Gary Heil || Choose Love, Not Fear in the Workplace

of the Board of cell Tech Medals. He is the co author of a number of best selling books, including Leadership, including Leadership and The Customer Revolution, One Size Fits All, Maslow and Management, The Leader's New Clothes, Revisiting the Human Side of Enterprise, Douglas McGregor, Douglas McGregor revisited And This is Hard to Get Through Douglas McGregor Revisited and choes Love not Fear. How the best leaders build cultures of

engagement and innovation that unleash human potential. Gary, it is so great having you on the Psychology Podcast. Thanks Scott, It's an honor to be here. Can you start off by telling me and our audience here a little bit about yourself and your background. Well, as you said, I was a frustrated coach. I navigated a polar icebreaker. You know, I was a lawyer for a while, did some trial work, and finally came to my senses and went into the

lawyer protection program. I'm presently in step eight of recovery. And about thirty five years ago, I started working with businesses that basically worked. I think that work didn't have to be a four letter word, and that there was so much human potential left on the cutting room floor that we could do something about it. And I've spent most of my career working with leaders to try to understand what's that rates great teams from the merely good ones.

I love that well, I wanted I want to kind of double click on your Love book, you know, kind of let's pivot around that for a moment when we talk about what supreates good from great leaders. So some people might wonder, well, what the heck does love have to do with building great teams? Right? Have you asked that question before? Like? Oh, right, really, Gary? Really? Yeah? And then and then I read this really cool book

called Transcendence by Scott Kaffin. You know that I wasn't as far off in the mainstream as I thought, I love it, So I went out actually not looking for that. I went out and I started interviewing, and they did almost five hundred interviews with leaders trying to create change, trying to figure out why everybody talked a better game than they played. You know, everybody's got the language, everybody's heard the speeches, they've read the self help books. They

just weren't making many changes. We spent about what sixteen billion dollars a year are trying to create better leaders, and we're not much better off than we were two decades ago. And I wanted to know why, And so we went and interviewing leaders trying to figure out why. Methodology aside. We found a couple of things we were

not surprised about. But one of the things I was really surprised about is every time we found a great team, a really good team, not one that just won games or made huge profits, but sustained itself over generations, we found leaders and teams that had a fundamentally different relationship.

And I didn't really want to find that. But I'd sit there and walk in and you could feel the energy when you walk through the door, and you go, what is this And Finally, this crazy football coach in South Carolina named Dabo Sweeney is talking to us about love, and I think he's a little crazy. And he's right before the National Championship. He says, we're going to win because we love each other. And you're like, okay, and

you start to think about it. But it reminded me of what a guy named Jan Carlson who was the leader managing director of SAS, the Scandinavian Air System airline years ago. He said, the first choice every leader needs to make is choose lover or choose fear. I thought I got it thirty years ago. To get it, Dabo's talking to me and I'm starting to get it going. Is that what I'm seeing here is a culture where people really care deeply for each other more than they

do just about money. And I mean making no mistake, Dabo cares about winning, so did Carlson running airline of the year. But there's something deeper about the way people related. And then I was walking down and talking to you Alan Malalley one day, who were at Ford for a number of years and did the turnaround, and he'd say, yep, got to love him up before you coach him up,

and I started to hear this thing. Everybody didn't use the word love, but the way they cared for each other was so fundamentally different than most of the people I interviewed. I couldn't help but stop and think, is

that the secret sauce that were missing? Is that what Douglas McGregor was trying to tell us seventy years ago when he talked about our assumptions about people, and it certainly was what you and I and our at least some of our mentor in Abe Maslow was saying along the way, is that love is a need to be loved and to love. And the people who cared deeply for each other like that, why should we be surprised when the teams they create in that image work harder,

play harder, play better for each other. So I started to see it. We didn't choose to write a book like that because that was our predilection from the beginning. We had to write a book like that because the number of leaders that we met creating great teams and the way they treated each other. Well, what if in order to compete sometimes you need to not show so much love. Well, you know, I think we confuse the

love with this positive thing. But you know, I love you love your kids, but you demand more from them. You love your friends, but you demand more from them. The leaders I met were tough sobs. They weren't really sobs, but they were tough right. They were like, we take no prisoners. We are not going to lose. You know, Mike McCloskey took a bunch of companies public before his fortieth birthday in Silicon Valley, and working with him, I'll tell you he cared so deeply for the people, but

