#376： When to Compete, When to Cooperate, and How to Succeed at Both
Episode Stats
Summary
Being successful in life requires social adeptness, and part of that social prowess is balancing two seemingly opposing social strategies: competing and cooperating. But how do you know which approach to take in the hundreds of different social relationships you navigate day in and day out? For example, should you go out of your way to promote your achievements to your boss, or should you spend more time helping your fellow co-workers? My guest today explores these subtle and often complex questions in his book, Friend or Foe: When to cooperate, when to compete, and how to succeed at both.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast being successful
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in life requires social adeptness and part of that social adeptness is balancing two seemingly
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opposing social strategies competing and cooperating but how do you know which approach
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to take in the hundreds of different social relationships you navigate day in and day out
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for example should you go out of your way to promote your achievements to your boss or should
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you spend more time helping your fellow co-workers my guest today explores these subtle and often
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complex questions in his book friend or foe when to cooperate when to compete and how to succeed at
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both his name is adam galinsky he's a professor at the columbia business school and today on the show
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adam and i discuss why all of our relationships even close personal ones are both competitive
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and cooperative and how our natural tendency to compare ourselves to others either causes us to
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cooperate or compete adam then shares how cooperation can lead to high status and success
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and power but how once we gain status and power our natural tendency is to become a big giant jerk
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which leads to our downfall he then provides some research back advice on how to avoid that from
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happening to you adam and i then discussed why teasing nicknames are former social bonding and why
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putting all of your education credentials in your email signature can make you look kind of insecure
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it's a fascinating discussion about the quirks of human social dynamics after the show's over check out
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the show notes at a1.is slash friend or foe adam now joins me via clearcast.io
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all right adam galinsky welcome to the show thank you so much i'm so happy to be here so you co-authored
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a book called friend and foe when to cooperate when to compete and how to succeed at both and it takes a
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look at social status and social dynamics i'm curious how did you get into researching and
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writing about this this topic of psychology you know i'm both my co-author marie schweitzer and i
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are both i think characterized by a love of a wide range of research on a wide range of topics and
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you know one of the funny things about friend and foe is i think it's both greatest strength and maybe
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its biggest weakness is the fact that in many ways it's 11 books in one because there's you know
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chapters on power and hierarchy and social comparisons and trust and apologies and negotiations
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but i think that really is emblematic of of who maurice and i are as researchers is we get so excited
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by any interesting idea and we sort of go in that direction and explore it and so he and i collectively
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have become sort of experts in a number of different areas of psychology but in throughout all of that
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process we really noticed that a lot of our research individually as well as a lot of what we do in our
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teaching really gets at this fundamental tension that really drives human nature between cooperating
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with people and competing with them for scarce resources so let's talk about that you start you
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begin the book saying that all of our relationships you know close family relationships close business
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relationships you know you know friends that we are on you know that we love are both cooperative but
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also competitive at the same time can you provide some examples of of you know relationships being both
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cooperative and competitive at the same time yeah absolutely i mean we see this just even at the at
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the firm level right so we see like microsoft and apple often compete in order to get people to use
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their products but they also cooperate as industry members let's say cooperate against the fbi or
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cooperate to get certain laws passed they're going to be in their favor you know and in organizations
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we see this extremely all the time where we collaborate and cooperate as teams to produce outcomes
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at the collective level but then we compete for promotions and salaries but i have sort of two very
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great personal examples of this one is i recently got married in the last couple years and we had our
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first child and we're actually expecting our second child sometime in the next week or so but you know
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raising a child there's nothing more cooperative than that as two parents but then at like three o'clock
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in the morning when the baby wakes up then you're competing fiercely with your with your partner for who's
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going to get up who's going to get to sleep and you can get a little salty with each other as you know
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it's like no you got up last night no you get up this time you know and then the other case where i
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can see this really well in my own life is i was actually a surprise twin and i even saw that
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competition in the womb where my brother kicked my ass he came out of the womb almost uh 55 percent
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larger than i was and we competed and cooperated all the time as kids and we could really see that
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process so it doesn't matter whether you're you know spouses whether you're siblings whether you're
