886: How to Become an Executive with Adam Bryant

Pete Mockaitis
Adam, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Adam Bryant
Thank you for the invitation, Pete. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too. Me, too. Well, I’m excited to hear the wisdom you’ve collected in your book, The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership. But, first, we need to hear about you and ping-pong. What’s the story, training with a ping-pong coach?

Adam Bryant
Yeah, that’s a sentence that I never thought I would utter in my life, which is that I have a ping-pong coach. But we moved down to New Orleans a few years ago where my two daughters are, including now my son-in-law. And he was blessed with great hand-eye coordination for things like golf. And in the townhouse we have, my wife generously gave me the loft for my “office,” and I put that in air quotes. But I have my desk up there, I have a pool table, a foosball table, and a ping-pong table.

And I just got determined to get better at this, and I found a ping-pong coach in New Orleans, and I train with him a couple of days a week, and it’s pretty cool. At my age, I’d recently turned 60, but it’s cool to get better at something. And my son-in-law used to beat me pretty consistently. I now beat him, I’d say, a little more than half the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, congratulations. And I’m just imagining these training sessions with the ping-pong coach with sort of Rocky montage type music in the background, and he’s, like, screaming at you to push yourself to the very limits. Is that how it goes down?

Adam Bryant
Not so much, but he’s a good coach. He’s from Vietnam and there’s a word he’s taught me, which is “Cho-le” which means sort of, “Let’s go.” And when you hit a really good shot, you celebrate and yell, “Cho-le.” The other thing, you’re taking me down a rabbit hole, Pete, but the one thing that is very cool about the world of ping-pong is that when you hit a lucky shot, generally, you sort of put up your hand just to sort of signal to your opponent that you acknowledge it was a lucky shot.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s friendly.

Adam Bryant
I think it’s very refreshing compared to some sports, like soccer, where people always just, like, fake flopping and things like that, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. It’s like, “Yes, I know. I’m so amazing. Look at me, I can pull it off.” Well, so tell us, I imagine there’s a lot of practice you invested. Are there any sort of tips or principles for folks also looking to be awesome at ping-pong? What would you suggest for them?

Adam Bryant
Well, there’s kind of basement ping-pong where you’re just sort of flailing your arms, but to do it properly, it is, and I know this sounds silly, but it is an incredible workout because you basically have to be squatting very low and also be on your toes. And footwork is a huge part of it, so you got to be super agile on your feet while you’re squatting, while you’re on your toes, and to get yourself in a position to hit the shots. So, it’s one of those things, like a lot of things in life, from afar it looks pretty easy, but it is an incredible workout. I get the same calorie burn from that as like a Peloton workout, so.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding. All right. Good to know. Well, so now onto…

Adam Bryant
Less important matters, how to be awesome at your ping-pong, right, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now for some insights which could have maybe an even greater transformational impact on people’s careers. So, you’ve interviewed over a thousand CEOs over your life and career. That’s pretty cool. Can you share with me any interesting themes associated with what’s kind of different about these people than others? And how do they generally get to become one?

Adam Bryant
And just to give you the context, so when I first started interviewing CEOs, it was for a series I created at the New York Times called Corner Office, which was based on a very simple what-if, which is, “What if I sat down with CEOs and never ask them a single question about their company?” which is how CEOs are usually interviewed, and just focus on the leadership lessons and early influences, and how they talk and think about the sort of universal challenges of leadership.

So, that was my initial focus. I, also, from the very start, embraced diversity in, literally, every sense of the word in the people I interviewed. And so, looking back now and kind of saying, “Well, what are the patterns?” I think one of the clear patterns that emerged is this skill, this habit of mind, to be able to simplify complexity. And, to me, it is one of the common threads.

I don’t think you can lead effectively if you don’t have that because I do think it’s a leader’s job to take the complexity of the world, their industry, what’s happening in their company, and it’s just one of those key leadership moments to be able to stand on a stage, whether it’s literal or virtual, and basically answer the kind of questions that little kids ask in the backseat, which is, “Where are we going? And how are we going to get there? And when are we going to get there?” And I know that sounds simple but simple is hard, and I just think it’s such an important skill. Because if you know how to simplify complexity, then you’re also going to be a good communicator.

