The Art of Manliness - #376： When to Compete, When to Cooperate, and How to Succeed at Both

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast being successful

00:00:18.620 in life requires social adeptness and part of that social adeptness is balancing two seemingly

00:00:23.040 opposing social strategies competing and cooperating but how do you know which approach

00:00:27.200 to take in the hundreds of different social relationships you navigate day in and day out

00:00:30.720 for example should you go out of your way to promote your achievements to your boss or should

00:00:34.320 you spend more time helping your fellow co-workers my guest today explores these subtle and often

00:00:38.060 complex questions in his book friend or foe when to cooperate when to compete and how to succeed at

00:00:43.220 both his name is adam galinsky he's a professor at the columbia business school and today on the show

00:00:47.260 adam and i discuss why all of our relationships even close personal ones are both competitive

00:00:51.480 and cooperative and how our natural tendency to compare ourselves to others either causes us to

00:00:56.040 cooperate or compete adam then shares how cooperation can lead to high status and success 0.98

00:01:00.260 and power but how once we gain status and power our natural tendency is to become a big giant jerk 0.92

00:01:04.520 which leads to our downfall he then provides some research back advice on how to avoid that from 0.57

00:01:08.240 happening to you adam and i then discussed why teasing nicknames are former social bonding and why

00:01:13.060 putting all of your education credentials in your email signature can make you look kind of insecure

00:01:16.800 it's a fascinating discussion about the quirks of human social dynamics after the show's over check out

00:01:20.820 the show notes at a1.is slash friend or foe adam now joins me via clearcast.io

00:01:25.980 all right adam galinsky welcome to the show thank you so much i'm so happy to be here so you co-authored

00:01:41.720 a book called friend and foe when to cooperate when to compete and how to succeed at both and it takes a

00:01:48.200 look at social status and social dynamics i'm curious how did you get into researching and

00:01:54.200 writing about this this topic of psychology you know i'm both my co-author marie schweitzer and i

00:01:59.000 are both i think characterized by a love of a wide range of research on a wide range of topics and

00:02:04.300 you know one of the funny things about friend and foe is i think it's both greatest strength and maybe

00:02:08.720 its biggest weakness is the fact that in many ways it's 11 books in one because there's you know

00:02:13.740 chapters on power and hierarchy and social comparisons and trust and apologies and negotiations

00:02:19.420 but i think that really is emblematic of of who maurice and i are as researchers is we get so excited

00:02:25.260 by any interesting idea and we sort of go in that direction and explore it and so he and i collectively

00:02:31.500 have become sort of experts in a number of different areas of psychology but in throughout all of that

00:02:36.120 process we really noticed that a lot of our research individually as well as a lot of what we do in our

00:02:42.500 teaching really gets at this fundamental tension that really drives human nature between cooperating

00:02:49.460 with people and competing with them for scarce resources so let's talk about that you start you

00:02:54.120 begin the book saying that all of our relationships you know close family relationships close business

00:02:59.700 relationships you know you know friends that we are on you know that we love are both cooperative but

00:03:05.040 also competitive at the same time can you provide some examples of of you know relationships being both

00:03:10.820 cooperative and competitive at the same time yeah absolutely i mean we see this just even at the at

00:03:15.920 the firm level right so we see like microsoft and apple often compete in order to get people to use

00:03:21.420 their products but they also cooperate as industry members let's say cooperate against the fbi or

00:03:26.580 cooperate to get certain laws passed they're going to be in their favor you know and in organizations

00:03:31.560 we see this extremely all the time where we collaborate and cooperate as teams to produce outcomes

00:03:37.820 at the collective level but then we compete for promotions and salaries but i have sort of two very

00:03:42.800 great personal examples of this one is i recently got married in the last couple years and we had our

00:03:48.080 first child and we're actually expecting our second child sometime in the next week or so but you know

