we don't teach leaders how to have uncomfortable conversations we don't teach students how to have uncomfortable conversations you tell me which is going to be more valuable for the rest of your life how to have a difficult conversation or trigonometry described as a visionary thinker with a rare intellect multiple time best-selling author science cynic every single one of us knows what we do some of us know how we do it but very very few of us can clearly articulate why we do what we do and i think one of the reasons most of us don't know who we are is because we're making decisions that are inconsistent with that true cause with that why there's a great irony in in all of this i had what a lot of people would be considered a good life and yet didn't want to wake up and go to work anymore why i we cannot do this thing called career or life alone we're just not that smart we're not that strong we're just not that good for anyone who wants to be a better version of themselves purpose comes from it's one of the best podcasts i've ever done so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the direva ceo usa edition i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this yourself [Music] simon my introduction to you was this book start with why and it hung on the walls of some of my offices around the world for a long time and then my employees would come in after reading the book and evangelize about it and it would come up in meetings and in discussions and in creative brainstorms etc over and over and over again the question i wanted to ask you was was there a point in your life where you'd felt like you drifted so far from your why that you realized the importance of it for the first time well the simple answer is yes um it was that drifting that set me on the path to find it in the first place to to even articulate that idea i had what a lot of people would be considered sort of a good life as living the proverbial american dream you know i quit my job to start my own business the business was doing okay made an okay living had great clients did good work and yet i'd lost my passion for that and didn't want to wake up and go to go to work anymore which was embarrassing because superficially everything was just fine i was pretending that i was happier more in control and more successful than i was or felt um which is quite frankly pretty draining and pretty dark and it wasn't until a very very close friend of mine came to me and said something's wrong she was the first one to notice something and i came clean and i sort of let it all out and uh it was that catharsis that sort of lifted this heavy weight off my shoulders i was no longer alone it was no longer a secret um and all of the energy that was previously going into lying hiding and faking now went into finding a solution there was a confluence of events it's not you know all of these histories are perfectly neat and clean and that's not really how it is or was but to compress it and oversimplify it i made this discovery based on the biology of human decision making that every single one of us knows what we do some of us know how we do it but very very few of us can clearly articulate why we do what we do and i realized that was what i was missing so to answer your question yes 100 the realization of the why was my loss of it and i realized i knew what i did and i was good at it i knew how i was different or special or stood out from the crowd and that was my differentiating value proposition and i was articulate about it but i couldn't tell you why i was waking out of bed every day to do it you know and i would give some nonsense entrepreneur answer because i want to be my own boss and be like yeah sure but that's not a reason to get out of bed every day this got me thinking a lot about the guests that i have sit here and also my own story where sometimes i think people's why or the thing that's been driving them is in fact some kind of trauma or insecurity i think because you sit here with people in there whether it's israel arasanya the ufc champion who's the current maybe world's best ufc fighter he was battered and bullied as a kid being the only black kid in his school in new zealand and so it's no coincidence that he strived to be this fighter and in fact when he won the ufc title the next day he was he was depressed and he went to therapy that's made me question whether like our wise can sometimes be trauma or insecurity driven as opposed to being intentional in i don't know so a why is fully formed by the time we're in our mid to late teens the youngest person i've done at wide discovery 4 was 16 and it worked the process worked um and what i've learned from just doing hundreds of these over the years is that a y is always positive it's always striving for something so like we're not inspired against something we're not inspired to stop something we're inspired to build something or create something or advance something though it may have been born out of trauma there's usually a silver lining that gives us that cause especially trauma that happens in the middle of our lives you know september 11th is often looked to as you know people found purpose you know we are who we are like i said we're fully formed by the experiences we have when we're young you know at a pretty young age and now the opportunity life presents us is to make decisions that either keeps us in balance with who we really are or not and i think one of the reasons most of us feel discomfort or don't feel ourselves or don't know who we are is because we're making decisions that are inconsistent with that true cause with that why so you raise the case of um individual athletes who become champions and then suffer depression it's a fairly common story you hear this from olympians you know michael phelps becomes the most meddled you know uh olympian of all time immediately suffers depression andre agassi becomes the most storied you know tennis player of all time immediately becomes depressed and what i've learned from talking to some of these um these particularly athletes but i think it happens in the business world as well which is from a very young age they set themselves a goal that in my words would be a very selfish goal i want to be the best at x the best tennis player the best golfer the best whatever and you know the way olympians put it which i get a kick out of is i want to win the olympics like well no one wins the olympics like you can be a winner in your sport you know but that's an aside but and and their entire lives from pretty young ages every decision they're making is to help them advance this finite goal all of their relationships are can you help me achieve my goal right and if you can no longer help me achieve my goal i don't need you anymore as a coach or even a friend and there's huge sacrifices missing of birthdays missing of christmases you know missing of major life uh events because i have to practice so i can achieve my goal and when they get interviewed on the news you know or at the olympics or whatever you know why do you do it they'll say well i'm doing it to inspire the little kids which is complete [ __ ] you know if you look at all of their vision boards from when they were younger of pictures of podiums and medals and money and lamborghinis not a single little child on there of the people you're doing it for it's it's just a lucky strike extra i mean absolutely you do inspire children but that's not the reason you did it you just got that you know like i said it's sort of a it's a twofer and and then when they achieve or don't achieve this thing and then can no longer compete for it um they've set their entire path and all their relationships on this one these finite selfish goals and so when it's complete they realize they don't really have a lot of friends around them they don't really have a lot of close relationships they don't really even have a sense of purpose because they've been spent the past 20 years or so with one purpose which was this finite goal which now has run out and so the very purpose lists and i see this in broadway performers who set their whole life to be on the west end or be on broadway you know every class every tap dancing class every singing class they make it they get there and then depression or at least malaise or senior executive same thing if i just or if i just make a million dollars you know if i just become a millionaire then i'll feel and uh and the problem with all of those things is as i said before they are selfish uh it is your goal for your reasons which um is not fulfilling for any social animal for any human being you know our sense of joy and fulfillment and love and purpose comes from our ability to serve another human being have a child tell me how your life changes fall in love tell me how your life changes you know think about all the stupid things irrational things we've done for love we get on planes and travel around the world just to say i love you you know we do ridiculous things and it all feels worth it and the sacrifices we make for a child all feel worth it but these are no longer for us and these things will live on beyond our own lives they are not finite they are infinite and there's nothing wrong with personal achievement there's nothing wrong with setting goals but it has to be in the context of something even bigger in general team sports don't suffer this because you had to do it together you know it's usually individual athletes who suffer this more often uh and so there is a there's one of the athletes i would point to is a guy by the name of curtis martin curtis is a hall of fame nfl footballer um and he only started playing football basically to stay out of trouble he did it as a favor to his mom just so he wouldn't get into he grew up in a really bad neighborhood in philadelphia it basically kept him out of trouble it turns out he was really good at it and when he realized he was good at it he realized that by being good at something it will give him the power to actually give back later and he made this realization especially when he went to college on scholarship and then made it to the nfl he realized the better he was at the sport it wasn't about propelling his own career it was about when he leaves this career he has a platform that would be bigger than the platform he has now and so he was driven and driven and driven not so that he could be the best not that so that he could make the most money in fact he made a lot less money than a lot of other players of his rank not that he could uh be rich or famous or any of these things he did it so that he could build his platform so he could give back later so when he retired from the nfl he wasn't lost he wasn't searching he he knew exactly what the next step was because being in being an elite athlete to the highest level possible was only step one um and to see one's life as a continuum rather than a than an event um is much healthier on that point of seeing one's life as a continuum by the way you completely you call it atting someone where you describe their situation but you completely added me you completely described my situation in terms of the place of mind i was in at 25 when i had that offered to buy my company it was about me it was about filling some void that i had in me from being like the only black kid in an all-white school and thinking that i think success and accolades would fill that void in some ways but on that point of a continuum as a as a way to live your life the other moment in my life where i which i really struggled in terms of goal setting and motivation was when i was trying to get in shape and in like 2017 i said to myself i want to get a six-pack for summer that's the goal i set myself really what i was trying to find a way to stay fit forever but i set myself this goal of getting a six pack in summer that was my thing and then every single year my motivation would only last for like four or five months and i couldn't