So, to me, that’s like one of the core skills that you have to have. In terms of how they became CEOs, what’s been so refreshing and so what I’ve really enjoyed just hearing people’s past and their stories is that, yes, I met a few CEOs over the years, Pete, who just seem like from central casting, like they were the class president, they were the frat house president. There were just those kids who, from an early age, they said, “You’re going to be a CEO someday.”

And I met a few of those but I have to say they were kind of in a distinct minority. I met a lot of people who you just never would’ve guessed, like they were former elementary school teachers, they studied classical organ in college, just really unusual backgrounds, theater. And, suddenly, they’re, like not suddenly, but now they’re running a huge company.

And I have thought a lot about this because I think people are hungry for career advice, and I think part of the thing that they’re looking for is an answer to the question, “Am I on the right path? What is the right path? If I want to move up, if I want to get that CEO job, what is the right path?” And what I always tell people is there are some obvious directional things you have to do. Like, if you want to be a CEO of a really big company, you should get a job at a really big company at a young age.

So, once you check the obvious things, what I always tell people is that there is no right path. The most important path is the path that you are on. And the thing that really separates people that I find is whether they keep their eyes open, and they look around, and they’re always, it’s this kind of machine learning of whatever their experience is, and keeping their eyes open, they’re just always sort of sifting that experience, it’s like, “What am I learning? What am I noticing? Boy, that boss seems to be really effective. What is it that he or she does? That seems like a really bad boss. Why is that? This team is effective.”

And so, to me, it’s just that quality of keeping your eyes open. I often reflect on a saying that I heard from a college president named Ruth Simmons. And what she would tell students is that, “You should always be prepared at any moment of your life to learn the most important lesson of your life.” And I think it’s just a great sort of guide for your life just to keep your eyes open and learn, because there are lessons everywhere.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. And I think, a lot of times, in my own experience, that can come up in just the form of a wild idea in terms of, “I’m noticing this and I’m wondering that. And then, what do you know, and now this is a business. Well, how about that? That was interesting.”

Adam Bryant
Yeah. And, to me, like a lot of that comes from silence. Like, yes, there is that sort of habit of mind. And, as you just described, you’re always questioning, like, “Why is that?” And you see sort of like a seam or a gap in the world, it’s like, “Why is that there?” And it is that sort of curiosity, that relentless questioning. But I also think that a lot of that, making the most of the experience that you’ve had, processing it, looking for the patterns, probing it, it does require time for reflection.

And I think a lot of people, silence isn’t comfortable, and they pick up their phone, and they start scrolling or something. And so, I always tell people, it’s like, “You need to get comfortable with silence, and just to have those conversations with yourself so you can process what you’ve been learning.”

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to the simplifying complexity, could you give us an example of, “Here’s complexity and here’s, on the other side of a CEO simplification. See how that’s great?”

Adam Bryant
Yeah, sure. And I often use the example of Bob Iger, the CEO at Disney. So, the backstory before he became CEO at Disney, he was the internal candidate, and I think the board actually wanted an external candidate. So, he went on this campaign for the job, and he basically created this very simple, like, three-part plan, he said, “If you make me a CEO, these are the three things that I’m going to focus on.”

He said, “Great content.” You can say, “Well, that’s obvious, right? Like, you’re Disney.” But, “Second one was global expansion. So, we’re going to place those bets. We’re going to go into newer markets.” And you could say, “Well, that sounds obvious, too.” But the third one that he said is that, “We are going to embrace technology in all its forms. New technology. So, whatever new technology comes along, whether it’s streaming, even if it undermines our traditional business model in the short term, we are going to embrace it.”

And what’s been interesting is that, Pete, he has never ever wavered from those three things. If you read his book, The Ride of a Lifetime, which is a good book, there’s good insights, it’s not that sort of CEO victory lap kind of book, you can just sort of see, like the growth of the company. It’s, like, all along those three pillars. And he’s just relentless about communicating that.

Last time I checked, the second sentence of his bio on the corporate website referred to those three things, like, great content, global expansion, embracing new technology. And so, to me, that is a good little case study of what that looks like. Because, again, like it’s a sweet spot, you can look at that and say, “Well, isn’t that obvious?” And it’s like, “Well, actually, great content maybe yes, but the other two were very clear bets and clear paths.”