00:03:53.300 raising a child there's nothing more cooperative than that as two parents but then at like three o'clock

00:03:58.700 in the morning when the baby wakes up then you're competing fiercely with your with your partner for who's

00:04:03.720 going to get up who's going to get to sleep and you can get a little salty with each other as you know

00:04:08.300 it's like no you got up last night no you get up this time you know and then the other case where i

00:04:12.300 can see this really well in my own life is i was actually a surprise twin and i even saw that 0.99

00:04:17.980 competition in the womb where my brother kicked my ass he came out of the womb almost uh 55 percent 0.95

00:04:24.940 larger than i was and we competed and cooperated all the time as kids and we could really see that 0.98

00:04:31.080 process so it doesn't matter whether you're you know spouses whether you're siblings whether you're

00:04:35.720 co-workers whether you're firms we're always competing and collaborating simultaneously with

00:04:40.580 everyone so as you said earlier that this book is really like 11 different books in one and i love

00:04:46.440 that because i love the breadth and also the depth you get into let's talk about some of these topics

00:04:50.500 you hit that that factor in and how we cooperate and compete the first factor is we're always making

00:04:57.880 social comparisons and that this is this is the source of motivation for us to either cooperate

00:05:02.840 or compete so how does our social comparisons with others motivate us either to cooperate with them or to

00:05:09.960 compete with them yeah i mean i think well there's a couple of interesting things is that social

00:05:14.960 comparisons this is sort of research going back a century has really been found to be a natural instinct

00:05:22.180 of humans but also even our non-human primate members and so we naturally we never compare

00:05:29.140 our outcomes in absolute terms all of our outcomes all of our efforts are always done relative to other

00:05:36.540 people in comparison to them now what's i think most interesting in relation to the theme of the book

00:05:41.700 is that well who do we compare ourselves with well we often compare ourselves with the people that

00:05:47.380 we're most connected to and most similar to and the people that we often cooperate with right so we

00:05:53.280 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

00:05:59.580 twin and so this is just the natural inevitable part and the binds that link us together are often the ones

00:06:07.960 that are the people that we compare to the most now sometimes this comparison is really good right and so i

00:06:13.980 have uh i mentioned this in the book but um i grew up in chapel hall north carolina and north carolina

00:06:20.320 and duke university compete in basketball all the time and that really motivates them in this tremendous

00:06:25.700 way so unc wins the championship in 2009 well duke wins it in 2010 duke wins in 2015

00:06:32.620 unc makes the final in 16 then wins it in 17 still hawking back to duke's winning in 2015 so

00:06:39.780 these comparisons can really drive us and motivate us but they also create sort of deep resentments

00:06:45.640 and frustrations and probably the famous example of this i'll give you just two really interesting

00:06:51.120 fascinating examples one is with monkeys so a monkey gets a piece of cucumber they feel really happy but

00:06:58.020 if they see a monkey next to them get a better piece of food like a grape well that monkey who got the

00:07:03.920 piece of cucumber goes apeshit and they literally take that piece of cucumber throw it back at the

00:07:09.460 experimenter even though they just aided a couple of minutes earlier very happily and so that's an

00:07:14.520 example comparisons a more recent one that's sort of been talked about is in 1992 after bill clinton

00:07:21.020 became president they put in a new rule into the sec that was designed to decrease the amount the

00:07:29.860 ratio between how much co's got paid versus the average worker it had been steadily rising over the

00:07:34.800 years so we're going to put in a little rule and it's going to decrease it and at the time it was

00:07:38.720 around 30 multipliers so co's got paid about 30 times an average worker did they put in this rule

00:07:44.600 in designed to decrease it it exploded it within a few years co's are competing 300 times what an

00:07:52.200 average worker was well what was this rule that got put in place well the rule was all co compensation

00:07:58.260 now had to be public but they thought that was going to do with shame co's into reducing their

00:08:03.700 things but co's don't compare themselves to the average worker they compare themselves to other co's