crack how people are continually motivated to work out i've cracked it now but what was wrong about that because i've heard you speak about arbitrary goals before what is the the flaw of creating arbitrary goals in our lives and how do we create goals that are more based on that idea of a continuum you know i i'm not a huge fan of the the term self-improvement right um but i do like the idea of awareness self-awareness you know we all live with blind spots we all live with missing gaps and pieces of information which will by the way last for the rest of our lives and there are some people who choose to live a life where living with those gaps is acceptable and they never fill them in and we would say that they remain stagnant and arguably either mentally or physically unhealthy or gaining you know getting unhealthier as they get older you know for someone for anyone who who wants to be a better version of themselves a more aware version of themselves you you we i seek out information and that comes in all kinds of forms right it can be in a relationship um so for example i went and took a listening class or actually i should pre preface with um i was dating someone and she accused me of being a bad listener and i was like you do know what i do for a living right like i'm a really good listener so i don't know what you're talking about you know and then i took this listening class turns out i'm an absolutely brilliant listener with people who i'll never see again for the rest of my life but amongst my friends and family appalling appalling so i had this basic skill set that i never applied with the people closest to me and gave myself an out because quote unquote i knew how to listen um and so i realized i was a terrible listener this was a blind spot this was a gap and having somebody love me tell me that didn't work didn't believe them until you know this objective outsider or at least i just took this class and came to this realization that was brilliant that awareness of the blind spot and the awareness of the skills that i need to be a better brother son boyfriend friend you know i had to learn how to hold space for someone and then practice um that's awareness and i think our health is awareness unfortunately some people wait for the breakup to learn that they're bad listeners some people wait for the heart attack to realize they're eating poorly you know that's awareness you get awareness by getting a punch in the face and i think i think it's a responsibility for every human being should they want to have value in the lives of others to seek awareness in how they show up in the world and and how the world impacts them their mental health their physical health their ability to maintain relationships and nurse relationships and you hear me what you i mean you heard me say this over again it's a sort of it's a it's a repeating pattern which is for those who want to show up better in the lives of others which is i see being healthy as a service to others i see being a better listener being a service i see everything in terms of service to others there are benefits to you as well of course but i i think we've neglected for decades the socialness of our animal and social media and cell phones and and the ubiquity of those technologies have complicated our ability to be human um there are others who comment on this as well brene brown talks about this where we have a young generation that has mistaken vulnerability and broadcast right where you sit in your room by yourself put your phone on record and make a video of yourself crying because of the loss of a relationship and then posting that on instagram or snapchat or youtube or tick tock or whatever your media of choices and the hashtag is just being vulnerable right and there's nothing vulnerable about that you're by yourself broadcasting to the world live or videoed it doesn't matter do that exact same thing with the person you hurt that is way more difficult don't leave a voice memo saying hey i'm really sorry just taking accountability call them or go visit them and look them in the eye and say that exact same sentence that you just left a voice memo for that's vulnerability that's really hard and requires practice and we avoid it because it's difficult we avoid it because it's uncomfortable we choose broadcast not because it's better it's because it's easier and then mistake the two and so the reason to learn to be vulnerable is not for ourselves it's for our service to others and i talk about this all the time which we've confused these things and once again going back to what we're talking about before we've weirdly taken these very pro-social activities and made them selfish like go us my biggest pet i'll give you my biggest pet peeve and i've talked about this one before but it drives me nuts i was at this me i was in this meeting once and there was a woman next to me who was this big timey yoga instructor apparently and the entire meeting was a big group of us she was on her phone under the under the desk under the table and i sort of sneaked over a look and it's not like she was like there was a family member in hospital and she wanted to just you know stay in touch she was on social media i could see right and at one point the conversation at the table turned to being present and she popped up her head and said that's why i love yoga because it helps me be present of which i'm thinking you're an idiot you know and i started to realize we've confused things here which is we don't get to decide when we're present we get to practice being present but you actually are not present until someone else says you are you know you don't get to sit with a friend and be like i feel present if they don't feel it that's like me saying i'm a great listener except i'm not right i don't get to self-assign these accolades especially when they're social they can only be assigned by another and so for anyone who's ever practiced meditation there are absolutely benefits to us without a doubt and it is in those are important mental and physical health benefits of meditation and mindfulness and we should practice those for sure but there's also that what i think is the primary reason some would consider secondary reason which is if you practice meditation for example you learn to focus on one thing your mantra a sound whatever it is you learn to your breath you learn to you don't nobody you don't think of nothing you think of one thing you focus on one thing right and if something interrupts that thing you have a thought can i leave the washing machine on you know you label it a thought and you push it out of your head and you say i'll deal with it later and that's the whole the whole idea his total focus and the ability to put your thoughts out of your head to stay focused on this one thing now think about when you're sitting listening with a friend who's going through a hard time are you listening are you waiting for your turn to speak right the whole meditation practice that you've been doing is now valuable in this moment where you're focused entirely on what they're saying to you every distraction every screech of a car tire outside everybody who's talking around you you don't hear any of it you only hear what they're saying to you are entirely focused on what they're saying to you and when you have your own thoughts of advice you'd like to give or things you want to tell them oh my god me too that happened to me as well right you say nope that's not important this moment and you put it out of your head and deal with it later and at the end of that conversation your friend will say thank you i feel heard or thank you for being there for me or thank you for holding space for me or thank you for listening and those are all uh uh indications that congratulations you've been present for another and i think what gives our lives purpose is not to wake up every morning to learn meditation so that we can be present for ourselves though that is valuable what gives our lives purpose is to do these things for another there's nothing wrong with doing things and enjoying the benefit of those things yourself by all means but the sense of the deep feeling sense of purpose and meaning to one's life or to one's work only comes when those things are for another and in my view primarily for another where our benefit is secondary you can't have equal there's no such thing as equal because at one point one of those things will have to be sacrificed for the other and do you sacrifice your spouse's love so that you can stay in love or do you sacrifice your comfort do you sacrifice as your girlfriend boyfriend's spouses comfort so that you can be better or do you sacrifice your comfort so they can feel better that's an obvious it's obvious well it's the same here it's the same analogy which is i choose to sacrifice my my happiness my joy my comfort my lamborghini in this moment not forever but in this moment for you for you my employee for you my friend you know um i will delay so that you can have and that's where the joy and love of business relationships friendships come from you know there's a great irony in all of this which is to sacrifice for another really is the most beautiful thing we can ever do i mean that's kind of what love is it's sacrificing for another um and all of these things whether it's learning to be a better communicator learning mindfulness and meditation being in shape if you can translate those things in for another all of those things start to have a higher purpose in the case of health doing it for another you're saying that it would be so that i can be here longer for my family would be a much more joyful if i had children for example sure as long as it's real it can't be generic you're right it can't you just cut you can't just put it out there just so it's fills the you know mad libs and you filled the gap yeah yeah you know it's gotta you gotta actually feel it that that ad actually is the purpose i'll give you one then so part i do think about this and i thought about this last night when i was in the gym was in part i think i work out because i want to be healthy and in shape for my for my girlfriend like i want to be i want our relationship to be good i want us to be able to be active together i want her to be attracted by me when i'm naked you know like and i i had a debate with my team as to like whether that's a noble reason to work out and should we have a feel and obligation or whatever to be in shape for our our other half i think to be healthy for our her for sure but you think the aesthetic stuff is a bit i think it's fine i mean i think the aesthetic stuff is about confidence right which is i'm sure she'll love you even if you're chubby you know i'm sure she'll love you even if you don't have a sex pack you know but if it makes you feel confident then it's like people have nose jobs you know like somebody says you can't have a nose job why are you well if it makes them feel better about themselves then how can we argue with it like if they if they went from being really really insecure and hiding their faces or bad teeth and they never wanted to smile to fixing their teeth and now they smile all the time like why why should we tell them they can't now of course there's a line getting addicted to plastic surgery is something different and there is a line but you know getting your teeth done or getting a nose job to make yourself feel better is it's fine if it builds your comfort so if it builds your confidence and then and it's a and you're doing it in a healthy way you know then you know it's like how can somebody argue that you shouldn't be exercising so it looks good now again there is a line there are some people who actually overdo it where if they stop exercising they gain a tiny bit of weight they actually spiral there is a line where they're actually not building confidence they're actually building in security but some of these things don't have to be big and lofty they can