And the great thing about when you get it right, when you do simplify complexity as a leader, then it’s actually really great for morale because everybody kind of understands how you’re going to win, they understand how the work they are doing can contribute to the success of the company. And there’s this popular expression you’ve probably heard that culture eats strategy for breakfast. You hear it a lot at conferences. It’s always attributed to Peter Drucker. It turns out there’s no record that he ever said it, and I increasingly believe it’s wrong.

That you need to have that really clear strategy, that simplified complexity so that everybody can understand how they are helping the team win. And if you do that, I think that’s great for morale and culture.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, in the Disney example, the simplified version is great content, global market, embracing technology. What would be the complex version that a CEO who is floundering might put forward?

Adam Bryant
Listen, you’ve probably seen them yourself. I certainly have. A lot of companies pull together strategy decks, and they’re 40-slides long, and they use 8-point font. You can’t even read it from the back of the room. There’s lots of pyramids, and there are colors and cork screw arrows, and just too much. And it’s the kind of thing that they may make sense in the moment but the key thing is, like, “Do you remember them?”

And we all know all the neuroscience shows that most people can’t remember more than three or four things day to day. And you can have that really complicated strategy document but you have to pass the hallway test. So, you just imagine, if you pick some random person in the hallway and stop them, and said, “Do you know what our strategy is?” would they be able to echo it back to you? And that’s why it’s so crucial to be able to distill that strategy.

I interviewed one CEO and she had this great line. She referred to her father, who used to talk about cows, chickens, and taters. And she internalized that as just a reminder, it’s like, “Just use really simple everyday language. Keep it simple,” because there is this bias in the business world.

People like reaching for that $20-word, it makes things sound better and more formal and fancier and all those things. And it takes so much discipline to hit that sweet spot of simplifying complexity so people go, “Okay, I get it. I get how we’re going to win and I get how the work that I’m doing is helping the team win.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, even if those synergies are highly impactful, you don’t want to say it like that.

Adam Bryant
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood.

Adam Bryant
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so thinking about, specifically, your book, The Leap to Leader, any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries that you came across in the direct preparation of the book or in the background leading up to it?

Adam Bryant
Yes. So, look, I think writing books is a process of discovery. You sort of write books to figure out what you know and to really put a sharp point on things, and I will call out a few things. The first section of the book is called ‘Do you really want to lead?’ And I think it’s an important question that people should really ask themselves because there is this kind of like momentum that just happens, either personally or institutionally, within organizations where you just kind of get carried along.

And if you’re a high performer, it’s like, “Well, of course, you want to lead, of course you want to move into that management position, and then a leadership position.” And I think people really need to stop and spend some time, again, in silence. Spend some time with themselves to be really clear about why they want to lead others and whether they want to lead others, and not just be carried along by that sort of river of promotion into the bigger title.

Because I think, a lot of people, it’s like, “Of course, I want that job because there’s a bigger title and there’s more money with it.” Or, they may want to lead because they like the idea of having more power or whatever. And I just think that leadership is so hard, and a lot of people get into leadership positions, and they go, “Wow, like I had no idea it was this hard.”

You’re dealing with people’s problems, you’ve got fires you’re putting out every day, the day is kind of a three-shift day, you’re tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. And so, you need to be very clear in your mind about why you want to lead. And so, just having that moment, I think, is really key.

Another insight I’ll share is this idea of how to be awesome at your job, and I’m sure you talk in big part of the audience of people who want to move up in their career. And one of the things that I came to appreciate is that, look, we’re always taught, “You got to have your elevator pitch ready.” People are told that early in their career, “Have your elevator pitch ready.”

And, to me, that generally means one of two things. One is your elevator pitch are like, “What are you working on?” In case you’re in the elevator with a CEO, “Hey, what are you working on?” you got to have that ready. And the second elevator pitch is, like, “Well, what do you want to do? Like, what are your career goals?” You got to have that elevator pitch ready.

And what I’ve come to really appreciate is that people don’t spend enough time on their third elevator pitch, which is that if somebody were to ask you, “Who are you as a leader?” what would you say to them? And you may go through your entire career, taking over new teams, and nobody will ever ask you that question, but what if they do? And, to me, that then raises a question, “Well, how do you answer that? Like, what does a good answer sound like?”

And, to me, it’s about being able to say, “Look, these are the three values that are really important to me,” and you don’t just stop at the words because there’s a lot of fridge-magnet poetry in the leadership field. There’s a lot of words that people just sort of toss around, they sound right and good. But I think when people reflect on and think about how they’re going to talk about their personal values, it’s not enough to just say these words, “These ideas are important to me.”

