QUOTES:

Optimism is not the same thing as blind positivity.

When times are objectively hard, and your boss is coming in sort of bouncing off a wall saying everything's fine, it can actually make us feel worse because there must be something wrong with me if my boss is positive and I'm just not feeling it. That's not what optimism is.

Optimism is the undying belief that the future is bright and entirely realistic.

An example of optimism: you can walk into your team and say, "These are the toughest times we've ever had. I don't know how long we're going to be in this dark tunnel. I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I know that if we work together and take care of each other, we will get through this and come out better than when we went in." That's optimism.

When somebody's trying to be positive all the time, it is dismissive of how someone else may be feeling.

In the mid-1980s, a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr. James Carse defined these two types of games: finite games and infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules, and an agreed-upon objective, like football or baseball. If there is a winner, there must be a loser or losers. More importantly, there's always a beginning, a middle, and an end. Then you have infinite games. Infinite games are defined as known and unknown players, which means you don't necessarily know who all the other players are, and new players can join the game at any time. The rules are changeable, meaning every player can play however they want, and the objective is to stay in the game as long as possible. We are players in infinite games every day.

Understanding that accomplishment or rocket ships are all for now [temporary] keeps you humble. So, it keeps you humble but also ensures that you stay on your game.

Don't confuse humility for meekness. Humility is being open to the ideas of others.

You're never complacent; you believe there's always room to improve. Your biggest competitor is yourself. You're not competing against anyone else in the market; you're competing against yourself in culture, training, and leadership.

One of the challenges we had that has hurt collaboration across the board was lockdown. When we all went into lockdown, Isaac Stern, the famous violinist, said, "Music is what happens between the notes." Well, trust is what's built between the meetings. It's the chatter as you're walking into the meeting, the meeting that happens after the meeting as you're walking out, bumping into someone in a hallway and saying, "Oh, I meant to tell you," or asking, "Do you want to grab lunch or coffee?" All those little innocuous things, by themselves, do nothing, but over time, build trust and actually support collaboration. When we work from home, we just have the meeting. There is no "between."

Remote teams are like long-distance relationships.

You're going to get the behavior you reward. Are you rewarding and recognizing people who are collaborating, or are you only recognizing and rewarding people who are hitting numbers regardless of their collaboration?

The dust has not settled since we started going back to work. You have a young generation, some of whom started work during Covid. They got their first job in lockdown, and they don't realize the value of in-person interactions. They refuse to come to work. I know someone who is really smart, works for a good company, likes her company and its culture, and she told me, "If they make me go back to work, I'll quit." It's also a generation that's not really afraid of quitting. Many people in this room, as we came up through the ranks, wouldn't dream of quitting without having another job lined up; we just had lots of “dental appointments.”

If you have plans to go fully back to work, the best strategy I've seen was a company that wanted to make everyone come back to work but didn't make a grand pronouncement. They didn't do it partially with plans to go fully back soon. Instead, the CEO said, "I'm making one demand: my most senior tier of leaders have to come back to work five days a week. They're at a certain level, and they don't get to question it. You're part of the company, that's it. That's my only demand; you have to come back to work. Everyone else is hybrid." It turns out, when your boss comes to work every day, the other levels start coming to work more as well.

You're not forcing people to come back to work but showing them the value of working with each other.

There was a company that tracked the lifetime performance of all its employees back to the internal recruiter who gave them their job. They discovered that their best recruiters sometimes get it wrong, and their worst recruiters never get it right. So you're either a great judge of character who occasionally makes a mistake, or you're a bad judge of character with the odds against you.

When you've hired someone with good intentions, one problem with being a fast-growing company is that you have to get people in seats quickly, sometimes speeding up the process. So, you didn't date long enough, and now you're married and wondering, "Did we make a mistake?" A few things to consider: Are they truly an underperformer? Maybe they're in the wrong place. Maybe there are pressures on them that we don't know about. My knee-jerk reaction is always empathy. Start with empathy and coaching. My rule is, if they're uncoachable and we made a mistake, we have to let them go. The reality is, someone struggling at work isn't enjoying it. We want our people to come to work and be proud of our Glassdoor rankings. It's a big deal that people want to be here. If someone is unhappy, that gloom has ripples. At the end of the day, we want them to be happy and to thrive. If you're going to let them go, let them go with dignity. You bear some responsibility because you mis-hired.

You're playing a long game here. Sometimes the quarterly numbers work out, and sometimes they don't. An example is IBM. A few years ago, pre-COVID, IBM missed its numbers. The CEO made an internal video publicly scolding the sales team and telling them to work harder. It leaked and was really awful. I remember meeting some folks from IBM and mentioning the video. They said, "Glad I'm not on the sales team." Notably, it was the first quarter IBM ever missed in something like 168 quarters. The reaction from senior management was to scold the sales team instead of saying, "Don't worry about it. It's one quarter. You'll make it next time."

If you start having quarter after quarter of problems, you ask, "What can we fix? Clearly, we have a problem. Let's work on it." You're talking about teamwork: celebrating successes and fixing problems together. The more people feel like they're part of the solution and can be celebrated as a team for successes, the more often you succeed over time.

We know that sometimes bad leaders achieve mission success, and sometimes good leaders suffer mission failure. We care if they practice good leadership because good leaders will enjoy success more often over time.