be ridiculously small like so for example for me you know i'm very good at um disappointing myself like i have no problem disappointing myself right like i wake up in the morning two hours before my alarm and i'll say to myself you should work out like you're up super early you've got a busy day and you just got an extra two hours you could like use 30 minutes of that to work out get out of bed i'm like i'll sit in bed for two hours and just like read the newspaper and play wordle you know and two hours will go by and i won't work out do i have any guilt none i'm just like oh you're an idiot simon right now if i'm meeting someone at the gym at 7 30 because we're gonna work out i'll be there i won't let somebody down i'm okay letting myself down but i won't let somebody else down so for me my purpose sometimes is very in the moment like i'm doing this for them it's like you know when i when i would run you know one of the reasons i stayed in good running shape is because when i ran with my running buddy i never wanted to ruin their run if they wanted to keep a slightly higher pace i could keep it so it doesn't always have to be big and lofty sometimes it can be in the moment when you talked about awareness there and the importance of trying to become more aware about ourselves and one of the things that made you aware was that conversation with your partner yeah where they said you don't listen you're a shitty listener yeah um self-awareness what i don't know if that's a real thing but self-awareness um seems to be the foundation of personal growth right so becoming aware about something in our lives and people can read as i always say that people can read as many books as they like but if they're unable to read themselves they'll never really learn a thing for me and i i wrote that a couple of years ago and i had a guy in my office who read every single he was actually one of the people that always came in with your books right he read every single book i've ever seen him he knew every book but he never changed yeah and and he and there was things within him that he wasn't self-aware about that i believe were the reason why he couldn't evolve even though he was taking in so much information how does warning go about what are the the key ways we can go about increasing our sense of self-awareness so that we can grow and evolve such a good question you know it's kind of like people like that are a little bit like yo-yo dieters you know they do every diet but they're not healthy people i read every book but i'm not growing and you can't assess yourself you know it's like can you i mean you know this from work right which is at some point somebody's gonna have to give you feedback at some point you have to give somebody else feedback like self-assessment is a thing but it's not the only thing it's a thing it's a data point and i'm a huge believer in self-assessment but you have to have that buttressed with the assessments of others because we are blind very often we're social animals we cannot do this thing called career or life alone we're just not that smart we're not that strong we're not that aware we're just not that good as social animals we actually need each other to watch our backs and tell us what's working and what's not working and i think for somebody who goes through life and reads those books all the books you know i get good on them i guess but are they asking for help are they asking for insight from others as opposed to just reading it and agreeing with it and thinking they're making the changes i know my own personal journey and i try and i do think of myself as i i work hard to be self-aware and i work hard to self-evaluate but i i have seen in my own life my ability to truly demonstrate real awareness um and move further down the the journey and path called life as opposed to staying stagnant came when i let others help me you know we we don't build trust by offering help we build trust by asking for it because it's a vulnerable thing to ask for help will you help me is a very very very vulnerable statement can i help you not so much an act of service but the act of service really comes from allowing somebody else to serve you which it becomes this whole weird twisted circular thing you know it's like i mean i'll give you a silly example people who are bad at taking compliments right you're so smart no no no no no no right we downplay it because we're embarrassed by the compliment right but a compliment is a gift somebody's paying you a gift now if somebody handed you a present you wouldn't push it back because it would be rude right you would accept it whether you like it or not or whether it makes you comfortable or not you accept it with gratitude and then you go evaluate it later no that's an ugly sweater you know but you're still grateful for the thought and the gift and the compliment's the same and i think all of these things the willingness to you know to deny someone else the joy of giving you the gift of the compliment and to deny someone else the intensity and joy of being there for someone else again i think is selfish never asking for help is selfish asking for help is a great act of service because you allow someone else to have the joy of sacrifice and it goes backwards and forwards it's not one-sided and this is where i think great relationships work which is we take turns and sometimes it's really difficult when both of us are in need at the same time that gets really difficult good thing we have friends so you know the height of kovid um i have a couple of my friends they're sort of remarkable high performing individuals both of them and one of them called me out of the blue and she went for a long walk she says i'm doing really badly and i need to talk to you and i don't want to talk to my husband because he's doing really badly as well and i fear that if i talk to him he doesn't have the energy for me but i know he want to be there for me which will make it worse for him we're both really struggling can you have some time to talk you know and i mean a the willingness to ask for help b the willingness to understand that asking her husband for help would made it even more difficult for him it was just a very sophisticated and beautiful moment and to this day we became not only did we become closer for it but her husband and i became closer for it as well because i was there for her when he knew he couldn't be and this is why we have friends like again we can't do this alone not only are we social animals we're tribal animals you know it's more than a friend it takes a community um and i think one of the you know we're always talking about what we're eating and we're talking about what we're you know what you know what supplement we're taking or we're always talking about those kinds of things or what book we're reading but we we don't do enough talking about how we are nursing [Music] our close personal relationships how we're taking care of those closest to us and making sure that the tribe is strong um the crew is taken care of you know um and i think there's a lot more work that we can do in that arena is there practical things that you do with colleagues partners friends to create that culture of seeking feedback being open being truly vulnerable you know some people say oh we'll have we'll sit down with our diary and we'll write we'll do this exercise or you might have seen in organizations where they do like 360 feedback things is there is there practical things we can do to create a culture of seeking out that feedback and creating a safe space well the simple answer is of course um the there's no such thing as a single silver bullet it's a combination of things it's like what's the one thing i can do to happy have a happy relationship well i can't i can tell you a important thing but i can't tell you the important thing so it's the same um and everybody's a little different you know and each culture is a little different so there's there's not even a set list i can give but there's some things that people can choose from you know one thing is one of the ways we create space is how we react right if someone gives you feedback and you deny it well that's a problem if somebody gives you hard feedback and you thank them for it it's a very different environment it creates so i i i'll give you two uh examples one a lesson the other one a practical example that someone can use so i had the opportunity to visit the army rangers uh ranger school in particular and i where they make they make army rangers and one of the troubles they had a a bunch of years ago was they had these folks that they called spotlight rangers which was they were really good at their job like they were brilliant at all the tasks that were set to them strong their the teachers the instructors loved them they stood out they were great they were motivated but as soon as the spotlight was turned off when the instructor wasn't there and they were back in barracks they were [ __ ] and the only person who the only people who knew were there were their friends and colleagues because the spotlight was turned off and so the army rangers implemented a system of peer review in order to identify spotlight rangers and in now by the way they started this 40 years ago which i find incredibly advanced but to advance through ranger school you need to pass three tests you need your instructor to say yep you're ready to go to the next level you need to physically actually perform all the tasks required of you and you need to pass your peer review um and if you fail any one of those three you don't make it to the next level interesting and so that becomes an equally weighted component of advancement in the army rangers which is what kind of team player are you which i love so we implemented a system of 360 review um which was sort of a bit of an amalgamation of things we'd taken from other groups and made our own where what we the way it works is um you take the group of people you have regular interaction with and you um [Music] fill out uh your top three weaknesses or the places you believe you need to grow the most with a specific example for each so top three specific weaknesses or places you need to grow the most and then top three specific strengths or the places you believe three examples of the places you believe you've grown the most they have to be specific not like oh i'm a much better time keeper now no that got to give some specific examples they're collated and distributed amongst the team and then you come together as a group and you take turns reading them so first you read your own weaknesses and then the group has the opportunity to add to that list and here's the best part we give a little speech before the whole exercise starts that the people who are going to give you this feedback really don't want to it's really uncomfortable for them it's going to be uh they would just rather not do this exercise at all but they're going to do it because they want to see you and help you grow and so what they're giving you is a gift and so you have to receive it as a gift which means you say thank you you don't have to agree with it if you don't agree with it say thank you and just dismiss it it's fine but if it has an emotional impact if it makes you angry or frustrated it's probably true right and we go around the room and somebody tell every people can add to this list of these weaknesses in any way that there's no format they can do it in any way they want and you sit there and you look them in the eye and you generally say thank you you're not allowed to say a word except thank you then you do your strengths and you read your threat strengths and anyone can add to the list and just as you discovered you have blind spots you didn't know you have you discovered that you have strengths that you didn't know you had that you're having a positive impact in the lives of others that you didn't know you were and it's a magical experience there's usually tears