00:08:08.560 and they start seeing the packages the other co's get and then it created arms race that co gets his

00:08:13.820 package i want even a better package oh well i want a better package oh i want a better package

00:08:17.380 and all of a sudden they're getting paid 300 times the average worker so we can see these process

00:08:22.300 comparison they drive us they motivate us but they can create unchecked competition and even resentment

00:08:28.300 so let's talk about how to get the upsides of social comparison while mitigating the downside so

00:08:34.660 here's an example i i've been in situations where i'm comparing myself to someone and i'm like the

00:08:38.560 underdog and that motivates me but there's other times where i'm comparing myself to someone and i'm

00:08:44.920 the underdog and but it debilitates me i'm just like ah i'm never going to be that good so what's

00:08:49.080 going on there why is it sometimes like being the underdog can motivate you and other times it can just

00:08:55.060 be like just depress you and not just cause you to like not want to even try yeah i mean i think

00:09:00.260 there's a couple of things that are really important there the first is you have to see

00:09:05.400 the comparison especially someone above you as ultimately attainable and that you can attain that

00:09:11.820 level of performance and so what what happens is we have this what we kind of call the sort of

00:09:16.880 latitude of acceptance so our comparisons fall within that meaning that we think we can reach that point

00:09:22.900 versus our latitude of sort of rejection they're so far away from us that we can't even imagine

00:09:27.960 competing with them and that sort of debilitates us i'll give you sort of one example from my own life

00:09:33.100 where one of the ways that we can solve this process is what i call expanding the status pie or

00:09:39.340 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

00:09:46.140 miles in 46 minutes which is a tremendously good time my twin brother ran that same race in 44 minutes

00:09:54.240 and no matter how fast i ran and how good i got my brother was always doing better than i was so what

00:10:00.800 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

00:10:06.420 became a wrestler and then eventually i got pretty good made all conference was captain of the wrestling

00:10:11.020 team and so that's one example where one of the things that we can do as organizations is kind of

00:10:16.520 deal with that comparison problem by rewarding people on their unique attributes that distinguish

00:10:22.620 them from others within the organization and that's one of the things that i teach leaders to do is say

00:10:27.620 find that unique thing in your employees and identify it and value it and that way they're not going to be

00:10:36.080 comparing in this resentment way towards each other they're going to be able to all

00:10:40.320 get their own level of unique status and therefore motivate them further how do you think social

00:10:46.440 media is affecting social comparisons is it making it more perilous that you have to be a little more

00:10:52.860 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

00:10:57.260 this idea that you know you don't want to just clutter your social media with all of your accomplishments

00:11:03.960 right because people want to be able to connect to people not feel like that they're feeling

00:11:10.080 in the sense of envy and jealousy and so i think there's times in which we can find actually ways

00:11:15.340 to show some of our our weaknesses some of our humility some of our days that don't go great and

00:11:22.080 that makes us actually more connected and and more personable and since i wrote the book i i you know

00:11:27.560 one of the things i do at columbia business school is get to interview leaders all the time and as part of

00:11:32.700 a class on leadership i teach i got to interview a woman named linda rottenberg who's ceo of endeavor

00:11:38.020 a company that helps entrepreneurs throughout the world and she's been called you know one of the top

00:11:44.120 hundred leaders in america you know one of the great innovators of the 21st century and she talked

00:11:49.140 about how she only became a great leader when she stopped being super and started being a little bit

00:11:56.100 more human and she talked about by exposing some of her vulnerabilities some of her anxiety some of her

00:12:02.040 concerns to employees they actually started to connect with her better and so when she just

00:12:07.360 came across as a super person with this a person with incredible accomplishments and talents people

00:12:13.060 couldn't really connect with her and so i think the same thing with social media finding ways to

00:12:18.060 connect with people is incredibly valuable and one of the ways that we can do that is not by just