you didn't want to let him down. He set the bar so high. Alan Malalley sets the bar. Dabo Sweeney sets the bar high. These guys that love are just like you would treat your kids like love. It's like, we're going to set the bar up there expect you to surpass that bar. So it doesn't mean soft, That doesn't mean they live in la la land. It means they care deeply, so deeply that they think it's almost

their moral responsibility to help you reach your potential. And you don't reach your potential by singing Kumbaya on the beach. I mean, wasn't that. I mean, there's no more knowledgeable guy in the world than you about a Maslow? Wasn't Maslow frustrated when people talk about self actualization because he thought people thought that self actualization was sitting on the beach contemplating their navels, and he knew it was hard work.

He got frustrated with the students that didn't recognize that, its heart, takes a lot of hard work to self actualize. For sure. Although I do enjoy singing Kumbaya on the beach, I must say so. I don't want to be a hypocrite. I do enjoy that me too. I only laugh when I think people think they're going to grow and change

and create change in companies run as without some disruption. Sure, no, absolutely, But how come despite a fifty billion dollar a year in investment and decades of effort, we've made so little progress in developing better leaders? Boy, I wish I knew the answer to that. I think it's a fair question. Oh it's a great I think it is the question.

And I think that for me when we would do these interviews, you know, we we we would find that the biggest impediment probably for us, and what we found to people making changes to become better is the pressures that exist in the present culture, which doesn't want them to shag, I mean how it goes. You say, well, we would, we would. We'd go in and we'd say, give me two leaders, living or dead, who most influenced

your thinking? Are you most admired? Twenty percent of their time it was their mom, their dad, or their little league coach. Eighty percent of the time it was somebody they'd never met, you know, Martin Luther King, George Washington, mother Teresa. And you'd say, what do you think about

doctor King? What makes him so unique for you? And they give you this list of traits that's probably the same list of traits that everybody's been given for two thousand years, about being empathetic and the decisive it all. And finally they realized they didn't know doctor King very well. They're talking about themselves. And so we would say, well, if that's what the syllogism, you think doctor King was great, you think this is what a great leader is. Therefore,

you know, are you those things? And they would go, oh no, And I'd say why not, Why aren't you those things? And they would go, well, have you met my boss? You know? Have you met the people that work for me. You don't understand are the way we do things here? My personal favorite was can you really make money doing that crap? And you know, people just had a thousand reasons why the existing environment they were in inhibited their ability to be what they they should be. Yeah,

and so I think most people are not surprised. I mean they talk about inclusion and autonomous teams, but they don't want to give up power. I mean it just goes on and on like that. Yeah, you're you're really calling it as it is good for you? Well, can we can we unpack more of some of the other characteristics of exemplar leaders that you've discovered, you know over your long illustrious career. Well, sure, sure, where would you like to start? You know, pick just pick one more character,

you know, just pick something else. You know, we are talking about love, But what else do you see that that specifically separates exemplar from good leaders? You know, Scotta, I think that you have have really hit the nail

on the head in your work. I really believe that to my very soul as I as I page through your book Transcendence, I think that because everything is about whether we call it engagement, or we call it motivation or whatever we call it, This willingness of people to give every bit of their discretionary effort to reach closer to their potential. And how do we set up the environment to do that? I think is the question for leaders, But I think we answer it poorly when we go

into I love your experience. I'll go into executive development programs and I'd go, well, if your main job is creating an environment where people are excited to go attain this purpose, and they would go yeah, And I would go, well, what's your theory, what's your hypothesis about how people will choose to give that kind of effort? And I don't think it would be surprising to you, And I wonder

if you have a similar reaction. But for most practicing leaders that I would meet, Their primary theory of motivation is some version of behavior modification or some version of conditioning, based on a world of compensation consultants and the manipulation

of rewards and punishments. They wouldn't call them that, They call them incentives, but there's so much manipulation, and I think that their mindset about that that's been handed down for generations is a real stumbling block to them becoming the leaders they want to become. And I just don't know how we get to the other parts of leadership.

