(bright piano music)
- So the date is August 16th, 2002
and flying over a valley in Afghanistan
are two A-10 Warthogs.
An A-10 is a heavily armored, low-flying,
slow aircraft designed to provide ground cover
for troops on the ground.
On this night it's a very, very cloudy night.
There are storms in the area.
And these two planes hanging up above just waiting
in case anybody down below needs help.
Up there it's gorgeous.
The moon is bright.
There's thousand of stars in the sky.
The clouds look like the snow had just fallen.
Down below in the valley, however,
there were 22 special forces,
special operations forces troops,
trying to make their way through the country
and they could feel that something was wrong.
They felt uneasy.
One of the pilots up above call signed Johnny Bravo,
and yes, he stands like this,
he could feel their unease
listening to them over the radio
so he decides he was gonna go down below the cloud
and just have a look.
He tells his wingman, "Hang out up here.
"I'll go see what there is."
And he points his plane down into the clouds.
As he's going through the clouds,
the call comes over the radio.
Troops in contact.
Troops in contact is what they say
when they come under effective fire.
It means they're in trouble.
Now Johnny Bravo points his plane straight down.
The plane's getting thrashed about in the turbulence.
When he comes out below the clouds
he's less than 1,000 feet off the ground
and he's flying in a valley,
cliffs on both sides.
This is only 2002 and the planes were not yet equipped
with ground hugging radar
and worse, they were using old Russian maps.
That's all they had at the time.
The sight that greets him
is something like he's never seen before,
not in training and not in the movies.
He sees tracer fire,
fire coming from all sides of the valley
pointed right in the middle where the American forces are.
He picks a point and starts to lay down suppressing fire.
He's flying
and he's in danger of hitting the cliff, of course.
He knows his speed, he knows his distance from the map,
and he literally counts out loud
while he lays down the suppressing fire,
"One one thousand, two one thousand,
"three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand."
Pulls hard on the stick, pulls back up into the cloud,
comes down around again.
"One one thousand, two one thousand,
"three one thousand, four one thousand."
"Good hits, good hits," it says over his radio.
And again he comes around.
"One one thousand, two one thousand,
"three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand."
He runs out of ammunition.
Fuel is fine.
Flies back up to the top of the cloud,
tells his wingman, "You need to get down there."
His wingman isn't sure about the conditions
so the two of them fly back down together.
His wingman lays down the suppressing fire
and Johnny Bravo counts
as they fly three feet apart from each other,
wing to wing.
"One one thousand, two one thousand,
"three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand."
Up and around again.
"One one thousand, two one thousand,
"three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand."
That night 22 Americans went home alive
with zero causalities.
My question is
is where do people like Johnny Bravo come from?
Who are they?
Who would risk their lives for others
so that they may survive?
I asked Johnny Bravo.
I asked him, "Why would you do it?
"Why would you risk your life so that others may survive?"
He gave me the same answer
that everybody in his position gives,
"Because they would have done it for me."
Now, if you think about it
in the military they give medal to people
who are willing to sacrifice themselves
so that others may gain.
In business we give bonuses to people
who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain.
We have it backwards.
Wouldn't you like to work in an organization
in which you have the absolute confidence
and the absolute knowledge
that other people that you may or may not know
who work in the same organization as you
would be willing to sacrifice themselves
so that you may survive.
We're not talking about giving your life.
We don't even like to give up credit, you know?
Where do people like Johnny Bravo come from?
Well it's an age old question.
They're not born, they're actually made.
If you look at the human animal,
the human animal is like a machine.
There are systems inside our bodies
that are trying to get us to do things
that are in the interest of the survival
of the human animal.
Just like in a business, in a company,
if you want people to do something
you offer them some sort of positive or negative incentive
to direct the behavior, right?
If you want people to achieve a certain goal,
you offer them a bonus if they achieve that goal
and they'll work towards that goal
because they want the bonus.
It's a very simple system.
The human body works exactly the same way.
It works exactly the same way.
Inside our bodies are chemicals
that are trying to get us to do things
that are in the best interest of us.
If you've ever had a feeling of happiness,
pride, joy, love, fulfillment,
all of these feelings that we have
are chemically produced feelings.
They're produced by four chemicals predominantly.
These are basically responsible
for all of the feelings
that I would generically call happiness.
They are endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
EDSO.
These two chemicals, endorphins and dopamine,
I like to call these the selfish chemicals
because you don't really need anybody's help to get them.
Let me tell you a little bit about what they are.
Endorphins.
Endorphins are designed to do one thing and one thing only,
mask physical pain.
That's it.
That's what they do.
If you're a runner,
if you've ever gone and done heavy exercise
you've heard of an endorphin rush or a runner's high.
Basically what's happening is when that runner's out there
pushing their bodies harder than they've ever pushed before
they feel good.
When they're done with their run they feel fantastic.
