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Jan 12
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1119: Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Shares the Seven Rules of Trust

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Jimmy Wales reveals the foundational principles around trust that helped build Wikipedia.

You’ll Learn

  1. How trust helped Jimmy achieve 52X productivity
  2. The common assumptions that erode trust
  3. How our systems encourage mistrust

About Jimmy 

Jimmy Wales is the Cofounder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. Named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, he has been recognized by the World Economic Forum for his contributions to the global public good. He lives with his family in London.

Resources Mentioned

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Jimmy Wales Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jimmy, welcome!

Jimmy Wales
Hello. Nice to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat with you and get some insight into trust. That’s something we’re big into here, so why don’t we start with, could you tell us your story of how Wikipedia came to be? And I know we could do that for hours. So, let’s do the five to 10-ish minute version of that just so we can get situated in context and piggyback off of some things.

Jimmy Wales
So, I had the idea for a free open source, freely licensed encyclopedia, written by volunteers more than two years before starting Wikipedia, and I was very excited to get started. I thought it was such an obvious idea, lots of people would be doing something similar. So, I just got started. I didn’t really know what I was doing.

And went out and hired an editor in chief and we set up a seven-stage review process to get anything published. And, in retrospect, I realize now the entire system that we built just screamed, “We don’t trust you,” because that seven-stage process, you had to send in your CV to prove you were qualified, and then we would take your draft and send it out for review to the most prestigious professors we could find and so forth. We were being more academic than Britannica.

And I realized it wasn’t going to work when I thought, “Well, I could try to write an article about Robert Merton who had just recently won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on option pricing theory.” And in grad school, I had published a paper on option pricing theory, the mathematics of it, and so I knew his work very well.

And when I sat down to write, I had this enormous feeling of writer’s block because it was very intimidating. They were going to take my draft and send it to the most prestigious finance professors they could. I hadn’t been in academia for a few years at that time, so even though I was familiar with his work, it was a very scary thing to contemplate.

And that was when I realized, like, “Oh, this isn’t going to work. Like, it doesn’t feel good. It isn’t fun.” So, one of my employees, Jeremy, came to me and showed me the Wiki, the concept of Wiki, which had been around for several years. So, a Wiki is just a website anyone can edit. And the word Wiki comes from a Hawaiian word wiki-wiki, which means quick. So quick collaboration is the concept.

And so, a Wiki is a website where you can just quickly write and share and so on, which was pretty radical. I mean, these days we have Google Docs and everything else so it doesn’t seem as radical but that wasn’t really a thing back then. And it worked. Within two weeks, we had more work done than we had in almost two years. It was really quick.

Pete Mockaitis
52x, there you go.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, because we had this community that had grown up for two years, and we had the mailing list, and we had spent two years talking about an encyclopedia, talking about how to build it, what it should be like, neutrality, all of the kind of values of Wikipedia. But we had created a system that didn’t trust people and, therefore, didn’t make any progress.

People were very intimidated, it wasn’t very fun, so even though people liked the idea, it didn’t really move forward. But that act of opening up and just saying, “Okay look, everybody just come and write. We’ll figure out as we go along. We’ll need to…” Well, in the early days, I assumed we were going to need to assign someone to be the editor-in-chief of the, I don’t know, the American history section. And I still had a top-down mentality in the early days.

But after a short period of time, it was like, “Oh, that doesn’t seem to be in any way necessary or even useful to have someone like that.” In fact, the community looks after each other and monitors each other, and so on and so forth. So, the whole journey there was really about realizing, like, you can trust people and that’s the way to make progress.

Pete Mockaitis
This is fascinating stuff and, boy, from seven stages of approval to seven rules of trust, that’s kind of a fun little parallelism there.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, the other day, I never thought of this, somebody the other day said to me, “Oh, so the first system was like the seven rules of mistrust.” I said, “Oh, yeah, I didn’t think of it that way, but that’s actually quite good.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so your book is called The Seven Rules of Trust. I’d love to hear, any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries you’ve made about human beings and trust along your journey or in putting together this book?

Jimmy Wales
I think there’s a lot really. I think one of the keys is, I think, it’s rule four in the book, is give trust to get trust, that by being trusting, then people will trust you. And I think that’s a little counterintuitive or a little surprising to people, although it actually isn’t, I think, once you really think about it.

If you think about how you conduct yourself in relationships and things like that, if you approach someone and you trust them and you make it clear that you’re trusting them, they’re very likely to reciprocate because humans are like that. People are very pro-social and they like that kind of environment.

So, in a workplace, the kind of manager who trusts the employees to get the work done tends to be rewarded with employees who are trustworthy and who work to get the work done because they’re like, they appreciate that. And if you approach the employees with a really, like, an aggressive sense of mistrust, well, they’re probably just going to work to rule at best. They’re not going to trust you in return. They’re going to say, “This person is really being a jerk.”

You see these stories from time to time, sort of post-pandemic stories about people working from home, and then some kind of software installed on your work computer to monitor whether you’re at your keyboard or not. And I’m like, “Man, quit that job. That is so toxic. Like, that’s completely absurd.”

And, actually, if you want employees to give it their best, the best way to get that out of people is to say, “Yeah, you’re to work from home? You know, we’ve got a lot of work to get done. That’s the important thing. Organize your day as you see fit. If you’re away from your computer, give me some time back later. Let’s be flexible. Let’s be trusting of each other.”

And I think people really respond well to that. And they respond the opposite way when you show them mistrust.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that really does resonate. And I’ve had that in my own experience. I heard a fun turn of a phrase. I believe it’s a malicious obedience or malicious compliance.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, malicious compliance. Yes, I’ve heard that.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, you know, you say they work to the rules, like, “Oh, this is a rule, huh? Okay. Well, I’m annoyed and irritated with you, and this is the rule. And I know this is going to cause a little bit of trouble, but I kind of like that. I’m taking some gleeful delight in obeying the rule but causing a little bit of trouble, like, ‘Well, I’m just doing what I was supposed to.’” And, yeah, that’s not what we’re going for.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, totally. Totally. And so, it’s a healthier way to live, among other things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you mentioned one of the rules. I’d love it if we could, in fact, have perhaps a one-ish minute overview of each of the rules and then we’ll dig in a little bit from there.

Jimmy Wales
Sure. Well, I mean, I don’t necessarily have them all memorized in order, but I can do my best, or maybe we just start digging in.

Pete Mockaitis
I have your table of contents up.

Jimmy Wales
Oh, that’s cheating, you know. So, I’d say the first rule, “Make it personal.” And so, the idea here is that trust is won and lost in an individual human mind. And so, there’s a lot of different things I mean by that, but in particular, it’s about empathy, like thinking about that other person, thinking about, “What do they need from me in this situation? What will help them to trust me that I’m going to do the things I say I’m going to do?”

And it’s an encouragement that we maybe not think too much about statistical measures and playing the numbers. Certainly, because I come from the consumer internet world, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on A-B testing. You A-B test and you see, “Which of these two patterns gets us a higher checkout rate at the end of the visit to the website?”

Okay, that’s valid. I’m not saying don’t use A-B testing. A-B testing is super valid. But layered on top of that, you also have to say, “But how is somebody going to feel when they get through this? Are they going to feel like this is a great relationship, like we’re a good company to do businesses with? Or, are they going to feel like, ‘Oh, my god, this is a nightmare,’” even if you somehow got them to the checkout.

And where you really see this a lot of times is when you try to unsubscribe from something, there are so many dark patterns there, which I’m sure if all you do is A-B testing, you say, “Yeah, look, if we do it this way, make it clear, obvious, honest, simple, for people to say cancel their subscription, then when people start down that path, even though we give them some reasons along the way and we offer them a discount, we make it easy and 40% of them still quit.”

“If we send them in an endless loop and then force them to call us on a phone later, then only 3% quit.” And you think, “Oh, great, well, we’re going to do the difficult way.” No, you’ve just undermined trust. You’ve just undermined any chance of ever getting that customer back. You’ve undermined your reputation, the word of mouth. I mean, it’s just super toxic.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, they’ll hop on Reddit, trash you.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, people go crazy about that kind of stuff. I mean, I personally just can’t stand it, and I sort of have my own internal blacklist of companies I’m never going to deal with again. And so, that’s the kind of thing where, you know, don’t just look at the numbers. Like, make it personal. Make it personal. So, be positive about people, so assume good faith is a classic Wikipedia rule.

I’ve talked about this a little bit already, that under rule four be trusting but here, you know, it’s like it’s a good bet if you meet somebody, and whatever they’re doing, they’re probably a decent person. If you meet a thousand people, 990 of them are going to be fantastic people. Probably nine of them are going to be annoying, but they’re still not malicious. They’re just like annoying people. And then maybe one in a thousand is somehow actually being malicious.

And so, it’s a very small number of people. And so, being positive about people and designing whatever your process is or your life or whatever around that premise of saying, “Oh, look, I’m just going to assume most people are going to be good. They’re going to do the right thing,” that actually works really, really well. And then we talk in rule four about the reciprocity piece of that. One of the reasons it works really well is because people like to reciprocate that.

Rule three, create a clear purpose. That one’s fantastic. So, this, really, when people say, “What do you think is the one rule of trust that has been really instrumental to the success of Wikipedia?” And I would say it’s this. Wikipedia, the goal of Wikipedia is a free, neutral, high-quality encyclopedia, and that’s what we’re here to do, and that defines everything about everything that we do.”

And what does that mean? It means when we come to decisions, we’ve got a North Star, something to guide us, we know what it is that we’re trying to do, we have a good purpose, and we’re able to follow that purpose. And it gives everybody an organizing theme. And a lot of times, people don’t sense that kind of clear purpose. And they’re not really sure what the point is of what they’re doing.

And, frankly, this is, I believe, one of the problems with a lot of social media is because the company’s purpose is, frankly, it’s just show as many ads as possible and get as many clicks on ads. And if that’s their core purpose, they lose sight of a lot of things about what users really want to need out of a social media platform. And they, instead, optimize for addiction, outrage, clickbait, etc., which, as we know, is pretty toxic and not very healthy.

And so, having that clear, good purpose is really important for success. Skipping four, because we did four already, rule five, I think this chapter is titled something like, “Your Mother Was Right,” and this is about be civil. Be nice, be kind to other people. Disagree respectfully. You focus on ideas. No personal attacks, is one of the core rules of Wikipedia. It’s just useless. It violates our purpose, which is to write an encyclopedia. And it isn’t practical.

And, obviously, we see this in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of places, in all kinds of businesses, that being nice to other people is actually a fantastic way to get things done because people are like, “Oh, yeah, this is a nice person. This is great. I’m going to do what I can to further this. It’s a relationship with this person or with this business that I like, and I’m going to cherish that.”

Be independent. So, this is, maintain freedom from undue influence to build credibility. In this case, the Wikipedia reference I would get is we’re not funded by governments, so governments have no influence over what we say and what we do. We aren’t funded by a handful of billionaires or one billionaire. I mean, you can imagine how that might end in tears. We’re funded almost exclusively by the small donors. The average donation of Wikipedia is just over $10. But we do have some…

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve seen your messages, Jimmy.

Jimmy Wales
Oh, yeah, you’ve seen the messages, yeah. And this is why it’s really important. It’s important for our intellectual independence that we have the ability to say, “You can come and offer Wikipedia a million dollars to change an article, and we’re just going to go like, ‘Sorry, that’s not what we do. We’re not desperate with that.’”

And the way it normally happens, it wouldn’t be that blunt or brutal. It would be, if we had one major donor who is funding 80% of our budget all the time, then, wow, you would have to really listen to that one donor, and you would really have to kind of worry about what they think about the content of the articles and things like that, in a way that I think could easily be unhealthy.

As opposed to we have to worry about what the general public thinks, that everybody thinks, and we need to appeal to the widest possible audience so that everybody can go, “You know what, that Wikipedia is a great thing. I love it. I should chip in.” And so, that independence is part of why people trust us.

When you’re reading Wikipedia, you know, for example, that no government can force us to change an article. And they’ve tried. We were banned in Turkey for three years and we fought all the way to the Supreme Court in Turkey and won. Meanwhile, for three years, we were blocked in Turkey and we didn’t give in. And that’s kind of just we’re very principled. We’re very independent in that way. Because for us, that value of independence, that intellectual independence is really core to our whole mission. We have to fight for that.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to comment on that. I think it’s so wise and true that we should take a look at that. And, you know, I don’t think it’s conspiratorial to just assume that when there’s a substantial flow of money from a concentrated source, whether it’s an industry or an individual, that will influence the editorial choices of something.

So, for like TV news, I mean, I’ve noticed a pattern of who tends to advertise a lot on TV news, and I don’t want to, you know, be a tinfoil hat conspiracy person, but I got to imagine that has an impact on what stories they choose to pursue and which ones they don’t. I will tell you, I have, you know, a couple major customers, and when I’m getting pitches, that say, “Oh, hey, we’re going to totally make fun of one of your major customers. Would that be sort of a fun little episode?’

It’s like, “Well, maybe,” but I already don’t want to do that. I mean, I also don’t think it’s valuable, but I will admit, like, my financial influence is impacting what I choose to do, at least a little.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, that financial influence over the content. Now there are ways around that. I used to be on the board of The Guardian newspaper here in the UK, and that’s a really interesting structure because The Guardian is owned by a non-profit trust.

I was on the commercial board, so the operating company that actually runs The Guardian, but the editor-in-chief of the newspaper is hired by the other board, by The Scott Trust, by the non-profit board, and we, you know, the commercial board, had no authority to fire the editor-in-chief or to change any editorial policies.

And so, that was a really strong firewall, backed up by the legal structure, there just wasn’t any way. Now that doesn’t mean that the editor-in-chief completely doesn’t care about the commercial situation. They have to. I mean, newspapers are in dire straits and all of that. But I kind of like that, that sort of independence. And so, when we say be independent, that doesn’t necessarily mean, “Oh, well, anything done for money is bad because it’s all going to be corrupt.” I don’t believe that.

But I do believe that there is that potential, right? Then you do have to think about, “Okay, how do we design this situation so that it’s quite clear that, you know, our…” A typical kind of example, like Google has always been good about maintaining the independence of the search results from the ads. So, you can pay money and get to the top by paying for an ad, and it’s clearly marked as an ad.

Or, I mean, good luck, like the algorithm is the algorithm, and they don’t really, you know, and they keep those teams very separate and they’re quite ideological about that, and I’m glad, and I think they should be. If they started to break down and say, “Well, actually, we’ve decided that in our organic search results, we’re going to start favoring our biggest partners,” I think they would lose a lot of trust, and I think that would be damaging to them in the long run.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well said. So, that’s independence. What’s next?

Jimmy Wales
So, the seventh rule is be transparent, and this one’s kind of obvious. I mean, I think it’s one of the things people first think of when you say what makes an organization more trustworthy. And one of things you say is, “Yeah, transparency. Like, I want to understand how it all works, how are decisions made.”

I’ve been encouraging the news media, and there’s a lot of proposals out there, not just from me, from lots of people, and I’m like pointing at those, and going, “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” which is, when you’re writing a story, don’t just adopt that voice of God, voice of the New York Times, “We’re going to tell you like it is. You can trust us. We’re the New York Times.”

You need to show your work. You need to tell us who you interviewed. You need to tell us all the details of the story. If you’ve got multiple sources, you need to talk about that. If there is a source, I mean, this is my personal pet peeve, and some organizations are better than others about this, it’s like, “Okay, there’s a Supreme Court case, okay, it just came out yesterday.” I’m just making this up, but just hypothetically.

And I’m like, “Ooh,” and I see a headline, like, “Ooh, that sounds like an important Supreme Court decision. I’m really interested in that.” And it’s so annoying, it’s like, “Oh, here’s their interpretation. Ah, this will destroy democracy,” or, “Finally, this decision will save democracy.”

And it’s like, “Yeah, but you didn’t link to it. Like, how do I, you know?” Like, now it’s super irritating. Now, it’s not like they’re hiding it from me. I can then go off and Google and find it myself. But that’s like a little small thing of like, “Hmm, if you really believed your interpretation was accurate, wouldn’t you link straight to it and link straight to the quote that would prove what you’re saying?” And that’s the kind of transparency that I think would help to build trust in news and other types of publications.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I feel the same way in terms of, because in some ways reporting on a news article can be endless. Like, there are so many people you could talk to, so many rocks you could overturn. But when the story is about a document, or a book, a Supreme Court decision, or a court ruling elsewhere, it feels to me, and maybe it’s just too high a standard, that the bare minimum is, “Did you read the thing that you’re reporting about?” because that’s really kind of finite and approachable, assuming it’s not thousands of pages and all that.

So, yes, I’m with you in showing the work. And I’d also love to get your take on, in some ways, some of these things feel commonsensical, although not always common practice for sure, are there any kind of hidden, mysterious, easily overlooked ways you think that professionals are losing trust, they’re just squandering it, and they don’t even know it?

Jimmy Wales
I think one of the things that we know, just looking at the data, is that there has been a significant decline in trust across most of the world, decline in trust in journalism, politics, business, to some extent to trust in each other, and that this is having some negative impact in society.

One of the examples that we talk about in the book, the question of masks in the pandemic. And, basically, we quote health authorities very early when the pandemic, when the news first started to break, and they basically said, “Don’t bother with masks. Please don’t rush out and buy a lot of masks.”

They gave two reasons. One, they really need it in the hospitals, and, two, they don’t really do any good for you at home anyway. But then, a month later, everybody’s like, “It’s mandatory. You must wear a mask every time you’re outside,” right? And so, suddenly, “When you go out of your house and you’re in any public place, you must wear a mask.”

Well, like that flip-flop caused a lot of people to lose trust. And, in fact, one of the reasons they first said don’t bother with masks is they didn’t trust the public to follow that first warning. They were afraid people were going to panic and buy up all the masks, there’d be a mask shortage in hospitals. And it’s like, no, trust the public, say, “Actually masks are effective if worn properly, etc.”

And at the end of the day, where I get to on masks is like a proper N95 mask, worn properly, by a professional in a hospital setting, they are effective at reducing transmission. I live in London and the number of people who are riding the Tube in London, very crowded, with their masks half-ass on, half-ass off, “Hey, was that really helping? I’m not so sure.”

And that’s what the data seems to suggest, it’s like, “Yeah, good strong effect in hospitals, less so elsewhere.” So, where do you get to on that? That’s a complicated question. But my point here is really about that failure to trust the public resulted in a loss of trust. And I think an example of this, you could also look at a lot of environmentalists who have lost trust by over-hyping concerns.