While we still believe that controlling people and manipulating them to get their best is a theory of humanity, that it just runs contrary I would think for the last eighty years of research, Am I am? I off on that? Scott, Yeah, well, you're I don't know exactly what if we did a statistical analysis of where all the leaders are at, what

would be the most predominant thing today. But I certainly do see it, you know, I certainly do see that carrot stick mentality is still a very prominent theory of motivation, and it's it's very unfortunate and very misguided, and it makes you wonder how so many brilliant people can can

can do so. Dare I say stupid leadership strategies? Well, yeah, I mean, when you're sitting with the head of a comp committee in a public company these days, the one thing that marches through your office, you know, is a non ending litany of compensation consultants, each telling you how

to better manipulate the senior managers in the company. And I can still remember on one company I was in when the compensation was came up, if I only would bribe them slightly differently or incentivize them slightly differently, how much better they were doing. And I said, well, you know they they've raised EPs five hundred percent of four years, they've transformed the company any shit, but they could be better.

And so that I remember the CEO walking by and I called him in and I said, they think that if I just do a little better with the compensation system, you're you're And he started laughing, going and said, I hope you're not paying much for that. It's not like I'm holding back waiting for you to bribe me with

a few more shares. Right. You know, there is this theory, and I don't mean all incentive compensations, because that's certainly the research doesn't show that, right, But I am saying, if you do this, you will get that manipulations of behavior have a dark side that I don't think we

want to face many times. Yeah, you know, something that really we both have in common is this passion for human the human side of a business and well everything really and one characteristic that's a real human thing is create creativity and creative expression right and activating kind of the unique potential of each employees. You see so many leaders talk about creativity, but then they punish creative expression when they see it. So what in the world do

you do about that? But this bias against creativity that Jim Miller was writing about other people who have done the studies over the last ten years is so real. Pragmatically, I think because I don't think we love novel as much as we say we do. I think we love certainty more than we think we do. And the human condition to like people like us and to love certainty is hard to overcome unless we face it. And I

don't think we talk about the need for certainty. But you know when you see the research that you're much more versative than I am. But when I read the research around, okay, I get a couple of presentations. One's beautifully novel and one's far more button down and certain and you say, well, I love that novel research, which person would you hire? I take a certain button down person,

not the creative person. And it always doesn't work out so well for the creative mind inside companies that are looking to promote and If the culture doesn't reward the novelty or at least the expression of creatives, then the diversity that we're hiring really doesn't make much difference if we don't want to hear opinions different than we do. And you know, I don't know what you think, Scott, but I I'm amazed by the power of culture to

homogenize behavior. And I'm also amazed by how few people in companies can define the word culture or really understand the power inherent and shared assumptions and values. Yeah, yeah, preach, preach, preach, It's very true. No, I love it. Yeah, value quality and having pro social values is both those things are in short supply. You know in a lot of these companies. Well, you've used the phrase, You've used the phrase motivational or

motivated blindness. I think that's an interesting phrase, motivated blindness. Why are leaders suffering from this? Well, you know, I think the I think it's sometimes it's been used in a lot of different ways. The way I would use it is that sometimes it's inconvenient to see what's really there, especially when it reflects on you, and I think that we tend to confirmation bias, call it whatever, we want

to call it. I tend to think we look for the information that confirms what we know, and in the process we become motivatedly blind to that which is inconvenient for us to know. And I think culture does that to us. I think ed Shine's work is right on when he says the most powerful parts of culture are tacit non articulated, and operate below a level of consciousness. And so sometimes it's motivated blindness, like we could see it,

but we don't. And sometimes I think that the cultural pressures we feel are unarticulated and we don't really know they're happening to us. Oh can you can you allaborate on that a little? Like what would be one kind of example of that? Sure? I think in well, for instance, I think if we talked about even the motivational stuff in the compensation or they're not looking for the downsides

of incentives and stuff. I think that there's pressure to do more or yesterday, what we do more tomorrow of what we did yesterday inside every company, right, because culture is a stabilizing mechanism, right, So it tends to stabilize collective human effort in ways that are predictable and so you might be the same person in company A, but then then you move to company B and you become slightly different because the culture homogenizes you, socializes you in

some way. And I don't think we always know it happening to us. I think we sit there and we think we're being independent, rational thinkers, but we start to

act like those people around us. I mean when I spent I went to one of those service academies as an undergraduate, and the funniest part of it is you sit around in one of the academies and one of the things cadets do all the time is they go, I'm never going to be like that when I grow up, right, I'm never going to be like that when I grow up.