You then need to be able to back them up, and say, “These are the stories of how these became important to me. And this is why they’re important. And this is what it looks like in action. And this is how I found these values to be really important and effective for driving success in the teams that I’ve been part of.” Really bring those ideas to life.

I talk about it as like your personal leadership brand, like, “What do you stand for as a leader? And when you’re not in the room, like how would a direct report describe you to a job candidate?” So, you want to be clear about what you stand for. And I think, in this day and age, just in the last few years, there’s been so much more talk about humanity and transparency and vulnerability and authenticity, all these qualities that people want to see more in their leaders.

And I think being very clear about your personal values and being willing to share those, I think that helps with all those things because you want to take the mystery out of who you are as a boss, because you’re always being studied by your direct reports, they are trying to figure out who you are, like, “Are you moody? Like, are you happy?” They’re studying your body language.

And the more you can be sort of up front, and say, “Look, this is who I am. This is my personal values. This is what’s important to me,” then your direct reports can say, “Okay, I got that. Now, I need to spend less time trying to figure you out, and I could spend more time getting my job done.” And, to me, that’s success on a lot of levels.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, to that first point, “Why do you want to lead?” you say it’s very hard, and you need to have a good why in place as opposed to just, “Oh, well, hey, you know, I’m doing pretty well and I like winning and achieving, so that’s the next step. Let’s just go ahead and do it.” So, that’d be a lame or ineffective why, it’s almost no why. You’re just sort of going with the flow. What would be some rich articulations of effective whys for leading?

Adam Bryant
Yeah, look, the older I get, the more I like sentences that begin with, “There’s only two kinds of people, Pete,” and sometimes those work. But I do think there’s only two kinds of managers in the world, and only two kinds of leaders as well, but I think there’s this sort of framework. It’s not black or white. It’s not one or the other, but I think some managers and leaders are more selfless and some are more self-centered.

And I think, to me, the best leaders, the best managers, are selfless. They’re doing it because they want to help the team, the organization. They want to help their direct reports. And, to me, not that there’s a right answer, but I think really effective whys start there, that you believe in what the organization does, you can see the impact that the organization can have. And then you want to have impact as a leader, and I think that means elevating people, and making them better, and helping build their skills, and seeing trajectories for their career that maybe they didn’t even see for themselves.

I say in the book that leadership is complicated and it’s okay to have a complicated relationship with leadership, and I have, in my career. I’ve been in plenty of roles where I was the number two, and I was very happy in those roles. And I was in other roles where I was the leader. And, to me, it wasn’t about being number one. It sort of kept my ego in check.

And the thing that motivated me in all my management and leadership roles was I approached the job as a coach, “I am here, I’ve learned a few things in my career, and I want to share them with you. And I want you to achieve, like, wild success. I want to help you get better,” and that was my why in all those years.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to get your take, having interviewed a thousand CEOs, and I guess it’s hard you can’t peer into their souls, but what’s your sense of roughly what proportion of leaders are selfless versus self-centered?

Adam Bryant
If I could take your question and maybe reframe it slightly, it’s like my understanding of their why, like, “Why are they doing this?” again, people are complicated so there’s, like, a thousand layers of motivations.

That said, I have noticed sort of patterns, and I put them into three or four broad categories, because I’ve always been curious in, like, “Why do you want this job?” One of the questions that I ask so many of the leaders that I interviewed, Pete, is like, “Where does your drive come from?” Because I’m curious about that because you need a certain amount of drive and stamina to do these big jobs. Like, on paper they’re kind of awful jobs. They’re just all-consuming, there’s a lot of responsibility, there’s a lot of weight on your back.

And so, as I’ve tried to probe that, the patterns that I’ve seen, the first one is they grew up with some kind of adversity and sometimes really tough adversity. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard really sad stories about growing up, and not just sort of financial straits but alcoholic parent, abusive parent. I’ve heard stories about growing up in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, mom stayed at home, dad worked, and then he died at a young age, and there was no life insurance. And, suddenly, the family was kind of scrambling to just put food on the table and pay the electric bill.