Then an hour later they're in pain
for damage they caused to their muscles an hour before.
This is what endorphins are designed to do.
They're designed to make physical pain.
The caveman reason for this stuff,
'cause this stuff is all from 50,000 years ago,
understand homo sapien existed at the same time
as other hominid species
and yet we survived and they didn't.
What is it about this species
that's so good at survival and thriving?
Look at the world we've built.
It's not just that we're smart.
We're certainly not the strongest
and we're certainly not the smartest.
It's that we're social animals.
We have to do things together.
We have to look after each other.
And we have to work together
to ensure that we survive, that we do well.
This is how we're designed.
These chemicals are trying to make that happen.
In these caveman times 50,000 years ago,
Paleolithic era,
we had to eat.
We're not the strongest, we're not the fastest.
But there's one thing that the human animal is made for:
endurance.
We could track an animal for hours and hours and hours
and miles and miles and miles
and if we were tired we'd keep going.
If we got injured
or we had to bring the food back to the cave,
we'd continue to do it.
It was so good, it felt so good,
that maybe we'd even volunteer to go hunting the next day
just like we get addicted to exercise, right?
Oh my God, it was so much fun yesterday.
I will totally go hunting tomorrow.
Good system for the survival of the group.
Good system.
By the way, the reason laughing feels good
is because of endorphins.
You're actually convulsing your internal organs
and endorphins are masking the physical pain.
I'm sure everybody here has laughed so much
that the endorphins eventually run out
and you go, "Stop, stop, it hurts."
(audience laughing)
Endorphins.
They feel good.
Dopamine.
Dopamine is the feeling
that you found something you're looking for
or that you accomplish something you set out to accomplish.
You know that feeling you get
when you cross something off your to do list?
That's dopamine.
Feels awesome.
You know when you have a goal to hit
and you achieve that goal and you're like, "Yes!"
You feel like you've won something, right?
That's dopamine.
The whole purpose of dopamine
is to make sure that we get stuff done.
The historical reason for dopamine,
we would never eat if we only waited until we got hungry
because there was no guarantee that we would find food.
So dopamine exists to help us go looking for food.
We get dopamine when we eat,
which is one of the reasons we like eating,
and so when you see something
that reminds you of something that feels good
we wanna do the behavior
that helps us get that feeling, right?
Let's say you're out there going for a walk
and you see an apple tree in the distance.
(fingers snapping) You get a small hit
of dopamine.
Then what it does is it focuses us on our goals.
Now we start walking towards the apple tree.
As the apple tree starts to get a little bigger,
we feel like we're making progress,
(fingers snapping) you get another little shot
of dopamine
(fingers snapping) and another little
shot of dopamine until you get to the tree
and you're like, "Yes!"
This is why we're told you must write down your goals.
Your goals must be tangible.
There's a biological reason for that.
We're very, very visually oriented animals.
You have to be able to see the goal
for it to biologically stay focused.
If you don't write down your goals,
if you can't see your goals,
it's very hard to get motivated, to get inspired.
For example, think about corporate visions.
A corporate vision has to be some thing we can see.
That's why it's called a vision.
You can see it.
To be the biggest, most respected,
to be the fastest growing are not visions.
They're nothing.
What does that even look like?
Respected by whom?
Your mother, your self,
your friends, your shareholders, who knows?
What's the metric?
Don't know.
It's amorphous.
Doesn't motivate us.
Just like I can't tell you
you will get a bonus if you achieve more.
You're gonna ask me, "How much more?"
I'm gonna say, "More."
Doesn't work.
You need a tangible goal.
Here's a great vision.
Martin Luther King, I have a dream
that one day little black children and little white children
will play on the playground together
then hold hands together.
We can imagine that.
We can set our sights on that.
Every time we achieve a goal and achieve a metric
and achieve a milestone
that makes us feel like we're making progress
to the vision we can see,
(fingers snapping)
we keep going and going and going
until we achieve something remarkable.
You have to be able to see it.
Dopamine.
Like I said, dopamine is the feeling you get
when you set out to find something
you're looking for, as well.
We talked about the to do list.
I came home from a trip just a couple days ago
and I had a bunch of errands to run
and I wrote down a little list of things I had to do
and off I went.
As I was walking past, I think it was the dry cleaners,
I don't remember, I was walking past something,
I remembered oh, I have to do that
and I hadn't written it down on my to do list
so I went in and finished what I needed to do
and then when I came out I then wrote it on my to do list
and then crossed it out.
(audience laughing)
'Cause I wanted the dopamine.
Feels good.
Dopamine comes with a warning.
Dopamine is highly, highly, highly addictive.
Here's some other things that release dopamine.
Alcohol, nicotine, gambling, your cell phone.
(audience laughing)
Oh, you think I'm joking.
Okay, we've all been told
that if you wake up in the morning
and you crave a drink, you might be an alcoholic.