And next thing, you know, if you're around long enough, your classmates all grow up and they exact they act exactly like that, and they don't they would disagree, they would say, no, that didn't happen to me. But if you're standing on the outside, you go, he's acting just the way they did for the last thirty years, and they don't know what's happening to them. I think that's how culture work. Well. They need someone like you to come in as a consultant and let them know the cold,

hard truth of the matter. Yeah. I think we have a inate ability to disregard anything, you know, confirmation bias. So that would be pretty tough because I think culture tends to perpetuate itself. It's so tough to change, right, It's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah, And it's it's it's like water to fish. Yeah. Sometimes our culture as we take it for granted and like we don't realize

there could be any other different kind of environment. Yeah. No, And you know you kind of laugh because you're going, yeah, and you hit the nail on the head when you said, you know that our bias against creative thought or creative action.

You know, you can see how the existing culture wants to do more of what it did yesterday, and the number of companies that start out and say, well, let's try that, and then the innovator's st lemma happens, and resources get a little tight, and the first thing we kill is the new thing in favor of the old thing. And big companies don't innovate very effectively for a thousand reasons, not the least of which is the existent culture. Right. Yeah, Well,

let's talking about another aspect of the culture. You've talked in your work about democratization. I mean, I was scared to have to say that whole word out loud. But

what is the effect of democratization on leadership? Well, you know, I think that this idea of the one trend in studying leadership all the years that I've been looking at it, which you can tell since Lincoln was president to take a look at my hair, right, stop it is there's been a shift in power from those that used to have all the power to people who didn't used to have power. Right, And that technological shift happened in every generation. Right.

The printing press was novel at one time and allowed people to coalesce around an idea that could overthrow a government, or TV and radio free Europe, or or the media bringing down part of the Iron curtain or cementing revolution.

And now you know, with Twitter and Facebook and social media, you see the Arab spring, and you see presidents of universities being fired over a weekend because you know, one fraternity does one thing on a bus, it goes viral and they can bring a president of a university or a CEO to their knees almost overnight because the technology allows the power to shift to those who never used

to have power. And you could see it in the stock market, you know, when when a group of crowdsources they're buying techniques and brings hedge managers head to their knees in terms of their short sales. I mean, we have a thousand things and experiences where the technology has allowed people to come together and foment a power shift. And that's what I think we mean by democratization is

that it spreads out the power. It doesn't do it in the short term, but over some period of time, the tenure for CEOs is reduced to like three and a half years now the power has the power shifted somewhat and it's not necessarily day to day that I'm not saying CEOs are powerless or head coaches are powerless, but I mean, if you look at athletics, college athletics coaches used to do a lot of things that they don't get away with today very easily, and the old

guard wouldn't survive very much today. Maybe they survive too long. I mean, the latest research would show it's three times more likely to be abused in a college d one college program than in a business But is that right? Yeah? Yeah, you know, Temper did this study in Ohio State and they show that with the goal study that the NCAAA

did that it's kind of a perfect storm. When you have powerful coaches hold scholarships over people's heads, and when the student athlete has no ability to fight back without losing their scholarship, they're ripe for some of the incivility. I thought when I read that research, I think it said fifty two d one college athletes suffer from anxiety or depression. That's really sad. I mean a lot of college students in general are suffering from anxiety and depression

right now. The rates are pretty high. Boy without especially as they're separated sitting on zoom all day. Right. Yeah, I'm totally stressed out by Zoom. I want to, you know, just talk to people in they're real particles, not their simulated particles. Yeah. I think I think we missed a lot, don't you think? In your work? I mean, you've done an extraordinary amount of work on the connectedness issue and the love issue as it applies to our basic needs

as people. That has to be quite interesting to you, isn't it about this idea of how we are, how we are suffering from this lack of connection and belonging, this being so isolated. I am very interested in that and its effect among young people today particularly. I mean, you have written yourself just to turn the question back in you second, you know, how has the millennial generation, this millennial generation changed the way leadership and organizations work.

Do you see a shift there? Yeah, you know, I think it's really a great question because it's not simple. Right. They're people, and so human needs is you know, our human needs. And you know, you and I both would agree that Maslow never wanted to make a hierarchy or a triangle out of human needs. Your version, your version of those needs is brilliant about how to how to look at those But I think, as you say, we're working on growth levels and our subsistence levels simultaneously all

the time. And I think that because of the absence of the ability to to not only connect, but to trust that there's going to be more there that I think millennials have a great BS detector to realize that the here and now matters, and they want it now, and so they sacrifice less on the subsistence or the

deficit level. I think then some of us might have been hooked there and need less they're used to be having taken care of and they want an opportunity to learn and grow with no bs, and I think that's very difficult in a world that is used to controlling people based on techniques that are more fear based than growth based. Well, that was very well said. That was very well said. You know, we had to. It was funny in jimbree when it was still alive, when before

we sold at the Pain Capital. I think one of the things that Matt McCauley was doing, which I thought was brilliant, is we had to actually go out and we wanted to create much more involvement with our teams with charities and kids and things, a because we were a group dedicated to those things, but also because our employees were challenging as they asked to do so. The millennial group in the Bay Area where Jimboree was headquartered, we're having none of us ignoring that for any length

of time. The need to be part of something bigger than themselves was so apparent to all of us, and for most of us that seemed like a change from the past. Well, you know you've made there's some interesting arguments about about choosing love not only over fear, but even over competence. I mean, your argument's really interesting. You've argued that warmth should come before competence and not saying

choosing one or the other. That I shouldn't have framed it that way, but just in terms of what order do you do? You show it first? You know, oh jeez, I would never try to make that distinction, really, Scott. I think the argument I would make is that there are a lot of really brilliant, competent teams that fail. Yeah, yeah, you know, I've played on some of them. I've worked with some of them, and there are a lot of brilliant people who come together collectively we're one and one

equals one half and so. And I've played on a few teams that worked with a number of teams where one and one equals about six, right, And so I'm a pragmatist. I think we need competence. I think we need a mindset that's about exploring the unknown and growth. I think those things are really important. But I also think that we ignore the idea that the collective has its own identity, and that if we have a collective

with no identity, then we're in trouble. There's a really interesting piece of research that was done a few years ago which says that if we get more and more talent but don't have a central sense of purpose for which we're acting, the more talent we have, the more disruptive it can become, and the worse our results might be. But that doesn't mean I don't want talent. If I'm out recruiting, give me the talent. But I think it's both. I want the most talented team in the universe. I

want the most diverse team on the universe. But I think I need a collective that is more the belief in every individual that we can only succeed individually if the collective succeeds. So I don't think I could put them in a hierarchy at all. Yeah, very interesting that you equated competence with talent, because in my model, I

differentiate them, you know that people. Yeah, I have this like four C model where competence is different than capacity, you know, or like talent, you know, how quick you earn something. A lot of people may seem untalented, but through hard work and even love. Dare I say show eventually show very high levels of competence and we shouldn't count them out. So anyway, that's just my own little

sort of theory. Well, no, I think that I think that's far more distinctive than the way I was probably and artfully using the words in those terms, because when you separate it that way, it makes perfect sense. Right, I need capacity and present capability, right, yeah, and so and so I think that your way of saying it makes makes it much more actionable actually than the way I was saying it. What do we disagree on? Then let's find something we disagree on? Tell me, well, I

don't know. I can't. I have yet to find find something we both nerd out over Douglas McGregor and Abraham Maslow and how we want to kind of bring their work more to the fold. I don't know. I think it's going to be difficult to find something we disagree on. But can we talk about Douglas McGregor a little bit since I just kind of mentioned that name. Absolutely, you've done a beautiful job resurrecting him and end revisiting, revisit, revisiting.

So what do you think you know he was so frustrated about I know we're talking beforehand, and you said that he died frustrated that he said that it was too complicated to change human motivation for the hire to strive for the higher ceilings. But what you know, what do you what do you make of McGregor? There, I guess what I know of McGregor right, because he died

in sixty one or sixty two. What I know mostly about McGregor I learned from Warren Bennis, who worked for Doug McGregor and Abe Maslow at the time as a young man, and I wrote this book with Warren, who is a seminole person in my thought process, because he would explain some of those things and what I thought was intriguing to me about what I had learned or

you know, secondhand give it. But about McGregor is when he postulated theory and theory why he believed that the way we treated people weren't just the tactics we believed in, but had more to do with the way we viewed human beings as either willing to accept responsibility, willing full of life and wanting to do it differently right, or more like machine like at rest and they needed to

be incentivized or jump started, right. And I think McGregor, although he didn't talk a lot about his belief in theory why, the belief that people have ordinary people are capable of great things, I think that's the way his mindset went, and what he was frustrated by is he was getting trying to get people to look in the

mirror at their assumptions, right. And I think that what people did at the time was they saw theory X and theory why and started to talk out about him like they were leadership styles, like there's a theory X leader and a theory why leader. And he's like, no, I'm not talking about that. They're not styles. They're just

ways to test your assumptions about people. And he couldn't get people to think deeply about looking in the mirror and what do you really believe about human beings because people wanted a simple magic pill that they could take, adopt the style and make their workplace is hugely more productive. So my understanding of it in those days was that that he was frustrated because he wanted people to think deeply about the nature of human beings and they wanted

a contingency look at leadership styles. Well, I'm even in this generation, I'm frustrated by that thing. Yeah, you know, and I think I think Maslow at the beginning was it was really funny because as you write about it in your book, and we both know, went out with Andy Ka at Kpro Computers for a summer and dictated

you psycheic management. But in You psyche and Management, there's a chapter as it became Maslow and Management, there's a there's a chapter that's written about thirty four ideas that if you want more enlightened leadership or more enlightened management, here are thirty four ways you got to think differently.

And that was Maslow's missile at McGregor saying, Doug, if you really think you can be more enlightened, you're gonna have to do these thirty four things differently, to which I think they were in absolutely you know, argumentative agreement that you know, here was the psychologist in Maslow and the organizational theorist in McGregor coming to the same conclusion at the same time. Yeah, I know they had great affection for each other. Well, MacGregor, you know, I have

a letter from McGregor to Maslow. That was very very kind, very kind. Yeah, I mean, Maswell called that theory Z in that chapter, you know, and it is kind of like a bit of a cheeky thing to do because of McGregor's theory X and Y. He said, he's not We're not complete. We need the theory. We need to get to theory Z, which is real and enlightened leadership

and transcendent, not just self actualizing. Yeah. Yeah, And you know, I think that's where the beauty of your title to your book is so big, and you know, and reading through yours, And I wasn't even aware until the last year or so that you know, Maslow had combined his efforts with Victor Franco and others. Yeah, totally totally focused

on the idea of transcendence. And and I knew he had thought about theory Z and that he thought that thinking about individuals was was not where he wanted to be at the end of his life, because we do everything in groups and teams and collectives. And he said, being part of something bigger than yourself. But there was a group of people whose sole focus in life became that.

And I still I'm not sure we still understand that. Yeah, you know, if you see one more CEO stand up at a conference and go, the reason we exist is shareholder value and everybody, everybody in the audience is like, really, turns me on. That's that's our purpose? And were we write a purpose that it sounds like everybody else's right? I think we still don't quite get that. For people to find true meaning in what they're doing, it's it's

not only personal, but it's emotionally engaging. Yeah. No, I mean you keep coming back and returning to the theme about human the human side of it, and it's, uh, why are people need to listen to this? Well? You know, it's very interesting, isn't it. I mean? Power? I mean I think maybe if there's one thing you guys who really do the research and it probably agree over one hundred years, is that power tends to corrupt study after study,

And maybe Laura Acton was right way back then. And as long as power corrupts and people don't share power voluntarily, that isn't you know, power and control the opposite of the autonomy based enlightenment that you know we all keep writing about. Yeah. No, very well said, there's the power paradox that doctor Keltner talks about where the very traits that get someone the power to begin with are the

things that eventually cause their downfall. Once they've achieved power and then become you know, they they completely uh it goes to their head, you know, like you know that, you know, they the thing that gave the power was usually was usually love, and then when they get the power, they forget about that, about those traits. But anyway, a humans, humans are missing what is what is the quiz you

Cannot Fail? So I want to take that one. Yeah, So the quiz you Can't Fail was a quiz set up by a professor emeritus at Michigan State years ago who had come after Joe Scandaler And when when Doug McGregor brought Joe Scandlon the factory worker to m I t to be a lecturer, right, his proteget goes out and he starts trying to create change in factories in the United States, and he's or it's failing. He starts going, I'm trying to create change. But you know how it goes.

People say yeah, yeah, we want to change, and then two years later they're still saying they want to change. Is there's no change, so he got frustrated. So the origin of the original term quiz you can't fail is he would go in to companies and he would give him the quiz, and he would say, do you know where you want to be different? Is there a compelling reason for you to do it? Do you think you can make it happen? And if you did, is there

nothing in it for you to want to commit? For simple questions about and if people answered no to any one of the four, he would say, you're probably a really good company and want to change, but I don't have time in my life to work with you to be a Scalon like company because you're not ready. And so he believed that readiness for change became these questions that if you know where you want to go that's different from where you are, you have a compelling reason

to want to do it. You believe it's possible that this group can do it, and you'll be better off for having done it. There's a fighting chance you can create the kind of changes you want. So the quiz you can't fail was his test, his litmus test originally for whether he would take him as a client. What I found interesting was it's also a great test for

are you ready to create change inside a company? Sort of are you unfrozen in a way, Because if you know where you want to go and you're really committed and there's a compelling reason to do it and you think you can do it, you have confidence and you're going to be better off, you have a fighting chance. I like that reframing. Yeah, and so the guy's name was Carl Frost, right, I want to look up that cat. Yeah, yeah, he professor Meris. I think he's maybe not with us

at this point at Michigan State. And he was instrumental in spreading scandalon like idea is throughout the manufacturing sector of the US, you know, fifty years ago or so. Yeah. He passed away in two thousand and nine. Yeah, wow, wow, Wow. There's a book changing forever the well. I like that, The Well Kept Secrets of America's leading Companies. Have you

read that book? Uh? No, I read. I read a different one than he actually wrote earlier when he started lamenting trying to create change and meeting the resistance, that what seems inevitable. Thanks for introducing me to him. You've introduced me to a lot of really cool people. Since I've well not personally interested. You know, you've introduced me to some dead people, but they're really cool, usually because you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know

what I mean. You introduced me to them, but not directly. I'm being a dork, Okay. So how much better might people perform if leaders were to believe that ordinary people are capable of greatness? You've writ a little bit about this, and I just loved what you've written about it. I don't know how much potential we have it is, but it is amazing to me when I find these teams. I mean, I found this wrestling coach in southern California, Poway, who took over a wrestling program thirty years ago, and

he thought he got a great job. He was going to be the head wrestling coach. And the only problem is he showed up for work and they didn't have a wrestling team. And they said, and they said, well, you know, we don't have a wrestling team and we don't have a history of wrestling, but you can be

the wrestling coach if you can find wrestlers. So he asked to do freshman p and you'd go around freshman pe and He'd pick out people and say, hey, you want to wrestle, And within two years he won the two district champion in Chip's district champion hip in San Diego. And he's won the state championship in wrestling a number of times, I'm not sure the exact number. And they

built a building for in thirty years later. And what's interesting, at the end of every year, I'm looking in his files and he writes love letters to every one of his wrestlers, not about wrestling, but about how gratefully was that they would let him coach them. But what he took was that people who had never wrestled before and within three years made up state champions And you go, how could you tell? He says, I never got the

best athletes. He says, I would go up to LA and they had these big players and football players who would wrestle, and I never did. He says. These people had to work hard. But it's amazing what people can do if they find a passion and want to make

it happen. And you know, I'll never forget the first day I went to Marysville when they were building Hondas twenty years ago in Ohio and you watch them, and you watched them Bill Carrs, and these were people that had never done it before, and they were building world

class cars as well as they did in Japan. And and and you look at the experience that that Toyota had with Numi in northern California when they took over the joint venture with GM, and the same workers who were the one of the worst GM plants in the country became one of the best joint venture plants with

the same employees doing it. And you go, you need a certain amount of talent, but a certain amount about is desire to get better, and willingness to take feedback, and willingness to grow, and willingness to be a part of a team bigger than yourself in which you commit to it. And I don't think teams without talent win a lot of championships. But I think there are a lot of good players who can become great players in

the right environment. And I think McGregor wrote years ago, he wrote that the biggest way in his world was the waste of human potentially witnessed as he traveled from company to company. And you go into a company today and you say, how much more do you think you could do if we could change the environments and people have a zillion things, or even we used to do an experiment where we go in and we'd say, no

more money, no more resources, no reorganization. How many ideas do you have could you that you could improve once you delivered to a customer or make the delivery less expensive, not changing a whole lot, not talking about total quality, just you're in your control. And they on average had fifteen ideas per person in fifteen minutes. And you say, why haven't you done anything with these? And you know,

you know, well, it's not my job. I'm total once you know there's a thousand excuses why they don't do it. But when you talk to people and sit down for fifteen minutes, and I don't know how to quantify this exactly, Scott, but when you talk to them for fifteen minutes over a couple of year period in different companies, and everybody's got a number of ideas. Let's even say that eighty percent of them are dumb ideas. If we just took the twenty percent of them, how much better would they be?