at some point because it's powerful and it's a safe environment i wouldn't recommend an organization start there i would recommend you build towards that because you're going to put very senior people and very junior people in the same room and they're going to have very blunt conversations with each other and it's it's real right it's not a place to start but it is a place to get to i mean there are variations for it that one takes a lot of time you know we've we've very we varied as where everybody's responsible to do it and you can you have two people assigned and you can choose one or two people to join and you just have a smaller a smaller group when you want to do it you know and it's just for you so the others don't do it in that moment it's it's a little more efficient to do it that way um but there's no right or wrong way i really love that idea of the promotion being contingent on not just the your manager or you're the ceo believing that you are x y and z but getting peer reviewed by the colleagues around you because one of the things i noticed in my company we had and when i left there was about 700 people but i would have i would hear reports about a particular team member and the reports i would get back about their character and their conduct never matched the way they treated me so they would always treat me of course amazingly right of course right and then i'd hear that they treated this person like this and they did this and i'd go really and they'd go yeah really they were always so nice to me and obviously on that basis i would have promoted that individual and thought they were great so that's definitely something i'll implement that's called a tree of monkeys by the way it's called the tree of monkeys which is um all the people at the top looking down see only smiles but all the people at the bottom looking up see on the air oh [ __ ] yeah that makes perfect sense and again you there's you don't have to do you don't have to i mean there's again there's different cultures can accept different you know there's no right or wrong here you know and some cultures may want to implement a peer review that gets included in a promotion package but it doesn't have to be that good leadership helps there as well which is every senior person knows that they don't get the truth i mean even if your people are wonderful and fantastic people want to tell you the right answer not because they're trying to lie to you but they want to please you like you you knew the more senior you got it was harder and harder to get the truth and every senior leader knows that it's hard to get the truth every great senior leader also has spies somebody that maybe you started you were friends with that people don't know you're friends with or you came up through the ranks of the organization together but your career went a little further a little quicker you know that you have these trusted relationships that you can just get a little inside scoop as to what's really going on um also this is the hardest one is or at least it's a hard one learning to replace judgment with curiosity so somebody comes to you and says that person is a problem and all of a sudden we create a narrative based on the story that they tell us that they are a problem that person's stupid that person's lazy whatever it is now they're labeled as lazy now we treat them as lazy now everything that they do or don't do because they're lazy right um but as a good leader we want to we can take those reports we can take that hearsay we can take those direct stories that people have and we can say thank you i appreciate that i'll look into it i'm going to find out more and you go on a little journey to discover what's really happening it absolutely may be that they're lazy that could 100 be it or maybe they're distracted for a reason or maybe they're having trouble at home or maybe we've given them a job that they're ill qualified for or maybe they're having a personality conflict with somebody that they work with like the list goes on and on and on and on and the good leader is finding that out and by the way by leader i don't mean the senior person i mean any person in the organization um to replace that judgment with curiosity and i think that's what creates those environments but the reality is is with rank you do set the tone so for example um no lying that seems like a pretty simple one inside a company we don't tell lies okay phone rings your assistant picks up uh they put the person on hold and they call out to you uh david's on the phone and you go tell him i'm not here you've just sanctioned a lie you've just sanctioned a lie right and that little lie then now that person who was told to lie approvingly now they can tell a lie right because it came from the boss and all of a sudden you find out you have an organization that tells lies all over the place and some of those lies grow it happened to me once where um i had a very very senior phone call with the top leaders of a really big organization like and i forgot i just didn't show up on the call i just i have no no excuse i just i forgot to check my calendar and i forgot and my assistant at the time of course wanted to protect my reputation and she wrote to them and said terribly sorry simon had another meeting that ran long and i took her aside and it was the hardest feedback i had to give because she did it with such good intention i said i am so grateful i'm so grateful that you're protecting me and you're protecting my reputation and i want you to do that but you have to do that without lying we cannot lie you can say i'm sorry he's late i'm sorry he missed the call but you cannot say it's because he was in another meeting because that's not true and so you it's this you know i mean i'll challenge you you try this right let's look at the time right now right it's it's noon okay it's noon on i don't know what day it is monday right you and your entire crew here's the challenge for all of you okay you may not tell a single lie for the next 48 hours i mean nothing and you'll be amazed how difficult it is you'll be amazed how many little white lies we tell like the waiter comes over and five minutes before you're saying oh this food is so salty and the way it comes to goes how is everything you go it's fine everything's fine yeah thank you it's fine that is a lie right now you don't have to be mean there's nothing that says truth has to be brutal it just has to be true try for the next 48 hours and see how hard it is not to tell a single lie everyone's going to be walking around asking each other what they think of each other now simon says you've got to be honest right but there's ways of doing it right like so um do these genes make me look fat i like the other genes much better they're way more flattering right you don't have to hurt people also timing right so a true story so i went to see a friend's play and uh i i could not wait for this thing to end it was so bad and i went out you know to say hi to her after the performance and she came out she was still in costume and makeup and she knows i'm an honest broker she cares about what i she knows i'll always tell her the truth and these kinds of things and she says to me what did you think now now is not the time and place she's pumped up full of adrenaline and now is not the time for me to give her a critical evaluation of of this god-awful performance and so i sidestepped the question but said something true i said ah it was such a treat to be here to see you do your thing you know i've been wanting to see you on a stage forever and it was so much fun to see you on the stage all of that was true the next day when the adrenaline had come down and i called her up and said can i tell you what i thought about the play she goes yeah of course and i told her critically piece by piece what i thought about it and how bad it was we had a perfectly rational conversation about it didn't hurt her feelings the day before it would have really hurt her feelings so not everything has to be we mistake being honest with being honest now no i can't lie and i have to answer the question but it can answer it tomorrow when the conditions are better for that message to be received what is so insidious or what is so harmful what is the long-term negative impact of creating that culture of lying within teams and within ourselves well there's a there's this there's this psychological uh phenomenon i guess called ethical fading which can grip an organization's culture where people within that culture become capable of making highly highly unethical decisions believing they were well within their own ethical frameworks right so extreme examples are things like pharmaceutical companies who have a patent on an essential drug and in order to meet or beat some financial projection they raise the price of that essential drug 100 500 1000 1500 totally legal there's nothing illegal about that really unethical right and in organizations that suffer ethical fading it almost always if not always starts from the top it's usually a leadership problem it comes from excessive amounts of pressure to hit certain short-term goals to the point where doing it ethically becomes more and more difficult and so what creates ethical fading is a series of things one of those things is we we rationalize right we look for ways to distance ourselves from the impact of our decisions we say things like it's what you got to do to get ahead it's what my boss wants um everyone's doing it it's the system i don't have a choice right um and there are ways we can disassociate our responsibility right so rationalizing is a big part of it another part is the old slippery slope you did it once you did it a little bit it worked we raised the price 10 nobody even noticed great do it again do 20 this time try 100 and it just keeps going and going and going and going before you have full-blown ethical fading and some of the things are excessive use of euphemisms again we're using language to disassociate ourselves from the impact of our decisions so for example you know we in the united states would never torture but enhanced interrogation that sounds very appealing right or companies would never spy on their customers but data mining yeah i know we're really into that right um we're just using different language to mask the insidiousness of our real decisions like everybody talks about managing externalities but we don't talk about the damage we're doing to the people and cultures environments of the places where our offices and factories are located why don't you have that conversation and so when you have enough of those things ethical fading shows up where you now have real issues and in the extreme you have massive scandals sometimes it leads to illegal activity but usually it's just unethical scandals and when those things happen management is dragged out and they talk to the newspaper to the law and they always say the same thing which is we broke no laws everything we do is legal no we don't have an issue with the law we have an issue with your ethics but when you don't have when it's not full-blown it just becomes an incredibly uncomfortable and a horrible place to work that increases stress to the point where you'll do damage to your own health and you'll do damage to the way you treat your family because when you're into that kind of stress to violate your own ethics at work um you're gonna come home you're gonna take it out in your your spouse and your kids you're gonna kick the dog um you're not gonna be motivated to do much except sit and sit on the couch and watch tv you know so it has it's had some pretty insidious uh impact in the lives of human beings i was thinking of it as well in terms of romantic relationships one little white lie becomes another little white lie and then a couple of you know a year passes and you're so unaligned and so far from your truth that you're resentful that you're having to keep up with this set of lies i