Well if you wake up in the morning
and the first thing you do is check your phone
before you even get out of bed,
you might be an addict.
If you walk from room to room in your own apartment
holding your telephone,
(audience laughing)
you might be an addict.
When you're driving in your car
and you get a text and your phone goes beep,
we hate email, true, we love the beep, the buzz, the ding.
(moaning)
Right?
You'll be there in 10 minutes
and yet you have to look at it right now.
You might be an addict.
Even if you read it
and it says are you free for dinner next Thursday
and you have to reply immediately,
you can't wait the 10 minutes, you might be an addict.
For all you gen y's out there
who like to think that you're better at multitasking
because you grew up with the technology,
then why do you keep crashing your cars when you're texting?
(audience laughing)
You're not better at multitasking,
you're better at getting distracted.
In fact if you look at the statistics
diagnoses of ADD and ADHD
have risen 66% in the past 10 years.
ADD and ADHD is a frontal lobe disorder.
Are you telling me out of nowhere
66% of our youth have a frontal problem?
Where did that come from?
No, it's a misdiagnosis.
What are the symptoms of a dopamine addiction to technology?
Distractibility,
inability to get things done,
easily distracted, shortness of attention,
it's all the same thing so we misdiagnose things.
It's this.
It's the addictive quality of dopamine.
We can also get addicted to performance in our companies
when all they do is give us numbers to hit,
numbers to hit, numbers to hit,
and a bonus you get and a bonus you get
and a bonus you get.
All they're doing is feeding us with dopamine
and we can't help ourselves.
All we do is want more, more, and more.
It's no surprise that the banks destroyed the economy
because one of the things we know about a dopamine addict
is they will do anything to get another hit,
sometimes at the sacrifice of their own resources
and their relationships.
Ask any alcoholic, gambling addict, or drug addict.
Ask them how their relationships are doing
and if they've squandered any of their resources.
It's an addiction.
Dopamine is dangerous if it is unbalanced.
It is hugely helpful
when in a comfortable and balanced system.
But when unbalanced it's dangerous and it's destructive.
You don't need anybody's help to get these.
Go for a run, achieve your goals, you'll get dopamine,
you'll get endorphins,
but you won't have any feeling
of fulfillment or love or trust.
That's where these come in.
These are attempting to manage these.
This is what makes our society great.
This is where people like Johnny Bravo come from.
It's because of these two chemicals
that leaders really fulfill their great responsibility.
Outside in the world is danger
at all times for various reasons.
In caveman times
that danger may have been a saber-toothed tiger,
it may have been the weather,
it may have been a lack of resources,
it may have been who knows, any number of things,
things that with no conscience are trying to kill you.
They want to end your life.
So how do we survive?
We work together.
Together we come together in our groups
and our companies and our tribes
to feel like we belong,
to be around people who believe what we believe
so that we may feel safe.
When we're surrounded by people
who have our best interest in mind and we feel safe
we will organize ourselves and cooperate
to face the dangers externally.
Don't forget the outside dangers are a constant.
In a modern world
the outside dangers may be your competition
that's trying to put you out of business,
or at least steal your business.
It might be the ebbs and flows of the economy.
It might be terrorism.
All of these unknowns all trying to put you out of business,
take away your job, take away your livelihood,
end it for you.
Nothing personal.
It's a constant.
Inside our organizations
the dangers we face are not a constant, they are a variable.
They are the decisions of leadership
as to how safe they make us feel when we go to work.
This is the job of leaders.
Aesop said it better than I can.
There's an Aesop fable
about four oxen that stand tail to tail.
Whenever the lion tries to eat them,
no matter what angle from which he attacks,
he will always be met with horns.
However, due to infighting and disagreements
they separate and they go and graze
in different parts of the field.
And one by one the lion picks them off and kills them all.
When we stand together,
we can more easily face the dangers outside.
When we break up inside our companies,
if our leaders don't allow us a space
to feel safe inside our own companies,
to feel like we belong,
then we have to, we're forced to exert our own energy
to protect ourselves from each other
and, by the way, expose ourselves
to greater danger from the outside.
If you have to worry about politics,
if you have to worry about someone stealing your credit,
if you have to worry about your boss not having your back,
think about the energy you invest, not in your business,
not in the products you're trying to develop,
not in your work, not in how great you're producing,
not in your creativity,
but in just keeping yourself feeling safe.
This is destructive.
The responsibility of leadership is two things.
One, to determine who gets in and who doesn't get in.
This is what it means to start with why.
What are our values, what are our beliefs?
Who can we allow in?
Second thing is to decide how big this is.
How big do we make the circle of safety?
How big do we make the circle of belonging?
Do we keep it around just our c-level executives
and call it an inner circle
and allow others to try and fend for themselves
and maybe trying to get into our inner circle?
Or do we extend it
to the outermost edges of the organization?
Great leaders extend the circle of safety,
the circle of belonging, out to the outer most edges
so the most junior person feels like they belong,
feels safe, feels like they have top cover
from somebody like Johnny Bravo.
That's what these other two chemicals are trying to do.
Serotonin is the leadership chemical,
is responsible for feelings of pride and status.
This is why public recognition is very important.
We are social animals and we need the recognition of others.
This is why we have the Oscars
and this is why we have public awards events.
This is why we have commencement for graduation.
Think about it.
What does it really take to graduate college?
You need to pay your bills,
fulfill the minimum requirements,
and collect enough credits.
That's it.
It's a formula.
You can get an email that says congratulations,
you've fulfilled all the requirements for graduation,
enclosed please print out the PDF of your diploma.
PS, magna cum laude.
Right?
Wouldn't feel so good, right?
Instead we have a big ceremony
to recognize the accomplishment.
In the audience we put our family and our friends
and our teachers, all of those in our tribe
who have supported us and watched our backs
as we've made it through.
Then we show up on that day
and we go up on that stage and we take our diploma.
It feels great.
We feel our status rise, we feel our pride go up.
By the way, when you have serotonin in your veins
your confidence goes up also.
Here's the best part about serotonin.
At the exact moment that you took your diploma
and you felt that surge of serotonin go through your body,
at the exact moment your parents sitting in the audience
also got a surge of serotonin
and also felt an intense pride watching you graduate.
This is what serotonin is trying to do.
It is trying to reinforce the relationship
between parent and child, boss and employee,
coach and player, the caregiver
and the one who is grateful for the support they are given.
Think about it.
Think of the speeches that we give.
If you give an award to somebody, what do they say?
I couldn't have done it,
I thank God, I thank my parents, I thank my coach.
We thank the person who we believe was looking out for us.
"We could not have done this without them," we say.
And they look at us and they say, "I'm so proud of you."
And we work to make them proud.
Great teams don't wanna win the trophy.
Great teams wanna win one for the coach.
They wanna make the coach proud.
We wanna make our parents proud.
It raises our status and it raises our confidence
and it feels good and we in turn will look after others
so that they may accomplish the same.
This is what serotonin is trying desperately to do.
The problem is you can trick serotonin.
We live in a materialist society
so we judge status very often in our country
based on how much money you make.
Any conspicuous display of wealth raises your status.
This is why they put the logos on the outside.
No good on the inside.
Nobody can see them.
We want the red line of our Prada glasses.
You own a pair of designer shoes,
how good does it feel to put on your Gucci shoes?
Oh my God, it feels so good
and you walk out and you feel a million bucks.
You can actually feel your confidence rise
when you put on the stuff
because it's showing this display of status.
It feels great.
The problem is there was no relationship
that was reinforced because of it.
You tricked the system.
That's why we keep trying to accomplish things
and accumulate more and more material goods
and yet we never feel successful
because there was no relationship.
We tricked it, we gamed it.
Serotonin is the leadership chemical.
The reason I call it the leadership chemical
is a historical reason, a very simple historical reason.
We had a very practical problem
as our animal was developing,
as the homo sapien was developing.
We lived in communities of about 100 and 150 people
and this is a very practical issue
which is if we're hungry
and somebody brings back food
and drop a carcass on the floor,
we're all gonna rush in to eat.
If you're lucky enough to be built like a linebacker
you will elbow your way to the front.
If you're the artistic one of the family
(audience laughing)
you get the elbow in the face.
Not a good system to keep the whole tribe alive
and definitely not a good system for cooperation.
'Cause remember the value of group living
means that if I trust you and you trust me,
I can fall asleep at night
and trust that you will alert me to danger.
If I don't trust you, I can't go to sleep at night.
It's the same in our companies.
If we trust each other, we will turn our backs,
we will take risks, we will innovate,
we will do things that will change the course of our world.
If I don't trust you I can't do that.
I can't do that.
There's value in group living and group working.
If you got an elbow in the face that afternoon,
odds are very high that you're not gonna wake the guy
who punched you of dangers there.
You're just not gonna do it.
Bad system.
We evolved into higher hierarchical animals.
We're constantly assessing and judging each other,
constantly ranging ourselves.
Who's the alpha, who's the dominant,
who's the one who sort of is the more dominant personality
or dominant talent in the room?
In caveman times it might have been physical muscle.
In the creative industry it might be talent.
In the military it might be courage.
There's no standard by which we judge alphas.
It's relative to the industries we're in.
It's relative to us, as well.
If you've ever met someone
and you were nervous while you were meeting them,
you're not the alpha.
We've all had the experience where we're meeting somebody
and we can sense that they're nervous meeting us.
You're the alpha.
I'll tell you a little aside that's kind of funny.
You know when women all live together
their menstrual cycles align?
Assuming they're not on the pill, then it doesn't work.
But if they're not on the pill
then all the menstrual cycles
go together on the same schedule.
It's not arbitrary.
They always align with the alpha female's schedule.
The reason is
is because when a woman is in her menstrual cycle
she can't bear children.
So in evolutionary terms
you want the alpha male and the alpha female
to do it so you can have alpha children,
nice, strong, strapping kids who are gonna survive,
but if she's off the market that produces competition.
Mother nature has created a very clever way
that when she's off the market everyone's off the market.
(audience laughing)
(chuckling)
Back to the talk.
We're constantly judging
and assessing each other who's alpha.
What we do is when we assess that someone else is the alpha
we voluntarily take a step back
and allow them to eat first.
Alphas get first choice of meat and first choice of mate.
Good system.
The alpha gets to eat first.
The rest of us may not get the best cut of meat,
but we will get to eat eventually
and we won't get an elbow in the face.
Good system.
We'll happily alert them to danger later.
Good system.
This is why we're constantly trying to raise our status
is because there are benefits to being the alpha.
People will do things for us and step back
and offer us favors.
To this day we're perfectly comfortable
giving special treatment to our alphas.
No one has a problem
that your boss makes more money than you.
You might think he's an ass,
but you don't have a problem that he makes more money.
Nobody has a problem that somebody who outranks us at work
has a bigger office than us.
Doesn't offend us.
It is deeply ingrained in us.
We happily step aside and allow our alphas
first choice of meat and first choice of mate.
It's good to be the king.
There are advantages that come with being the alpha.
You get special treatment, you get to eat first.
People show you love and respect.
It boosts the serotonin.
You walk around like this.
It boosts your confidence.
It's awesome.
But it comes at a cost.
You see, the group is not stupid.
We're not giving all of that stuff away for free.
Leadership, alpha, comes at a cost.
You see, we expect
that when danger threatens us from the outside
that the person who's actually stronger,
the person who's better fed,
and the person who is actually teeming with serotonin
and actually has higher confidence than the rest of us,
we expect them to run towards the danger to protect us.
This is what it means to be a leader.
The cost of leadership is self interest.
If you're not willing to give up your perks when it matters
then you probably shouldn't get promoted.
You might be an authority, but you will not be a leader.
Leadership comes at a cost.
You don't get to do less work when you get more senior,
you have to do more work.
The more work you have to do
is put yourself at risk to look after others.
That is the anthropological definition of what a leader is.
This is why we're so offended by these banker boys
who pay themselves astronomical salaries.
It has nothing to do with the number.
It has to do with the fact
that they have violated a deep-seeded social contract.
We know that they made all of that money
and allowed their people to be sacrificed.
In fact, they may have sacrificed their people
for the money.
If I told you we're gonna 150 million dollars
to Nelson Mandela, would anyone have a problem with that?
Nope.
250 millions dollars to Mother Teresa.
Got an issue with it?
Nope.
It's not the number.
It's not the amount of money they make.
It's that we are deeply and viscerally offended
that we know that we allowed them
to have this alpha position
and they did not fulfill their responsibility of the alpha.
They're supposed to sacrifice themselves for us,
never sacrifice us for themselves.
This is why we're angry and offended and don't trust them.
They fail.
(audience applauding)
Oh, there's more.
(chuckling)
Oxytocin.
This is the best chemical of all.
Oxytocin is the feeling of love and trust and friendship.
It's all the warm and fuzzies.
It's all the unicorns and rainbows.
It's the reason we like to spend time with our friends
even if we don't do anything with them.
We just sit and watch TV.
We love their company.
I promise you nearly every single person
sitting in this room today
chose the person they're sitting next to.
You're not sitting next to a stranger.
You're sitting next to somebody you met, came with,
or kind of know a little bit.
Why?
'Cause it makes you feel safer, doesn't it?
If you got up and went and sat next to strangers
it wouldn't feel so good.
That's the feeling of oxytocin.
Oxytocin is that intense feeling of safety
that someone's got your back.
There are multiple ways you can get oxytocin.
One way to get it is physical contact.
Hugging feels wonderful.
When women give birth to children,
huge surge of oxytocin in their body.
This is what's responsible for the mother child bond.
It's all that oxytocin in the system.
This is why shaking hands matters.
Imagine you're doing a deal with someone
and you're ready to sign the contract
and you say, "I'm so excited to do business with you."
And they go, "I don't need to shake.
"Let's sign the contract.
"I'm also excited to do business with you."
You go, "Great!
"Well, let's shake on it, then."
They go, "No, no, no, no.
"I agree to all the terms.
"Let's get this deal done.
"I can't wait to work with you."
You might get everything you want in the contract
but business, relationships, are not rational.
They're about feeling safe, they're about feeling we belong.
It's human.
One of the ways we wanna know
that that relationship is solidified
is with physical touch.
Their simple refusal to touch you,
to exchange that oxytocin,
means one of two things will happen.
You will either completely scuttle the deal
or you will go into it nervous.
Human bonds matter.
Another way you can get oxytocin
is through acts of human generosity.
An act of human generosity is defined
as giving of your time and energy
and expecting nothing in return.
Money doesn't work, sorry.
If I told you that this morning I gave $1,000 to charity,
what would you think of me?
You'd be like (applauding) good for you.
(audience laughing)
What do you want, a medal?
But if I told you that last Saturday
I gave up my day and I went and painted schools
in the inner city, then what would you think?
You'd be like, "Nice, cool.
"I should do more."
Right? (audience laughing)
The value of my labor, much less than $1,000.
You could have hired many more people for $1,000
to go paint schools in the inner city.
But you see, as human beings
we put a premium on time
because it is an equal commodity
and it is a non-redeemable commodity.
You spend money, you make money.
You spend time, you'll never get it back.
Some of you are sitting in this room right now
saying, "I will never get this time back."
(audience laughing)
I got nothin' for ya.
We put a premium
on people who give us their time and energy.
A leader who says to you, "I'll pay for something for you,"
is not a leader.
A leader who comes and sits down next to you
and says, "How can I help you?" is a leader.
I was talking to some oil executives
and they were trying to convince me
that they really care about how fulfilled
and how happy their employees are at work,
to which I said, "No, you don't."
And they said, "No, we do."
And I said, "No, you don't."
And they said, "Yeah, we do."
You see how this went.
I said, "I bet you hired some high priced consultancy
"to come and do a web survey
"about whether people liked their jobs or not."
And they said, "Well, we didn't hire a consultancy."
I said, "Okay, so it's kinda like sending your son an email.
"Dear son, your mother and I care
"that you feel like a valuable part of this family.
"Please tell us candidly what we can go better
"so that you feel like you belong here
"because we really love you.
"Love, Dad."
Or you go into his room, you sit on his bed
and you say, "Hey, son, your mom and I really care
"that you feel like a valuable member of this family.
"Please tell us candidly what we can do better
"because we want you to feel like you belong
"and we really love you."
Same words, same intention, same desire.
The difference is one, you gave time and energy,
and the other one you didn't.
This is the problem with email.
It's too easy.
There's no time and energy expended.
It's too easy.
You don't feel anything.
If I come to your house for dinner
and you make me a lovely dinner,
the next day I send you a very nice thank you email,
what a wonderful host you are,
or three days later you receive a handwritten note from me
with the exact same words that were written in the email,
which one makes you feel better?
Handwritten note.
The sentiment was the same, the words were the same.
The difference is one took a little more time
and a little more energy.
Leaders are the ones who give us their time
and give us their energy,
not the ones who give us their money.
It doesn't count.
It doesn't work.
It just biologically doesn't work.
This is how you get oxytocin,
doing nice things for people
that require that you sacrifice a little bit of time,
a little bit of energy.
Something you will never get back.
If you expect something in return
then you weren't really giving in the first place.
You take someone out for dinner
because you want them to hire you,
you're not really taking them out for dinner.
You want something in return.
It's just a protracted transaction.
It's not relationship building.
It's nonsense.
I was walking down the streets of New York,
true story, and the guy in front of me,
his backpack opened and a bunch of paper
spilled out on the street.
Didn't think much of it.
I bent down, gathered the papers up,
handed them back to him,
and pointed out that his band had opened.
I did a small act of generosity for somebody,
I got a small burst of oxytocin, I felt good.
Also the person on the receiving end
of the act of generosity feels good.
They get a shot of oxytocin.
He felt good.
He says thanks.
I get to the end of the block
and I'm standing waiting to cross the street
and a guy who also happens to be standing
waiting to cross the street turns around, true story,
turns around and says to me, "I saw what you did back there.
"That was really cool."
(audience laughing)
As it turns out witnessing acts of human generosity
release oxytocin.
Remember our bodies are trying to get us to repeat behaviors
that are in our best interest
and it's making us feel good
when we see or do acts of human generosity
so that we will do them.
In fact, the more oxytocin you have in your body,
the more generous you actually become.
The more you do, the more you want to do.
It gets better than that.
Lots of oxytocin in your body inhibits addiction.
It makes it very difficult to get addicted to something
when you have lots of oxytocin in your body.
It actually inhibits addiction.
It boosts your immune system.
It makes you healthier.
That's why happy people live longer.
It's why couples live longer.
Oxytocin.
It actually is good for us.
It increases our ability to solve problems.
It increases our creativity.
It's really good for us and it's not addictive.
It just feels great.
It takes time to build up, though.
I went on a date with a girl the other day,
it was a first date, we totally got along great,
we're gonna get married.
(audience laughing) Why are you laughing?
that's my social life.
(audience laughing)
The reason you laugh is because you inherently know
that I cannot form a bond of trust strong enough
to get married in seven days.
You know that.
Why don't you go on a couple more dates?
Inherently you know that.
If I told you that I'd been dating somebody for seven years
and we're not married yet, what do you say?
What's wrong?
(audience laughing)
In other words we know that that bond of trust
takes more than seven days and less than seven years.
Don't know how long it takes, though.
When you start a new job
and you're really excited to work there
and they're really excited to have you,
don't quite feel like you belong
and you don't quite feel like you're trusted yet, right?
Even though you were really excited.
It takes time and you have to do little acts of generosity
and make little sacrifices, do little things for people.
Not big risks, small risks.
It's like dating.
You don't start by buying them a diamond.
You start by taking them for lunch,
buying them a drink, little bits.
Then they take you out or you take them out again,
you do something a little bigger,
then you do that and a movie,
then they come over, and then you buy them flowers,
and then you say, "I love you."
And one day you wake up in the morning,
it's like you pressed this belief button.
You're just, "I'm in love.
"I don't know when it happened."
It just clicks and you feel like you belong.
Same thing at work.
It just clicks (fingers snapping)
and you feel like you belong
'cause you got enough oxytocin built up in your system.
We don't allow this to happen.
We're too busy sending emails.
The next time you wanna tell somebody something,
email is fantastic for the exchange of information, right?
It's fantastic.
Here's the report you wanted,
the meeting's at four o'clock.
Fantastic.
What did you think of my idea?
Do not reply on an email.
That's an emotional question.
Email is a rational tool.
You get up from your desk, you walk the 30 feet,
and you say, "Wanted to tell you what I thought
"of your idea."
And I promise you,
not only will that information be better received,
but you will start to create relationships
because oxytocin starts to get released.
If you can't get up and walk 30 feet,
pick up the telephone.
I've done it.
It's an amazing thing.
You pick up the phone, you go, "Hey."
They're like, "Hey, what's the matter?"
You're like, "No, I'm just replying to your email.
(audience laughing)
"Wanted to tell you what I thought."
"What?"
People who tell me, "But I need a paper trail."
Have the conversation, hang up and say,
"Just to confirm what we talked about."
Boom, there's your paper trail.
The reason we get so many emails
is because we reply to them all
and 12 emails are sent
and then somebody misunderstands something
and somebody gets angry
and then you have to pick up the phone and do it anyway.
Do it at the beginning.
Quicker, easier, better.
Biology.
Give your time and give your energy.
This is why leadership is really difficult
because you can't give it to everyone
because you don't have enough to give to everyone.
You just can't.
You have to make sure that you can trust others
to trust others to trust others to trust others.
This is what happens in the circle of belonging,
in the circle of safety.
This is what effective bureaucracy is.
Which is as the CEO, as the leader, or whatever your job is,
you have one responsibility and one responsibility only
which is to make sure the people you know
that you have physical contact with,
you know their names, are confident and feel looked after
and encourage them to do the same
for the ones who work beneath them
who work beneath them who work beneath them.
When this group of people really feels safe,
then they will invite in the customer to also feel safe.
They will talk to these people as if they are human.
I actually flew on an airline recently
and I was appalled at how I was treated.
It was disgusting.
It was like cattle.
I said something.
I said, "Why do you treat people like cattle?"
And she literally said to me, "I'm sorry, sir,
I have to do it or I'll lose my job."
What did she tell me?
My organization that I work for
doesn't make me feel safe.
I don't feel like I belong,
so I'm gonna treat you like dirt to protect myself.
As opposed to somebody who feels safe
that says, "Sir, I will do everything in my power
"to make sure that you feel happy and good
"because I'm not worried."
That's called a highly effective organization.
There's one more chemical I haven't told you about.
The big c.
Cortisol.
Cortisol is the feeling of stress
and the feeling of anxiety.
We share these chemicals with all the social mammals.
When you see a herd of gazelle,
you've all seen the documentary
on Discovery or whatever, right?
And see a herd of gazelle grazing.
And one of them thinks they hear a rustle in the grass
and they go (gasping)
(audience laughing) Up head, right?
That's what cortisol does.
Cortisol is designed to keep us alive.
It is the first stage or fight or flight.
It makes us paranoid,
it makes all of our senses hyper attuned to look for danger.
It injects glucose into our muscles
to make us stiff and ready to go
in case we need to fight or flight.
It increases our heart rate like crazy.
And it makes us start looking.
It makes us paranoid to find the danger.
The cool thing about cortisol
when you work in a social environment
is if other people sense that you're nervous,
they get nervous.
All the other gazelle go (gasping)
They didn't hear anything.
They just saw Steve over there get really freaked out.
(audience laughing)
And so they got all freaked out.
Now they all start looking for the danger.
Good system.
One of them who didn't even hear
the initial rustle in the grass sees the lion, runs,
they all run, they all live another day.
Good system.
So that when we go to work and somebody says,
"I think there's gonna be layoffs."
All of us are like, "What do you mean?
"Wait.
There's gonna be?"
We're all paranoid now.
"I shouldn't have talked talked in that meeting.
Ugh!"
We start to get crazy, we start to get paranoid.
Our hearts start to race.
It's what cortisol does, it's trying to keep us alive.
You wake up in the middle of the night,
you hear a bump in the middle of the night.
(gasping)
What's the first thing you do?
You wake the person next to you!
(audience laughing)
And then what do they do?
They go (gasping)
If there's nothing there you go and trust your eyes,
you go looking for it, we're visual animals.
If there's nothing there you go like this,
(exhaling)
the cortisol leaves our body and we relax
and our heartbeat goes back down.
Cortisol, to get all of that extra energy,
to make us paranoid, to make us self-interested,
it needs to shut down non-essential systems
'cause it has to get it from somewhere, right?
So it shuts off things like growth.
You don't need your fingernails to grow at that moment.
Shuts it off.
The other thing it shuts off is our immune system.
Don't need it in that moment.
The problem is you're not supposed to have cortisol
in your system all the time.
You're supposed to have it in and then gone.
When we go to work in a place
that doesn't make us feel like we belong,
that doesn't make us feel safe when we're at work,
guess what?
We got little bits of cortisol dripping in our body.
Drip, drip, drip, drip.
Makes us paranoid.
Drip.
I know my boss hates me.
I know he hates me.
He hates all my ideas, I know it.
Drip, drip.
It makes us self-interested.
One of the things cortisol does
it inhibits the release of oxytocin.
Biologically if you work in a high stress environment
where you don't feel safe,
you are biologically less empathetic and less generous.
We don't care about each other
because we're too busy trying to protect ourselves.
Drip, drip, drip.
Our immune systems are now compromised.
Drip, drip, drip.
We live in a country
with some of the best medical education in the world,
some of the best medical systems in the world,
some of the best doctors in the world,
some of the best hospitals in the world,
some of the best medicines in the world.
Please explain to me why diabetes is on the rise,
heart disease is on the rise,
some cancers are on the rise.
It ain't partially hydrogenated oils.
Our jobs are killing us
and the people who are responsible are the leaders.
We also know that parents who come home stressed out,
their kids learn that this is what work is,
that work is something
that makes you short-tempered and unhappy.
So they expect it as they grow older.
Worse, we know that parents who come home upset and angry,
it has such a negative impact on their children
that there's some studies
that show that they might actually become bullies
because of their unhappy parents
who hate their jobs and have excessive amounts of stress.
Our companies are literally killing us.
So what are you gonna do about it?
What are you gonna do about it?
Leadership is not a rank.
Leadership is not a position.
Leadership is a decision.
Leadership is a choice.
It has nothing to do with your position in the organization.
If you decide to look after the person to the left of you
and look after the person to the right of you,
you have become a leader.
You've seen the movie 300, right?
The Spartans.
The greatest fighting force of all time.
You wanna know one the things that made the Spartans great?
It wasn't their muscles, wasn't their spears.
It was their shields.
They stood shield to shield and the phalanx was strong
because those shields were big.
They were told when they were young children,
"You either bring your shield home
"or you come home on your shield."
The punishment for losing your shield
was tremendous in battle.
Because if you lost your shield
that means you cannot protect the person to the left of you
and the person to the right of you
and you have destroyed the phalanx.
It's the shield that matters, not the spear.
Not the spear.
It's your willingness to sacrifice yourself,
not your life, maybe your credit, maybe your little time,
maybe a little energy, maybe getting up from your desk
and talking to somebody for 30 minutes
instead of sending a three minute email.
It's your willingness to sacrifice for someone,
to hold that shield up so that they feel safe
that makes you a leader.
You wanna know how you beat a dopamine addiction,
if you're worried that you're addicted to performance
and all this dopamine things?
Alcoholics Anonymous has been highly effective for decades,
80 something years.
We all know the first step of the 12 steps.
We joke about it, right?
Admit you have a problem.
Do you know the 12th step?
Don't say it, it's supposed to be anonymous.
(audience laughing)
I'll tell you what the 12th step is.
Alcoholics Anonymous knows that if you master all 11 steps
but not the 12th, you will drink again.
If you master the 12th step you will beat the disease.
What's the 12th step?
The 12th step is the commitment to help another alcoholic.
Service, service to another.
Oxytocin wins.
Serotonin wins.
The more we look after each other,
the safer we feel, the more we feel like we belong,
and the more we will work together
to confront the dangers outside.
Do this for others and others will become Johnny Bravo.
Thanks very much.
(audience applauding)
(bright music)