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co-workers whether you're firms we're always competing and collaborating simultaneously with
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everyone so as you said earlier that this book is really like 11 different books in one and i love
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that because i love the breadth and also the depth you get into let's talk about some of these topics
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you hit that that factor in and how we cooperate and compete the first factor is we're always making
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social comparisons and that this is this is the source of motivation for us to either cooperate
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or compete so how does our social comparisons with others motivate us either to cooperate with them or to
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compete with them yeah i mean i think well there's a couple of interesting things is that social
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comparisons this is sort of research going back a century has really been found to be a natural instinct
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of humans but also even our non-human primate members and so we naturally we never compare
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our outcomes in absolute terms all of our outcomes all of our efforts are always done relative to other
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people in comparison to them now what's i think most interesting in relation to the theme of the book
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is that well who do we compare ourselves with well we often compare ourselves with the people that
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we're most connected to and most similar to and the people that we often cooperate with right so we
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as a twin who's the natural person to compare myself to it's it's to my to my sibling to my my other
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twin and so this is just the natural inevitable part and the binds that link us together are often the ones
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that are the people that we compare to the most now sometimes this comparison is really good right and so i
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have uh i mentioned this in the book but um i grew up in chapel hall north carolina and north carolina
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and duke university compete in basketball all the time and that really motivates them in this tremendous
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way so unc wins the championship in 2009 well duke wins it in 2010 duke wins in 2015
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unc makes the final in 16 then wins it in 17 still hawking back to duke's winning in 2015 so
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these comparisons can really drive us and motivate us but they also create sort of deep resentments
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and frustrations and probably the famous example of this i'll give you just two really interesting
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fascinating examples one is with monkeys so a monkey gets a piece of cucumber they feel really happy but
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if they see a monkey next to them get a better piece of food like a grape well that monkey who got the
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piece of cucumber goes apeshit and they literally take that piece of cucumber throw it back at the
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experimenter even though they just aided a couple of minutes earlier very happily and so that's an
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example comparisons a more recent one that's sort of been talked about is in 1992 after bill clinton
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became president they put in a new rule into the sec that was designed to decrease the amount the
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ratio between how much co's got paid versus the average worker it had been steadily rising over the
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years so we're going to put in a little rule and it's going to decrease it and at the time it was
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around 30 multipliers so co's got paid about 30 times an average worker did they put in this rule
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in designed to decrease it it exploded it within a few years co's are competing 300 times what an
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average worker was well what was this rule that got put in place well the rule was all co compensation
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now had to be public but they thought that was going to do with shame co's into reducing their
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things but co's don't compare themselves to the average worker they compare themselves to other co's
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and they start seeing the packages the other co's get and then it created arms race that co gets his
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package i want even a better package oh well i want a better package oh i want a better package
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and all of a sudden they're getting paid 300 times the average worker so we can see these process
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comparison they drive us they motivate us but they can create unchecked competition and even resentment
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so let's talk about how to get the upsides of social comparison while mitigating the downside so
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here's an example i i've been in situations where i'm comparing myself to someone and i'm like the
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underdog and that motivates me but there's other times where i'm comparing myself to someone and i'm
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the underdog and but it debilitates me i'm just like ah i'm never going to be that good so what's
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going on there why is it sometimes like being the underdog can motivate you and other times it can just
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be like just depress you and not just cause you to like not want to even try yeah i mean i think
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there's a couple of things that are really important there the first is you have to see
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the comparison especially someone above you as ultimately attainable and that you can attain that
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level of performance and so what what happens is we have this what we kind of call the sort of
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latitude of acceptance so our comparisons fall within that meaning that we think we can reach that point
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versus our latitude of sort of rejection they're so far away from us that we can't even imagine
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competing with them and that sort of debilitates us i'll give you sort of one example from my own life
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where one of the ways that we can solve this process is what i call expanding the status pie or
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we can also call it differentiation so when i was a 12 year old boy i ran a 10 kilometer race which is 6.2
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miles in 46 minutes which is a tremendously good time my twin brother ran that same race in 44 minutes
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and no matter how fast i ran and how good i got my brother was always doing better than i was so what