00:12:23.600 creating this outwardly super comparison but by being a little humble and exposing some of our weaknesses

00:12:29.560 and some of our fears but you can't do the humble brag because that just rubs people the wrong way

00:12:34.160 yeah a humble brag is pretty much the worst thing that you can do right and so people are very aware

00:12:40.300 of what a humble brag is and so um it's a term that's gotten into the literature people bring books

00:12:45.520 about it scientists are now doing research on this um a humble brag is not the way to go real humility

00:12:52.240 is the way to go yeah that example of the ceo it reminded me of a story from george washington

00:12:57.460 it was i think after valley forge it was basically his soldiers were ready to mutiny they didn't want to

00:13:03.420 fight anymore and he had rallied the troops together and uh he had this present this like letter he

00:13:08.820 wanted to read and what he did like he he put on his glasses and because i think george washington

00:13:13.480 was very fastidious about his presentation he wanted to be seen as pretty much perfect but like him

00:13:18.000 putting on the glasses and he said i'm sorry gentlemen but i've my sight my sight has gotten poor

00:13:22.740 due to fighting in my country and like supposedly that moment like people just like oh they just they

00:13:29.060 saw his vulnerability and they wanted to fight for him yeah and i think you know that's one of the

00:13:33.120 surprising things i think about president trump right now is is that he doesn't recognize that

00:13:39.340 actually acknowledging some weakness can actually make people feel more connected to you rather than

00:13:45.040 less connected to you now one of the things that you know that my research shows and other people's

00:13:50.660 research shows is i i have this great phrase that i use in my class which is you want to be superhuman

00:13:56.620 not human super and what i mean by that is you want to expose your vulnerability after you've

00:14:03.200 demonstrated your competence and that people respect you but if you expose your vulnerability

00:14:07.480 at the beginning then it kind of undercuts your more super qualities later on and so there's this

00:14:13.700 almost like the person i thought they were super but now i see that they're a little human and that

00:14:18.220 makes me really connect with them so let's talk about the interplay between status and power

00:14:22.760 you start off this this section of the book talking about there's a difference between

00:14:25.900 being powerful and feeling powerful so how can you feel powerful but not be powerful right why i think

00:14:33.640 you know you know typically when we have power and we can have power in lots of different ways we can

00:14:38.180 have power by being a boss you know we can have power by the fact that lots of people respect us

00:14:44.800 we can have power by some of our social groups so you know we can have power if we come from like a

00:14:50.860 goldman sachs or mckinsey because they have such high status in society and typically our power

00:14:58.360 feelings correspond to our actual levels of power that we have within a context within an organization

00:15:03.940 within society but that's not always the case and sometimes we can actually have power but not

00:15:09.340 recognize the power that we have and not utilize or leverage the power that we have to feel weaker than

00:15:14.900 we really are and therefore not get some of the outcomes that we want so for example we might

00:15:20.300 actually have a really strong alternative in a negotiation which gives us powers because it

00:15:24.620 gives us the capacity to walk away but if we don't feel powerful we're not going to leverage that

00:15:29.100 alternative and we're going to make meek or weak first offers in that negotiations for example or we

00:15:34.860 don't recognize we have power we have at work and we give up that power to other people by letting

00:15:39.660 them take control of situations and so one of the things that i have shown in my research and some of

00:15:45.400 things i do in some of my teaching and consulting is to get people to recognize the power that they do

00:15:50.120 have and therefore to leverage that and be able to utilize that power that they have um and to

00:15:56.200 recognize and to feel the power they truly have gotcha and you talk about too how power there's that

00:16:02.260 famous quote from lord acton right power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely what what goes on

00:16:08.620 like what sort of bad behavior do we take part in once we start feeling powerful what does the research show

00:16:14.000 yeah i mean i think you know when you just think about it power gives you incredible level of

00:16:18.620 control of your own outcomes and also the outcomes of other people in fact that's kind of the definition