mean we've talked about it with a guest on this podcast before one of the mistakes i made in my relationship at the start was i would say yes to things that i didn't like doing yeah so i created this culture and there's also this like expectation when my partner thought i loved doing x activity at six a.m in the morning because i'd always said yes and i'd always pretended to like it now i have to live out that life of something i do not enjoy doing because i lied at the start and the journey back is not always so easy when you've i i i've made the same mistake on the other side which is after i broke up with someone when we maintained a friendship and i started dating somebody or at least started dating but i didn't want to hurt the feelings of this person i still care about that we broke up you know a couple months before um and so if i would avoid the conversation but if she said are you dating anybody i'd say no not really and it's not because i wanted a lies because i don't want to hurt her like the intention of course is positive but what i learned later is all of those little lies meant that she was holding out hope that wasn't there and by the way it's been done to me as well i'm holding out hope that's not there because someone didn't want to hurt my feelings and i would rather just have the uncomfortable conversation are you dating somebody you are okay well that hurts but i can heal i can move on and you know again this young generation because of all the reasons we've talked about and more seems to exhibit the traits of being very conflict avoidant very uncomfortable with uncomfortable that has some impact that are sometimes funny quote unquote but always tend to make somebody feel more lonely so for example and i've seen this happen i've heard about these stories so many times a young employee who may feel they're in line for a raise but it's so uncomfortable to go to their boss and ask for a raise that they just quit that they would rather quit and have an uncomfortable conversation and then sometimes it is followed by a an angry email that says i'm undervalued you don't appreciate me you underpay me you know and and i've i've heard it happen so many times where the leadership is like what we would have happily like i'm sorry we were either planning on giving you a raise we'd happen to give you a raise you know and it's really uncomfortable to walk in your boss's office and be like hey i'm working really hard can i have a raise please now the time you do get to quit is when you've had this conversation four five six times and you've seen nothing and had no feedback and had no impact then absolutely you quit and absolutely you say you undervalue me you under appreciate we've under under appreciate me we've had this conversation five or six times then it's their fault because they had all the information but again it's really funny how many young kids would were they they would rather quit than have a difficult conversation or they'd rather break up than have a difficult conversation or worse they'd rather ghost someone than break up with them because it's really uncomfortable to have a fight and a breakup and call each other names it's much easier to just turn off all the social media un unfollow everywhere i know we've been dating for six months but i'm just going to now ignore every text ignore all your calls and think about it from the we talk about service think about the service or disservice we do the other person for their their point of view it's like you got in a car accident it's like you were just killed it's like you just disappeared off the planet that is trauma because you're uncomfortable to have an uncomfortable conversation you would do that to someone another person so service goes both ways which is i will make myself uncomfortable and have a difficult conversation even if i bumble it and screw it up and it ends up being a screaming match because that is a better option than traumatizing a person where they have to believe that i've first of all that i've died because they can't get hold of me in the panic and then when they realize i'm alive because they see me on instagram that now i've destroyed their self-confidence how dare somebody do that to another human being because you're just a little uncomfortable of having an uncomfortable conversation where we can help is we can teach people how to have uncomfortable conversations that is a skill set we don't teach leaders how to have uncomfortable conversations we don't teach students how to have uncomfortable conversations we don't teach you know we can teach these things all over the place and i think it's i think it's a big gaping hole in curriculum we teach you know maths and we teach english but we don't teach social interaction we don't teach listening we don't we don't teach how to have uncomfortable conversations we don't teach how to give and receive feedback you know now you tell me which is going to be more valuable for the rest of your life how to have a difficult conversation or trigonometry yeah and shouldn't we be you know isn't this shouldn't we be preparing people for life i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast as the seasons have begun to change so has my diet and um right now i'm going to be completely honest with you i'm starting to think a lot about slimming down a little bit because over the last couple of probably the last four or five months my diet has been pretty bad um and it started to show a little bit really over the last two months i go to the gym about 80 percent of the time so i track it with 10 of my friends in a whatsapp group and this tracker online that we all use together we call it fitness blockchain and i'm currently at 81 so 81 of the days i've done a workout in the last 150 days right so i'm going to the gym about six times a week that's been a little bit impacted by the derivative live tour but i'm trying to stick to it and so one of the things i'm doing now to reduce my calorie intake and trying to get back to being nutritionally complete and all i eat is i'm having the heel protein shake thank you hill for making a product that i actually like the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one on that point of that new generation in the workplace and how they're they're exhibiting traits of being a little bit more cowardly in terms of having those difficult conversations you made a video about millennials in the workplace that did probably hundreds of millions of views yeah i remember seeing it on facebook maybe five years ago and it i think it had 50 million views on that one video but across youtube it's got tens of millions of views on many many different videos but i'm thinking now about that new generation that you've described that younger generation that gen's their generation that are emerging into the like postcovid world what is the workplace for them what how do i as a leader make sure that if i'm hiring gen z and i've got a couple even in this room that work in my company what have we got to know about them and do to make sure that they thrive stay motivated and achieve their goals this is my own bias i don't like the conversation of strengths and weaknesses um you know it's the famous question you know in an interview what's your biggest weakness well i'm a perfectionist you know uh i don't like the conversations of strengths and weaknesses because strengths often have liability i'm really confident okay in the wrong context you're arrogant right but weaknesses also have silver linings so for me i'm chronically disorganized i'm terrible right every system app works for like a week and then i'm back to being disorganized is that a good thing or a bad thing now for years i used to beat myself up for it and say it's a bad thing it's a terrible weakness but the reality is it's context so i was as a young entrepreneur i was at this networking event and i met this guy who's like really impressed with what i had to say with my pitch and he's like simon we have to do work together here's my business card call me let's do this and i lost the business card basically as soon as he gave it to me so anybody who was organized would be sending a text from the taxi or at least sending an email the next day not yahoo over here i lost the business card there was no way for me to find out what this important piece of business would have led to because i lost the card two weeks later i found the business card at the bottom of a briefcase so i emailed him and said hey remember we met two weeks ago you know i'd love to reconnect and see if we can work together still he wanted to work with me more because he thought i was busy so strength or weakness the answer is it depends now in general yes it is a weakness it's a liability and it causes me great stress but not always is the point and so yes it's important for us to understand our characteristics that we exhibit of which some of them in the con in certain contexts are huge strengths and some of the exact same characteristics in the wrong context are huge weaknesses right so it's very it's we have to be very careful when we label people or generations as being strong or weak because the answer is it depends okay so that's the preface so we talk about this young generation the the gen z generation they exhibit many of the same characteristics as the previous generation but they're quite different in the sense that they're very activist right so for example in the 1950s and 60s people hated their jobs back then too they just went to work every day and just suffered in silence you know by the time you get to the 80s and 90s people hated their jobs but then they'd at least start talking around about it around the office saying you know this this job kind of sucks a little bit you know and then by the time you get sort of the 2000s people start speaking up to their bosses saying i think we should make it better to work here you know and now you in this young generation and they're just like they're like standing up and quitting and like and i love it right and and and they organize they're much more you know the previous generation would like hashtag tweet my discontent as i'm sitting in my uber on my way to brunch you know but this young generation gets out and organizes and comes together plus or minus it depends sometimes it's a huge strength the fact that they have that kind of energy but sometimes as we've talked about as well they also have the energy to quit instead of having an uncomfortable conversation so strength or weakness it depends and so i think the way we have to approach all of these things is with empathy which is instead of uh deciding if it's a strength or weakness to try and understand where it comes from because i can say this generation is irresponsible and will quit before they ask for a a raise or i can say why is it that they're quitting before they get a when they just need a raise what's mis what's what's what happened between a and b and that thought in those two actions you know and i'm like oh they just missed the skill set oh we can totally figure that one out that one's an easy fix so i'm not labeling a whole person or a whole generation i'm not rather recognizing that there's gaps of skills which we all have so when you ask me about any of the generations and they all have strengths they all have liabilities and depending on the time frame and the context sometimes sometimes those strengths also become old-fashioned no longer necessary you know they can still cause frustration they can still cause confusion you know we're still looking through them at our through our own prisms of our own generation i've definitely caught myself doing it you know i do do it my goodness we never did that when we were kids you know when i was their age i'm actually saying that now but um i think the the the trial the the the test is the practice of empathy which is another skill that we can teach that's missing how is this the coveted experiment