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did i do well i kind of did what you just said is i gave up but i switched to a different sport and i
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became a wrestler and then eventually i got pretty good made all conference was captain of the wrestling
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team and so that's one example where one of the things that we can do as organizations is kind of
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deal with that comparison problem by rewarding people on their unique attributes that distinguish
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them from others within the organization and that's one of the things that i teach leaders to do is say
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find that unique thing in your employees and identify it and value it and that way they're not going to be
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comparing in this resentment way towards each other they're going to be able to all
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get their own level of unique status and therefore motivate them further how do you think social
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media is affecting social comparisons is it making it more perilous that you have to be a little more
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aware of it what do you think is going on there yeah i mean i think we see a lot a lot of that with
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this idea that you know you don't want to just clutter your social media with all of your accomplishments
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right because people want to be able to connect to people not feel like that they're feeling
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in the sense of envy and jealousy and so i think there's times in which we can find actually ways
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to show some of our our weaknesses some of our humility some of our days that don't go great and
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that makes us actually more connected and and more personable and since i wrote the book i i you know
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one of the things i do at columbia business school is get to interview leaders all the time and as part of
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a class on leadership i teach i got to interview a woman named linda rottenberg who's ceo of endeavor
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a company that helps entrepreneurs throughout the world and she's been called you know one of the top
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hundred leaders in america you know one of the great innovators of the 21st century and she talked
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about how she only became a great leader when she stopped being super and started being a little bit
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more human and she talked about by exposing some of her vulnerabilities some of her anxiety some of her
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concerns to employees they actually started to connect with her better and so when she just
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came across as a super person with this a person with incredible accomplishments and talents people
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couldn't really connect with her and so i think the same thing with social media finding ways to
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connect with people is incredibly valuable and one of the ways that we can do that is not by just
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creating this outwardly super comparison but by being a little humble and exposing some of our weaknesses
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and some of our fears but you can't do the humble brag because that just rubs people the wrong way
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yeah a humble brag is pretty much the worst thing that you can do right and so people are very aware
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of what a humble brag is and so um it's a term that's gotten into the literature people bring books
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about it scientists are now doing research on this um a humble brag is not the way to go real humility
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is the way to go yeah that example of the ceo it reminded me of a story from george washington
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it was i think after valley forge it was basically his soldiers were ready to mutiny they didn't want to
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fight anymore and he had rallied the troops together and uh he had this present this like letter he
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wanted to read and what he did like he he put on his glasses and because i think george washington
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was very fastidious about his presentation he wanted to be seen as pretty much perfect but like him
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putting on the glasses and he said i'm sorry gentlemen but i've my sight my sight has gotten poor
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due to fighting in my country and like supposedly that moment like people just like oh they just they
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saw his vulnerability and they wanted to fight for him yeah and i think you know that's one of the
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surprising things i think about president trump right now is is that he doesn't recognize that
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actually acknowledging some weakness can actually make people feel more connected to you rather than
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less connected to you now one of the things that you know that my research shows and other people's
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research shows is i i have this great phrase that i use in my class which is you want to be superhuman
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not human super and what i mean by that is you want to expose your vulnerability after you've
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demonstrated your competence and that people respect you but if you expose your vulnerability
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at the beginning then it kind of undercuts your more super qualities later on and so there's this
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almost like the person i thought they were super but now i see that they're a little human and that
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makes me really connect with them so let's talk about the interplay between status and power
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you start off this this section of the book talking about there's a difference between
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being powerful and feeling powerful so how can you feel powerful but not be powerful right why i think
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you know you know typically when we have power and we can have power in lots of different ways we can
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have power by being a boss you know we can have power by the fact that lots of people respect us
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we can have power by some of our social groups so you know we can have power if we come from like a
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goldman sachs or mckinsey because they have such high status in society and typically our power
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feelings correspond to our actual levels of power that we have within a context within an organization