00:16:23.460 of power right is that you control your own outcomes and outcomes of other people and that means that we

00:16:29.440 don't feel the same moral constraints that we would normally feel basically what power does it kind of

00:16:35.860 melts away those constraints and we feel relatively free and unfettered in our behavior now sometimes

00:16:42.460 that's good sometimes like when we feel powerful we act in an emergency where other people would feel

00:16:46.880 constrained by fear of getting hurt or being embarrassed if it's not really an emergency but

00:16:52.060 oftentimes it leads to very bad behavior it leads to uh cheating i think we see a lot of that where

00:16:57.220 you know banks felt very powerful um in the mid-2000s that led to some very um unethical behavior

00:17:04.020 risk-taking behavior that led to the financial collapse but we see this in some of these incredible

00:17:08.640 horrific examples that have emerged recently um whether it's bill cosby or harvey weinstein in

00:17:14.780 terms of some of the sexual behaviors that people engage in and you know one thing that i think is

00:17:19.200 is really important is you mentioned the idea of absolute power and think about how much power

00:17:24.900 harvey weinstein had to make or break so many people's careers by green lighting their movies by putting

00:17:30.800 them into movies and he just used that power over and over and over again you know by putting

00:17:36.520 women into these incredibly awkward positions and i think that it you know in some ways it allows us

00:17:42.340 to just act on whatever our impulses or appetites are at that moment in time because those constraints

00:17:47.960 melt away and we can see a number of different ways whether it's within business or in different

00:17:54.080 types of interpersonal relationships this absolute power corrupting absolutely so how do you put a check

00:17:59.820 on that because you're i mean this interesting thing like that you know the behavior that you engage in

00:18:04.520 when you feel powerful can help you rise to the top but if you continue that behavior it can lead

00:18:09.660 to your downfall so what do you do to to put a check on that yeah i think that's a really great

00:18:15.880 question and you know one of the things that my research has shown is is that something you just

00:18:20.300 mentioned which is really important to get power i need to be a really good perspective taker i need to

00:18:25.460 understand what other people around me want give them what they need and they're going to then like me

00:18:30.300 and how allow me to rise up the hierarchy but one of the things that my research has shown is that we

00:18:34.340 get into power we kind of lose a little bit of that capacity to understand other people to connect

00:18:40.280 with other people to feel compassion to other people in fact there's a lot of research shows that

00:18:45.380 when we sort of stop that perspective taking of others that's when people start to resent us when

00:18:50.560 we're in power and people form alliances against us and overthrow our rule we see this even in the

00:18:56.060 animal kingdom right where people aren't attending to the needs of others but what i just told you

00:19:01.240 also gives us the seeds to solving this conundrum because what i've shown in my research is that if

00:19:06.960 we get the powerful who feel really age this idea of agency action i call it a psychological accelerator

00:19:14.260 in the same way like a car needs a gas pedal to accelerate power is our psychological accelerator

00:19:19.600 but if we take the car analogy further if you don't have a steering wheel you crash into things

00:19:24.640 so we can take power and combine it with perspective taking this idea of understanding

00:19:30.120 other people paying some attention to what they want and their needs then we get the best of both

00:19:35.620 worlds we get this fine-tuned race car where we're flying down the highway but with control with our

00:19:42.940 great steering wheel and so one of the things that my research has shown is one of the ways that we can

00:19:47.440 get the powerful to actually take other people's perspective is to make them accountable to make them

00:19:52.900 answer to other people and not just to themselves now sometimes in organizations we try to do that

00:19:59.220 with corporate boards that's what corporate boards are designed to do but we can also make people

00:20:04.260 psychologically feel connected let's say a sense of responsibility to workers that can activate their

00:20:09.760 perspective taking gotcha and also going back to the status thing because you know status is

00:20:14.300 intertwined with power if you are in a position of high power high status like don't go around flaunting it