on the workforce and the workplace so how do like business leaders or business owners need to adjust in order to make sure we don't lose people and become an un compelling unattractive place to work in this post-coveted era and also on the point you talked about earlier about the importance of like we're social animals we need that social connection and we're being kind of we're optimizing that out of our lives it feels to me like this remote working thing has has exacerbated the issue because we're you know for young people you know i think that the office is one of the few institutions we have left where we are in person we no longer get dating we do that on apps that's right food we don't go to restaurants anymore we just order ubereats and our work they're telling us is going to be done from zoom i'm like what do we have left they're lonely we're going to be lonely and it's not a coincidence that we see rising rates of depression anxiety suicide you know especially in younger generations so you know it's not causal but it's there's definitely correlation you know it reminds me of when um and i'm old enough for this some of your listeners are not but i remember when the internet showed up and e-commerce started and i remember some of the people who are really into the tech running around thinking this is the death of bricks and mortars they will never be stores again and now amazon opens stores and rent the runway open stores and turns out it's the extremes are not great places you know it's not the death it's live alongside they become different animals they become different reasons we go to shops not to get the best deal you go to you go to you go to websites to get the best deal you go to shops because it's fun you go to shops to try stuff on you go to shops because it's an activity because we our hunter gatherer instincts we like foraging and looking for things it's entertainment we enjoy the service aspect you know it's with our friends sometimes it's not about the shops at all it's just a place something to do with our friends it plays a different role and the smart retailers know that and so when we talk about work it's the same it's the death of the corporate headquarters the death of the office i'm like is it though you know the reality is this is going to be somewhere in the middle and i think one thing with all the predictions about what the future of work looks like i think one thing we can be absolutely sure of is there'll be more flexibility where you know where it used to be hey boss can i take off next friday can i work from home next friday i have to stay home for whatever right becomes emailing in the morning saying i'm working from home today and everybody's just fine with it you know introverts liking work working from home extroverts like working at the office but at the same time sometimes extroverts should stay home because they can get more work done and sometimes introverts need to come to the office because they need to connect and and and we want you to be a part of the culture and so i don't think you know making any predictions about what it will look like i think is a little foolish at this time we know it'll be some sort of amalgamation we know it'll be more flexible and probably every office will be slightly different and it'll fit whatever their culture is and i think the office environment will become one of the selling selling things which is if somebody really hates this rfis environment they'll find another company where they like the office environment but i think what's really interesting about the great resignation what's being talked about less and the great resignation is sort of the reasons for it some people talk about the government checks that we've gotten that runs out so that's not the main reason for it people talk about uh how people are quitting to follow their dreams you know i've always wanted to be an actor or a writer great and that is definitely a percentage and i and i love that but that's not those numbers aren't big enough i think what i think is more interesting is that the great resignation is an indictment on decades of substandard corporate culture and poor leadership where and because it's a big deal that we're seeing people especially at um front line level jobs which um where leadership used to say of them they should just be happy to have a job right um that those people are quitting without new jobs necessarily is a big deal and they're definitely not all just following their dreams i think it is because in the past you know when you ask those people how's work and they'd be like it's fine is it good no it's it's fine it's a job it's fine well why didn't you quit because the unknown was way scarier than fine and so they may do with fine and leadership took advantage a lot of corporate managers took advantage of the fact that they could get away with fine we could do the minimum because they're not going to leave they're lucky to have a job and what are they going to go out there and the the great unknown fine is fine and then covet happened and a lot of people were laid off a lot of people lost their jobs a lot of people were furloughed some people kept their jobs but just lived in fear and we all kind of made it out okay we ate we had food you know most people made it okay even if it was difficult they made it through and so all of a sudden the great unknown a lot less scary and so when you're offering me fine i choose unknown that's a better option in fact not only do i choose unknown i'm going to wait until you fix fine and i don't think enough companies are recognizing that the great resignation is an indictment that the great resignation is a wag of the finger that you have been getting away with substandard culture and poor leadership for too long and you better fix your stuff and i think the companies that will have the huge advantages is not the combat the companies that get the balance of in-person or or or or online work right i don't think that's what makes it i think the companies that get the huge advantage moving forward are the ones that teach leadership to their leaders that teach these human skills that we've been talking about that create a corporate environment and a corporate culture that i want to go to every day and i actually form good strong bonds with my new tribe with the people i go to work with and i'm willing to sacrifice and not get everything exactly how i want it because i'd rather be here and serve these wonderful group of people those are the companies that will have the huge advantage of the next decades or two one of the things that i saw in that postcode period was in my company in particular was one of the things that i believe and from our our research at the time i'm no longer with this company so i can kind of talk about it um with a bit more honesty in our in our questionnaires we would see that a lot of the reason why people love to come and work there was because of the the company culture right we're done we've gone to extreme lengths we had like five people that were just in charge of happiness called the happiness team we paid for everyone's mental health therapy it was a very it was the it was in terms of flexibility what the world is like now or you can decide for yourself when you work and then when covert came around we were like known for that in the uk like the bbc demo pieces this the best place to work when covert came around it smashed our usp because it and this is why i almost viewed it as a leveler because now everyone was working from their laptop at home in their box of shorts so now what i think i saw was our employees were going to some degree i can work at home in my box of shorts for this company or i can work home in my box of shorts for this company where they'll pay me double yeah and and that shift was and it was terrifying for us because that's when we started to see people leaving because they would go oh well this company will give me 30 more and i'm still going to be doing my to-do list at home on my own so why not move now is there truth to that in your view yeah of course because you mistook um trappings for culture right right now those things are good let's not diminish the value of those things but this this is a beautiful full circle we're going in from the very beginning of our conversation which is to what end to what end like what are we doing this in service too what's the bigger thing that was missing and that was missing 100 and that's that's that's where cultures become magic they're fun like you know the number of companies you and i have both visited that have you know flat screens everywhere amazing design freeze free lunch you know we had a slide yeah yeah you have a slide like cool you know now is somebody going to turn down a better paying job to keep that no you know but if you give them the opportunity to contribute to something bigger themselves would they turn down a better paying job now yes right and so i think it's probably driven by the whole dot-com tech culture um but it's it's you know because tech companies largely are that sort of ridiculous bright color slides in every office you know which is fun don't get me wrong it's fun um but that that's not that's not cause that's not purpose uh and great cultures are are are organized to advance something bigger than themselves they're not just fun places to work you know the thing i think we did wrong is i think we asked people what they wanted yeah so they said things like a bar yeah a basketball hoop whereas as you've as you're clearly alluding to here you can't ask people for culture like in that regard you can't ask people for to all name the collective cause because they'll all say different things correct you have to you have to offer them a cause to join yeah that's one of the reasons they join the companies because they believe in the cause not just because it's a a job i want to do um you know henry ford famously said if i asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse you know this is where folks like steve jobs who's given too much credit for being able to predict what people want is totally not true it's he had a cause and he simply made products that brought that cause to life which is to give people the power to stand up to big brother that's it and we develop technology to empower individuals that's it you know and so those who came to work there they recognized that they were a part of a revolution the computer revolution they constantly talked about it as the revolution then they invented itunes which more than the ipod revolutionized the music industry turned it from an album culture to a song culture let us make music portable you know um and that was the music they referred to as the music revolution um and and you carried a banner you know and you sacrificed for it was it a great place to work it was a hard place to work but it was worth it and that's the question are the sacrifices worth it and sometimes we we hide the pain or the difficulties or the strains or the stresses with all the silly fun stuff which is a salve let's be honest i mean it does work to some degree but not all stress is bad you know you know i i i joke you know often you know when we work hard for something we love it's called passion we work hard for something we don't love it's called stress now in both cases you're working hard you know what's the difference what's the difference between you know doing something you love and you work late hours and you sacrifice your relationships and you sacrifice your family but you look at and say ah it was hard but it was worth it you know versus losing all those things and all you do is get a lamborghini at the end you know it's like was it worth it i'm like ah not so sure i'd do that again you know um and so i think that's what that's what purpose and cause provide us is they give us a reason for the sacrifice that's what love gives us because it's the reason for the sacrifice that's