Are you teaching people how to lead? Are you teaching the necessary and essential skills, those human skills that will have a team perform at higher levels more often, that will have individuals perform at higher levels more often? Are you teaching people, as they make their way through the ranks, listening skills, how to give and receive feedback, and how to have an effective confrontation? That's a big one. What if your boss screws up, and you need to have a confrontation up the chain of command? What if you need to give harsh criticism to someone who works for you? How do you know that they're going to listen to you instead of shutting you out and cursing you in their mind while you're talking to them? Those are skills.

The ability to be honest about the things you're struggling with has a magical impact. It goes back to that toxic positivity thing where, if you pretend you're lying, hiding, and faking that you've got everything under control to inspire your team, they're underwater. They see you totally under control and think there's something wrong with them. It'll destroy their own self-worth. But the minute you start to reveal what you're struggling with and say, "I need help," it creates an environment where other people can come to you and say, "I'm struggling with the same thing. Can you help me?" That's what we want. We want people to tell us where they're struggling so we can help them.

If I keep it a secret, they'll keep it a secret.

Great organizations are value-based.

It's about shared vision. If you think about our nation, which is complicated, complex, imperfect, and struggling at all times throughout its history, for some reason, we cling to this ideal laid down in the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal, that all people are created equal. You see a nation struggling and striving to get there. Sometimes we take a few steps back, but we keep pushing. I think we have a desperate need in our corporate world today to bring idealism back into business.

George Eastman, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison—these folks had visions of the world that were naive and impossible, but they were going to die trying to build those worlds they imagined. I think we need idealism back in our nation and our country.

If you model and start speaking in idealistic terms of the world you imagine, and you commit your culture and your business to help advance toward that ideal vision, the ripples inspire a nation, repair wounds, and actually move us toward "World Peace."

If you're on a sports team, helping someone who fell over is sometimes more important than winning the game. Those values come from work. The values you take home come from work. If your work is pounding you like your competitors, guess what values you take home: exhaustion. "I don't have time for you. I can't come to your baseball game because I have to work." Those are the values you bring home. I don't think you realize how powerful what you're doing is.

Complacency can take many forms. Laziness is one of them. Lying, hiding, and faking is another. But we don't know which one it is. Stress could be another one. Poor training, fear—there are many reasons people are complacent. The problem is, when we label it as laziness or stupidity and talk among our peers, saying, "That person is so lazy," we're creating a narrative about them. Those other leaders will treat that person as lazy, and damage will be done because we've created a narrative. It's called gossip. If you're among leaders and that starts to happen, catch each other. Say, "Wait, they might be lazy, or they might be going through something." Back off for a second. We don't like it when people create narratives about us being horrible, toxic, or aggressive, so it goes both ways. We have to model behavior. Empathy is king.

If your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row, and you've had this conversation before, ask, "Are you okay? I'm worried about you. What's going on?" The way I like to address complacency is with empathy. Very often, the truth is revealed. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, we can support or coach. If someone is uncoachable, that's a different conversation. True laziness or complacency is revealed when they reject coaching or support.

Replace judgment with curiosity.

By simply offering someone the ability to feel seen and heard and giving them a second chance, very often those people become our biggest supporters, our best employees, and our best leaders.

It's called a "friend's exercise." Think of a friend you love and who loves you, someone you would be there for at 3 AM, and who would take your call at 3 AM. Do not do this with a spouse, parent, or sibling; those relationships are too close. Do this with a best friend and ask, "Why are we friends?" They'll look at you like you're insane because the part of the brain that controls feelings—love, loyalty, trust—doesn't control language, which is why we struggle to put our feelings into words. Stop asking "why" because it elicits emotional responses. You want rational responses. Instead of asking your kids, "Why are you home late?" ask, "What were you doing that you're home late?" You'll get an answer. When they say you're insane for asking why you're friends, start asking "what." "What specifically is it about me that you would be there for me no matter what?" They'll start describing you: "You're always there for me. I trust you." Play devil's advocate: "That's just the definition of a friend. What specifically is it about me that you'd be there for me no matter what?" They'll go through this a few times. Eventually, they'll give up and start describing themselves. My friend said, "I don't know, Simon. All I know is I don't even have to talk to you. I can just sit in a room with you, and I feel inspired." I got goosebumps. What they'll do is put into words the value you have in their life, and you'll have an emotional response. You'll either well up with tears or get goosebumps. That's how you know you've found your "why" because it's deep-seated in who you are. If you do this with multiple friends, you'll get similar, if not the exact same, responses. The thing you give to the people who love you is the value you have in their lives, which is your "why." Give that a try.

Not all sales calls have to result in a sale that day. Sometimes it's the relationship.

The greatest value you have at this event is each other. Recognize that leadership is a team sport. None of us can lead by ourselves; it's just too difficult. Like being a parent is too difficult to do alone, which is why we rely on partners, our own parents, friends, and constantly asking and reading books. You just can't do it alone; you need support and advice. Leadership is exactly the same. Make sure you have a leadership buddy at work, someone you can call and say, "I can't. I can't. I can't." You need someone to vent to, to scream and yell, and get it out of your system.

When we write to each other, "Do you have eight minutes?" it means "I need you." Anyone can step out of a meeting for eight minutes to be there for a friend.

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