00:20:20.380 because eventually people are going to resent it and they're going to bring you down because as you

00:20:24.000 said like like monkeys do this because i i think that's the most fascinating thing like monkeys have

00:20:28.080 elections on who's going to be the alpha and if one alpha is just really abusing their power then the other

00:20:34.480 ones get together and it basically just beat the crap out of the alpha monkey and run them off

00:20:39.180 you see that happen with humans as well yeah and you see this you know all the time you know we see this

00:20:45.040 for example even within academia where sometimes faculty take a vote of no confidence in their in

00:20:50.460 their dean or in the president of the university right so so we we need to treat people um with

00:20:56.780 respect and so it's it's funny and ironic that when we get power we're not taking other people's

00:21:04.220 perspective we're not getting them to feel the the respect they need but as i mentioned earlier with

00:21:09.200 social comparisons if we're really good at paying attention to people and recognizing their strengths

00:21:14.740 and rewarding them even just validating them with kind words they feel respected and they give us

00:21:21.280 actually more power and they allow us to maintain our power so one of the things that i try to get

00:21:26.800 leaders to do is to recognize the how their behavior impacts other people but also just to recognize that

00:21:35.400 how they used to have this capacity and that's how they became powerful i want to give you one great

00:21:39.620 example of this of how sometimes we don't recognize the power of of our behavior when we have power or

00:21:45.620 the effect it has so one of the things that when you ask anyone in the world you say imagine you got

00:21:50.700 a very short one sentence email from your boss that just simply said i need to talk to you i ask people

00:21:56.960 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

00:22:00.860 happening now a lot of times when we do that one power we know in our own mind that it's not a big

00:22:08.300 deal oh i just want to share an idea with you right but we forget the power that we have over others

00:22:15.320 and the impact that statement the ambiguity of that statement is going to have on others

00:22:19.160 and i was working with a financial institution and the president of this company would do this all the

00:22:24.320 time and the employees complained to me about it you know oh my god this happened all the time

00:22:28.740 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

00:22:35.120 have time to do this okay what can we do so that you can alleviate these people's anxieties when you

00:22:41.980 want to just get them in a hurry to come by and see you and so they eventually negotiated a deal the

00:22:48.120 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

00:22:53.740 that takes you two seconds and so he agreed to do that if it's not a big deal i add a smiley face

00:22:57.820 relieves everyone now if it is a big deal i don't have a smiley face and people know it's a big

00:23:02.340 deal but that's okay too um but it's just that that not recognizing that the impact that we have

00:23:07.940 on other people and i think that's a good example like remembering the proper emoticon to send to

00:23:13.660 someone when we have power to alleviate any concerns that they might have yeah it's a great

00:23:18.300 example because i've had that happen to me lots of times where they say hey let's talk and i'm like

00:23:21.580 uh and but i think i think some people might do that intentionally because they know they

00:23:25.320 understand there's a power like there's the powers in their favor because like you know what you're

00:23:30.980 going to talk about but the other person has no clue and you get to just steamroll them you know

00:23:35.740 without you know not being aware of what's going to go on yeah but i think you know i think you know

00:23:39.900 how do you how do you maintain your power in the long term and we can use what's called dominance or

00:23:46.700 domination or these strategies of bullying people or making them feel unsure of their standing

00:23:54.100 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 0.69

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 0.56

00:32:55.580 didn't feel comfortable speaking up how do they solve that problem they actually put nurses in charge 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

00:44:20.660 it with their first name um because especially when you're a young female professor people will kind 1.00

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 podcast appreciate it if you take one minute to give us review on itunes or stitcher helps out a lot

00:45:48.800 if you've done that already thank you so much please share the show with a friend or family member

00:45:52.180 that's how the show grows word of mouth as always thank you for your continued support

00:45:55.920 until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - February 02, 2018

#376： When to Compete, When to Cooperate, and How to Succeed at Both

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