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within society but that's not always the case and sometimes we can actually have power but not
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recognize the power that we have and not utilize or leverage the power that we have to feel weaker than
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we really are and therefore not get some of the outcomes that we want so for example we might
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actually have a really strong alternative in a negotiation which gives us powers because it
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gives us the capacity to walk away but if we don't feel powerful we're not going to leverage that
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alternative and we're going to make meek or weak first offers in that negotiations for example or we
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don't recognize we have power we have at work and we give up that power to other people by letting
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them take control of situations and so one of the things that i have shown in my research and some of
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things i do in some of my teaching and consulting is to get people to recognize the power that they do
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have and therefore to leverage that and be able to utilize that power that they have um and to
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recognize and to feel the power they truly have gotcha and you talk about too how power there's that
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famous quote from lord acton right power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely what what goes on
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like what sort of bad behavior do we take part in once we start feeling powerful what does the research show
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yeah i mean i think you know when you just think about it power gives you incredible level of
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control of your own outcomes and also the outcomes of other people in fact that's kind of the definition
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of power right is that you control your own outcomes and outcomes of other people and that means that we
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don't feel the same moral constraints that we would normally feel basically what power does it kind of
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melts away those constraints and we feel relatively free and unfettered in our behavior now sometimes
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that's good sometimes like when we feel powerful we act in an emergency where other people would feel
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constrained by fear of getting hurt or being embarrassed if it's not really an emergency but
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oftentimes it leads to very bad behavior it leads to uh cheating i think we see a lot of that where
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you know banks felt very powerful um in the mid-2000s that led to some very um unethical behavior
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risk-taking behavior that led to the financial collapse but we see this in some of these incredible
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horrific examples that have emerged recently um whether it's bill cosby or harvey weinstein in
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terms of some of the sexual behaviors that people engage in and you know one thing that i think is
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is really important is you mentioned the idea of absolute power and think about how much power
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harvey weinstein had to make or break so many people's careers by green lighting their movies by putting
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them into movies and he just used that power over and over and over again you know by putting
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women into these incredibly awkward positions and i think that it you know in some ways it allows us
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to just act on whatever our impulses or appetites are at that moment in time because those constraints
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melt away and we can see a number of different ways whether it's within business or in different
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types of interpersonal relationships this absolute power corrupting absolutely so how do you put a check
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on that because you're i mean this interesting thing like that you know the behavior that you engage in
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when you feel powerful can help you rise to the top but if you continue that behavior it can lead
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to your downfall so what do you do to to put a check on that yeah i think that's a really great
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question and you know one of the things that my research has shown is is that something you just
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mentioned which is really important to get power i need to be a really good perspective taker i need to
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understand what other people around me want give them what they need and they're going to then like me
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and how allow me to rise up the hierarchy but one of the things that my research has shown is that we
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get into power we kind of lose a little bit of that capacity to understand other people to connect
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with other people to feel compassion to other people in fact there's a lot of research shows that
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when we sort of stop that perspective taking of others that's when people start to resent us when
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we're in power and people form alliances against us and overthrow our rule we see this even in the
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animal kingdom right where people aren't attending to the needs of others but what i just told you
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also gives us the seeds to solving this conundrum because what i've shown in my research is that if
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we get the powerful who feel really age this idea of agency action i call it a psychological accelerator
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in the same way like a car needs a gas pedal to accelerate power is our psychological accelerator
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but if we take the car analogy further if you don't have a steering wheel you crash into things
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so we can take power and combine it with perspective taking this idea of understanding
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other people paying some attention to what they want and their needs then we get the best of both
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worlds we get this fine-tuned race car where we're flying down the highway but with control with our
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great steering wheel and so one of the things that my research has shown is one of the ways that we can
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get the powerful to actually take other people's perspective is to make them accountable to make them
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answer to other people and not just to themselves now sometimes in organizations we try to do that