They don’t trust that the public will believe that there is a problem unless they make it sound worse than it actually is. And then when that’s found out, I remember once there were some emails leaked that were quite, it’s like, “Oh, that’s really awkward. Like, you’re really talking about how to make a scaremongering story, and you’re a scientist. Like, you’re not trusting the public to be straight with them.”

And if you believe, and I think they do believe and I think they’re probably right, like if you’re really straight about climate change, it’s a serious issue and we need to really do something about it. And the best way to convince people of that is not to over-egg the case and create scare stories but to be straight, and say, “Well, look, here’s the problem, here are some mitigations, here’s the most likely scenario, here are some worse scenarios, here are some better scenarios.”

Because I think people just do respond to that and they then trust the scientists. And I think if people feel like, “Oh, the scientists have become politicized,” then they’re less trusting.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m thinking about just the notion of, as humans, we like certainty and we like our experts, our authorities to just say with clarity and confidence, “This is the thing.” Like, “Oh, okay, that guy really seems confident. I guess I should follow that.” And yet, like, the science suggests that there’s very little relationship between the confidence with which someone asserts something and the truthiness of that something.

And yet, if someone’s coming out, it’s like, “Well, you know what, here’s what we know. Here’s what we don’t know. Most likely it’s probably like that.” That nuanced balanced, hear the uncertain elements, kind of a presentation, over time I’ve come to appreciate that person more. It’s like, “Okay, I feel like it’s more likely they’re telling me the truth. And so, I should latch onto that.” But it seems that the masses go like, “Oh, this guy doesn’t know Jack. Let’s go to someone else who has more confidence.”

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, but you know what, I think the evidence shows the opposite. I think the evidence shows that the mass public doesn’t trust people just because they’re overconfident. And, in fact, that, oftentimes, they see right through it and they see this is a blowhard who’s blowing smoke. And sometimes they don’t care because they don’t trust anybody.

But I think it’s sort of, like, you can get some headway in the short run maybe by doing that, but you’ll be found out pretty quickly because people, I mean, like I trust, like people aren’t stupid, people can see, like, “Oh, actually, you made these claims, but they seem overstated to me. And then I looked into it for five minutes and I’m like, yeah, overstated. And now I don’t trust you.” So, it’s an interesting thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe that gets back to that dark pattern example, in terms of, yeah, that might get you the short-term results of the thing, like, you don’t cancel your subscription or you go, “Wow, check out this YouTuber. Let me forward and share their hot take. They’re fired up.” And then afterwards, you go, “Ooh, actually, oops. Hmm, maybe not so much that person.”

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, like one of my favorite examples of this is Netflix in the olden days, when Netflix was all about sending you DVDs in the mail. And I think everybody before that, and I’m showing how old I am, but it was a super toxic issue. You go to Blockbuster and then you would return your movie late, and you’ll get these massive penalties.

And, heaven forbid, like the worst thing that could happen to you is you’re cleaning your apartment, and under the sofa, you find, “Oh, yikes here’s a blockbuster tape. How long has that been under there?” And now you’ve got like, basically, the fine is so high, you’ve just bought the tape. It’s $80 or something, and you’re like, “Oh, my God, this is terrible.”

And then when I first heard about Netflix, I’m like, “Oh, that’s going to make me nervous, having three out and you’ve got to send them back, and what if I lose one?” “You can keep it as long as you want it.” “Oh, there’s no late fees?” “Yeah, no, just take three, you can have three. When you send one back, you can get another one.” “What if I lose it?” “Just tell us and we’ll send you another one. Like, that’s it. Nothing bad’s going to happen. Like, we trust you that you’re not scamming us.”

Obviously, if you report, I don’t know what their limit was, but probably after about five lost DVDs, they’re going to go, “You know what, actually, you’re losing too many, so we’re going to cut you off.” But broadly, they were just like, “Yeah, we think most people are going to be honest. Nobody likes a late fee. Have three out as long as you want. And if you lose one, just let us know and we’ll replace it. No problem.”

Wow, like I feel seen, I feel trusted. And that was a big part of why they succeeded, even though sort of ordering DVDs by mail was less convenient than sort of popping by Blockbuster on the corner.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, it is. It is a good feeling. And I think that, in a way, that’s one of the trickiest potential root causes of this stuff is that there are some things that are very easy to measure, like the behavior that I desire. And then there are other things that are much harder to measure, “How much folks are trusting us and digging our vibe as a brand, as a professional?”

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, definitely.

Pete Mockaitis
And the former is easy to measure, the latter is hard to measure, and so we may optimize for the former at our own expense.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, and that’s exactly it. So, there’s a very famous management research paper that, everybody learns about in grad school, on the folly of rewarding A while hoping for B. And one of the reasons people reward A while hoping for B is that A is easy to measure. And so, then you reward A, but frankly, then everybody starts to care about A, because that’s what they’re going to care for.

And if A can come at the expense of B, fine, that’s what people will do, because you’ve signaled very strongly. And so, sometimes, you’ve got to have a little more discretion and a little more sort of judgment around these things, which only really works if you’ve got a culture of trust, which is to say, your bonus as a salesperson.

“Your bonus is going to be based on sales, but also this kind of indefinable thing of your customers, how happy are they, are you building the right relationships. Maybe you haven’t closed as many deals as somebody else, but you’ve built relationships, so a part of your bonus is going to be, like, you’re building the base for future.” Okay, how do you judge that?

Well, you’re going to have to trust, and we have to have a culture of trust where I’m trusting you to do all right things, and we’re going to succeed together more if that’s our attitude, if that’s our team attitude of like, “Okay, yeah, of course, we’re a sales team, we got to make the sales, we got to make the numbers, but we’re not overly obsessed with the numbers at the expense of thinking about how do we build the broader growth of our customer base and things like that, even if we’re doing some activities that aren’t going to result in sales this quarter.”

Pete Mockaitis
And this reminds me that my first home purchase was through a Redfin agent, and he informed me that a substantial piece of their compensation is all about the reviews, like what we have to say about the agent. Whereas, if you think about real estate, it’s all about, “Hey, how many deals can be closed and at what price, and get the percentage and move, move, move?” And so, it was a different game. And, sure enough, I was having a different experience in terms of, “Wow, this guy, Michael Linden.”

Jimmy Wales
That’s great. I didn’t know about that. I’m going to read up on that. That’s quite interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
“Michael Linden is really over-delivering. He gave me a ride in the rain one time. This guy rocks.” And that was a pretty cool first-time experience. Well, Jimmy, we’re coming up on time. Tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear, rapid fire, about some of your favorite things?

Jimmy Wales
I know, I mean, it’s an exciting time. I’ve been super busy promoting the book, and I’d appreciate it if anybody thinks it sounds interesting, if you take a look. And it’s going to be a fun year for me because we’ve sold the book in 20 languages. So, I’m planning to travel all over the world this year, talking to people about the book. So, yeah, great.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you share a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Jimmy Wales
I think my favorite one from the book, and it just comes to mind because I nearly talked about it already, is research that showed that when newspapers endorse political candidates, it not only reduces trust with the people who disagree with the endorsement, they also lose trust among people who agree with the endorsement because now they feel like maybe the paper is always just shilling for their candidate. And I thought that was super interesting. Actually, one of the more optimistic things is like, “Oh, yeah, people are pretty sharp.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jimmy Wales
One of the books that was really transformative, and I’m thinking because this is How to be Awesome at Your Job, Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That’s probably why I settled on “The Seven Rules of Trust,” I just like the seven thing.

But that book really taught me a lot and had a big impact on me at a point in my career when I needed to be effective, highly effective. So, I love that book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Jimmy Wales
My favorite tool right now is local LLMs, which I’m using for all kinds of fun projects and experiments and things like that, so, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so intriguing and we could have a whole other episode about this. But, if I may, can you tell me what is a local model you’re digging and a piece of hardware that folks would need if they’re going to embark down this route?

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, so I’m digging GPT OSS 120B.

Pete Mockaitis
Classic.

Jimmy Wales
So, this is the latest model, free model released by OpenAI, which has gotten a lot of criticism for not releasing very much. And I bought the most expensive laptop I ever even thought of buying in my life, which is the M4 Max MacBook with 128 Gig of RAM, which can run that model quite well. It’s fast and it runs it really well, and it’s quite a smart model.

I’d say just one step behind, not a half step, a full step behind the cutting edge models in the cloud. But it’s really impressive what you can do on a local computer. And I actually think, looking forward for the next several years, there’s going to be an enormous growth and demand for compute on local computers because it’s so possible to do such amazing things that everybody’s going to want it. So, I think that’s a big thing that’s going to happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear quoted back to you often?

Jimmy Wales
My signature quote, I guess, is, imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That one puts a spark in people’s eye because they’re like, “Yeah, that’s what the internet should be about. Give everybody access to free knowledge. That’s fantastic.” And obviously that’s the goal of Wikipedia.

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

Jimmy Wales
So, I’ve got a little pilot project called Trust Cafe, TrustCafe.io. It’s a social network, but it’s very much a work in progress. I’ve just got a couple of developers working on it, a small community. I haven’t really promoted it that much. I mention it from time to time, and I’m on there. You can come and say hi to me.

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

Jimmy Wales
I would say, take a trust inventory. So, think about all the different aspects of your work life, your home life, all of that. Think about, “What are the things that I could do to help people trust me? And what are the things I can do to encourage other people to be trustworthy?” because I think it will pay huge dividends.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jimmy, thank you.

Jimmy Wales
Great. Thank you.

Dec 18
0

2025 GREATS: 1038: Getting What You Need from Your Boss through Managing Up with Melody Wilding

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Melody Wilding breaks down the crucial conversations to have with your boss to improve your work life.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to differentiate yourself with one conversation
  2. How to build your pushback power
  3. The easiest way to improve your visibility

About Melody

Melody Wilding is a professor of human behavior at Hunter College and author of Managing Up. She was recently named one of Insider’s “most innovative career coaches.” Her background as a therapist and emotions researcher informs her unique approach, weaving evidence-based neuroscience and psychology with professional development. Her previous book is Trust Yourself.

Resources Mentioned

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Melody Wilding Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Melody, welcome back.

Melody Wilding
Thanks for having me again. So great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it is great to be chatting with you from the fine state of New Jersey, which we discussed is lovely.

Melody Wilding
That’s right. Beautiful state, very misunderstood, but we love our Jersey.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, let’s talk about managing up. We haven’t discussed this issue in quite some time and I think it is so vitally important. Can you share with us maybe an extra surprising or counterintuitive discovery you’ve made as you researched this managing up stuff?

Melody Wilding
Well, I think, just like New Jersey, managing up is very misunderstood, and even when I began writing the book, I was resistant to the idea of calling it managing up and even zeroing in on that concept. I wanted to talk more about influence and persuasion, how do you build respect and recognition. And my publisher had to keep nudging me that, “Yeah, what you’re talking about is the skill set of managing up.”

And I think my resistance came, and what I’ve heard from many other people, is from these misconceptions we have. These old images of managing up from the ‘80s, the ‘90s, the person being the suck-up and running around with their boss’s coffee order. And who wants to do that? No one wants to compromise who they are or feel like they’re ingratiating themselves to the people around them. So, it’s no wonder why we resist this concept.

But what I know now, having done this work and researched this subject is that managing up is not something you do for your boss’s benefit at all. It’s really something you do for yourself to make your own work life, your own career, much easier, less stressful and on your own terms.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I dig that a lot. And while we’re talking about misconceptions, let’s clear them up, I recall, I think I was reading a piece by, Paul Graham, the Y Combinator guy, made a statement along the lines of “Professional managers are amongst the finest liars there are.” And folks are like, “Whoa, that’s some strong language. What do you mean?”

He’s like, “Ah, perhaps I should say, they are adept at managing up,” which sort of imply, well, more than imply, that managing up involves telling the folks above you a little bit of what they want to hear, and massaging their perceptions and expectations, and it really made it sound quite like it’s the art of deception in the professional, acceptable way that we can courteously do so in proper modern times,” Melody. So, have you picked up on those perceptions and how do you address that?

Melody Wilding
I think, again, that’s the older school way of thinking about it. And what I would argue is it’s less about massaging and contorting yourself to someone else’s perceptions and more about tweaking, or in the book I call it flexing, your approach so that your message is actually getting through to the people who need to hear it the most.

That may mean you do need to tweak how you present something, or the type of language you use so that it’s more resonant with the other person, but I don’t think, wholesale, it means that you have to change who you are or what you’re trying to say, because this book is really all about, “How do you have the tough conversations with your manager? How do you push back on extra work or give them tough feedback up the chain of command?”

That’s what managing up really is. It’s having those difficult conversations, sometimes having the courage to say what needs to be said, but doing so in a tactful diplomatic manner that actually earns you trust instead of just turning into a professional people-pleaser.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a nice story that inspires or brings this together in terms of what’s really at stake if we master this skillset?

Melody Wilding
Yes, I think the book actually starts with one of my personal stories which was a time I failed to manage up, and I think it’s a lesson in multiple ways. So, before I went full-time into my current business, I was working at a health care company, and I loved that job. I loved my boss. What I didn’t realize at the time that I saw in hindsight was that I had been hired to work on really a pet project of my managers that was kind of outside of the rest of the company’s scope, and my manager had been given a bit of budget and, unbeknownst to me, some timeline to see if this was viable or not.

And so, that was my first fail, was really not getting on the same page with my manager about “What was the context that this project came up in? What are the expectations? Who else needs to be bought in and on board with this?” And long story short, let’s flash forward, I ended up being laid off. My role was eliminated, and it felt like a shock to me, and it shouldn’t have.

And that is what’s at stake. That’s a very extreme example of what happens when you don’t manage up well, but I was really sideswiped because I hadn’t aligned with my manager. I didn’t have other advocates in the organization who were willing to fight for me and keep me because managing up has to go beyond your boss.

Do not make your manager your single point of failure. You might not get along with them very well despite all of your efforts. Who is leading you may change on a moment’s notice, so you need to make sure you have those other allies as well. And all of that was a very cautionary tale, but I think that’s what’s at stake, whether, again, in my case, it was extreme. I lost my role.

But every day, people feel like they’re overlooked for promotions and opportunities, it may go to someone else who seems less experienced, or we get into these minor frustrations that we end up taking personally, “You know, why does my boss cut me off? They never even allow me to hear my idea out,” or, “Why are they micromanaging me and on top of me about everything?” And so much of this can be solved by learning some key skills.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, tell us, you lay out 10 key conversations for managing up well, which I love. And so, we’ve got alignment, styles, ownership, boundaries, feedback, networking, visibility, advancement, money, and quitting. So, I really dig this because I just love a framework and a set of distinctions and a delineation of categories that just helps make sense of the whole universe of managing up conversations. It feels like, “Yeah, that’s a pretty fine job of summing them up.”

So, I suppose I’m curious, do you have a gauge for what percent of folks ever actually proactively say, “Hey, I’d like to have a conversation about some of the fundamental ways we work and communicate with each other, and what would be best for both of us”? In a way, that almost seems like among the most foundational things one might do in the world of managing up. Is that fair? And how often is that happening?

Melody Wilding
It’s definitely fair. It’s very true, that it is so fundamental that, I think, we sometimes assume it. We assume that this has happened and we overlook it because of that. So, to your point, I would say maybe 10% of people are having those types of explicit conversations about how they work together with their manager, and that is a huge, huge opportunity.

Because if you are in that small minority of people who are doing this, you’re not only going to stand out as someone who is thoughtful, conscientious, you’re driven, you’re taking initiative, but you’re going to have intel and build rapport and trust much more quickly than anyone else.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. I agree, and I’ve experienced it on both sides of the table. Because it’s rare, it feels very special, like, “Oh, wow, this person, I like them. They’re on top of things.” And I think it’s hard for that to go poorly. Maybe if you ask at just like the worst possible time, like, “Hey, that’s like the definition of a non-urgent situation and we’re in the midst of something on fire right now.” So, maybe that that’s one way it could go poorly. But tell us your take on that in terms of to what extent do managers welcome these discussions because I think there’s a bit of reluctance on the part of some folks to initiate?

Melody Wilding
There definitely is, yeah. And when I have this conversation with people, in the book, we’re talking about really the styles conversation, and that’s when we talk about how, “How do we work together? How do we communicate? What are your preferences? What are mine?” And going back to what I said a moment ago, when you understand the context of who your boss is, and also what your defaults are, you stop taking things so personally because you understand, “Oh, this is their style. This is their way of approaching and processing information.”

“And so, if they send a period instead of an exclamation point, I don’t need to make that mean that I’m getting fired, or they hate me, or they’re against me and they favorite somebody else.” We can be much more diplomatic and make those tweaks to how we communicate.

And in my experience, people are reluctant, yes, to bring this up, but when they do, their manager is overjoyed. And, of course, you need to bring this up in a tactful way. So, what I suggest is that you present it to your boss and say something along the lines where you show why this is in their benefit, to say, “I’m really committed to us being able to reach our goals together this year.”

Or, “I want to make sure that you can get the best performance out of me possible, that our work flows more smoothly, whatever it is. And to get there, what I would love to do is understand a bit more about how you work and how I can communicate with you better to get you the information you need. Does that sound good?”

And you can start by asking certain questions of your manager, whether it’s, “If I have to get certain updates to you, what format is best? Do you want those in Teams, in email? Should I present a slide deck? Do you prefer bullet points or should I do narratives?”

Understanding some of those preferences, when you are asking your manager questions, gives you opportunities to then say, “Great. Thank you so much for sharing that. From my standpoint, here’s what would be helpful. If you have feedback for me, take me aside after a meeting, or if you notice that I’m not being as concise as I could be in a presentation, shoot me a quick message on Teams so I can adjust on the fly.”

All of us have different preferences around that, but it turns it into more of a two-way street where, yes, you’re understanding what your manager wants, but you’re also finding opportunities to assert, or at least put on the table, “Here’s what I would like. Is that something that we can find a middle ground on together?”

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds great, yes. And as you say it, and I’m imagining the scene, that seems pleasant and welcome to hear such things. And I want to dive deep on a couple of these. I don’t think we could do all 10 in our time together, but one with regard to boundaries. I remember when I was reading through this, I recall a conversation I had with my friend, Kelsey. We were catching up at a wedding. It had been a long time.