And there was one time I interviewed two CEOs, back-to-back, and they said the exact same thing, told me the same life story that I just explained to you. So, they had that kind of trauma, that adversity at a young age, they know what it felt like to be out of control, and so that was a big part of their driving motivation. And, again, not to get sort of too shrink-y here but I think sometimes people, when they face a lot of adversity early in their life, they want to have a little bit more control. So, maybe that helps explain part of their drive.

I think another big category is some version of, like, the immigrant story, which is this idea of the first in your family to do X. And I think if you grow up and you’re always the first in your family to go to college, to do this, to do that, that you spend so much time kind of forging a new path that, ultimately, that just becomes, like, your comfort zone. And you need that kind of mindset as a leader, it’s like you’re always comfortable doing new things and dealing with new problems.

I put another category. Some people just like hit the parent lottery, like had a great family, maybe they’ve got an interesting blend of DNA strands where an entrepreneur parent and the other one was a psychologist, or there was an engineering parent married to…and the other parent was an artist, so you get that sort of interesting yin and yang, and just had sort of great messages and lessons growing up.

So, again, armchair psychology on my part. It probably wouldn’t stand up to peer review in a scientific journal, but those are the patterns I’ve seen.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now I’m curious, when it comes to the actual, let’s say, okay, we’ve got some great reasons, folks are raring to go, they want to become a leader executive, can you maybe start us with a story about someone who was not getting promoted, they wanted it, but then they made a switch in their approach and they pulled it off, they made the leap?

Adam Bryant
To me, a big part of making that leap, usually there’s a story under there where people explain, like, “What was that moment? What was that mindset shift?” and there’s a few that come to mind. There’s one executive I interviewed where she was moving up, and she hit this point where she realized she couldn’t do it all, and she needed to delegate. And she had the insight that she had to start giving away the stuff that she really liked to do and that she was really good at, so that she could then get to the next level.

And I can really relate to that because as people are moving up, we all have the things we’re really good, our strengths and weaknesses, and we tend to really like to do the things that we’re good at. But the point is if you want to get up to that top leadership position, at some point you have to start giving that stuff away, and letting other people do it.

There was another moment from another executive where she had become sort of a new CEO of a startup, and she was going to the chair of the board and sort of running key decisions past the board chair. And, at some point, the chairman just turned to her, and said, “Look, I can give you my advice but you need to realize, ultimately, this is your decision. And if you are wrong, we are going to fire you.”

And it was just that sort of moment of clarity, it’s like because when you are a leader, part of the mindset is it’s not about asking for permission anymore. To have that top job, you’ve got to own the accountability and you’ve got to own the outcomes of your decisions. And that’s a big part to me of making the leap to leader is being comfortable making decisions when the data isn’t there, because the higher you move up, like the decisions get harder, there’s less data, there’s more gray areas, there’s more unhappy people. Whether you go left or right, or up or down, you’re going to make some people unhappy.

And, to me, a big part of leadership is being willing to make decisions, to take the risks and own the outcomes, because, honestly, Pete, a lot of people aren’t comfortable doing that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good to surface there. And I don’t know if there’s a recipe for how one gets comfortable doing that. Is there?

Adam Bryant
Well, I think it’s being aware of the fact that it is your job to make those hard decisions. I reflect on a conversation I had with one CEO, he was a first-time CEO, and he’s just feeling like, “Wow, like every day is kind of a hard day. These problems are coming to my desk, and I don’t really know what the answer is.” And the lightbulb went off for him where he realized, “This is my job. And, yes, it’d be nice to have the easy decisions come to you, but they generally get taken care of farther down in the organization.”

So, at some point, you have to make the shift, and realize what may seem like a burden is an opportunity. It is your job. There are no easy days. And you need to see those tough decisions as interesting puzzles, because I do feel like we’re in this, we’re just living through this breathtaking moment of change for all the obvious reasons since the start of the pandemic. But I do think managing people and leading people has gotten five to ten times harder.

And in our consulting work at my firm, The ExCo Group, we do see a lot of fast-rising executives who are kind of tapping out, and saying, “Look, I didn’t sign up for how hard this is.” And I think we are in this moment where it is kind of black or white, like we are not in this moment anymore where there’s some playbook for leadership and how to have these new conversations about compassion and remote work, and all these things. It’s like these are new and very hard problems for which there’s no clear answer.

And I think you need to do a gut check. It goes back to this idea of, “Do you really want to lead?” And you have to ask yourself, like, “Are you excited about this?” Because if you’re excited about it, and say to yourself, “What an amazing time to be managing and leading people where we’re figuring out the future of work, the future of leadership, and you have an opportunity to shape that and be a part of it. Wow, that’s really exciting.”

So, are you that kind of person or are you saying to yourself, “I just find all these problems just kind of overwhelming. Everything seems so hard. Just the lines are blurring between the personal and professional. Everybody is kind of trying to figure out this new world of work and expectations. And I just find this all exhausting and somewhat overwhelming”?

And you need to be honest with yourself because I do feel like we’re at this moment where you really have to look at yourself in the mirror, and say, “Leadership is getting harder. Managing is getting harder. Do you want to do this?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now to dig into a couple of your particular concepts in the book, I was intrigued by you’ve got a notion called the say-do ratio. What is that? And how do we perfect ours?

Adam Bryant
Sure. So, the third section of the book is called ‘How to get promoted without asking for a promotion?’ And it’s sort of this is in your sweet spot of how to be awesome at your job. How do you set yourself apart? Because if you are ambitious and you want to move up, the question at the core of that is, “Okay, how do you set yourself apart?”

And, to me, one of the easiest ways to do it is to have a great do-to-say ratio. And that comes from a CEO that I interviewed; a guy named Brett Wilson. When I first heard it, I kind of fell out of my chair but what it means is “What percentage of the things that you say you’re going to do, do you actually do?” And it’s about reliability, it’s about dependability, it’s about your reputation, it’s about trustworthiness.

And I think if you want to set yourself apart, if you just have this rule that whatever you say you’re going to do, that you follow through on. And if, for some reason, you can’t, you tell people, it’s like, “Hey, I know I promised you that but this happened. I need an extra day.” You’re just upfront about it rather than letting them discover that you missed the deadline. I think if you build a reputation as being super reliable and dependable, you can really set yourself apart.

And the beauty of this is that it is so easy to improve. Again, you got to be honest with yourself. Pete, your listeners need to ask themselves, “What is your do-to-say ratio? Is it really high? Or are there some things that you say you’re going to do that you don’t always follow through on? And the beauty of this, it’s like a really easy hack to improve your do-to-say ratio, which is just whenever you say you’re going to do something, just write it down. Make a note to yourself, your computer, or mostly on your phone. It doesn’t matter where, just keep a list somewhere.

And even in the small stuff, if you say, “Oh, I’m going to connect you with that person,” and you follow through on it, like if you do that consistently, people are going to start noticing things, like, “Wow, this person always does what they say they’re going to do.” And then that builds your reputation, and so you’re going to get more responsibility because people just know you’re that kind of person that’s going to own it and deliver it.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. You say that compartmentalization is a crucial art. What do you mean by that? And how do we get better at it?

Adam Bryant
Well, I think as you get higher in leadership positions, like the problems get harder, and as we discussed, the decisions get more difficult, you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to be second-guessed, you’re going to be criticized, any decision you’re going to make is going to leave somebody unhappy just because of all the tradeoffs.

And so, I think a key skill of leadership is to be able to compartmentalize and to keep everything in perspective. Because if you’re not good at that, what does that look like? It means like you’re always beating yourself up for any wrong decisions, or you don’t take criticism well, you’re always worrying about the impact of your decisions on other people, you’re staring at the ceiling at 2:00 in the morning when you should be sleeping, and you’re just not going to be an effective leader.

And some people over-index the other way, Pete. I’ve certainly seen people who are so good at compartmentalizing, it basically means they have no empathy, like they just let everything roll off their back, and they don’t seem to appreciate the impact of their decisions on people. And maybe that’s not healthy either, but, to me, being able to compartmentalize to sort of acknowledge the challenges, but then sort of keep them in a box in your mind so that it’s like, “Okay, I’ve dealt with that, I’m thinking about that. I’m going to park this here and I’ll come back to it later.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if our compartmentalization art is not so artful and we do tend to ruminate and think about the thing that’s not so handy and we’d prefer to have it compartmentalized, how do we get better at it?

Adam Bryant
Part of it is to let go of perfection, because if things are chewing you up inside, it’s, first, you’re not going to be perfect and to give yourself a break. One of our mentors at my firm often shares this advice with startup founders and stuff, and it’s a great line. He says, “Look, if you talk to your friends the way you’re talking to yourself, you wouldn’t have any friends.”