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with corporate boards that's what corporate boards are designed to do but we can also make people
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psychologically feel connected let's say a sense of responsibility to workers that can activate their
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perspective taking gotcha and also going back to the status thing because you know status is
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intertwined with power if you are in a position of high power high status like don't go around flaunting it
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because eventually people are going to resent it and they're going to bring you down because as you
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said like like monkeys do this because i i think that's the most fascinating thing like monkeys have
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elections on who's going to be the alpha and if one alpha is just really abusing their power then the other
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ones get together and it basically just beat the crap out of the alpha monkey and run them off
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you see that happen with humans as well yeah and you see this you know all the time you know we see this
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for example even within academia where sometimes faculty take a vote of no confidence in their in
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their dean or in the president of the university right so so we we need to treat people um with
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respect and so it's it's funny and ironic that when we get power we're not taking other people's
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perspective we're not getting them to feel the the respect they need but as i mentioned earlier with
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social comparisons if we're really good at paying attention to people and recognizing their strengths
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and rewarding them even just validating them with kind words they feel respected and they give us
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actually more power and they allow us to maintain our power so one of the things that i try to get
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leaders to do is to recognize the how their behavior impacts other people but also just to recognize that
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how they used to have this capacity and that's how they became powerful i want to give you one great
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example of this of how sometimes we don't recognize the power of of our behavior when we have power or
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the effect it has so one of the things that when you ask anyone in the world you say imagine you got
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a very short one sentence email from your boss that just simply said i need to talk to you i ask people
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how would you feel and they're like i'd freak out i'd feel anxious i'd feel worried oh my god what's
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happening now a lot of times when we do that one power we know in our own mind that it's not a big
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deal oh i just want to share an idea with you right but we forget the power that we have over others
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and the impact that statement the ambiguity of that statement is going to have on others
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and i was working with a financial institution and the president of this company would do this all the
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time and the employees complained to me about it you know oh my god this happened all the time
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so i talked to the president and i said why don't you just share you know what it is he's like i don't
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have time to do this okay what can we do so that you can alleviate these people's anxieties when you
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want to just get them in a hurry to come by and see you and so they eventually negotiated a deal the
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deal was if it's not a big deal and we shouldn't worry just add a smiley face at the end of it like
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that takes you two seconds and so he agreed to do that if it's not a big deal i add a smiley face
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relieves everyone now if it is a big deal i don't have a smiley face and people know it's a big
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deal but that's okay too um but it's just that that not recognizing that the impact that we have
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on other people and i think that's a good example like remembering the proper emoticon to send to
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someone when we have power to alleviate any concerns that they might have yeah it's a great
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example because i've had that happen to me lots of times where they say hey let's talk and i'm like
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uh and but i think i think some people might do that intentionally because they know they
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understand there's a power like there's the powers in their favor because like you know what you're
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going to talk about but the other person has no clue and you get to just steamroll them you know
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without you know not being aware of what's going to go on yeah but i think you know i think you know
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how do you how do you maintain your power in the long term and we can use what's called dominance or
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domination or these strategies of bullying people or making them feel unsure of their standing
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that's kind of what donald trump has tries to do but notice all the resentment that builds up over
00:23:59.660
time and you know what my research shows and i think what other people's research shows too
00:24:04.760
is is that that's just a wrong view of power it's it's an erroneous view of power it's this idea that
00:24:12.540
oh that's what happens in the animal kingdom but that's as you just mentioned two minutes ago that's
00:24:16.500
not what happens in the animal kingdom it's actually when we treat people with respect
00:24:20.280
that's when we keep our power the longest and so you know people who believe that the way
00:24:27.040
to keep my power and to maintain it is to keep the people off guard uh you know cut them down in
00:24:34.340
meetings and show them who's boss um that's a recipe for long-term disaster it may work in the
00:24:39.360
short term but it's not going to work in the long term all right so this segues nice to our next topic so
00:24:44.020
knowing that the you know that if you treat people with respect and as equals right or you know
00:24:49.360
somewhat of an equal then you it's better in the long term so you hear all this talk amongst
00:24:53.860
companies and organizations like okay we need to get rid of strict up down hierarchies we need to
00:24:58.320
flatten our organization be hyper transparent and everyone's opinion is just as valid as ever but you
00:25:03.920
are you make you show in the book that that doesn't necessarily gonna lead to success it could
00:25:09.820
actually just lead to utter chaos so can you explain that dynamic there where yes you need to treat