what children do they give us the reason for the sacrifice your life will profoundly change when you have a child is it worth it yes is it easy no every person i've ever talked to who has children say it's the most difficult thing they've ever done and if you ask them if it's worth it they will say yes that doesn't go together you know when i think about even this podcast and setting purposeful goals for what we're doing here we definitely fell in the trap of being like i think a lot of people do you get consumed in the charts oh my god we're number one right for now for now yeah and then you scratch your head and go well then what what next what's sake what's a more worthy more purposeful goal for us to have as a team when we're building something like this podcast because it's so easy to get you know caught up in we've been born in the charts and sure and that does drive you to some extent yeah it seems to be a a reason whether it's a a vapid one or whatever but what is a better more worthy purposeful goal to set okay so let's take a step back uh-oh can you interrogate me no what was the reason you did episode one um plentiful i'm gonna give you all of them i'm very honest as well thought podcasting as a medium would be a big opportunity i thought that was would be a really effective medium of communication when that's growing opportunity for what to grow my personal brand okay i'm going to give you all of the reasons even the selfish ones okay number two i find a thrill and deeply compelling and liberating for others to talk about things and be honest in a way that most people aren't usually honest so in the first episode i talk about things like masturbation and mental health problems as a ceo difficulties with my family all of those things i find it liberating for myself but i know for others that listen to it when especially when we got um started to get the feedback it was equally liberating for them and then when you so episode one is a little episode one was more of an experiment but it's okay so episode yeah episode two whatever then it was the feedback so i was doing a lot of other things that were doing bigger views my facebook videos would get 10 million each 10 million views each but the feedback i was getting from the thousand people that were listening to this was deep it was profound and it was intense and it said things like they said things like i can relate to that um that's really helped me solve this problem i've had you've made me a big one we get is you've made me feel like i'm not alone and then going if i go to the last like you know if i go to more recent times i quit when i left my job and i was now no longer needed to do anything for money anymore in my life when i took stock of because there was about a six month or one year gap in this podcast which is when i was leaving my job and i took stock of my life and thought about the things i want to do for the rest of my life and this was one of the things that seemed to touch all bases it was enjoyable for myself i get to sit and learn from people like yourself it feels like as you said it's like a service to others a really profound one probably the most the great service i feel like i can do to the external world and it's it's money generating but to be honest if it makes a profit i just spend it on a podcast so uh yeah and that's where that's kind of my my thesis so okay so let's back up a second yeah i'm just taking on your own words i'm not adding anything here would you rather do this to be number one to grow your own brand or would you rather grow this would you rather do this to tell the truth so it helps others tell the truth to themselves and to others number two obviously yeah and so your podcast absolutely has purpose and so when you start recognizing that we do this we do this to tell the truth so that others can be honest with themselves and others in a way that they struggle to find anywhere else and if we're number one for a period of time amazing but if we're number two we'll still do it with number four we'll still do it everyone know the term will still do it because there's a reason to do this that's bigger now if the numbers are steadily declining and no one's listening then maybe we're doing something wrong to spread our message maybe we've gone off base maybe we're maybe we're not telling the truth like we used to we need to reevaluate if we're still fulfilling our purpose or maybe the manner or medium that we're using is no longer relevant so you know because things change in time too so that's why the metrics do matter but the absolute of the metrics don't matter the trend of the metrics matter and so you do have purpose for this and that means you have to practice that kind of truth telling with your team who work on this podcast because you have to live when the microphone is off the same way you live when the microphone is on and that starts to have a profound impact on you and your team so if that becomes the purpose rather than being number one maybe it gives people a reason to stick around here because they believe in it it's benefited them is there a role for those arbitrary goals is that are they useful to say we want to be number one in the united states is that a useful goal to set ourselves um alongside the sense of purpose can they coexist they can co-exist as long as you're as long as you recognize the reason right because if you become too obsessed with the goal at the sacrifice of the cause like there is a hierarchy the cause comes first because the goal comes first you can look i know authors who and i'm sure you know i'm sure there's ways to do it in podcast as well but like i know authors who are number one amazon bestsellers well that's because you can game the you can game the algorithm you just have all your friends buy a book on the same hour because it's calculated hourly and congratulations you can't be a number one amazon bestseller with the worst book in the world it exists you can do it i've seen it there are companies that you can buy a new york times bestseller like they know how to game the new york times algorithm and they buy books across the country basically you buy the books and they buy them on your behalf so and if and i've had an opportunity to look at the publishers like look at the publishers computers where you can see any book we can track any book book sales and they've showed me they showed me how the trend works that you can tell who game the system and there are some very famous authors that i will not mention on this podcast who i know for a fact because i looked at the the that they brag about how they're new york times best sellers well it's because they paid for it they bought all those books themselves right you can game all these systems and if you're too obsessed with the number because you think the number is what gives you credibility then it goes back to ethical fading again then the pressure becomes overwhelming and you start doing things that have nothing to do with the podcast or the cause and only have to do with advancing the number so you can go around telling people you got the number right great good for you you know and you know i don't it's not how i choose to build my business or live my life you know but i think what's more fun is to be surprised which is is it okay to be driven to be number one as long as you're doing it second and the pud and the and the cause comes first sure if that's your thing um but just be prepared to answer what what next you know because you you can't be number one forever i love it when companies say i'm number one or i've got the number one podcast and you heard i always say for now for now like that stuff doesn't last even if it's 10 years it still won't last right quick one we bring in eight people a month to watch these conversations live here in the studio when we're here in the uk and when we're in la if you want to be one of those people all you've got to do is hit subscribe what are you working on at the moment simon because you're you're known for writing amazing books and delivering amazing content what are you working on what's what's compelling you at the moment what's your why well my why is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them so to each of those so that each of us can change our world for the better that is the the foundation of everything that i do and and that's the test through which i run everything that i will do like does this inspire people to affect some sort of change or perspective um why does that matter to you it's not that it matters to me it's that's who i am it's like that's core to my being like you're why is courtier being my wise court of my being that's my personality it's what wakes me up every day it's what fulfills me it's what fills me as well so and then i have my cause my just cause which is you know my why is where i come from my cause is where i'm going and my cause is to create a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired to go to work feel safe wherever they are and then the day fulfilled by the work that they do you know that if you're going to put stress into something that you get to enjoy the fruits of your own labor you know building something and looking at and say i helped build that you know that's a beautiful thing and so any work that i do is always to advance that cause so there's a bunch of things that i'm doing some of which will work and some of which will fail um i started a my own imprint with penguin random house oh really called optimism press amazing where i'm looking for the people or ideas that i believe need to be shared that help move uh the needle and advance towards that cause and so we've published four books so far we have two coming on the way which is really exciting uh how to make a plant love you trust first the power of giving away power and our newest one is called partnering and they all have a point of view about how to move or new ideas about how to advance this closer towards this world that i imagine so um and all different takes on it which is really fun um so i have the imprint um i'm working behind the scenes on police reform uh which has been intense and fascinating and a steep education also looking um i'm doing some work to try and sort of figure out how to drive innovation inside large bureaucracies so i'm trying to figure out i'm working behind the scenes trying to work with some really forward-minded forward-minded really infinite-minded young ceos or at least younger companies to help them figure out how to build infinite minded companies now it doesn't matter if they sell it doesn't matter if they have a liquidity event but they're not driven by the sale they're not driven by the liquidity event they're driven to build a company that can outlast them and they're driven to build cultures that can withstand the test of time and the loss of every single employee you know that you could have an entire new generation come in and the company will survive um and so i really wanna i'm i'm looking for those companies that i think are worth supporting and helping them build a new kind of company for the next generation because i think the way we've been doing it for the past 30 40 years has been really not helpful to the economy into the world and i think that we have to find new ways to do it in other words i'm putting my money where my mouth is i'm all the books that i've written about these things i'm going to try and get under the hood and try and help these companies do it your brilliance you know i saw it in the list of all the things you're doing you're brilliant but i also see it in all the work you've created i see in the content you put out there your brilliance is very obvious i sat here with the the guy that trained uh michael jordan for 15 years and then he trained kobe afterwards and he said that with our brilliance often comes what he refers to as like our dark side which is the things we struggle with and those and he says they there tends to be a relationship between our brilliance and our struggle or our dark side are you aware of what your dark side is in terms of the cost of your brilliance well i think um first of all i don't think i'm brilliant i know that sounds sort of like falsely humble but i really don't think of myself that way i genuinely think of myself as an idiot and and i'm not being glib at all i i don't really understand very complex things um and i have pretty bad adhd and so everybody thinks i'm extremely read and the reality is i've written more books than i've read and and i just i love the idea of reading i i don't i can't read i don't read i learn by listening and talking and so uh um and so very complex things my brain doesn't work that way and so i i've learned to ask lots and lots and lots of questions so that something can be simplified to the level that i can understand it and if it's simple and i can understand it that means i can repeat it and so my books are my ability to understand complex things by asking other people lots and lots and lots of questions so i can simplify it enough so that other people can understand these complex things too talk about biology and anthropology of you know all kinds of you know things that yes i know that i've oversimplified them i'm fully aware you know like people who criticize you know criticize me like this is pop culture you know pop science i know that but if i make it it's full complexity all i've done is written a textbook well that's not helpful is it so i don't think of myself in the way that you receive my work you know and i think that maybe the impact of my work may be perceived as genius but let us not confuse that the impact of the work that may be perceived as genius doesn't make the person who produced it the genius right so i i reject i'm flattered by but reject the the the compliment even though it's a gift i'm supposed to gift yeah yeah um uh take your gift back it has no use here um so when you ask me like what's the balance of genius genius being this thing off the scale all the way far away over there well if i don't think of myself or even live my life that way then the balance of something is probably a little closer to the middle so do i have darkness of course i have darkness you know uh do i find that darkness absolutely fascinating i do what is it uh the i mean a lot of my insecurities uh that i'm that i've dealt with some of like i've it i don't think i've ever actually said out loud on a podcast like this i might have mentioned a couple times scarily like people would always ask me um so simon what books are you reading or what books are in your bedside table well i can answer that question because i have a pile of about five or six books on my bedside table and i've read none of them but they've been sitting there for like two years i've read some of two of them i honestly don't remember the last book i finished other than my own because i had to read it for the book on tape you know for the audiobook um and so i would always answer that question i would name one of the books or i just named one of my perennial favorites like oh man search for meaning you know and only now i'm sort of getting comfortable with the idea of saying out loud i don't read books and not because i don't like them it's because i struggle to the good news is i learned how to learn without them i wish i could read because there's so much good stuff in them and i know that they go into level of depth that i really want to understand but there you go and i think that goes to the honesty thing you know i'm realizing that me trying to answer the question and avoid embarrassment um [Music] it's valuable for people who like to read books but for the people who struggle to read books i just made them feel worse you know and somebody pointed that out to me it's like every time i lied about i never lied they said what books you're reading said well this is on my bedside table um or i believe this book is important you know or i just picked up this new book which should all be true i just didn't read them that there's a group of people who also struggle to read for whatever dyslexia or add or whatever it is and and i'm i'm living proof that you can do okay without it now that doesn't mean you can't learn but you gotta find the hack there's a couple books i finished um i finished i finished the davinci code it's so good and it's you know why because it's written with really really really short chapters like three pages that's i'm the person who like always looks pages ahead to see how much i have to go and if it's like 50 pages i'm like yeah how does that change how you write though if you if you're not a reader yourself when you're ironic isn't it yeah that i yeah it's ironic that i ended up writing books writing is a it's a it's different um because if it's really fun when i'm editing because if i'm boring myself i just cut that whole section and so the books have my sense of humor in them like there's little jokes in there because it makes me giggle and i write about the things that i think are really interesting i tell the stories that make me interested and and i can make myself cry with some of those stories in the book and i can give myself goosebumps with some of the stories in that book and if i'm doing it for myself it's probably working for others too you know um but i i do love ideas and i love dissecting ideas and understanding ideas and i really love understanding why things work i am a little kid at heart you know i want to know why um not as a noun as i popularized it would start with why but as a question like why is it that way i'm really i love that question it is it is a little kid question you know and for some reason as adults we stopped asking and started just blindly accepting and that doesn't mean i have to be rebellious in the question it's not it's not an accusation like why are you doing it that way it's genuine curiosity like why does it work that way and i love that and when i discover things that are illuminating to me and i'm able to explain it to my friends my friends can understand these things and the joy i see in people's faces and when they when i challenge their perspective then the the fun is to share it well i'm going to give you your the gift back of brilliance thank you the reason why i think i do use the word brilliance is because you meet people sometimes that have one of the three believe you use the word genius um if you meet people sometimes you have like one of the what i consider to be the holy trinity of like affecting change as an orator sometimes they have wisdom sometimes they're like good storytellers and then sometimes that they have the delivery but you rarely meet people that have all three your delivery in terms of when you deliver ideas the way you can like punctuate sentences and the tone of it keeps people incredibly engaged and i think you gave me the root cause of that when you said you had adhd and you're a bad reader because you find it hard to hold you find it hard for other things to hold your attention so you're very good at holding the attention of someone else listening and then the circuitous way in which you deliver a point as well makes incredibly engaging from a storytelling perspective and then the wisdom or the simple idea that underpins it that we can understand because i've sat here before and honestly we've deleted podcasts because someone comes in they're a genius mathematician yeah but when you ask them to make that complex math idea relevant and resonant in my own life it's impossible we deleted the episode because they're too smart to like to simplify for sure um but you're able to do that that's why your books are so important and that's why all the content you put out online and on your youtube channels and instagram is so necessary we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest oh cool so they wrote it in the story they don't know who they're writing it for i love that and you when you write your question you also don't know who you're writing it for but it's our way of all the guests talking to each other that's great and a long linear scene do i get to know who's asking you don't i don't okay what was the happiest moment of your life so far the happiest i literally can't answer the question it's for me it's my happiness doesn't exist in the past it's i've done many things that made me happy but i'm much more interested in what's going to happen next i'm probably better at answering the question what's the happiest thing you're going to do um i i'm i'm actually drawing a blank what is the happiest thing you're going to do um walked into that one didn't i um the happiest thing i'm going to do is actually solve some of the problems and or at least contribute to the solution of some of those problems that we talked about like i will be very happy when i help when i can contribute to police reform in this country i will be very happy when i can figure out better systems to help reinvent what modern business looks like and reject everything that jack welch built you know and disrupt shareholders supremacy and the way that we build companies now i will be very happy to demonstrate a momentum towards an entirely different direction um i will be very happy um if all of the sum of my work makes it feel like i have moved the needle somewhat closer though not final towards that vision i talked about of an inspired safe and fulfilled world ironically those sound like infinite games many of them yeah i don't believe i mean all of the things that will make me happy will be incomplete i i don't expect them to be complete what will bring me joy like when when you if let me rephrase the question for myself which is how will you know you lived a life worth living it's kind of the same question right and the answer will be is because other people will pick up where i left up and continue without me that i was clear enough my cause was compelling enough and the tools that i left were sharp enough that others figured out how to not only use them but make them better and reinvent new ones i will have lived a life worth living if i can look back and say it will keep going without me because it doesn't need me and that's the goal simon thank you it's a huge honor and a pleasure and it it's very clear why you were probably the most requested guest on this this podcast um from our from our viewers and you've definitely given much more than um i could have ever hoped for in terms of your generosity and wisdom to me but also to our listeners in this conversation so thank you so much for your generosity simon thank you it's it's been a joy um and you it's one of the best podcasts i've ever done i mean you are so engaging and driven your cause comes out clear which is you are so driven by the truth you are so compelled by the truth that anybody sitting here really wants to offer only truth um and it's a cause worth fighting for thank you i will accept the gift we are all looking for ways to live a little bit more sustainably and to make more conscious choices in our day-to-day routines so when a brand like my energy who i've spoken about before offered to sponsor this podcast i felt like and i knew deep down inside that i had to help them share their mission to create an even greener world it feels like there's not much more fulfilling than that and their products provide an easy and cost effective way to make a sustainable switch in your life and they've got some existing new products coming out that i can't wait to use myself and i'll let you know as i use those products how i get on so if you're a my energy customer at the moment let me know your favorite products down below in the comments section and if you haven't checked them out yet go to myenergy.com and find out a lot more about who they are and what they're doing if you're one of those people that wants to make a sustainable switch myenergy.com is the place for you [Music] [Music]