And, to me, that’s a sort of a great point to keep in mind. It’s like you need to take care of yourself. And some people are very driven and they’re really performance-oriented and success-oriented. If something doesn’t go well, you could spend a lot of time beating yourself up, and you just need to let that go.

Another trap that people fall into is that we want to be liked. Like, who doesn’t? As a manager, as a leader, you want people to like you, and you need to let go of that as well, and shift from wanting people to like you to people respecting you. It doesn’t mean that it’s fine if they don’t like you because they’re not going to follow you, but just to worry less about whether people like you.

And I think if you just keep, for every decision you have to make, you can get chewed up about, “Well, is this the right thing to do? And it’s going to affect this person this way and have these consequences.” If you just run every decision that you face through a simple framework of, “What is the best for the company or for the organization that I’m running, or the team that I’m running?” like, that’s a way of sort of simplifying and clarifying.

And then you could probably sleep better at night, and say, “Look, I know there are some disruptions here. I know I’ve kind of created a blast zone, but I know this is the right decision for the organization,” that’s going to help you compartmentalize. So, I think those are a couple of specific strategies.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how do you recommend we build our self-awareness muscle?

Adam Bryant
It starts with five words that I heard from a young CEO years ago, and it was one of those moments when she said it, it was kind of burned into my head. And the backstory was that she had a really rough childhood, very difficult relationship with her parents, they moved a lot, she was bullied at school, and she was sort of telling me about her life story.

And, at one point in the interview, I had said, “Well, you have such a positive attitude. Where does that come from?” And she said these five words, she said, “Reality is just source material.” And what she meant is that, “Look, there is the reality of the things we experience but it’s just a reminder that we are always creating narratives for ourselves. We are constantly sort of editing the films of our experience and focusing on certain things to tell ourselves good stories, bad stories.”

And, to me, that’s such an important insight because if you believe in the idea that reality is just source material, and that we’re always, in effect, telling ourselves stories, that it allows you to sort of step outside yourself a little bit and to ask yourself, like, “Wait a minute. What story am I telling myself about that experience? And is there another way to look at it?” And I think that helps guard against some of the traps that people fall into in the stories they tell themselves.

So, one of the common traps is the victim narrative, “Stuff is happening to me,” and you just start feeling like a victim when you should see everything as a learning opportunity. It reminds me of that expression I heard from one CEO, which is that, “Ninety-five percent of the worse stuff that happens to you winds up being the best stuff that happens to you because you really learn from those experiences. It builds your character, gives you a lot of wisdom about life.”

So, the victim narrative is one trap. The fairness or unfairness narrative is another trap. You can often feel like, in organizations, things aren’t fair. And it’s just a matter of, like, “Look, reality is what it is.” And if you really push yourself, it’s like, “Am I thinking about this in the most productive way? Am I seeing everything as an opportunity?”

Because, to me, that’s one of the things that really separates entrepreneurs. I’ve interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs, and they are wired slightly differently. And I think one of the key ways is they don’t sort of dwell on bad news. It’s like everything is an opportunity, “What’s the plan B? What’s the plan C here?” and they just keep pushing forward. So, to me, those are a couple of the key things to keep in mind just to help build that self-awareness muscle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And any thoughts on politics, office politics, networking, trickery?

Adam Bryant
Well, politics, there’s politics in every organization, especially the organizations that like to say, “We don’t have any politics.” And the one tip that I always keep in mind with politics is you really need to understand what the other person’s scoreboard is in their head for their own success. To me, that’s the secret to understanding office politics because, as much as companies like to say there’s a shared scoreboard and everybody is going to work together as a team, the reality is that everybody has got their own part of that.

And everybody is building their part of the business, and they tend to focus almost with blinders on about that. And so, to me, one of the ways to sort of help you navigate politics is always start by understanding what is the other person’s scoreboard. Because if you understand what is their scoreboard, then you’re much more likely to add clarity about how you can help them, and how you can kind of find a common ground. So, that’s my best insight about politics.

And I would also say about networking, I don’t know about you, Pete, but I’m an introvert. I don’t like the idea of networking. That’s sort of like, “There’s 20 people over there, just go mingle during drinks before a conference.” That makes me really uncomfortable, and I’m not good at it. But I think it’s important to build your network. And if you focus on, “Well, how do you build your network?” to me, the most effective way to do it is not just, “Hey, can we have a coffee? Or, do you want to grab a drink or something?”