00:25:15.480
people with respect but you you need there's a place for up down hierarchies yeah and i think that
00:25:20.360
you know looking across the world you know that hierarchy exists first of all in every species in the
00:25:27.600
world it also exists in every culture in the world it exists in every organization in the world
00:25:31.980
and and trying to understand this you know why is hierarchy the most prominent form of social
00:25:39.000
organization that exists and it's because it actually solves a lot of problems that groups face
00:25:44.040
for example groups face the problem of um how do we coordinate behavior right a hierarchy actually
00:25:49.640
gives you a coordination mechanism um how do we motivate people's behavior well if people who
00:25:55.320
work hard move up the hierarchy that makes people invest in the group and work hard for the group
00:26:00.120
um how do we deal with conflict well we need to have patterns of deference to resolve conflicts if
00:26:06.340
there's four cookies and three people who gets and one cookie is indivisible who gets that well
00:26:11.540
if there's a boss in the room people kind of defer to the boss and so hierarchy solves all of these
00:26:17.520
problems for groups and that's why i think you can see you know what organizations have the highest
00:26:23.560
hierarchy well the military what does the military need they need lots of coordination and so hierarchy
00:26:28.860
really solves their coordination aspect of it and they need you know to have that coordination they
00:26:33.900
need low conflict and patterns of deference and cooperation and they get it uh through hierarchy and
00:26:39.420
what's interesting is that so many organizations have tried to eliminate hierarchy to disastrous
00:26:45.160
results first example google google game in their engineers we hate our bosses we hate managers
00:26:51.660
let's get rid of managers you said the word chaos that's what happened zappos tony shay comes in says
00:26:59.440
we're no longer hierarchy i'm going to change the word holacracy we're going to have no titles no hierarchy
00:27:04.600
and what happened well typically two percent of the organization quit in any given year in the first
00:27:12.520
year almost 30 percent of the organization quit why because they described as chaos as miscommunication
00:27:18.460
not knowing who was supposed to do what so hierarchy actually solves a lot of these problems now we can
00:27:26.180
see again when hierarchy matters um and when it's really important and when it doesn't by understanding
00:27:32.600
again what it solves which is hierarchy is really good when we need to coordinate our behavior with
00:27:38.080
other people and so one of my favorite areas of research that i've done is a concept that i call the
00:27:44.360
too much talent effect and so when we have too much talent on a team that's bad when we have lots of
00:27:53.040
talent team that's really bad when the team has to coordinate their behavior and so researchers have shown
00:27:58.020
in basketball we get too many talented people on a team the hierarchy breaks down they start squabbling
00:28:04.280
over who's the alpha alpha on the team and their actually win percentage goes down but baseball where
00:28:11.080
we don't really have to coordinate our behavior where each pitcher goes out individually where each batter
00:28:15.640
bats in a determined sequence more talent has always been and so what's really interesting is when we look at
00:28:22.140
this idea is is that uh hierarchy really helps we need to coordinate basketball has more coordination
00:28:28.400
than baseball therefore um we can get too much talent in um basketball but we can never get enough
00:28:35.800
talent in baseball no the basketball example is is a great one because like it's relevant to me because
00:28:41.080
like i'm we live i live in oklahoma where i'm a big thunder fan and the thunder just got george and
00:28:46.920
carmelo anthony added to westbrook so you got these three really powerful dominant players and everyone's
00:28:52.980
like this is going to be the year that you're going to go to the they're going to win the championship
00:28:55.600
but as you said it might not be the case because there's they're going to be jockeying for who's the
00:29:00.340
top yeah and and you know i think we saw this with the miami heat you know a few years ago when
00:29:05.900
you know it was duane wade and lebron james who are both a friends but still each want to be the alpha dog
00:29:12.140
and they really and they only won the title actually when ironically duane wade hurt his name
00:29:16.660
and you know bill simmons had this great quote where he's like duane wade became 60 percent of
00:29:23.040
duane wade solved the dueling banjos problem and then they and then they won two championships in
00:29:28.440
a row and you know we saw this a little bit where oklahoma city almost won the other night where
00:29:33.060
westbrook deferred actually to carmelo anthony which is kind of an unheard of thing last year right
00:29:37.600
everyone would expected westbrook to take the final shot but because everyone knew westbrook was
00:29:42.520
going to take the final shot they were horrible in their final shots and last year and so
00:29:46.440
you can see how if you can win when you have a lot of talent and you learn how to defer that talent
00:29:52.040
we saw that last night where durant passed a curry in a critical point when durant was covered where
00:29:58.000
he might not have done that if they hadn't sort of solved some of that dueling banjos problem
00:30:02.040
so let's go back to this how do you when should you use implement a hierarchy and when should you
00:30:06.600
implement a more flat organization structure so what i would probably say is first yes and yes so we
00:30:13.560
bought more both hierarchy and flatness and so what do i mean by that well we need hierarchy in
00:30:19.280
the sense of we need to know whose decision ultimately matters we need to know who needs to
00:30:24.120
go to whom in an organization but there's a reason why people want flatness and hierarchies is because
00:30:29.880
we recognize that people have great ideas anywhere in an organization and we want to make sure that low
00:30:36.240
power people's perspectives are in silence and just as good to give you one example of this is i
00:30:41.960
analyzed 100 years of himalayas data every expedition that went up the himalayas for over 100 years
00:30:47.540
and what we found is is that when an expedition came from a country that was very hierarchical like
00:30:53.980
japan for example um they were more likely to summit capturing the coordination benefits of of uh of
00:31:01.680
hierarchy but they were also more likely to have people die in the mountain capturing they weren't
00:31:07.120
maybe utilizing everyone's perspectives um and so i think that what we need to do is we actually try
00:31:12.440
to create organizations that do have hierarchy but still create the opportunity for everyone to
00:31:18.680
contribute and for low power voices to be heard now there's a number of different ways that you can do
00:31:23.680
this so for example one really simple way that research has shown to get the best decisions made
00:31:30.780
but still have the hierarchy is to let low power people speak first before the leader does because
00:31:37.580
once a leader speaks everyone just gives them what they think the leader wants to hear the leader needs
00:31:41.520
to still make the decision but they want to get everyone's thoughts out on the table um and so that's just
00:31:46.860
sort of one simple example another example is we can create the right type of rules in organizations
00:31:52.800
so for example um uh during idea generation we need to create rules that allow everyone to speak up
00:32:00.360
so some of it is no criticism of of ideas during the generation phase or no interruption when people
00:32:08.120
are speaking during the idea generation phase but we need to also implement those ideas eventually and
00:32:14.080
so then we put in a little bit more hierarchy um and a little bit more structure when we get to idea