And if they felt like they accomplished something, how much more would they be willing to do tomorrow. I don't think we're using half of the human potential in most teams. Maybe that's the wrong number. I have no way of quantifying it, but you must see it in your work around that if people were in the right environment, is a lot right. So can you go like can you bypass the good route? Can you go from like bad

to great? I don't think so. You know, it's funny, you know, to talk to Jim about that when he wrote from good to great, But it's we should do that. But it's hard to take, you know, somebody who who's totally turned off and make them turned on in the same situation because there's a reason why they're turned off.

But before I would say you can't, I mean, I think I've had a number of experiences in companies where people who are turned off and part of that seventeen percent who come to work every day undermining the company, and you give them a new job with real responsibility, and they become all stars. Really, I think all of us have seen that because they're really like they feel a great greatest sense of identity and motivation and purpose. Yeah,

and I don't think there are unmotivated people. There's a lot of unmotivated workers. But at five o'clock when they leave work, they become the head of the cup Scouts or the Little League team. And some of them do extraordinary things if there was some opportunity worth challenging their effort. In their mind, they have extraordinary capabilities. But potentially a lot of jobs aslo saying, you know, any job not worth doing is certainly not worth doing well. What's not

worth doing is not worth doing well? Yeah? Yeah, And so how many jobs have we organized in ways that we wouldn't want the job for a human being because the training costs would be lower, or you know, I still I remember walking into a retail out of years

ago when it came hit me in the face. I walked in and I was returning two pair of shoes for my son at the time, and I wanted to get a pair of the right size, and I have to wait twenty minutes for a twenty dollars return till a supervisor comes and signs the slip and gets them to approval to do the exchange for twenty dollars. She comes, she signs that she's the supervisor's walking away and I yell at her, I'm going, hey, ma'am, would you come

say hi? I waited twenty minutes for the experience, you know, I was a little frustrated, and I look at this probably nineteen year old kid serving man. I said, whatever he said that pisses me off, you know, and he yelled at me, Scott. He flat out yelled at me. This nineteen year old looks at me and he goes, pisses you off? How many times a day do you have to do it? I'm the one that ought to be pissed, not you. And he was so right. I

was laughing to him. You know, he's right. God, he's so right that how would you like to have a job which forces you to get a signature that they don't even look at when they sign for a twenty dollars return. I'd almost feel as bad as going to one of those customer service seminars where they tell you how to greet people when you say hello, say it

this way. And I'm just thinking the people in that class are going they don't think I'm even capable of saying hello, right, I mean, when we're so controlling as we tell people how to say hi, Yes, and then we say, why aren't they turned on? Because you just know that guy for the shoes some supervisors away at a two day training program. I am trying to figure out how to motivate it. It's a little is that a little too cynical? No, no, it's not not cynical enough.

It's not cynical enough. I think you're you're you're spot on. Gary. I just I want to thank you so much for being on my podcast today and and I'm so glad that we could finally I could have a chance to showcase some of your really timely and important ideas about transforming the workplace and UH and reconceptualizing leadership. So thank you Gary, well Scott, thank you Ed. I need to

thank you. I think that the work that you're doing with Transcendence and the new center that you're creating, and all the things that you're doing to help move all of us to think in a more disciplined manner about creating transcendence is going to add to the body of work for for a long time to come. So I I thank you Ed. You know I have appreciate all that you do means a lot to me. Thanks Gary, Thank care Scott, thanks for having me you too, That was that was splendid. I can't wait to talk to

you on your podcast soon as well. That'll be a hot hell. I can't wait. Yeah, and I get to ask I bet, I get to reflect the questions back and find out what I really should have said. Nah, this is really great, really great interview. Have a great day, Gary, Thanks Scott, see you so. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.

That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.