I was surprised by how much of our happiness, health, and strength were based purely on our genetics, about 50%. You know, some people are just born happier, healthier, and stronger than you. It doesn't mean you can't be happy, healthy, or strong. It just means that you need to work harder to make it happen. That's just life. And then leaders, it is lonely at the top.

• 59:27Ryan Hawk?

  What do we do about that? We need a group you can trust and you enjoy their company. That Google study is they do everything in teams. What's needed? Psychological safety. You've got to be able to disagree with each other, give feedback, receive that feedback really well. It's on the leader to create a culture and environment for healthy disagreement and receive feedback in a way that encourages more of it. So good. Once again, I want to 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 Bill Von Hippel. 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

• 1:00:11Ryan Hawk?

  and subscribe to the show and write a thoughtful review and rate the show, hopefully five stars. By doing all of 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.