00:32:18.660
implementation so what i want people to do is not say have hierarchy don't have hierarchy is to know
00:32:25.100
when to have hierarchy when the more coordination is required but still to allow low power voices be
00:32:30.920
heard with even in that hierarchy and i just want to give you one other just great example that we
00:32:35.220
mentioned in the book which is that um johns hopkins hospital discovered that every time we do surgery
00:32:42.080
there's a risk and that's the risk of infection and they solved that risk through a five-step
00:32:49.040
sterilization checklist the problem was a doctors didn't always follow the checklist and two nurses
00:32:55.580
didn't feel comfortable speaking up how do they solve that problem they actually put nurses in charge
00:33:01.020
of the checklist now doctors have no problem telling director nurses if they miss the step and directors
00:33:07.520
nurses also felt more in control of the situation um and so we can start to see understand how we can have
00:33:15.100
hierarchy with low power voices still being heard it's great yeah there's a book the checklist manifesto
00:33:21.080
that goes into i love that book that's where i actually got that yeah from yeah so yeah checklist
00:33:25.920
manifesto anyone out there is a fantastic book you know just the idea of a checklist can be useful too
00:33:30.840
because like you give you're giving authority to this checklist instead of to yourself or to other
00:33:35.200
people yeah and i think that's you know what you bring up with the checklist is being really useful
00:33:39.360
going back to what hierarchy is useful is we need structure in our lives we need structure um because
00:33:46.280
we need that to feel in control and again structure a checklist helps coordination right so we're trying
00:33:51.940
to solve this but we also need flexibility and so we don't want to rigidly apply uh checklist all the
00:33:59.080
time when we need some flexibility to deviate from that so part of what i'm trying to help people do
00:34:04.420
in this book is find that right balance between structure and flexibility and just i'll tell you
00:34:10.120
just really quickly some new research just got published it's not in the book but i just really
00:34:13.600
love it is we actually hired workers to do work for us and we actually made situations where we had
00:34:23.180
no contracts really rigid contracts or contracts that weren't too specific more general contracts we
00:34:30.420
actually got the best outcome and the best performance when people got contracts that
00:34:36.220
weren't too rigid so the structure of the contract was really good but the flexibility within it allowed
00:34:42.020
people to still have room to move about and still get motivated and still feel like they had some
00:34:46.620
control over the process and so we're trying to find that right mix holacracy doesn't work there's not
00:34:52.380
enough structure right two rigid contracts also don't work because there's too much structure so it's really
00:34:57.600
kind of like we're trying to find the goldilocks world that proper balance between just the right
00:35:02.760
amount of hierarchy and structure and just the right amount of flexibility and low power voices being
00:35:07.920
heard so one of the fun sections that i enjoyed was was this about nicknames it reminded me of an
00:35:13.520
episode of seinfeld where george costanza he's at his office and all his employees had nicknames except
00:35:19.720
for him or he didn't like the nickname he had but he tried to give himself a nickname and it didn't fly
00:35:25.160
and he was just frustrated him so what's going on there why is it that you can't give yourself a
00:35:30.660
nickname and you have to rely on other people to give you a nickname yeah i mean i think that part of
00:35:35.460
what nicknames are are a social bonding mechanism right that's kind of this the seats of cooperation
00:35:42.160
and we connect with people by by emerging from us a name that we give to other people so one of the
00:35:51.560
things that i mentioned in the book is that happens in a number of different areas of the military
00:35:56.100
is that um in basic training the the the troop gives each member a unique nickname or marker and
00:36:04.600
actually becomes their signature you know we can even see this in top gun right with uh with um goose
00:36:10.840
um and uh what was the uh what was um maverick ice man yeah maverick ice man goose right we see all
00:36:18.420
of these things coming into place and it's part of the way that we initiate people into groups this
00:36:24.160
happens in fraternities and sororities also um and it's a part of the way that we're saying look
00:36:29.240
we're connecting and bonding with you by the name that we give you now we want to have some control of
00:36:35.760
the nicknames people give us but it sort of speaks to the idea that we can't give ourselves our own
00:36:41.260
nickname now another thing that's interesting is when we're really good at giving people nicknames
00:36:45.820
that's how we also connect with people and so i i like this part of the book where we talk about you
00:36:50.740
know george w bush had a way with language now we think about all the ways that george w bush
00:36:55.640
messed up the english language right uh even telling kids they i think he says something that you have to
00:37:01.420
you know be good at reading or messed up you know even the way to talk about reading in the english
00:37:06.700
language but he was such a master of finding the right nickname for people that gave them a sense
00:37:12.320
of feeling unique but also valued in status and like one of the great examples he's called the
00:37:17.060
california senators you know diane feinstein and barbara bachers ali you know ali and fraser like sort
00:37:23.700
of saying you're heavyweights you know you're like muhammad ali and joe fraser you're you're the
00:37:27.560
heavyweights that i have to deal with and so when we when we're good at giving people nicknames that's
00:37:32.720
another way that we can gain our own sense of status and connect with other people i think this
00:37:37.800
also raises an interesting point i think something i know is between different between men and women
00:37:41.940
in terms of status and sort of status social dynamics is that men will often use ribbing and
00:37:48.800
teasing as a way to like nurture and i think sometimes women see that and they're like what is going on
00:37:53.640
there like that you shouldn't do that but it it's weird because like you're okay with that because
00:37:58.640
there's like a line you don't cross that it's actually it feels good to like this guy is ribbing
00:38:03.000
me because it means i'm i'm a part of the group yeah and i think i mean but that also we even see
00:38:07.440
that actually between the sexes in terms of flirtation a lot of flirtation is actually really
00:38:12.420
gentle ribbing of our of our of our spouse or partner or you know a prospective romantic partner is
00:38:19.500
you know again it's about this idea of the theme of the book and we you know we do this the end of
00:38:24.360
every chapter ends with finding the right balance and it's because it's really about finding that
00:38:28.760
balance you know we um if we can just find just the right way to tease someone we can make them feel
00:38:35.460
really connected and i have a good example of this from um uh my wife and i met each other a little bit
00:38:40.940
later in life as i mentioned and we wanted to have kids and so we got engaged then married six weeks
00:38:46.700
later in a crazy wedding and another state with over 100 people that we threw together and
00:38:52.000
anyway uh my wife had all these great ideas and she woke me up one one in the middle of the night
00:38:56.500
one day and she had all of these ideas for this wedding that were completely a monstrously expensive
00:39:02.360
and be impractical um and i didn't want to just you know condemn those ideas but i teased her and i said
00:39:08.720
um those are such great ideas and you know we should get you know barack obama to do the ceremony
00:39:13.700