To me, the most effective way is to do things with people, to build something together, just be on a committee with them to do some project together, maybe it’s outside your day job or something. But, to me, like that’s the way to sort of really cement those relationships. Whether it’s with colleagues internally or, like, maybe serving on a board, or part of an organization outside your company, but the way to build your lasting networks, so those relationships really last, is to do something with people rather than just share a coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Adam, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Adam Bryant
I’m over to you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you give us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Adam Bryant
I mentioned the early one from Ruth Simmons about always be prepared at any point in your life to learn the most important lesson in your life. That’s one of my favorites. The other favorite is “Play in traffic.” And whenever people are asking me for career advice, I often mention that. And what it means is just, like, get out there and do stuff. Meet people. Get involved. Just start doing things. Play in traffic, and you’re going to build those connections that are going to lead to things.

And I think about that often because I think, sometimes, people when they’re first starting out their careers, they tend to have very specific ideas about their career plans, like, “By this age, I want to make this much money, I want to have this title,” and it’s sort of very linear. But that’s not how life works. Your career path is going to be shaped much more by the people you meet, the people you work with, people you connect with.

And so, you really just want to get out there and meet a lot of people in the context of work and doing things, so that’s why I love that expression – play in traffic.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Adam Bryant
There is a study about capuchin monkeys. And if your listeners look it up, capuchin monkeys fairness study, and it’s this great video about two monkeys in cages, and they’re fed like a cucumber versus a grape, and it’s sort of how the two monkeys react to getting either the grape or the cucumber. It’s just a powerful reminder of how, as human beings, one of our triggers is fairness. It’s a hilarious video.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Adam Bryant
I love In the Heart of the Sea. It’s a great book about whaling that got made into a movie. I love books about sort of adventure and resilience, and what people do, like, in really tough circumstances. I often go back to that.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Adam Bryant
I’ll probably say my recorders because I’ve done a thousand interviews, so that’s probably my Swiss Army knife. It all starts with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I need to know. Recorders, we’re talking about, like, an external…?

Adam Bryant
Yeah, I’m a lot older than you, Pete. So, I grew up using external recorders.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Well, that’s handy when you’re out and about. Sure.

Adam Bryant
Exactly. I’m dating myself but, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I have one as well, so. And a favorite habit?

Adam Bryant
Probably the best, but maybe not my favorite is just, like, exercising every day, like trying to go out for a run. And, to me, that’s how I kind of stay centered and blow off steam. I will share that I basically listen to the same playlist every time I go for a run. It’s not because I’m listening to the music. It’s I like to have music, but to me it’s just background noise. It’s kind of like a green screen that I can think against. So, I probably just overshared there.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, actually that’s perfect, and I would like to know a couple of the tracks on the playlist.

Adam Bryant
There’s Dave Matthews in there, there’s U2, John Legend. It’s a pretty eclectic mix, I have to say.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they repeat it back to you often?

Adam Bryant
One thing, I’m sure, like an important insight for me, and it goes back to there’s a famous interview question that Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur who’s pretty famous for asking people, which is like, “What do you believe that 95% of the world disagrees with you on?” And I think it’s a great way to sort of getting that creative thinking and stuff.

And I have to say, like it was an important insight for me that I think the world has it completely wrong on in the following way, that the world tends to refer to children as young adults. And I think it’s backwards because I think adults are older children. And I think if we sort of all acknowledge that and recognize that, and that people bring their little red wagon of stuff into work, and we’re all motivated by a lot of the same things that kids are motivated by, like, “You want to go first. That’s not fair. Let me do myself,” all those reactions that kids have, adults have them, too.

So, I think it’s a good sort of unified field theory of understanding human behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Adam Bryant
My personal website is AdamBryantBooks.com, and my firm is The ExCo Group, and our website is ExCoLeadership.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Adam Bryant
I think a huge underrated superpower of leadership is listening. I think most people are not that good at listening, and I think our devices are making it worse. But I just think if you want to be awesome at your job and separate yourself, I think it’s about being a good listener, and it’s a muscle that you can practice all day long in your personal life, your professional life. And, again, if the goal is to set yourself apart, I think being a good listener is one way to do it, plus you’re going to learn a lot more if you’re a good listener.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Adam, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and many good leaps.

Adam Bryant
That’s great. I appreciate it. Thank you, Pete.