And she was telling me all of, like, the cool things she was doing with, like, go to an Ironman Triathlon, and this and that. I was like, “Wait a minute. I’m sorry. Don’t you work in consulting?” And she’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “How on earth are you finding the time to have all of these adventures and do all of these things when I recall my days of consulting were so brutal with regard to the hours of the travel and the unexpectedness of things?”

And she was like, “Oh, well, you know, I just kind of talked to my boss and said, ‘Well, hey, here’s what’s going on, here’s the nights I’m not available, and here’s the thing…” She just sort of laid it out in terms of what’s up, in terms of, “I’m going to over-deliver on these key metrics and expectations, and these are the nights I will not be available to be doing things.”

And I was like, “And they went for that?” My mouth dropped, I was like, “You can do that? That’s possible? Even in client services? Wow.” And so, I was struck at just what a managing-up boundary conversation can do for transforming a life into being sustainable and enjoyable in what can be demanding fields.

So, lay it on us, Melody, if we want to establish boundaries but we’re a little scared and we think that we might misstep, or seem like we’re not a team player, or we’re lazy, or we’re not really committed, or any of these other negative associations we fear, how do we play the boundary-setting conversation game?

Melody Wilding
Well, that’s the tension with it, right? We need to protect our well-being, but we also don’t want to look like a slacker, so we have to find that balance there. And the thing with the boundaries-conversation is that “no” may be a complete sentence in many areas of life, but at work it doesn’t go over so well if you just say, “No, I’m not going to do that,” or “I don’t want to do that,” right? It’s going to hurt your reputation for you to say that so you need to be more thoughtful about how you approach it.

And what I think is so telling about what your friend did is it sounds like she was assessing, what I call in the book, your pushback power. And your pushback power is the invisible leverage you do or don’t have to push back, to say no. And we all fall somewhere on the spectrum, higher to lower. Your pushback power is higher if you have more positional authority.

If you’re more seasoned, tenured in your career, you have more credibility behind you, you are a high performer, or you offer a very specialized skillset that people may be more willing to make accommodations for because it could be hard to replace you. And even things like the strength of your relationship with your boss, how you build trust and rapport, your boss’s values, the state of the organization.

If the team is in free fall, in crisis, it’s going to be harder to say, “I can’t pitch in this weekend,” or, “I can’t take on more of this project for a colleague who just left,” versus if you’re in a time of stability, it might be a little more receptive to that. So, taking into account that pushback power allows you to gauge “How directly or assertively can I say no? And how frequently can I say no?”

And it sounds like your friend did that with her manager. Because she was higher in pushback power, she was able to say, “I have these commitments, and so can we find a solution to work my workload around these commitments that I have?”

Now, for those of us that may be medium to lower in pushback power, there’s a number of different things you can do. One of my favorite approaches that I talk about is called the trade-off approach, and this is great because it allows you to set up binary options. So, you may say, “Okay, thank you for sharing that, you know, Y has come down as an important priority from the leadership team. A few weeks ago, we had talked about that you wanted me to focus on X.”

“And so, if X is truly still a priority, how would you like me to reprioritize to make room for Y? Or what would you like me to slow down on? What would you like us to delegate or temporarily deprioritize in order to make that possible?” And the beauty of this is that you are setting the parameters. You are setting the decision options, subtly saying, “Both of these cannot happen at the same time. Which one would you like to choose?”

But ultimately, you’re approaching it more as a problem-solving conversation instead of just dumping a problem back in your boss’s lap to say, “I don’t know. I can’t do it, so figure out someone else to get it done.” You’re approaching it more as a collaboration, which that person will appreciate, and the ultimate authority is back in their hands.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s really handy because I think without the conversation, we can just assume, “Oh, I have to continue doing all the things we’ve ever discussed, as well as this new thing, and that’s just that,” and that is a dangerous, untenable place to live. So that’s handy with regard to the conversation. I’m curious, when it comes to increasing our pushback power over time, let’s discuss.

So, one of the levers is just the strength and quality of our relationship. Another is how special and wonderful and high-performing we are. Any others and what are the quickest, easiest ways to boost these so that we are growing in pushback power over time?

Melody Wilding
Well, let’s talk about the performance piece and building rapport and trust with your manager. There’s a conversation that comes before boundaries, and that’s called the ownership conversation. And that’s important here because the ownership conversation is all about looking for where can you take initiative of projects or problems you want to solve and run with, but by doing that really add value or solve an issue that’s a pain point for your manager, your team, the organization.

And when you do that, you build, you add to the pushback power you have because you’ve enhanced your value, you’ve shown you’re a problem solver, and that’s really valuable. So, the ownership conversation is all about “How do I not only spot those opportunities, but capitalize on them in a way that’s not going to step on the toes of other people around us?” Because that would backfire, of course.

And a lot of it comes down to choosing the right problem to start. And so, I talk about how there’s five worthwhile areas to look at. And a few of those may be bottlenecks. So, are there inefficiencies or broken processes, for example, that are slowing everyone down, including you, that if solved would make everybody’s lives much less stressful and easier?

Neglected needs is also a great place to look. What are the topics or agenda items that keep going to the bottom of the pile or keep rolling over month to month, quarter to quarter, that no one seems to have the time to get around to, but says, “Wouldn’t it be great? Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that? Or we really need to get to that”? Could you be the one to carry that torch forward?

And another one that I think can be easier to spot is feedback patterns. What are you hearing again and again from fellow team members, clients, your vendors, that if you took action on to make better, would add value to everyone else?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right. Well, could you give us a story of this ownership in action? Because I think you’re really keying in on something in terms of differentiating and growing a career, because it’s quite possible to go years at a time in reactive mode of doing whatever somebody asks for, or seems to be perilously on fire.

It’s hard to be distinctive in such a place, as opposed to, with ownership, it’s like, “Oh, you know, that’s a fantastic result. Yeah, that was, really, I’m the person behind that.” That’s hugely awesome. So, could you give us a story about ownership in action?

Melody Wilding
Sure, I have two that come to mind, if that’s okay. So, the first one is, I had a client about a year ago, who, his organization was acquiring a new one and he worked on the legal side of this. And so, because of that, when they acquired this new organization, all of his colleagues were running in the direction of all of the new opportunities that were created by this acquisition and trying to capitalize on that, chasing shiny objects, everyone was trying to meet with the three key leaders.

And what he saw was that that change actually created this vacuum where he could step in, and that no one was tackling, there was a neglected need, in other words, with due diligence matters of closing everything that had to do with that transaction, you know, wrapping up all of the contracts, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s to make sure the merger was complete.

And so, he said, “You know what? I’m actually going to zig while everybody else is zagging.” And he carved out that niche for himself as being the person who was buttoning up the deal, so to speak, which gave him a lot of exposure to not only he became a close confidant to his manager, but also his skip level, his boss’s boss, and some other key C-suite leaders in the organization who really cared about this going correctly, and who knew, “We have to get these compliance matters correct.”

And for him, that allowed him to build those relationships. He was seen as more of a partner to those people. And flash forward about a year later, he was actually promoted to partner because of that work that played a huge instrumental role. So, that’s one example that comes to mind of looking for opportunities that other people may be missing.

And then the other quick story I’ll share has to do with another client who, after the pandemic, was really interested in getting mental health days going for the organization, making sure that the team had time for development and rest, and weren’t just go, go, go, go, go all the time. And why this was ownership is because she had to create buy-in for this idea. This wasn’t something that others had thought of. This was something she was innovating from the ground up and had to push through.

And so, a couple things that she did really excellently was she came with proposals in hand, and so when she would have meetings with some of the key stakeholders and decision makers, she would come with a one-pager with talking points that they could use, just ready-made. She made their job easy, took the cognitive load off of them, and she proposed small steps.

So, in the book, I talk about this as the foot-in-the-door technique in psychology, where you propose, whether it’s a pilot project or a test or rolling something out to just a small sample. The people around you want to mitigate risk and potential exposure or failure. So, if you could say, “Let’s start with a mental health day and then we can actually roll that out to have these once a quarter and have more events around this.”

She just started with, “Let’s have this one day,” and that was easier for people to get on board with. And, eventually, she was successful in making it something bigger but I thought that was a great example of planting seeds, taking it step by step, and getting small agreements that lead to bigger ones.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really cool thing to take ownership of because, well, one, that’s just great for everybody, and two, boy, I sure would like that person in my organization, it’s like, “Oh, this is the person who got us all the mental health days. I want to do them favors whenever possible.”

Melody Wilding
Yes, great point. And that speaks to this idea of looking for triple wins. Is something going to be a win for you in terms of you’ll enjoy the work, it will add to your own credibility? Is it a win for your manager? Will it make them look good or advance their priorities? And, third, is it a win for the team or your organization as a whole?

Like you said, your colleagues are certainly going to love you, but, you know, at the end of the day, for everyone’s productivity, sustainability in their roles and long term the results of the organization, it was huge from that respect, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us, within these 10 key conversations, could we pick perhaps one or two that seem to be super transformative and yet pretty easy to do? Any of your favorite tips here?

Melody Wilding
Let’s talk about visibility, if that’s good with you. Yeah, I think this is one that people know they need to do, but don’t quite know how to approach because it feels daunting. It feels daunting to feel like, “Ugh, I spend so much time working. Now you’re telling me I have to advertise that work as well and I have to bring more attention to it?”

And in some ways, yes, because we can expect our work to speak for itself. It’s not going to do that. We need to be the advocate for it. But there are some pretty simple, easy ways to build visibility into just the day-to-day of how you work instead of making it extra effort, and I think that’s the win-win. One way you can do this is by restructuring your one-on-ones.

So, I highly recommend that you start all of your one-on-ones with your manager with wins. And you can call it wins, you can call it progress or milestones or achievements, whatever language feels best to you, but the point of that is to not just dive into status updates of, “Oh, here’s where this project is. Here’s where this is. This is what’s coming up.”

But to more so utilize that time to show your manager, “Yes, here’s what we’ve done, but here’s what it means. Here’s the outcome, the results. Here’s also visibility into how I thought about solving a problem, the considerations that I made, or the people I talked to.” And all of that shows them, yes, you are actually getting things done. It gives them more insight into you operating at a more strategic, perhaps even higher level. And it also gives them information that they need to run up their own chain of command.

And so, it’s not really self-promotion to just puff yourself up. We really need to think about it more as, “I’m giving my boss the data they need to advocate for me, to advocate for the rest of the team, to have resources, opportunities, decision-making power at higher levels.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s excellent. And often, when we take ourselves out of the equation, there’s less self-consciousness, and it’s like, “Oh, this is this is handy. Like, if I were leading this organization, I would probably want to know about the skills, this asset, this resource, this person has in the mix to be deployed when useful and necessary. Otherwise, everyone just misses out.” And how about advancement?

Melody Wilding
Advancement, yes. And thank you for that great segue because visibility and advancement go hand in hand, right? And you can start to see how these conversations build on each other, intersect, because once people know more about what you’re achieving and know more about you, well, then you’re in a position to do bigger things.

And why I say that term “do bigger things” is because advancement doesn’t always have to be a promotion. It can be that you want to grow your scope, or the budget that you oversee, you want to go from two to four people on your team, or you want to work on a stretch project, or something that’s completely different from your current skillset.

For example, right now I have a lot of clients who are asking for stretch projects in AI, because that’s really important to them to learn and they know it will be a value-add to the organization. So, think more broadly about what advancement could mean, but also think about starting much earlier than you think you might need to.

Because I see way too many people get caught in the performance review paradox where they keep their head down, they think they’re sending signals to their manager about what they want and where they want to go, only for their performance review to arrive and no promotion, no salary increases, no being named to that committee. It seems to pass them by.

And that’s often because we either haven’t been explicit enough about what we want or we’ve waited too long to bring that conversation up, and your manager has already had to allocate headcount or resources or make those decisions. They were made months ago. So, this may mean starting three to six months in advance to plant those seeds.

Let’s say you did hit a big milestone. You may say, “This was such a valuable experience. I really loved getting to interact with these clients or that stakeholder or use this skill. I would love to do more of that. Do you think there’s an opportunity in the coming months?”

And so, you start to get that out there. You may even have more of a formal conversation with your manager to say, “In the next year, I would love to double the size of my team,” or, “I would love to move from manager to director level. What would you need to see to be comfortable with that change?”

And that allows you to surface objections because your manager may say, “Well, you’re not ready for that,” or, “We need to have these other people on this committee bought into this, so I need to rope other people in.” And it allows you to contract so that you can understand, “All right, by June, you need to see this. By December, you need to see that.”

And you can work against that and have follow-ups to say, “All right, I did what we discussed. Are we still on track here? Has anything else come up? Would anything else prevent us from making that decision at that point?” And so, it has advancement top of mind for you and your manager, and it prevents some of moving that goalpost that can happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, beautiful. Well, Melody, tell me, any other final tips, tricks, do’s, don’ts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Melody Wilding
Let’s talk about, briefly, the money conversation because if you have advanced and you’re taking on more, you probably want the salary that comes along with that. Money can also be very loaded and very sensitive, something many of us are not taught how to discuss in our personal lives, let alone in the workplace.

And one of the big mistakes or missteps I see people make here is that they focus way too much on what they’ve done already and not enough on what they can do in the future if they were given more money to do it, and that’s very important. You need to think about, “What’s the potential ROI if the organization gives me five, ten, fifty thousand more dollars, what else would I be able to do? Does it serve bigger clients, manage a bigger team?”

You need to paint that future so that your manager, again, see a theme here, can make a case to their own leadership about, “Why should we give this person more money?” It’s not enough that you want it or you feel you deserve it. That may be true and there needs to be a business case there. So that, combined with, instead of just saying, “I deserve this. I work really hard,” approach it from the standpoint of fairness.

We humans, we are wired for reciprocity. We want to make sure that people feel like they are being treated fairly or correctly. And so, if you can use language around that to say, “I want to make sure that my compensation matches the level that I’m performing at or is commensurate with the amount of value I’m bringing to the organization.” If you can use that sort of language, it makes it feel less like this request that you’re demanding, and again more like a trade.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Melody Wilding
In the book, I actually cite some of this research around micro-yeses. And so, if you can get a micro-yes, let’s say you have to give someone feedback, and instead of just diving into, “So, in that last meeting, I felt like you talked over me,” ask for permission first. Get a micro-yes, “Will now be a good time to talk?” “Yes, sure.” “Okay, I’d love to chat about that client meeting. Is that good with you?” “Yes, sure.” Get those micro yeses along the way so someone is a bit more bought in and not as surprised by what’s coming next.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Melody Wilding
Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. Fantastic book, as well as their other book, Thanks for the Feedback. Both amazing books that really break down the nuances, the anatomy of how to have these difficult conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Melody Wilding
I am a huge Oura user, so I have my Oura ring on here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Mine is on my charger.

Melody Wilding
Yes, I probably have to charge mine today, too. But I’ve had it for years, and I just, especially since they have added the heart rate monitoring throughout the day, it is so helpful for me to see what spikes my stress when I go into restorative time. It’s just helped me manage my own schedule and my own energy much better.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Melody Wilding
I am a go-to-the-gym-first-thing-in-the-morning person.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear them quote it back to you often?

Melody Wilding
“You teach people how to treat you.”

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

Melody Wilding
ManagingUp.com is where you can find all the information about the book. You can connect with me as well there, too.

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

Melody Wilding
Start today with having the alignment conversation, and that is a really simple entry point to begin managing up, to ask your boss, “What would success look like for you in the next three months? What does great performance look like in this role? Or, what metrics does your boss discuss with you?” Start there, and I think that’s going to establish a basis of trust and give you a lot of insight that will be really valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Melody, beautiful. Thank you.

Melody Wilding
Thank you.

Dec 11
0

2025 GREATS: 1020: The Three Keys to Being Inspirational with Adam Galinsky

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Adam Galinsky reveals the core skills anyone can master for more inspiring leadership.

You’ll Learn

  1. The easiest way to uplift the people around you 
  2. The 15-minute exercise that makes you visionary 
  3. The quick trick to feeling more confident and powerful 

About Adam 

Adam Galinsky is a celebrated social psychologist at Columbia Business School known for his research on leadership, decision-making, teams and ethics. His scientific research—consisting of over 1000 studies published in over 200 scientific articles—has been cited more than 64,000 times. In Galinsky’s latest book, Inspire, he weaves together his decades of research and global consulting experience to reveal the science of how to become more inspiring. His TED Talk, “How to Speak Up For Yourself,” has been viewed more than 7.5 million times and his book Friend and Foe, was an audible and eBook bestseller. 

Resources Mentioned

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Adam Galinsky Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Adam, welcome.

Adam Galinsky
Thanks so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to dig into your wisdom about your book, Inspire, to get inspired, to become more inspiring. So, no pressure, Adam, but we’re expecting lots of inspiration to be flowing from you here today.

Adam Galinsky
I hope I can deliver.

Pete Mockaitis
Me too. Well, so tell us, you study this stuff. I’d like to hear, in your own lived experience, who’s the most inspiring person you’ve encountered and what is it about them that inspired you?

Adam Galinsky
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ve been inspired by a number of people in my life. One person that inspired me really deeply is my dad and even my mom too. So, both my parents and their different ways. One of the things I talk about in the book is I really compare and contrast two types of leaders that tend to be in our orbit, the inspiring leaders, but also the infuriating leaders.

And I think one of the things, when I think about both my parents, I immediately think about their inspiring characteristics, but also their infuriating flaws that they had. And so, I think one of the things in studying this topic is, probably maybe the single biggest insight that I’ve discovered is I’ve actually answered an age-old question that’s bedeviled people for centuries, which is, “Are inspiring leaders born or are they made?”

And what I’ve discovered is, I think, pretty definitively, that inspiring leaders are truly made. And the reason why I know this is because there is, and the thing that I’ve established in my research, is that there is a universal set of characteristics that make up the inspiring person. And these characteristics exist in every single country, on every continent in the world. There’s not a single inspiring characteristic that doesn’t exist in every other country, that exists in one country. It exists in every country.

And because there is this universal set of characteristics, those can be learned, they can be practiced, they can be nurtured, and so that we can become more inspiring over time. And if we go back to thinking a little about my parents, and I said they’re inspiring and they’re infuriating, the thing that really, what my research shows, is that it’s not who we are, it’s really what we do. It’s our behavior, our current behavior, whatever we’re doing today can either inspire or infuriate.

And that means that even if we were amazing yesterday, we may be a total infuriating dad today but the good news is we could be even more inspiring tomorrow.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, it’s good news that inspirational leaders are made and not born, otherwise you’d have a pretty short book and podcast, I imagine, Adam.

Adam Galinsky
That’s right, yes. Well, it could be a whole discussion of how to select those people, right? So wouldn’t be necessarily that short, but it would be a different conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
It would be. Well, and not as much fun because, I mean, I am inspired by the notion of being inspirational, to get meta with you. And I do definitely want to dig into this set of characteristics, what are they, and how do we learn them. But first I’d like to hear, generally speaking, as you’ve dug into all this literature and done the research, any big surprising or counterintuitive discoveries that made you go, “Huh, how about that”?

Adam Galinsky
I think that one of the things I discovered over the course of doing 25 years of scientific research is the power of not just thinking about ourselves, but thinking about others. And so, one of the first things that I ended up studying in my dissertation was a notion of perspective-taking. And when we take the perspective of other people, it opens up a lot of different avenues and possibilities that we might not know were available to us.

And so, it helps us be better negotiators. It helps us be better leaders. It helps us be more inclusive, give better feedback. Like, you could do a whole list of the things that perspective-taking provides to you. But this is one example, I have a paper that’s coming out in the top psychology, social psychology journal in the world, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in January, a paper I’ve worked on for a number of years.

And the title of the paper is called “The Vicious Cycle of Status and Security.” And so, one of the mistakes that the people who are insecure about where they stand in the world make is they think they have to tout their accomplishments. They have to show what they have done. And what my research shows is that, when we’re feeling insecure, we feel reluctant to credit other people for their contributions to us, thinking it’ll undermine our own standing.

But what my research shows really definitively, even in some of the most competitive contexts, that when we are generous in spirit towards other people, when we acknowledge their contributions to our own success, we not only elevate them, but we also elevate ourselves. We actually gain in status through generosity.

And I think that’s one of the things that people might instinctively kind of think that might be true, but when they get anxious, when they get insecure, that goes out the window and we focus on the self and, “What I’ve done.” And so, I think maybe the surprising thing is just the power in, “It’s not all about you.” If you focus on others, you’re going to benefit but it’s through this sort of other route, if you will.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I absolutely buy that, and I’ve seen it on both sides of the table in terms of when I’m at my best doing those things, as well as when I see it from others, and I am wowed by, I suppose, anytime someone just is generous in terms of, I guess I think about in sales conversations in which someone says, “Hey, we’d love to take your money, but actually I don’t think we’re the best fit for you. You should go with it over in this direction instead.”

I end up liking them more and giving them more referrals. It’s like, “You got to talk to these guys. They’re so honest. They’re so great. They’ll help you out or tell you who could help you better.” And it’s a world I want to live in, you know? So, I think that’s beautiful.

Adam Galinsky
Yeah, I think that’s right.When we do something that doesn’t look like in our best interest, it seems more authentic and genuine, because “Why would they be doing it if they didn’t really believe it?” And I think that becomes really powerful for that. And it also just highlights how important our reputation is to us, like, how people think about us, how they talk about us, what they share about us.

And so, that’s another, I think, I use this phrase that I really like about, “spreading the seeds of inspiration.” And I’ll come back to this later, but I have an acronym that I use called REAP. And it’s a Hananim from the Bible and, “Reap what you sow.” But the idea is that what you put out in the world comes back to you. So, if you’re inspiring to others, they’re going to be inspiring to you. But if you’re infuriating to others, you’re going to get infuriation back. And I think that’s something so important.

One of the foundations, and we’ll talk about the characteristics, as you said, and sort of how we can utilize those characteristics, but one of the foundations is really, like, living your values, and how you can live your values. And my number one value, I have a values card that’s in my pocket with my top five values and in a hierarchy. My number one value is generosity. And it’s that idea that if we’re generous to other people, not just in substance, but even in spirit, we’re going to produce a better world, not only for others, but also for ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s dig into some of these characteristics. Lay them on us.

Adam Galinsky
Sure. Well, so just to give your listeners a little background. So, what I’ve done over the last 20 years is I’ve asked people all over the world to tell me about a leader that inspired them. And I’ve asked people, “Well, what does it mean to be inspired?” And people use words like energy or warmth or light.

And the way that I describe it is a wellspring of hope and possibility. It changes you inside. It gives you this feeling. And I say to people, “What was it about that person that inspired you? I want you to tell me the exact characteristic. Be a scientist. Pinpoint what it is that really changed you inside.” And then over the course of time, I started asking another question, I said, “Okay, I want to talk about a different leader that changed you inside. But instead of creating that wellspring of hope and possibility, they created this seething cauldron of rage and resentment. And what was it about that leader that made your blood boil, that infuriated you?” And so, by collecting thousands, and probably even tens of thousands of these examples across the globe, I’ve been able to sort of analyze and study them and use sort of scientific techniques to reduce them to some core factors.

And these three universal factors, I’ll tell you sort of the first thing, my first insight is that the inspiring leader and the infuriating leader are really mirror images of each other, and they exist on this continuum, this enduring continuum that’s made up of “How are you behaving today?” And so, just as a couple quick examples, an inspiring leader is generous. We already used the word generosity, right? Infuriating leader is selfish.

Inspiring leader is courageous. Infuriating leader is cowardly. Inspiring leader sees the big picture. Infuriating leader is small-minded, lost in the weeds. So, one of the things we can start to see is that these are mirror images of each other. And the second thing is that continuum is made up of these three enduring factors. There’s being visionary, which is how we see the world. There is being an exemplar of desired behavior, how we are in the world. And then being a mentor, how we interact with others in the world.

And one of things that I’ve discovered is there’s a reason why these are the three universal factors. And the reason why these are the three universal factors is because they each satisfy a fundamental human need. We’re inspiring people because we’re satisfying a need. So, to be visionary satisfies a human need for meaning and understanding. We crave meaning.

To be exemplar satisfies the fundamental human need to feel protected and safe, but also to feel propelled by people’s passion and energy. And then mentor is one of the universal factors because it fulfills the fundamental human needs for a sense of belonging and inclusion on the one hand, but feeling like that you have status and are respected on the other hand.

And so, these are these three universal factors. I actually have a term that I use, a mnemonic device to help people remember it. I call it the VEM diagram of inspiring leadership. So, it’s like a Venn diagram, you have visionary, you have exemplary, you have mentor, and inspiring in the middle of those concentric circles but that really sort of captures those three elements.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you brought the goods and some social psychology chops in action, our deep human needs. And on the mentor side, I’m thinking about, we got the belonging and the inclusion and also at the sense of learning growth mastery that occurs when we’re getting good tidbits from a mentor. Like, “Oh, wow, that’s brilliant. And now my skills have been upgraded and I feel great as a result of that as well.” So, we’re ticking all kinds of deep human boxes here.

Now, I’ll tell you, Adam, when you said that these inspiring leaders are made and not born, it feels like a tall mountain to climb to just develop these characteristics within us. If we’re not so visionary and exemplary and mentor-y, how do we get more of that goodness going for us?

Adam Galinsky
Yeah, absolutely. So, for each of these, I can go into a little bit more detail, but also say, like, “How do we get into a visionary state of mind that makes us and propels us to be more visionary? How do we get into an exemplar state of mind? How do we do those things?” And so, let me just start with, I think, visionary is such a straightforward one and really helpful. So, what does it mean to be visionary?

Well, visionary has three characteristics. It’s kind of like what we say, is one of it, how we say it and when we say it. And the what basically is big picture, optimistic vision of the future. So, there’s, we see the big picture, but we also see a positive version of what the world can look like. Now, how do we say it? Well, my research shows and other people’s research shows is you want to do two things. You want to simplify it to its essence, but you also want to visualize it, make it come to life.

So, one of the examples I love to give is, you can have the mission, “Our mission is to have satisfied customers.” That’s a good mission, right? You want to have your customers be satisfied. But now let’s just tweak it a little bit and see how it changes, “Our mission is to make our customers smile.” Now that word smile is something we can visually see.

And then we can think about, “Well, what is it that we can do to bring that smile onto our customers’ face?” And that actually simple change from satisfied customers to make our customers smile, engages people more and motivates them more. It produces better outcomes, better products, if you will.

And then the final thing is that if you want your vision to stick, you got to share it and repeat it again and again and again and again. And one of the things I think we fail a lot of times is we fail to recognize that for something to stick, we need to hear it a lot of times. I mean, here’s a good example. What does almost every song in the world have?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, a refrain, a chorus.

Adam Galinsky
Yeah, a chorus, a refrain, right? That tells us, if almost every song in the world has the same exact feature, a repeated line, a repeated chorus, a repeated frame, that probably tells us the human mind needs some central idea to be repeated again and again. And so, that’s another thing that I find that people are really good at. So, now we can be both practical, very specific, but we can also be sort of a little bit broader. So, here’s a practical thing.

Look at how you’re communicating and ask, “Can I simplify this? Can I be more economical in my words? But can I, in doing that, also make it more visual and vivid and metaphorical and come to life?” So, that’s like a very practical thing you could do. But what I’ve also shown is “How do we get into a general visionary state of mind where we can really see the big picture?” And that is a technique that comes back to what I said earlier about values.

And so, one of the things that two decades of research has shown, my own research has shown this, I’ve done multiple studies, that if you get people to reflect on their values, and I call this your values hierarchy. My colleague, Paul Ingram, has done amazing research on this. So, this is what we tell people, “Think about your values, what really matters to you. Now pick four or five values and put them into a hierarchy where the top value sort of animates the rest of your values. Now that’s your value hierarchy. Now what I want you to do is I want you to think about why those values matter to you. Also, when have you demonstrated those values in your daily life?”

And here’s one study we did. One of the worst things that can happen to anyone in their life is to be unemployed, to be laid off, to be fired, to lose your job. It increases anxiety, depression, even suicide. So, we worked with a Swiss employment agency, a government employment agency, every citizen in Switzerland, if they want to get unemployment benefits, has to go into one of these agencies and register. And we did a little experiment.

Fifteen-minute intervention for half of these people. We did exactly what I just told you. Reflect on your values, why they matter, how you’ve demonstrated them. Two months later, they were twice as likely to have found a job. In fact, the effect was so strong, we stopped the experiment and gave everybody the values intervention.

And so, when we reflect on our values, it has two things that I think are incredibly important. One is it helps us see the big picture, what really matters. But two is I think it has this element of optimism. It gives us that energy to go forward. Because what do you need to do to get a job? You got to apply, you got to suffer the slings and arrows of rejections, right? And you got to keep going, right? And you got to keep applying to other jobs. And so, reflecting on our values both helps you see what really matters and gives you that optimistic positive energy to go forward.

So, we can become more visionary both with very fine-tuned practicality, “How do I simplify my messages?” or, “How do I make sure that people see the big picture?” But we can also do it more sort of organically by reflecting on our values.

Pete Mockaitis
Adam, what we love to hear so much here is a little bit of an effort produces just an extraordinary result. Like a 15-minute value intervention is phenomenal, which reminds me of a conversation we had with Dan Cable about, I think, similarly, a short, it might’ve been a one-hour intervention, in terms of introducing yourself to your colleagues about who you are at your best, reduce the attrition by over 30%.

And so, I think that is just astounding in terms of zooming in on this stuff, it’s just amazing in that our human spirit, I don’t know how to say it, Adam, but it seems like it’s so easy for us to lose sight of our values, our North Star, that which makes us come alive and be all we can be. And, apparently, we can get there with just a pretty quick refresher.

Adam Galinsky
Yeah, I think this is a great transition to the second universal factor of being exemplar, because I think Dan’s intervention is, it’s a little bit about values, but it’s also something a little bit broader. So, what does it mean to be an exemplar of desired behavior? So, what it means is being a calm and courageous protector, who’s authentically passionate, who’s super, but also human. They’re not perfect. They have their own vulnerabilities.

And so, I’ve shown in a lot of different ways why that matters. So, how do we get people into an exemplar state of mind? Well, in 2003, I introduced something, and Dan’s research kind of builds all of this, an intervention that has been used in hundreds of experiments across the world, hundreds of experiments across the world. And we basically did analysis of all those experiments and showed that it’s got deep scientific validity.

But we simply asked people to kind of do what Dan did, but we said, “Think about a time when you were powerful, in control, and your best self.” And we targeted at a more micro level. So, imagine you’re going into a negotiation, “Think about when you’re powerful and in control and your best self at the negotiating table.” Or you’re going in for an interview, “Think about when you’re powerful and in control your best self in an interview.” Or think about giving a speech in front of people, “Think about the time when you felt powerful, really in control on that stage.”

And so, what that does, the reason why that’s so powerful, that reflection, is because you’re building off your own lived experience, authentically building off your own lived experience. You’re not recalling what someone else did. You can feel yourself.

You’re like, “Yeah, I negotiated.” You might’ve negotiated one time out of ten well, but you can still recall that one time you did it well, right? And that’s a real powerful way to leverage that. And we’ve shown in our research that when you do that, people do better in interviews. We actually have the people are more likely to get a job. We’ve shown they give better speeches. Other people in Europe have used my intervention, measured people’s physiological reactivity before a very stressful event, and they were physiologically calmer after engaging in that.

And so, one of the things that the way they like to describe it is if you want to be super, you got to be able to remember when you were super. And that’s sort of one way of being able to tap. And then you go out and act super when you can do that. And so, I think that’s one thing that’s just so powerful and so important for people is to remember that we have those experience when we did something really, really well and we can recall and really sort of build off those experiences.

Now, I hope you don’t mind, but I want to introduce another topic really quickly that I think is really important.

So, I know you have three kids, and so you’re a parent, you’re a dad, and so your kids look up to you because as that parent, it could be just because you admire someone. It could be because someone’s really important to you. And so, anytime someone gives you their attention, you, your behavior, your words, the way you stand, the way you interact are going to have a big impact on people.

And so, I’ve coined a phrase. I call it the leadership amplification effect or the leader amplification effect. And the leader amplification effect basically says that when we’re in a position of leadership or where people are looking up to us or we really matter to them, they’re paying attention to us, their eyes are on us. And one of the foundational, fundamental scientific truths that govern all of mental life is that the things that we pay attention to get amplified. Whatever stimulus we’re looking at, that stimulus will have a bigger impact on us. We’ll get intensified reactions.

And so, it’s just sort of one example would be, I still remember 30 years ago, my first doctoral seminar when I was a PhD student with a guy who’d win the Nobel Prize in Economics, and I raised my hand one day, first day of class, have 11 fellow students, I want to demonstrate that I belong, I’m at Princeton University, this Ivy League thing, but feeling a little insecure, and I think I have a really nice point to make. And I still remember what Danny did 40 years later, he crossed his arms, shook his head, scrunched up his face and said, “That’s not right at all.”

And then he smiled and he moved on and the rest of class moved on. But, like, I was frozen. I felt humiliated. It was crushing to me. And so, Danny doesn’t remember this. Like, it was nothing to him, but to me, it just felt like humiliating criticism. But, like, six weeks later, I’m walking in the hallway and Danny, without stopping, he doesn’t even stop walking, he just says over his shoulder, “Hey, Adam, I love reading your reflection papers. You’re a great writer.” And then he turned the corner but that comment, like, has nurtured me for 30 years.

And so, one of things is that when we’re in a position of leadership, the reason why our words matter so much, the way we are in the world, how we interact with others matters so much is people are paying attention to us. And some of it is because we have power and authority, but sometimes it’s just because they look up to us and they care about what we think. And our whispers are going to be shouts, our comments are going to get amplified, and the reactions we produce are going to be intensified.

And so, one of the things we have to learn as parents, but as leaders, is that nothing we say is offhand. Everything has an impact. And so, that’s one of the things we have to be aware of to be inspiring is to recognize the powerful impact that our words, behaviors, and interactions have.

Pete Mockaitis
That is huge. And I’ve heard a number of leaders say, and I’ve lived this myself that, “It’s the weirdest thing. When I became a leader, my suggestions became commands.” And so, that’s one form of the amplification, but it’s great to flag the other ways that your stuff is being amplified and the impact and consequences of that there.

Adam Galinsky
Here’s one of my favorite stories about this. Barry Salzberg became CEO of Global Deloitte, which, you know, has tens of thousands of employees. And about six months into being CEO, he noticed that there were bananas at every sort of executive meeting. And he’s like, “God, I’ve been at Deloitte for 30 years. Is it a symbol of Deloitte I didn’t know about? Or does someone really important love bananas?”

So, he asked his assistant, he said, “Hey, why do we have bananas at every meeting?” She said, “Because you love bananas.” He’s like, “Wait, what?” So, the first time he walked into a meeting where she was present, she was paying incredible close attention to everything he did because she wanted to please him.

And she noticed he picked up a banana with a little bit of enthusiasm. And so, she coded in her mind, “Barry Salzberg loves bananas. We must have bananas at every meeting.” And that’s not even a suggestion. That’s just like, he’s like, “Ooh, banana,” he just might want to have a little potassium that day but then it became a law.

And so, that’s sort of a great example of the leadership amplification effect. He didn’t even say anything to anyone. It wasn’t even a suggestion. It was just a dollop of enthusiasm.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that is telling. Well, I’d love to get your perspective, Adam, before we hear about some of your favorite things. Given what you’ve learned about the impact of the things we do or don’t do, and then the relative prevalence of these behaviors, if you can lay on us just a couple of your top do’s and don’ts that you think can make a world of difference for us, what would they be?

Adam Galinsky
I’ll go through a few do’s. So, the first one is always think about the big picture. Like, what is really going on here? Like, try to put things into context to understand people’s behaviors. I’ll just give two examples that relate to being a parent because I think they’re really, really powerful. I had two kids, very close in age, just like you. And so, I had a kindergartener and a first grader. And the kindergartner’s classroom was on the second floor and the first grader’s class was on the third floor, and I take them to school every day.

So, naturally, I dropped the kindergartner first because he’s, as we walk up the stairs, my first grader is very type A, very impatient, “I want to get to school.” My kindergartner, like most second borns, likes to relax a little bit, take his time, likes to a big ritual with me saying goodbye, and Asher would be like, “Hurry up, Aidan. Hurry up Aidan,” and I would get very frustrated at Asher. I’d be like, “Just be patient. Why can’t you be patient?” And then Asher would march upstairs and run in the classroom without saying goodbye to me.

And about a month into this, we were walking with Aidan, I had an epiphany. And I was like, “What if I drop Asher off first?” So, I said to my kids, I said, “Hey, why don’t we all walk up to the third floor and drop Asher off first, then walk down to the second floor?” And it was transformational. So, Asher got to go at the time he wanted to, he’d give me a hug, I’d get to go downstairs, Aidan could take his time, no one was rushing him.

And by day three of this, his teacher, I never even talked about this with his teacher, Aidan’s teacher, the kindergartner’s teacher said, “Wow, dropping Asher off first has been a big success.” Like, she noticed, she could see Asher getting frustrated and angry. And, like, I could yell at Asher, I could tell him to be patient, I could try to give him some type of gummy to make him calmer, but he was saying, “I need to get the class on time.”

And so, then if we start thinking, “How can I allow Asher to meet his needs, but also have Aidan meet his needs?” We just reversed the drop-off order. And so, when I talk about seeing the big picture, it’s like really sort of understanding all the people that are in sort of an orbit and how they interact. And so, I think these are very, very, powerful things. What is it that people need? I mentioned these fundamental human needs. What does this person need right now?

I’ll give you just one other quick example, it’s very top of mind. My mother-in-law has lived with us for eight years and my older son is very attached to her and she’s moving now to Las Vegas. And about, she’s moving literally next week, and about two weeks ago, my son started being just really salty towards his mom, my wife, just being really rude to her and angry at her. And she was getting a little, like, upset by this, and it’s hard not to take it personally.

But the big picture is he’s mad that his grandmother is leaving, and he’s furious, but he can’t express it to her. In fact, they’ve actually never had a fight. Like, he’s her safe person. And so, he’s taking out on the person that’s closest, the mom. And so, once you see the big picture, you can start to recognize what’s going on. But then we can be visionary. We can start to help him have context for his feelings, “Hey, Asher, I know you’re really, you know, it’s probably, it’s really hard with Lola leaving.”

And the other day he whispered to me, he didn’t want his brother to hear this, he said, “I’m really sad that Lola is leaving.” And so, that’s what I mean by sort of being visionary. How do we see the big picture and really recognize what really, really needs to happen? Seeing the big picture allows people to handle the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Like, think about people going into war, soldiers potentially giving up their life, but for a bigger idea. So, the first do is be the big picture.

The second do is to remember that when we are in these positions of leadership, our emotions are infectious. And so, when we’re calm, we calm other people down. But if we’re anxious, we’re going to make other people even more anxious. So, we really have a duty and a responsibility to regulate our own emotions in those experiences, even as parents to not get angry.

My old dean, he would have these faculty meetings where people were speaking viciously to him, and he was always so calm. And I was just so amazed that he could just handle that. Like, he never reacted, he never blew off the handle. Apparently, he did so sometimes in private, but like never in public when it really mattered. And so, I think that’s the other do.

And then the final do that I’ll give is elevate others. When you see someone do something good, let them know. And when they did something that really helped you, express gratitude. And I’ll tell you a story about that. Every time I teach, I give people the leader amplification effect call to action. And I say, “I want you to pick three people that are less powerful than you, and I want you to send them some message that says, ‘Hey, you really knocked that presentation out of the park,’ or, ‘Thank you so much for helping me on that report. I couldn’t have done it without you.’ And I want you to be specific.”

Because if you come across as inauthentic, that’s infuriating, right? And so, this was 10:15, I was in front of a group of 50 CEOs and presidents. And at 10:29, one of them raised his hand and said, “I already sent my three emails, already got three responses, and they were gushing with excitement. One of them said, ‘I’m finally going to take my spouse to that new restaurant they always wanted to go to.’”

And I really liked this example because, first of all, it proved something I found in my research, which is people in powerful roles are very impulsive. This guy couldn’t even wait to 10:30 in the break. He had to like send it off right away. But it also shows it didn’t take him any time at all to do it. Like, it cost him a couple of minutes and it transformed people’s lives.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s the content of the email? You just say, hey, what you think is great about them or…?

Adam Galinsky
Yeah, or just anyone, just think about three people who, in your orbit, who have less power than you, that deserve some expression of gratitude or praise and be specific about what they did. So, it could be anything, you know. And I was telling this story, and a president of a bank, 1,400 employees that are under his charge. He said, actually, “Actually, I do that every day.” And I said, “Do what?” He said, “I actually send out an email to every single employee on their birthday.”

And he showed me an example. He said, “Here’s the one I sent this morning. It said like, ‘Hey, Trisha, I hope you have a great birthday. How was bowling and track this weekend?’” That’s all he wrote. And then he showed me her response. It was like a novel, like described everything about bowling and track. He’s like, “You know, I actually never even read her email because it’s so long.” But like she was so excited to get this.

And one of the things that this president said, which really struck me, is he said, “I know my message puts a skip in their step but it actually puts a skip in my step. Like, I get their message back and I feel so good.”

And so, one of the things that I’ve come to the conclusion of, here’s a do and a don’t. Now we always say, “Do something in person, communicate with someone in person, face-to-face is better.” But if I were to praise you, Pete, and say, “Oh, my God, you are the best podcaster I ever saw.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks Adam. Thank you.

Adam Galinsky
Yeah, it makes you a little bit uncomfortable, right, because, like, “How do I respond to that?” It feels good. But now imagine I wrote that to you later and you can read it, you can reread it.

Pete Mockaitis
Save it and read it when I need to read it months later.

Adam Galinsky
You can save it. You can savor it. You can send it to your spouse. You can show it to your eight-year-old, and say, “Look what this person said about me.” So, actually, by writing it, and then it’s much easier for people. Like, if I say to you, you’re like, you did that, you did, you’re kind of like a little bit embarrassed, a little bit, “Oh, thanks,” you’re trying to push it away.

But if I were to send them by email, you’d be like, “Oh, thanks so much. This is what I work towards,” you’d be more expressive over writing. And when I praised my dean yesterday, I mentioned I praised my dean, there was a long awkward silence. He didn’t really know how to deal with it. And then he sort of commented about how much he’d learned from the management division and stuff like that.

So, here’s an example where putting something in writing is better than saying it in person because you let them savor it, you let them share it, and you let them respond in a gushing way that lets them express their appreciation but puts a skip in your step.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautifully said. Thank you. Now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Adam Galinsky
One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Confucius, and it says, “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may understand. But only when you involve me will I truly remember.”

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

Adam Galinsky
Here’s a study that I love more than any other study, and I’ve been using it in my teaching for 25 years. It’s one of my dissertation advisers, Marcia Johnson. She did this in 1973 or ’74, and it’s such a simple study but it’s so profound. She just basically gave people a description of something.

It goes something like this, it says like, “First you take the things and separate them into different piles. Then you have to decide if you have to go somewhere else. If you have to go somewhere else, then you do that. But you also don’t want to do too much at the same time. And after you’re done, then you put things back into their appropriate places.”

And I’ve given this to thousands of people across the globe when I’m presenting and I ask people, “Does anyone know what’s going on in this scenario?” And, like, less than five people present and can solve it. So that’s one of her conditions. Here’s her other condition. She gave them a title and then she read the description to them.

And the title in this case was, drum roll, “Doing the laundry.” And then you realize, “Ah, doing the laundry, separating things, whites and darks. Okay, do you have a washing machine here or do you have to go somewhere else? Oh, yeah, you don’t want to overstuff that because you might break the machine or ruin things. And then you put them back in their places.”

Now, the reason why this experiment is so powerful is because it’s not just that it was easier to read when you got the title, it’s what happened later. When she asked people to recall what they read, the people who got the title couldn’t remember it word for word, but they remember the gist. And the people who didn’t get the title, some of them couldn’t even remember reading anything, it was like they couldn’t even process it.

And so, this is really about being visionary. Being visionary, giving people a vision gives them that title. If you have the title, every word makes sense. Every sentence connects with the other sentences. Other people reading it are, you’re synchronizing with them. And so, to me, it’s like such a small, profound study that really captures that.

I’ll just mention one other study also from the 1970s. But they took two people, let’s say you and I, and we say, “Hey, Pete, you’re going to teach Adam about Indonesia. So, we’re going to give you some material, you’re going to spend 25 minutes learning about this information so that you can teach Adam about it.” And then you’re going to, they give me the same information and say, “Hey, Pete’s going to teach you about Indonesia, but I want you to read this material and study it so you’re prepared.” So, it’s like, just randomly assigned you to be the teacher and me to be the student.

And then later, they give us a test, before we interact, a test on Indonesia, and we had the same amount of time, we had the same material, you would learn it better than I did. And so, just being in that teaching mode makes you process information differently. I think part of it again is being visionary. You’re thinking about the big picture. You’re thinking about how things connect to other. You’re thinking how you’re going to communicate it.

And because you’re doing all of those things, you’re processing, you’re making connections, processing information deeper and really understanding not just the individual facts, but also how they come together. And so, that’s really another story about empowerment that we just talked about, is that like putting people into that teacher frame of mind is more powerful than a student frame of mind.

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

Adam Galinsky
I mean, I do think my favorite tool is what thing that I kind of came up with in 2003, which is like using our own lived experience to reflect on them at the right moment in time so that we can be whatever we need to be in that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Adam Galinsky
I think the favorite habit that I would say is trying to do that leader amplification effect, that gesture of generosity, ideally. That would be my favorite habit. I haven’t instituted it yet. But I think, “How can we build in habits of generosity?” I think is probably the most important thing. It’s my number one value and I think it really is the key to spreading the seeds of inspiration.

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

Adam Galinsky
I think one thing that people really find powerful is that leader amplification effect, recognizing that “What I do and the way that I am in the world is really impacting people,” and it’s very eye-opening for people. I’ll tell you one funny story which I really love is I’ve been doing the laundry study for two decades now. And about 10 years ago a woman told me that she wrote, “Do the laundry,” and she put it on her, like, a Post-it next to her screen. And it was on there for like two or three weeks.

And, finally, one of her subordinates walked by and was like, “Are you ever going to do your laundry?” And she’s like, “Oh, it’s actually, it’s like to remind me to always remember, like, the vision and remember the big picture.” And then they started using that as a catchphrase when they felt like they weren’t seeing the big picture. They’re like, say, “Do the laundry,” and then that would get them. So, that’s like an example of a nugget that someone took from one of my lectures and really then implemented it and utilized it and hopefully made their organization better.

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

Adam Galinsky
AdamGalinsky.com, and the book is Inspire.

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

Adam Galinsky
Once a month, ask yourself these two questions, “When was I inspiring in the last month and when was I infuriating?” So, that’s sort of one set of reflections and sort of think about what it was.

But also think about “Who was inspiring in your orbit in the last month? What was it about they did that changed you inside? And how could you emulate that behavior?” And so, I want you to take those, your own personal reflections, those emulations, and then I would just want you to form a single intention about one thing that you’re going to do differently in the next month.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Adam, thank you. This is fantastic, inspiring. I wish you much inspiration.

Adam Galinsky
Thank you so much.

Nov 13
0

1110: How to Multiply Your Opportunities through Smarter LinkedIn Posts with Jason Feifer

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Jason Feifer discusses how to advance your career by creating winning LinkedIn content.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why LinkedIn matters even when you aren’t job hunting
  2. What most get wrong about personal branding
  3. The trick to getting your posts seen on LinkedIn

About Jason

Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine, a startup advisor, host of the podcasts Build For Tomorrow and Problem Solvers, and has taught his techniques for adapting to change at companies including Pfizer, Microsoft, Chipotle, DraftKings, and Wix. He has worked as an editor at Fast Company, Men’s Health, and Boston magazine, and has written about business and technology for the Washington Post, Slate, Popular Mechanics, and others.

Resources Mentioned

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Jason Feifer Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jason, welcome back!

Jason Feifer
It is so great to be back. I got to say, after we did this the first time, I heard from so many of your listeners, including a woman I went to high school with, which was fun to reconnect after that. So, thank you for having me back.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s cool. Well, I’m glad. Hey, thanks, listeners, for reaching out. And I know LinkedIn is often one of the platforms where this occurs.

Jason Feifer
Indeed, it is!

Pete Mockaitis
And we’re talking LinkedIn. And, Jason, I want to say thank you because I just, like, impulse invited you to this podcast just because I was looking at your LinkedIn, yet again, and I was like, “By golly, I’ve read Jason’s LinkedIn more than anybody else’s LinkedIn on Earth.”

Jason Feifer
I love hearing that.

Pete Mockaitis
“What is he doing? And I think we all need to know.”

Jason Feifer
I really appreciate that. That is great. I always like to be impulse invited to a podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, you impulse accepted.

Jason Feifer
I did very quickly. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, that was one of the quickest turnarounds ever. Yeah, so thank you.

Jason Feifer
My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so give us the scoop, like, you’re on LinkedIn, and maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s a lot of other folks who are commenting and liking and reacting and following and stuff with your posts. But I find them mesmerizing. Could you orient folks who have not been so lucky as to see your LinkedIn? What are you doing and why?

Jason Feifer
That’s a question. All right. Well, maybe I should propose an outline for this because there’s a whole bunch of different things to discuss, so things I want to cover on this episode with you. Number one, I want to talk about how to build a personal brand very strategically. We’re going to talk about that.

And then, number two, I want to tell you what LinkedIn is looking for, because I’ve had a lot of conversations with the folks who run the algorithms and machines over there, so I understand what is actually working. And then number three is we can talk about how to create great content on LinkedIn. So those are things I think would really answer your question.

But I’ll just start by zooming out and saying that I didn’t understand the point of LinkedIn at all for a long time. I thought it was just a place to promote myself. And so, I would post these promotional things and nothing would happen. Nobody would read it. Nobody would engage. I thought, “This is dead, useless.”

And then I came to understand that you actually are always promoting yourself on LinkedIn, but if you do it overtly, it doesn’t work. If you do it by displaying your knowledge in service of helping others on LinkedIn, then you actually position yourself as an authority on LinkedIn.

And I think that, right now, LinkedIn is the single strongest tool for reaching the people who could be hiring you, who could be promoting you, who could be your customers and clients in the future should you ever start a business. It is LinkedIn. It just is.

So, I started to evolve into a LinkedIn machine, where I now post every day, Monday through Friday. I have 241,000 followers, I think, at current count. And I get a ton of business out of LinkedIn. A ton.

Pete Mockaitis
A ton of business.

Jason Feifer
A ton of them.

Pete Mockaitis
So, folks say, “Jason, I want to give you monies.” And for what? What are you doing for these people?

Jason Feifer
Well, here’s an example. Someone wants me to keynote their conference for their employees. And I say, “Oh, that’s awesome. How did you find me?” And they say, ‘Oh, I follow you on LinkedIn.” Or, people will say, “Hey, I’d love for you to be an advisor to my business.” “Oh, that’s awesome. Let’s talk about that. How did you find me?” “Oh, I’ve been following you on LinkedIn for a long time.” It is always, “I’m following you on LinkedIn.”

And the reason for that is because everything else that I have ever done, and I get to reach a lot of people through newsletters and podcasts and whatever, is all in a way, it’s somewhat boxed in, right? It’s like you have to subscribe to my newsletter to get my newsletter. You have to subscribe to my podcast to get my podcast. But, LinkedIn, if you post something that really hits, it just starts bleeding out into other audience segments that you were not originally reaching.

And then because you’re posting daily, you’re constantly reminding people, “Oh, this person,” “Oh, this person,” “Oh, this person.” I see LinkedIn and doing LinkedIn well as simply about creating signal and noise. Every day there’s a lot of noise. You hear from a lot of people, you see a lot of people, you see constant stuff.

If you can create consistency, “This is who I am. This is what I have to offer. I will be relevant to you every single day,” then people start to recognize you. They start to say, “Oh, Pete, I love that guy. What does he have to say today?” And then after a while, they start to think, “Huh, can I work with that guy? Is there a way I can work with that guy?” And that is where economic opportunity comes from.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So well said. So, LinkedIn is the place where cool things happen in terms of getting hired or perhaps making deals, doing business, selling stuff.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, doing it all.

Pete Mockaitis
And then, so this personal brand…

Jason Feifer
Yeah, and let me add just one other thing to that. Also getting promoted, for real, getting promoted because we’re on a show called How to Be Awesome at Your Job. And the reason for that, this is a really interesting theory that someone floated by me and I’ve tested it out with people and found it to be totally true, is that LinkedIn, if you’re really good at it, creates external validation that then leads to internal validation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Jason Feifer
Which is to say that if you’re posting and you’re getting lots of people across your industry who are saying, “That’s really smart. This person is really smart. Yeah, I totally agree with that,” then people inside of your company start to see it, and they’re like, “Oh, this person is being externally validated, therefore, I should take them more seriously internally too.”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s really ringing a bell. And I’m thinking back to, well, Bob Cialdini who wrote Influence, science and practice and more, was on the show. Great dude. Great guest. I’m thinking about just that principle of social proof is that, in a way, there’s a lot of things in the world of work that are super ambiguous and subjective.

I mean, if we’re doing like sales, okay, we know, “Okay, that person sold half a million dollars. The other person sold a quarter million dollars. Okay, Bada Bing, Bada Boom.” But in the world of knowledge work where so much of it is just like, “Hey, here’s some ideas that I’m putting forward. Like, are they good? Are they bad?” “Well, we don’t really know.” But if a lot of other people are saying, “Yes, you are brilliant, sir,” they go, “Okay, maybe. Maybe it is.”

Jason Feifer
That’s right. It’s predicated on trust, right? If you’re in a meeting and some people’s crazy random ideas are commanding more attention than other people’s crazy random ideas, and you wonder, “Why is that?” The answer is because of everything that happened before the crazy ideas. It was all the trust-building that went into it.

And so, people are carrying a reputation and, therefore, people are taking more seriously ideas based on reputation. So, if you have a tool where you can build your perception of authority, not just internally, but externally, it will feed back internally and you will walk into that meeting and be the person that people take seriously.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Well, now, and to totally reverse that, I’m thinking about instances where, about being not taken seriously in the humor domain. Because sometimes I’ve had the experience where it’s, like, I’ve made a joke and then another person made almost the same joke with the same crowd, you know, just like six people just chit chatting, within minutes, and they got much more laughter than I did.

I mean, and I’m not going to, I’m not trying to be a standup comic. I’m not road-testing material or anything. But I think that maybe these would be the same dynamics at work, it’s like, “Oh, I have a lot of history of this person making me laugh many times. And, therefore, I just kind of fall into that groove again.”

Jason Feifer
Totally. It’s the buy-in. It’s the buy-in. Why is the headliner comedian getting larger laughs than the opening comedian? I mean, maybe the headliner comedian is funnier, but also everyone’s just there to see the headliner comedian. So, they’re bought in on that person. They want to enjoy that person’s jokes more than the other person.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m here for laughing for you, from you.”

Jason Feifer
Yeah, “I’m here for laughing from you, very specifically from you. So, if you do a thing, I’m going to laugh at it.” And this is the reason to build up your authority. I have this concept, which is that I want to be singular. I think it’s incredibly important for me in my career to be singular, which is to say I am the sole person who you think of or turn to for this.

I have separated myself from everybody else. You don’t sit around, and you’re like, “Hmm, well, who should keynote my conference? I guess, let me just find any random person who talks about change management,” that’s the subject people generally hire me for. No, you want to hire Jason Feifer, “We got to get that guy, that specific guy.”

The more singular you can become and be perceived as, the more in which it’s not just you’re one of many, you’re just the selection today. No, it is you. People want you specifically, the more in which you will succeed. And so, you have to use the tools at your disposal to build that singular-ness, that distinctiveness. And personal brand is just top among your available assets.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So having a personal brand isn’t just a cutesy thing, that’s a checkbox that we’re “supposed” to check, but rather has substantial real-world consequences that we want working in our favor. So, lay it on us, how do we think about building a personal brand?

Jason Feifer
Okay, let’s do it. So, first of all, if you are not doing this right now, you, person, I’m talking to, because maybe you think, “Ah, that’s not for me. That’s for like, Jason’s got 240,000 followers. He’s like speaking in front of crowds. That’s for him.” No, no, no. Here’s the thing. Personal brands are valuable for everybody and they’ll serve different purposes.

So, my job and my ability to do my job does require having a large audience. It’s the kind of work that I’m in. But that’s not true for most people. Most people just need to reach the right audiences and they can be small and niche. So, an example I always like to offer at the start is my friend, Matt Adelman.

So Matt Adelman, he works at a company. His job is to help brands, like consumer-packaged goods brands, you know, food, beverage, snack brands, but get onto retail shelves, particularly a Target, which is what his expertise is. So, like, he helps people get onto Target, right? So, he doesn’t own the company, he works at the company and that’s his job.

So, he has built a personal brand for himself on LinkedIn in which every single day he is sharing insights about retail, about how to get on retail shelves, about what he’s seeing in retail trends. He’s walking around Target and taking photos of shelves and then posting, you know, “This is the beef jerky aisle is looking interesting and new today,” and whatever it is.

And he’s got like 6,000 followers because he’s been doing this for a while, but it converts, it converts because people see those posts and, eventually, first they say, “Oh, this is useful.” And then they say, “Oh, this guy is consistently useful. I should follow him.” And then they say, “Oh, we should hire that guy,” right? That’s how it happens.

And the reason for that, and this is very, very important, so let us keep it in mind as we do this, and that is that content builds relationships, and relationships convert. That’s it. Content builds relationships and relationships convert. So, when you put content out into the world, people say, “Oh, I like this person. I know this person. Now I feel like I have a relationship with this person.” Pete, that’s why you reached out to me is because you see me on LinkedIn every day and so I’m on top of mind to you.

And then eventually that relationship converts in some way where they say, “I’ve got to have this person on my podcast. I’ve got to hire this person. I’ve got to promote this person.” Okay, so with that as the premise, let’s start by talking about personal brand. Everyone gets the phrase personal brand wrong because they optimize for the word personal, “Oh, I got to post what I had for breakfast on LinkedIn,” or, “I got to…” No, no, no.

We have to actually put the emphasis on the word brand. You are treating yourself like a brand. And what is a brand? A brand is three things. A brand is simple, a brand is repeatable, and a brand is scalable. Just apply that now to the first brand that you can think of. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, what are they? They’re simple, repeatable, and scalable. You know exactly what Coca-Cola is. You know exactly the message that it has. Happiness.

And then, it’s repeatable. You say it over and over and over again in infinite ways, “Happiness, happiness, happiness.” And then scalable, they’re going to find constant new ways to reach as many people as possible with that message. That’s what a brand is. That’s what you need to become.

So, the first step of this is that you have to turn yourself into something simple. So being a personal brand is not talking about everything. It’s talking about one thing and doing it over and over and over again. So, I have a little framework with four questions that I will share with you for how to simplify yourself, how to turn yourself into something simple. And that is this.

Now, this is something I will caveat that I am usually teaching to people who own businesses, but it can very easily be applied to people who work at businesses, too. So, for someone who’s in a business, it would be like, “What is your product?” But for you, it’s, “What is your deliverable? What is your area of expertise? What is the thing that you hired for?” So that is it. What is that?

And then the second question is, “Who does that serve?” which is to say, “Who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to impress? Who do you want to be very aware of and interested in you?” Question number three is, “What problems do you solve?” So, for the people that you serve, whether that’s a person, you know, a superior at a company or whatever, or the customer, “What is the problem that you solve?”

And then, number four, very important, most important, “How can you address that problem with content?” So, if I’m Matt who helps companies get onto retail shelves, that is my job. Well, what is my product or what is my service? I help companies get onto retail shelves. Who does that serve? Who do I serve? I serve founders of brands who have products who want to get on retail shelves. What problem do I solve? They don’t know how to get on retail shelves. How do I solve their problem with content? I can inform them about how to get on retail shelves.

Now I have narrowed it really specifically. And then if you want to go even further, I was talking to Matt recently about “How does he take it up a level?” And I said, well, start to think about, “What are the major problems that people have when they come to you for business?” So, it’s like, “Why do they hire you after a previous solution that didn’t work?”

And he’s like, “Oh, well, that’s because they got into Whole Foods, but now they can’t get into Target,” or, “They got into a couple retailers and then their sales flatlined. They can’t figure out what to do.” Great. Okay.

So, you now know the problems that they have, start to answer them in your content. Start to address that in your content, because they’re going to see that you have answers to the problems that they’re walking around with, and now you are incredibly relevant to them.

And now you have to be incredibly specific and specific, I said specific twice, but sure, why not? Because it’s very important. And consistent is what I meant to say. You have to be really consistent about this. Just be really regimented and consistent. Now you are simple. Follow me so far?

Pete Mockaitis
Simple, repeatable, scalable. And I guess I’m thinking that they could be quite possible to come up with some pitfalls, I’m guessing, in terms of, “You’re too generic.” It’s like “Oh, I help businesses with marketing.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, no, no, no, let’s get much more specific here.”

Jason Feifer
Very, very important. Right. Because if you try to be something to everyone, you will be nothing to nobody. And so, the way in which you have to signal value is through a really knowing level of specificity about who you hire. I mean, I tell people this all the time, if they’re building a business, like, “You don’t want to be, ‘Hey, we help businesses with marketing,’ because that doesn’t tell me anything about anything.”

And if I am a business looking for marketing, I’m not going to trust someone who’s just like, “Hey, I help businesses with marketing.” Instead, what you need to do is be incredibly specific about who you serve such that they think, “Oh, this person is for me. This person is for me.” “I help small businesses with less than five employees who are building SaaS products in the finance space with marketing because that is my area of expertise and I understand exactly what they need.”

And if you’re that person, you say, “Oh, my God, finally, I found my person.” And if you’re not, well, that’s fine. That’s not who you’re serving anyway. There’s something to keep in mind. Here’s a little kind of secondary framework here, but it’s something to keep in mind, is that there’s a thing that I like to call the first question. And the first question is the first question that anybody asks whenever they encounter anything.

“Is this for me or is this not for me?” That’s what you’re asking, “Is this for me or is this not for me?” We have limited time. We’re not going to waste our time on things that are not for us. We just want to filter things by, “Is this for me or is this not for me?” So, we started this conversation, and if you’ve made it this far into the episode, then you decided, “Oh, this is for me.” You’re not listening if this is not for you.

So, we have to know, whenever we’re producing something, like content on LinkedIn that’s going to reach people, that people are going to ask that question unconsciously of every single thing that they see, every post that they see as they scroll LinkedIn, they’re going to ask, “Is this for me? Is this not for me? Is this for me?” So, we have to anticipate that, we have to answer it as fast as possible.

So, the first words, and we’ll talk about content later, but like the first words that you write have got to be answering that. The way in which you show up on LinkedIn has to be answering that. The way in which you identify who your target is has to be answering that because, otherwise, people will tune you out. So, yeah, Pete, you’re exactly right. It’s got to be super specific.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s funny how it’s like the algorithms, and people talk a lot about the algorithm or the algorithms, I think that is, ultimately, what they’re trying to achieve is matching the giant catalog of stuff, whether they’re tweets or LinkedIn posts or Netflix or movies or YouTube videos or TikTok shorts, like, “Hey, I got a bunch of stuff, and I got a bunch of people. How can I get the right stuff to the right people?”

That’s what they’re trying to do in their little digital brains as best as they can, and then sometimes they do better or worse. And so, I think this is really vibing, says, if you want to do well on LinkedIn, for instance, you want to be swimming with the current instead of against the current, in terms of, “Hey, let me make it easy for you, everybody. This is who I’m for.”

Jason Feifer
Exactly. And you have to do that not just for everybody, but for the algorithm, because the algorithm is not some uncontrollable stroke of luck. The algorithm is trying to understand who your content is for. So, help it do that. And then you can use it to your advantage. I’ll tell you what the LinkedIn algorithm is for, and then we can get back to simple, repeatable and scalable because we’re still on simple.

But the LinkedIn algorithm is looking for three things. Ready? And this is not me making this up. This is multiple conversations with the people who build the algorithm at LinkedIn. So, it is number one, it is looking for knowledge and advice, and that’s their language, knowledge and advice. So, they don’t want life updates. They want knowledge and advice. They want you offering direct information that is useful to an audience.

And then, number two, they want it built off of your specific authority. So, LinkedIn is actually doing this crazy thing where it is looking at your background, because it’s got your resume. It’s looking at your connections. It’s looking at all past content. And it is making an algorithmic assessment of where your authority is, and it will amplify posts that live inside of your authority, and it will not do that for posts outside of your authority.

So, for example, if I write about marketing that is within my authority, LinkedIn sees it, it amplifies it. If, for some reason, I decided to write about anthropology one day, it would look at it, and be like, “This guy doesn’t know anything about anthropology,” and it would not amplify that. So, you really want to stay in your lane.

And then number three is meaningful comments. So, you want to write things that are going to get the kind of people that you are targeting to leave meaningful comments. And by meaningful comments, I mean more than like, “Yes!” or emojis. Like, give people something to have something to say about.

And the algorithm is literally looking for that because that is a sign of validation that it has reached its target audience and that that target audience is interested. And the more in which you’re getting meaningful comments from people, the more in which the post will be amplified to other people like them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Okay, so you said we’re just on simple. Let’s hear repeatable.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, I know there’s a lot here. Okay, so now we have to think about how are you going to show up as that brand. And I came up with this concept. I call it the 5% character, and it goes like this. So, Pete, you are a 100% person, would you agree?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Jason Feifer
But the thing is that most of that is not relevant to the people that we serve, professionally, at least. It’s just not, right? Bring your whole self to work? No. Actually, you have to bring the specific targeted, most relevant version of yourself to work or, certainly, to LinkedIn.

And so, I think what you need to do is assess what 5% of thoughts and expertise of yours is most relevant to that audience? What way in which you engage is most relevant to that audience? Some days I wake up cranky and some days I wake up enthusiastic. Only the enthusiastic version of me is relevant to my audience. The cranky never is, right?

So, once I understand who I am to that audience, what part of me is relevant, then I can start to build what I call the 5% character out of it, which is that I start to ask myself, “What brand attributes are embodied by this 5% character?” So, what does that mean? Really abstract, but really specific. So, 5% character for me, “I am a guy who simplifies complex problems for people in business.”

That’s how I see myself. That’s what I do. That is my offering to the world. I simplify complex problems. And I do that specifically and mostly through understanding communication and people. So, I can tell people how to do storytelling and how to understand the complex problems around them.

So okay, now, I think about my brand attributes, “How do I want people to think of me? How do I want to show up regularly on social media?” And so, I came up with some attributes. Here are some of them. Energetic. You’ve heard that as I talk to you, right? Like, if Pete and I were having coffee, I wouldn’t talk like this because it would be annoying.

But I do talk like this when I’m performing as my 5% character. I’m showing up on a podcast and I’m embodying this version of myself that is simplifying complex problems and is being really helpful to people. So, I have a way in which I’m speaking and that also translates to how I write. My writing is very sharp. It’s poppy. It’s lively. That’s how I want to do it.

And the reason to do this is because once you know who you are on social media, then it becomes much easier to show up like that every day. So, when I sit down every morning to write a post on LinkedIn, I think, “What does the 5% character version of Jason Feifer have to say about this?”

So that is how you become repeatable. And then scalable is when we get to actual content, when we actually start talking about how to make the content.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really intriguing. A character. It’s a 5% in that it’s within you, so it’s not utterly contrived. So, it is authentic in so far, it is genuinely a part of you, as opposed to something just invented, fabricated. But it is focused, distilled, polished. So, it’s like we have a very nice left foot of Jason that the world is admiring.

Jason Feifer
That’s right. The word I use, and all the words you used were great, but on top of it, intentional. It is intentional. It is the intentional, consistent version of you that, once you define for yourself, you can always show up that way. And that’s the critical distinction. If we don’t define this for ourselves, then we might show up differently every single time. And then we just create more noise.

But we want to create signal. We want to do things on repeat so that eventually people say, “Ah, I remember this person,” “Ah, yes, I want to follow this person,” “Ah, yes, I want to hire and spend money on this person.” This is why if you watch great personal brands, like just think of anybody who you follow, Gary V, you follow Gary V. Gary is so repetitive, so repetitive. And it’s because that works.

Because if Gary said some random new thing every time, or he showed up in some different way on a regular basis, then he would be noise. He wouldn’t be memorable from the first time you saw him to the next time you saw him, and it would just, you’d lose track of him. But because he’s being really repetitive in the way in which he’s talking and the way in which he’s showing up and the topics that he’s hitting, now he’s going to say new things each time, but those things are really all versions of the same thing.

And, by the way, I once, years ago, I’ve known Gary a long time. So, Gary emails me one day, and he’s like, “Hey, you want to get a drink?” And I said, “Sure.” And then a fun thing about Gary is that if you get a drink with Gary, it means that he’s going to give you, like, an incredibly hyper-specific time. He’ll be like, “Be at this place at 8:43, and I’ve got 17 minutes for you.” It’s so crazy, but I’ve talked to lot of people and they’re all like, “Yeah, that’s Gary’s thing.”

So, anyways, I show up and Gary has the camera rolling because he’s always got a camera on him, and he is Gary and he’s very energetic. And then the camera guy’s like, “Yeah, we got what we needed,” and the camera guy wanders away, and then Gary changes. And then he becomes, not a completely different person, but a more complex person.

He’s not talking quite like that. He has a softer tone. He’s slower. He’s more thoughtful. We’re having back and forth. He’s more nuanced, right? Like, that is actually the moment in which I realized, “Oh, Gary is playing a character named Gary. Like, when I see him on social media, he’s playing a character named Gary Vaynerchuk.”

But then when the cameras are off, he becomes actual Gary Vaynerchuk. And the character Gary Vaynerchuk is inside of that real Gary Vaynerchuk, but it’s just one thing that he’s activating every single time. And that’s being intentional.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, that’s interesting. And, well, now I’m thinking, so you and I both know and love and respect Pat Flynn. And so, I have watched lots of his content, had him on the show a few times, met him at a couple conferences, hung out and got some burritos.

Jason Feifer
Nice.

Pete Mockaitis
And my experience of Pat, and people will say this about famous people, in general, like as a positive, virtuous attributes, it’s like, “Boy, you know what? It sure seems like Pat’s just the same sweet, generous, thoughtful, person in all of his content as he is in person.” And so, I mean, that seems to be the case, and that seems to be a positive. So, to what extent is that contrast with a Gary V. and square with your overall message here?

Jason Feifer
So, everyone is going to make different decisions about how much of their whole version of self they will show to others and in what context and when. And it’s true, Pat is extremely consistent. The Pat that you see on camera is pretty much the same Pat as if you’re talking to him in real life. But, you know, Pat’s a more complex person than what you see on camera. Everybody is. How could you not?

Nobody would want to be friends with or be married to a person who is as simple in real life as they are on camera. So, Pat has done a great job, because he’s such a good content creator, of developing a focused version of himself that is truly appealing and digestible and scalable, and that is absolutely him. But is still just a part of him. It’s still just a part of him.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I mean, I haven’t like, you know, been in his house for a week.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, right, right, right. And that’s the thing to remember, right? So, I’ve seen Pat in two interesting, different professional contexts, which is that, number one, we’ve worked together on a bunch of smart passive income stuff. But then also I took my kid to his Pokemon conference. And, you know, it’s interesting how it’s a version. It’s the same version of Pat, but when we’re doing business, he only talks about Pokemon in the context of lessons of content creation.

And when he’s doing Pokemon, he almost never really talks about business, unless he’s using it to help explain his own journey, “I did this and I did this and then I discovered this.” And so, he’s being thoughtful about how to utilize these different arenas of knowledge to be most relevant to the audience that he’s speaking to. And that, I think, is a critical part of this.

We all know lots of things, but we have to make sure that the things that we know are delivered in a way that are going to be most relevant and helpful to the audience in which we’re serving. And we have to think of everything and everybody. “Who am I speaking to right now? What do they need from me right now? What is going to be most relevant to them?” And so, this is what I mean.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think, in a way, all of us humans are pretty much doing this all of the time as we engage with different people in different contexts. And so, what we’re doing here is we’re just really clarifying, in your digital realm, if you want to show up in a particular way that is efficacious, this is what it’s about, and it requires a bit more proactive conscious thought than what we do subconsciously that, “I show up differently at Catholic mass than I do at my child’s friend’s birthday party.” We’re doing a different thing with different people for different purposes.

Jason Feifer
And it is easier to do that. I really like the way that you just framed that because what I am describing with the 5% character is, indeed, a version of what we do all the time. But the reason it’s important to think about it is because the context in which you are in will help guide the version of you that you should be.

Because you are in a very specific setting, you are surrounded by people who are also part of that setting, it is easier to fall into the right version of yourself that’s appropriate for that time. It is harder to do that on social media because it’s chaos, it’s noise. You’re seeing everybody do everything. And so, you’re going to go on, you’re going to see…

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, you think it’s fine to do that. That’s a great point. Because we see everything, you may think it’s fine to do everything, but, in real life, we don’t get those cues. It’s like nobody is grunting and high-fiving at like a professional business luncheon, the way they are at a gym, you know. And yet, in a social media world, you see it all. And so, you might take the cue, it’s like, “Oh, it’s okay to just do whatever here.”

Jason Feifer
“Do whatever. I’ll just say it, yeah, say anything. Oh, they’re talking about this stuff over there. Maybe I should join that conversation.” No, do not show up just as yourself. The more in which you can think of yourself as a product in a marketplace, like when we’re engaging in a personal brand space, you are engaging in a marketplace of ideas in the same way that Old Spice is engaging in a marketplace of deodorants.

You are engaging in a marketplace of ideas and you have to be a product, and the product does not change. You don’t take Old Spice deodorant and put it next to orange juice and it becomes orange juice. It doesn’t. It always is Old Spice. And you always have to be that solid, too.

So, the more in which you think, “This is every day how I show up. This is how I talk. This is how I do not talk. This is what I talk about. This is what I do not talk about,” the more in which you will create that signal, and you will not be tempted to just morph into whatever you see.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so simple, repeatable, scalable. Lovely. And so, you mentioned a little bit about what LinkedIn is looking for already. Any additional comments there?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, well, so scalable is really about how to write content. And so, let’s just touch on that briefly, which is, once we’ve decided how we’re going to show up, then we have to know how to communicate on LinkedIn. And here’s the thing to know. Most people make the mistake of writing very dense or complicated openings or there’s a lot of throat-clearing.

You’ll find people who are writing like, “Last week I was thinking about…” Nobody cares last week what you were thinking about, right? That doesn’t matter. So instead, you have to always remember what I said about the first question, people are asking, “Is this for me? Is this not for me?” The first things that they see from you have to start addressing that.

So, I challenge you to do the following things in every post. Number one, visual. Find a compelling visual, maybe even put a caption on top of that visual with some text that’s going to draw some people in. For example, I write a lot about marketing on LinkedIn. And so, I would find, for example, a funny ad that Uber created.

And then I’m not just posting the ad, I’m going to write a little caption on top of that ad in the graphic that I’m uploading to LinkedIn, because that’s the first thing people are going to see. The thing that’s going to stop the scroll is actually the visual. So, they’re going to see the visual and then they’re going to wonder what you have to say about it.

And it could be a visual of you. It could be just a really compelling photo. It could be an interesting chart, but you got to have some context onto that chart. It could be anything, but you got to have something. And then the next thing that you want to write is that you want to write some language that signals who this post is for. And then after that, you want to signal the value that is to come. That’s what you want to do.

So, for example, I just told you like I wrote this post just two days ago or something – I’m to pull it up as we’re talking – in which I wrote about an Uber commercial that was really funny. So, what it is, I grabbed the video and I put this caption on top of it, and the caption said, “Uber’s ad was so good, it won an Emmy.” That’s the caption. Now, don’t you immediately want to see the ad, “Wow so good, it won an Emmy? Let’s see.”

Now, here’s my first line. This is what I wrote. This is all anybody sees, because LinkedIn will cut off after the first, like, so many characters. So, this is all anybody sees. It’s got to be good enough that people want to click more and read more. This has got to be compelling. This has got to drive people to take an action. And that action is, here’s what I wrote, I wrote, “Now this is how to speak to young people and turn them into customers.”

So, what have I done? Now, “This is how to speak to young people.” That is now signaling to anybody who is in a business where they need to engage young consumers, young employees, anybody, anybody who’s worried about thinking about that, that this is somehow relevant to them. And then I say, “And turn them into customers.”

At which point I am now promising that the next thing you’re going to read is going to help explain that. I’m going to pay off on that promise. And then if you open it up, that’s exactly what I do. What I do is I introduce an idea, and that idea is stop trying to be your audience, start respecting your audience. And it’s the difference in how Uber was talking to that young audience.

So, this is the language. I call this the three-hook structure, right? So, the first hook is the visual. The second hook is telling who this is for. And then the third hook is what is the value to come. And you do that all in a really nice and fluid way. And you try to be as punchy and simple in your language as possible and just start to experiment and you’ll see what people engage with. Try different formats. And, eventually, you will start to see your own patterns of what your specific audience wants from you.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about the hook, it’s funny, it’s almost kind of like standard issue is like the first sentence, it just has a hook. It’s like, “What? Tell me more. What’s going on?”

But sometimes, they’re clearly written by AI often, it’s like, in a bad way. Like, there’s not actually any substance to back it up. It’s, like, “Yesterday, I quit my job,” or something, or, “I had to fire someone today.” It’s like, “What? Why? Tell me more.” You know, it’s like you can tell what they’re going for. And then, often, you kind of wonder, it’s like, “Well, did you really? Or are you just like making stuff up to try to get me to read your LinkedIn post here?”

Jason Feifer
Totally. Totally. Or, people will do like, “Now this is what teamwork looks like,” and it’s a photo of their team. And that’s great. Good for your team. But there’s no reason for me to click and learn more about that, because you’re not promising anything. That’s what teamwork looks like? I don’t care. Or, a lot of people will also just get too in the weeds.

I mean, who was I just talking to? Somebody in logistics, and they want to position themselves as an authority in logistics. And they showed me some of their posts, and I was like, “You know what? I literally don’t understand the language that you’re speaking right now. It’s full of acronyms and it just feels dense. It just feels dense.”

The best thing that you can do as a writer, as a creator of any kind of content is just look at it through the lens of someone who is just stumbling upon it. Like, take yourself out of you, and imagine me or Pete, just coming across this thing and looking at it. Are we interested? Are we going to spend the time? Or is this too dense and it’s too complicated? And if so, then simplify it so that it makes us stop and read.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Any other thoughts on what LinkedIn is looking for?

Jason Feifer
Well, let me tell you the number one frustration that people in my world, which is to say people who are trying to reach tons of people on LinkedIn have, and that is that the LinkedIn algorithm is constantly changing, and it is. And everyone always complains it’s harder and harder to reach people on LinkedIn. And I’ve put this to LinkedIn.

And their answer, I think, is really instructive, especially for people who are listening to this show. Because what they’re saying is they don’t actually want things to go viral on LinkedIn. And they don’t, actually, want people to be trying to reach the masses on LinkedIn. What they want is for people to use LinkedIn to find economic opportunity. That’s the language they always use, economic opportunity.

Which is to say, and I was like, “Give me an example.” And Dan Roth, who’s the editor in chief of LinkedIn was talking to us. He’s like, “I was just talking to this nurse, and she’s wanted to shift into this specific position at a hospital or something. And so, she started posting kind of insights into best management practices inside of healthcare or something. And then somebody at another hospital saw that and reached out and hired her because of that.”

He’s like, “That’s success. That’s what we’re looking for.” Which is to say, you don’t have to reach tons of people. You just have to reach the right people, as I said at the very beginning, and don’t get discouraged if your numbers are small.

Because if what you just want is more economic opportunity, well, then all you really need to know is who do you want to reach? And then how do you show them, don’t tell them, show them that you are an authority that they should take seriously, that you are great talent that they cannot overlook?

This is a long game. You have to have a lot of patience with it. You have to take it very seriously. You have to be consistent. But, over time, if you do it, people will find you. And that’s the point.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, and then your third pillar there was how to create great content. We’ve hit a couple of those bits. Anything else you want to make sure to highlight?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, there’s one other thing, which is let me tell you my number one tip for content idea generation. People always ask, “How do you get your ideas? How are you writing every day? What do have to say?” A couple of things to know.

Number one, I think that the best content comes from real life and will come up in real life, which is to say that I just use the Notes app on my phone. And any time that this little “Boop!” goes off in my head, which says, “Interesting!” I don’t let it pass me by. I write it down. I capture it in real time.

And what I am really doing is I am creating an ever-filling backlog of content ideas. Because if you sit down to write a LinkedIn post, you will have no idea what to write about. But if you just start capturing interesting things, just think about interesting things at work, “What problems did you recently solve? What came up in some meeting and you’re like, ‘Oh, that was a good way of thinking about that.’ Or, ‘This is a thing that I did and it worked really well.’”

Like, whatever. You’re not giving away confidential information. But like what are you seeing? What’s coming up? What did you just do to solve that problem that actually is based on something that you do all the time? “You know, the way that I did that is that I always first look at this. And if I look at this first, that it usually gives me a good direction.” Great. That little framework, that thing that you, that is content. So, constantly be capturing those things so that you can then sit down and produce that content.

And then the second thing I want to share is that it doesn’t have to be new every single day forever. So, you might write a post and it does okay. And then give it like a month, and now write another version of that same post. It was a good idea. Maybe you can do it better. Maybe you can find another more compelling way to do it. Maybe you wrote a post and you realize, “Actually, this is kind of like two posts. Like, I have two ideas here.”

So, I am always going back to my old material and just sort of like tweaking it or updating it or doing something new. So, the more in which you do this, the more material you have, number one, in your Notes app on your phone, and then, number two, on LinkedIn, and then it starts to become much easier and you start to get into a flow and a rhythm. So, you need to create some systems so that you can do it.

And then, actually, Pete, sorry, one more thing. I keep promising that this is the only thing that I have and that I just keep adding one more. But final thing is you might be wondering “How often should you post?” And I told you I post every day, Monday through Friday. Don’t do that to start. Don’t do that. You’ll get overwhelmed and you’ll never do anything.

Instead, I challenge you, “What is the minimum amount that you can definitely commit to?” or the maximum amount, I suppose, any amount, just commit to some amount. So maybe it is once every two weeks. Fine. Once every two weeks, do it once every two weeks. Pick it every other Monday, you’re going to write a LinkedIn post. You can spend two weeks thinking about it.

And then, once you’ve got that regularly, once you feel like you’re in a real flow once every two weeks, see if you can add another. Now, can you do it once a week? Great. Now get comfortable with that. So, you never want to take, if you try to do this too often, you will not do it at all. The more important thing to do is to just be building the habit over time. You’ll get better at it. It’ll become easier.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jason, are there any tools or resources or experts or websites or newsletters or just things to check out to get ever better at this LinkedIn game?

Jason Feifer
Absolutely. Well, let me tell you about my newsletter. It is not specifically about LinkedIn, but it is very much about simplifying complex problems and communication. I share a lot of great communication tips on there, and it is called “One Thing Better,” each week, one way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career or company that you love. And you can find that by going to the web address, OneThingBetter.email.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thanks. Well, now could we hear a favorite quote?

Jason Feifer
Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, said this to me. He said, “Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jason Feifer
The last thing that I just was obsessed with was The Three Body Problem, the full trilogy. I could not recommend it more strongly. I think about it all the time. It is like a big hypothesis about the grand scheme of the universe, and I just adored it. So, The Three Body Problem.

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

Jason Feifer
The most valuable thing that you can do is to be constantly seeking the thing that is available to you that nobody is asking you to do.

We spend so much time at our jobs, doing the things that people ask us to do, and that’s fine. But if that’s all you do, then you are only qualified to do the thing you’re already doing. But to do the thing that nobody’s asking you to do.

That is actually where growth happens, because that’s where discovery happens. That’s where new opportunities come from. That’s where new skills are learned. That’s where new connections are made. So, I would step back and ask, “What is available to you,” in the abstract, “available to you because you could pursue it; available to you because you could make a phone call or you could go to a website, anything? What is available to you that nobody is asking you to do?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jason, thank you.

Jason Feifer
Thank you. I am so glad that you impulse invited me onto the show.

Nov 10
0

1109: How to Find Great Mentors and Build Your Legacy with Dr. Deborah Heiser

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Dr. Deborah Heiser discusses how and why to find mentors from all directions.

You’ll Learn

  1. The fundamental human need that mentorship fulfills
  2. Why most struggle to find mentors—and the simple fix
  3. The unlikely places where you can find more mentors

About Deborah

Dr. Deborah Heiser (Ph.D.) is an applied developmental psychologist, the CEO/Founder of The Mentor Project, and author of The Mentorship Edge: Creating Maximum Impact Through Lateral and Hierarchical Mentoring. She is a TEDx speaker, member of Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, Thinkers 50 Radar List, expert contributor to Psychology Today and is also an Adjunct Professor in the Psychology Department at SUNY Old Westbury.

Resources Mentioned

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Deborah Heiser Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Debra, welcome.

Deborah Heiser
Thanks for having me. I’m delighted to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat about mentorship, and I understand that you currently have a 21-year-old mentor. What’s the story here?

Deborah Heiser
So, I am 57. I’m a Gen Xer. And I decided that I wanted to try out social media for the next big thing that I’m working on, and to get some word out there. So, I asked if this person, who’s 21, could mentor me. I didn’t say, “Hey, can you be my mentor?”

But we talked. And he agreed. And so, he’s been mentoring me for two and a half months now. And it’s amazing to be in the position of a mentee. It made me have a whole new perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s super. Well, could you share with us what’s a social media insight you’ve picked up from this 21-year-old phenom?

Deborah Heiser
That it is not as easy as it looks, that there’s a lot of work that goes into it. There’s a lot of thought that has to go into it. Even the things that are supposed to look really completely off the cuff, they’re generally not. So that was really a new insight for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Thank you. Yeah, I think I’d heard Mr. Beast, a top Youtuber, say, “People are surprised all the time when they learn just how much tremendous work and effort goes into these videos. We’re not just a bunch of folks goofing around. There’s huge sets and teams and productions.”

Deborah Heiser
You know, it wasn’t just the work, right? I had to learn from him the work. I had to learn the culture. So, the very first livestream he put me on TikTok, I was getting all of these comments that were coming into the feed, like, “UNC” was one of them. I was thinking the person was talking about the university. No, it’s “unc.” It means I’m old and outdated.

So, it was really funny to learn about how people perceived me in the Gen Z population, and how I needed to learn the culture and learn what was relevant to people that were outside of the Gen X age group.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks. Well, you know what, I guess I’m learning something too. I thought “unc,” I knew it was short for uncle, and it meant that this person is older, but I had sort of hoped and thought it might’ve had affectionate connotations, but you’re telling me it doesn’t, okay.

Deborah Heiser
No. And I learned that without knowing that. He had to explain that to me. And so, that was kind of funny.

Pete Mockaitis
I just remember Bryan Johnson is often called the “Immortal Unc” and I thought that was endearing, but I guess it’s not. Okay, I’m learning. Well, so I think that’s a nice little lesson in terms of mentorship, in terms of the things maybe you thought you know, maybe you don’t. And you get that wisdom from different perspectives and engaging in different kinds of folks.

So, you’ve been in this game for a while. We got the book, The Mentorship Edge, which we’re chatting about. You are the CEO and founder of The Mentor Project. So, could you maybe kick us off with anything that’s particularly striking or surprising for folks when you’re teaching about mentorship and they go, “Whoa, seriously, for real?”

Deborah Heiser
Everyone is a mentor and you just don’t realize it. So, most people think that mentorship is for work and it can be and is, and that’s a great place to look for mentorship or to become a mentor. But mentorship is something that’s in our families that we’ve been doing forever. If you subscribe to any religion, that’s passed down through mentorship, centuries.

We’re never going to remember Bob the accountant, but we remember what religion and the traditions and the values that we have in our family that get passed down. And we often take that for granted, but that’s mentorship, all of that is. The family traditions at every holiday that you engage in, that’s mentorship.

So, we’re doing all of this and we just don’t give credit to the grandmas and grandpas out there who are doing this every day, or to ourselves when we say, “This value means something to me. I’m going to pass it on.” So that’s a big surprise to a lot of people. They think that mentorship is saved for someone with an advanced degree or a specific title, and, really, it’s not. Everybody is always mentoring and they’re being mentored and we just don’t always realize that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’re always mentoring and we’re always being mentored, and you mentioned some of those contexts. What exactly is your definition for mentorship then?

Deborah Heiser
Mentorship actually has five components to it. So, it has to start with the developmental… I just want to say that we’re developmentally, just like walking and talking is a developmental life stage. We are developmentally programmed to want to give back. And so we are, it’s like a developmental milestone. So, it’s something that we should be expecting to do.

So, it first starts with generativity. And generativity is where we have a desire to give a bit of ourselves to somebody else without expecting anything in return. We’re all doing that. If a friend calls and says, “Hey, can I pick your brain?” You don’t say, “Buzz off.” You say, “Of course.” We’re always doing this.

And the reason we do this, engage in generativity, is because we like that a little piece of us lives on in somebody else. We like that we’re valued enough, or something that we value is valued enough, that somebody else wants to carry that.

The next thing it needs is intrinsic motivation. So, if I’m being paid to mentor, I’m not a mentor. You have to be doing it simply because you want to do it. And the example I give is if I said, “Hey, Pete, would you like to go volunteer at a soup kitchen, giving out food and beverage to hungry, thirsty people?” You might say, “Yes.”

Now imagine you’re on your way to the soup kitchen to deliver food and beverage to hungry, thirsty people, and I say, “Hey, Pete, take a left. I want you to go to Starbucks and volunteer your time there instead.” Well, that’s going to have a whole different feeling, even though you’re giving food and beverage to hungry, thirsty people for free.

And that’s what we need with mentoring. And we do this all the time. We’re all very helpful to others. We want to be, we like it, we get a good feeling from it. We also need to have a meaningful connection. So, a lot of people will say to me, “Oh, my gosh, I have this toxic mentor, the person is horrible. How do I deal with it?” But that’s not a mentor. You have to like the person. They have to like you. It’s kind of like a friend.

If you have some friend who is mean to you, they’re not your friend. So, you need that meaningful connection. You also need trust. So, Pete, if you were a boss of mine and I had an issue where I didn’t know how to do something at work, I might wonder if I could go to you and say, “Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing. Can you guide me through this?” Because I might think, “Wow, he’s going to find out I don’t know what I’m doing and he’ll never give me a raise or a promotion.”

So, likewise, if I was your mentee and you said, “I’m not going to share my knowledge and expertise with her. She’s going to go start her own company with that.” You have to trust me, but that has to go in both directions. And, finally, there has to be a goal. A lot of people think, “I’m just going to meet with somebody for an hour every week, and I’m just going to meet with them, and somehow I’ll get mentorship.”

Mentorship is an exchange of something with a goal. So, it’d be like, “Can you tell me the lay of the land at work?” or, “I’m a hardware engineer. Can your software engineer help me solve a problem that I need to have that involved with it?” It’s combining that. As long as it has all five of those, it’s mentorship. If it’s missing one, it’s not. It’s like baking brownies without sugar. It’ll look like it, but won’t taste like it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so understood, those are the components that exist within that. And so, I’m hearing you that those five ingredients can be present in all sorts of relationships, interactions, as opposed to formal career professional, “I want to sharpen my skills in digital advertising, whatever, exchanges.”

Deborah Heiser
It can be in all of those. I’ll give you an example. Irene Yachbes, she worked for NASA. She pushed the launch button on the mission to Mercury. She’s an aerospace engineer. She’s smart. She went to work for IBM, and she walked in and she said it was like going to the first day of middle school, “Who do you eat with? Where do you go? What do you do?”

So, this very smart person was looking for, “I don’t even know where the bathroom is here.” And so, she said, “I just need to know the lay of the land here.” And so, somebody at her office was giving a talk in her first week, and said, “If anybody would like a mentor, reach out to me.”

So, Irene called me and she said, “I can’t reach out to her. I’m too intimidated. I’m brand new here.” And I was like, “What are you talking about? Just email her.” And she did, and she said, “I just need to know the lay of the land. Can you help me out with that?” And the person said, “Yes.” They met for 15 minutes and that led to a four-year mentorship.

So that does apply. The person liked Irene, Irene liked her. It ended up that all five of those components were met. We just don’t think about those components when we’re reaching out to somebody. But she didn’t say to her, “Hey, mentor me.” She came with a specific goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And I think that just going through those ingredients, I think, might spark some ideas for people here, it’s like, “Hey, you know what? I’ve got a sense of a meaningful connection and trust with this person who knows some stuff that I need to know. Why the heck don’t I just go ahead and reach out?”

Deborah Heiser
Yeah, it’s the same as when we make friends. You know you don’t have to go through your thing, and say, “Does that person share my values?” No, you could have 10 people that cross your path, and there’s one that you say, “Ooh, I like that person. I’m going to hang out with that person.”

If you were to dissect that, you’d find out that you have criteria that you’re checking off to see if it matched for that. So that’s all that I’m saying with this checklist that is for mentoring.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now you’ve said that about half of young professionals say they feel kind of lost in their careers. What do we think is behind this and how does mentoring play in?

Deborah Heiser
I think that most people that I’ve talked to say they’re intimidated and they think that mentoring is only hierarchical. They have also said to me that they are looking for somebody who’s going to open the doors and lift them up into the new job they want. That’s too vague. If I said to somebody, “I want you to solve all the problems that I don’t even know I have,” there’s an issue.

So, people come to me and they’ll say, “Can you be my mentor?” And I’ll say, “Sure, what in? How? What would you like me to help you with?” And they say, “I don’t know.” And then I have to say, “Well, okay, what are some of your goals?” “I’m not sure.” And so, all I say to people who are starting out is have a tiny ask, one small ask.

So, if somebody like Irene said, “Can you show me the lay of the land?” A person could say yes or no. And that’s an accomplishable goal. And within that very first moment, you can determine, “Is this somebody I could mentor or be mentored by?” You can feel each other out. So, start with something super, super small.

You could ask a person, “Hey, I would love to learn an aspect of the job that you do in advertising. I think that I could learn from you. Can I just ask you a few questions?” And you just have something that could take maybe five minutes, and then you can take it from there. That person may or may not be the person that’s best for you.

And the other thing is I tell people is you do not have to look hierarchically up the ladder. That’s very limited. You only have a certain number of people who are directly above you. But if you look to your left and to your right, you have countless people who can help you. And if I look at all of the cases of the people who are like famous lateral mentors, that’s the founding fathers of the United States. Nobody was the boss.

Every entrepreneur who starts a company, they can’t look up. They have to look to their left or to their right. Steve Jobs looked to Steve Wozniak as a lateral mentor. All of these cases are people who didn’t look hierarchically for help. So, anybody who’s starting out, if you’re feeling vulnerable, insecure, look to your left or to your right, somebody in a different department.

And you can ask them questions. You can say, “Hey, from an outside perspective, what do you see is a path for me and my department? Do you have any tips or pointers for working within my department in this new job that I have?” That’s something that people can do very easily. And I’ll give you one more, quick example.

I was speaking with an Iowa federal judge, and he was saying, “Look, judges can’t be vulnerable. You can’t say, ‘Hey, I don’t know how to handle that case. Like, I don’t know what to do.’ That’s not going to work well.” So lateral mentoring was something that was really important to this group of federal judges.

So, what they did was they put in an informal lunch and everybody got to come in and sit next to somebody. So, somebody was able to say, “Hey, Bob, you handled that case. How did you do that?” Now, that’s not a person saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” That’s a person saying, “How did you handle something?” And then that person was able to start without showing a vulnerability, but they saw an incredible increase in mentorship that was happening laterally because it removed that vulnerability.

So, if you’re starting out, think about the power that is to the left or to the right of you where you’re not worried about somebody feeling like you’re stepping on their toes, they’re competing for your job, they’re not competing for a promotion from you. They’re going to share very readily with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And I’m thinking now about my podcast mastermind group, and they’re wonderful, they’ve all been guests on the show. And it’s interesting about the lateral piece is that I wouldn’t say any of us is like the top dog, you know? It’s sort of like it’s clear that all of us have our respective strengths and areas where we’re excelling and others can learn from each other there.

And it’s really quite lovely because, in the course of sharing, we discover stuff. It’s like, “Hey, you seem to know a lot about how these advertising is working. And you seem to have a really engaged growing program over here.” And we’re all able to share the goodies.

And especially, over time, when you talk about trust, you realize just how much of our hangups are emotionally-driven and irrational. It’s like, “Oh, I should maybe just chill out about that. Oh, okay. I’ll just stop worrying and give it a shot. How about that?” So many breakthroughs boil down to that.

Deborah Heiser
Absolutely. I love the example that you brought up because so many of us join groups. There are people who join book clubs. They join. We’re all joiners, right? People join all kinds of things. That’s a great place to find mentorship. Most of us think that if we’re in the job, we have to find our mentor in our job.

But I’m going to give you a quick example of a workplace where somebody who was new at their job came in and they said, “Uh-oh,” and they got mentorship. So, this guy, Steve, was at his job and he had a boss who gave him an impossible task with a super short deadline. And Steve didn’t know what he was doing. But Steve was like, “I got it,” when the boss came in and said, “Hey, can you get this done?”

So, the boss came in a couple of days later and was like, “Steve, you haven’t made any progress.” And Steve was like, “Don’t you worry. I got it. I got it.” He was afraid he was going to get fired. So, he didn’t ever tell his boss, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” When I talk to people, everybody’s been there at some point where you’re like, “Okay, I can do this.”

So, what happened was, the next day the boss came in, he’s like, “Listen, you either got this or you don’t. What’s the deal here?” So, Steve said, “I told you I got it. I do.” The boss left, and he immediately called his friend, Steve. And he’s like, “Steve, can you help me? I don’t know what I’m doing. I know that you know this different kind of engineering than I know. Can you come in and help?” And so, Steve said, “Yeah, I’ll come in after work. I got to finish my job. And then I’ll come in and help you.”

So, in he comes, everybody is gone in the workplace, but he comes in and they work together. And Steve’s like, “Oh, my gosh. Thank you, Steve, for coming. This is so helpful. I’m making progress here. Keep teaching me what you know.” So, they made a lot of progress.

The boss comes in the next day, and he’s like, “Steve, I can’t believe all the progress you made.” And he said, “I told you I knew what I was doing.” And long story short, they worked together and the project gets done a week earlier than expected.

And the boss came and said, “I can’t believe you did this a week earlier than was expected.” That job was Atari. The boss was Al Alcorn, the engineer that didn’t know what he was doing was Steve Jobs, and the person who helped him was Steve Wozniak. That very first project was Breakout, the first video game. And that was lateral mentoring.

Steve didn’t feel comfortable in his own job. He was brand new. He thought he was going to get fired if he didn’t do this. So, he called his friend, Steve, who worked in a completely different area. And that was lateral mentoring. And so, when you’re in the workplace, you do not have to think of the workplace as your only way to find a solution to what you need or the mentoring that you need to get.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. Thank you. So, let’s hear on the other side of things, you talked about generativity, and that is just sort of a human developmental thing. I don’t know if there’s a particular age or years in the career or threshold in which this kind of kicks into higher gear, but tell us a bit about that and where to proceed with it.

Deborah Heiser
So, generativity is a life stage just like walking, any physical life stage that we have. And it kicks in specifically at its highest point in midlife. So, between 40 and 65, you should really see people ramping up. You’ll see things like people say, “I’m going to start a blog,” “I’m going to start a podcast,” because that’s a form of mentorship. It’s a modern form of mentorship. So, you, Pete, are mentoring right now in a modern way.

So, people will start to kick in to doing that. They get an itch to give back. And so those are some of the ways that we see people doing that in midlife. But the reason we have that is because you reach midlife, all prior to midlife, you’ve had boxes to check off that other people put in front of you, “Finish school,” “Maybe go to college,” “Get a house,” “Buy a car,” “Get married,” “Have a family,” “Have a career,” “Get advanced in your career,” “Become an expert in something.”

All of these things are outside, external kind of boxes that we check. Then midlife hits and you’re like, “Huh, I get to pick my own boxes. What am I going to check?” And that’s when it hits us, and we say, “Do I matter in the world? What’s my footprint doing? How deep is it? And what do I want that footprint to look like?”

And it’s the first moment that we have the time to do that and we have the bandwidth to do this. So that’s why there’s a pretty big window for that. So, you could be 40, and say, “I am not there. I’m really busy.” It could be between 40 and 65 that it really hits for people. And that’s when people are looking to give back their expertise, their values, their traditions, their usefulness to others.

It makes them feel relevant. It makes them feel useful. It makes them feel like they matter in the world, like they didn’t just take up space. And so, that’s what generativity is all about. So, if you’re looking at somebody in midlife, that is a great person to look to, to mentor you, because they’re probably looking to mentor someone.

Pete Mockaitis
And if we are in that stage and we’re feeling those things, what do you recommend we go do?

Deborah Heiser
That you look within yourself and say, “What is it that I think is important to me?” Some people will say, “Well, it’s the things that are in my personal life.” Some people will say, “I want to pass on the traditions and values that I hold dear in my family.” And that could be religion, that could be your traditions that are in your family. It could be values.

It could be that you say, “I want to be remembered or known for this expertise that I had.” So, whatever that is, it could be different for every single person. And that expertise is all you have to tap into. And most people think, “Well, it has to be something really profound.” And it’s not. It’s the little things that we do.

So, the very first thing I say to people is show up. Just show up in places because that’s your opportunity to find out what you’d like to give back. And showing up is like the first beginning step of mentorship. So, you know, that can be a value. If someone is in need and they’re in the hospital, show up, go visit them. That’s a form of saying, ‘You matter, I care for you.”

If you make an appointment on somebody’s calendar, show up. If you’re going to go to a funeral, show up. All of these things that maybe we say to ourselves, “I don’t know if it really matters.” It does. That’s the very first thing that you can do that costs nothing and doesn’t require you to have a degree or anything else. It’s just showing up. And then that’s going to be the first step of making the mentorship happen.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s next?

Deborah Heiser
So, once you’ve showed up, the next thing is that you want to see if you make a connection with somebody. Is there somebody who you can see who wants what you have? So, if I have an expertise in something, and I go to give it to you, let’s say my expertise is in, I don’t know, crocheting. I’m a master crocheter and I say, “Hey, Pete, I’d like to teach you how to crochet,” and you have no interest in crocheting. Well, that first step is, “Okay, we don’t have it.”

But if I meet somebody else and they say, “I’ve always been wanting to learn how to crochet,” then there we go. It’s the same with if you go into work and you’re looking for somebody or showing up to things, you go onto the big Zoom, you’re at the water cooler, you’re at the lunch, you’re at the grand rounds, if you’re in a hospital, wherever you are, you’re showing up.

Who is it that looks like they’re receptive to what you need? And then you’re basically finding that person, “Hey, does this interest you? No? Okay, next. Who’s out there looking for that?” It’s the same as when you’re podcasting and you’re putting something out there. Not everybody is going to resonate, but those that do and they say, “I’m going to come back over and over again.” Those are your meaningful connections.

So, the next step is really connecting with people, “Who, out here, is looking for what I have?” It’s developing the trust by continuing to show up and it’s engaging with that individual to see if you can make change for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and it really is beautiful. As I’m just imagining this and I’m reflecting on experiences I’ve had, it really is a beautiful, human, heartfelt, deep, emotional, good thing. You know, it’s like right up there. And I’m thinking about, I’ve heard in academic scholarship circles, and maybe you can comment on this, good doctor.

That sometimes, when folks retire, a beautiful gift they receive is sort of like the grand tree that shows their mentees, protegees, doctoral candidates that they brought up, who in turn brought up the next generation and the next generation. You can just sort of see the lineage flowing through and rippling out as just like a top retirement gift for folks in that zone.

I’ve heard of this as a thing that has happened on multiple occasions. So, it was like, that sounds like about the top thing you would want at your retirement party.

Deborah Heiser
Yes. We all want to feel a sense of legacy, and we start to build our legacy as early as we can think. We’re building how we’re going to be remembered by others. And that tree that you’re talking about is incredibly important. So, the term legacy tree was coined by Bob Lefkowitz. He’s a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry from 2012.

And he published, he wanted to know, “Why am I a Nobel Prize winner and not somebody else?” He was like, “I was born in the Bronx. What made me stand out from anybody else? I’m not smarter than other people. What is it?” So, he decided to make a legacy tree for himself that showed all the mentors above him, those that were on his level, and the mentees, very few, because most of us don’t even realize when we’re mentoring, that were below him. And he published it in a journal.

And two weeks later, he went to a conference, and somebody came up to him and he said, “Hey, Bob, I’m six degrees Lefkowitz.” And he was like, “What are you talking about?” And the guy said, “Hey, there are five people who’ve worked between you and me. And here I am continuing the work that you started.” Bob said, “What are you talking about? Tell me about your work.”

He told him about his work, and he was able to hear his own words spoken by this person he had never met, and he was able to see how his work had snowballed out six degrees away from him. And he said he’d never felt more profound emotion than the birth of his children and getting married than at that moment because he knew that he mattered and he knew he had a legacy.

So that academic legacy, the tree that you talk about, that’s what we’re trying to build. And if we are able to create our own legacy trees, we’re able to see what our impact is and see what our legacy actually is. And that’s very meaningful to us. Most of us aren’t able to harness that.

It’s kind of like when you donate and you don’t remember you donated anything until tax time and you have to like go through your tax return and say, “Oh, yeah, I know I donated this.” We forget all of the good things that we do, all the volunteering, all the philanthropy, all of the mentoring that we do throughout the year. And it just gets kind of folded into our everyday life.

So, if we can acknowledge the moments that we mentor, or we acknowledge the moments that we’ve been mentored and we thank the people that have mentored us, it makes us do it more and it ties it back to legacy so that we then can feel our impact. We can actually get that feeling that we want that’s kind of like the Grinch whose heart grew three times in size. That’s how we feel when we start to, you know, really acknowledge our legacy.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, yeah, you know, you’re right. That profound emotional thing, you’re bringing me back. This was years ago, but I remember when I was in college, I had a couple buddies and we started an accountability group where we just sort of challenged each other on a weekly regular basis, “Hey, did you do those things that you talked about?”

And in so doing, we built some really good habits and saw some cool results. And of them, his name is Jeremy, and I said, “You know what? I know Nike doesn’t recruit on our campus, but, like, you should just go for it and apply for an internship.” And so, he did, and he’s still working there. It’s a long career. Nike’s loving it.

And then I visited him out there in Oregon and I met people that he had formed another accountability group with. And I’d written down some of the principles that we were operating with. And so, they, too, were seeing really cool results and good habits and things in their world. And it really was tremendously powerful.

Like, “Huh, like some stuff I did has impacted Jeremy,” who is now in Oregon, partially because I said go for that internship. And then here’s more people that Jeremy is in the group with seeing awesome things. And it is among the top meaningful, feel good, emotional vibes around.

Deborah Heiser
It sure is because you know you mattered. And we need to know we mattered. That’s why, if we look at social media, those likes mean something to us. We need to feel like we matter. So even if those are throwaway things in certain things, in certain areas, it shows our craving for mattering, for relevancy, all of that.

So, what you just described is what we’re seeking from work. We want work validation. We want all of that. That all ties in together to how our emotions are. And just the acknowledging some of it, at least allows us. Like, you just told this story about somebody and how that made you feel. By doing that, it makes us want to do more. It makes us say, “Ooh, I’m either going to do what that person did or I’m going to translate that into something that I can do. I want that feeling again.” So that’s a bigger, better thing to strive for.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Deborah, tell me, any other top things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Deborah Heiser
I would tell everyone, look to your left and look to your right, you’re probably looking at a mentor. And if they aren’t right now, you can either be mentoring them or they can be mentoring you at some point. So, think of every single person you meet as a potential mentor or mentee.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now could you share your favorite quotes, something you find inspiring?

Deborah Heiser
I think the favorite quote is, “Mentors change lives. Mentors change the world.” And I think that it’s because that really is true.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Deborah Heiser
My favorite book has always been Marie Curie, her autobiography, because she was somebody who did something that was completely new and unique, and kept following her passion, even though it was at a time when it was very difficult and women weren’t in leadership positions and she just did it.

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

Deborah Heiser
I’m old school, I use this.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, a notebook.

Deborah Heiser
And that, I’ve never given up. I would suggest to anybody that, you know, structure is such an important part of our work day. Whatever modern tools you can use to get that, use it. It makes a difference because each one of these things that you can check off makes you feel like a winner throughout the day.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Deborah Heiser
I think that my favorite habit is walking every single day.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And is there a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks, you hear them quoting it back to you often?

Deborah Heiser
I hear people talking about look to your left, look to your right. Lateral mentoring is something that has resonated with individuals, and I get that over and over again.

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

Deborah Heiser
I’d point them to my website, DeborahHeiser.com. I’m on LinkedIn. I write for Psychology Today. You can find me there. I have a Substack, “The Right Side of 40.” And you can find my book, The Mentorship Edge, anywhere you get books.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Deborah, thank you.

Deborah Heiser
Thank you.