maybe get paul mccartney to come sing and maybe get you know um sarah silverman to come do some comedy
00:39:19.180
for us and she ended up giggling and because my teasing made her recognize how impractical the
00:39:25.220
ideas were and so finding the way to tease people um can can be really good and actually my my wife and
00:39:31.760
i have actually nicknames for each other that are actually on our wedding bands so she would always
00:39:36.640
get frustrated with me um and i'm sure anyone who's ever been married to an academic can can uh appreciate
00:39:42.220
this of how precise i always was she would say something you know it's like oh we walked four
00:39:46.340
miles no we walked 4.2 miles today you know so she started calling me professor precision um and my
00:39:52.100
wife is like 5'2 uh you know 105 pounds but she just like walks like a troglodyte like kind of like
00:39:59.220
makes really loud stomping mouths especially in the in the middle of the night which would always wake me
00:40:03.640
up so i started calling her stampy you know kind of like an elephant stamping around and so when you can
00:40:08.620
find the right nicknames it's actually a really bonding mechanism for each other and that's why
00:40:13.080
we have our nicknames on our wedding band that's awesome so yeah advice there don't you can't give
00:40:17.220
yourself a nickname or you'll end up like george costanza right and then i guess you have to be in
00:40:20.980
a position of power to give a nickname because you can't just be like you couldn't give your boss a
00:40:24.780
nickname because that would that would not go over well probably probably not right and i and i think
00:40:29.060
that's you know in very rare circumstances could you give your boss a nickname right um but it's got
00:40:35.920
to be the most gentle of nicknames and the most kind of praiseworthy of nicknames right um but the
00:40:41.940
slightly teasing ribbing nicknames um are very very difficult to give to someone who has more power
00:40:47.340
than you now it can work like in a fraternity it can work in you know in the military can work
00:40:52.220
in the spouses where there's equal power but when that power gets very distant it becomes very hard
00:40:57.020
to do it up but you can do it down all the time this is another interesting bit of research you
00:41:01.680
guys highlight in the book because i've noticed this myself is i'm i'm engaging in an email with
00:41:06.380
somebody and sometimes i've emailed some like really prestigious professors who are out there
00:41:10.380
doing incredible work they've got books out they're doing the ted circuit yada yada and they have all
00:41:14.820
these great acronyms after them after their name that they could put but they just sign off with like
00:41:19.000
bob or jill or jan and then there's people i've emailed who haven't really done that but like they
00:41:24.080
make sure to put all their acronyms after their name in their email and you're kind of like uh so what's
00:41:29.620
going on there well so what's going on there is that when we have high status and everyone knows
00:41:36.360
we have that status our titles in a sense become kind of irrelevant in our own mind right because we
00:41:42.480
know we're respected for who we are but when we are insecure in our status that's when we really feel
00:41:49.480
the need to do that and just you know i see this you know all the time in academia where you see
00:41:55.300
assistant professors sign their emails you know professor x or dr y but when they're you're kind
00:42:01.760
of an established professor you know you sign it you know sincerely adam or sincerely maurice and i
00:42:07.020
think that sincerely brett we can see the way that these things come into play and there's actually
00:42:12.940
research that has been done on this they actually went and they looked at the email signatures of
00:42:18.440
professors in psychology departments around the country and they found two things that were really
00:42:23.800
interesting um the first was if you came from a very high status school like a harvard or stanford
00:42:30.480
or columbia you didn't have any titles in your signature and two if you were an individual
00:42:36.500
researcher even if you came from let's say not a very high status school but you were well known in
00:42:41.460
your field you also didn't have it but if you came from a lower status school or you're let's say a
00:42:46.300
young assistant professor then you have like lots of these uh titles in your signature because
00:42:51.480
you're trying to prove to people look i deserve your respect look at my titles and i think that's
00:42:56.800
you know one of the things that we do and we see that you know earlier with my example of linda
00:43:01.260
rottenberg right is that you know once she recognized she had respect showing some vulnerability not
00:43:07.820
showing her titles allowed people to connect with her even more so in fact actually taking those titles
00:43:12.760
away once you've established respect actually is a way for you to gain even more respect yeah the thing
00:43:18.160
this ties in nice like the research that shows people from lower economic socioeconomic status
00:43:23.380
like they're more likely to engage in conspicuous consumption absolutely than people who who aren't
00:43:28.600
so i think it's sort of the same things going on yeah and i i often refer to that as the great
00:43:33.140
gadsby effect right where gadsby if you ever remember the famous f scott fisgerald thing he came
00:43:39.280
from humble beginnings but ostentatiously had these parties to display this wealth whereas the people
00:43:45.520
from true money you know across the the river or the lake didn't have the same ostentatious displays
00:43:51.060
so what's your advice there should you like put all the acronyms after your name or should or does
00:43:57.720
that look like uh you're trying too hard or are there times when you should or times when you shouldn't
00:44:02.760
i mean i think actually the research shows is that early on it probably is a good thing it's to remind
00:44:07.860
people that you are deserving of respect um and so there's some research out there for example that
00:44:13.540
female faculty who sign their emails with professor doctor actually get treated better than than sign
00:44:20.660
it with their first name um because especially when you're a young female professor people will kind
00:44:27.360
of refer to you as missus for example you know and sort of you know almost undermine your your your
00:44:32.140
uh authority and so i think there is some evidence that you you want to do it but at a certain point
00:44:38.600
you want to let go of it gotcha well adam there's a lot more we can talk about as you said there's like
00:44:42.400
11 different books in this single book um so much there but um where can people go to find more about
00:44:47.740
your work and your book well friend info is you can get it from you know amazon barnes and nobles
00:44:53.380
online it's uh an audible book kindle everything that you want i also have a ted talk a very popular
00:44:59.600
ted talk that i did last year on how to speak up for yourself so you can look that up too and you can
00:45:05.200
just put the name adam galinsky to google and see other exciting stuff that i'm doing awesome well adam
00:45:09.540
galinsky thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure yeah thank you so much it's been a great
00:45:13.440
pleasure my guest today is adam galinsky he's the author of the book friend or foe it's available
00:45:17.340
on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also check out our show notes at aom.is slash friend or foe
00:45:22.100
where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:45:24.720
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:45:41.060
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the
00:45:44.600
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00:45:48.800
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00:45:52.180
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00:45:55.920
until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly