Adam Galinsky
speaker
285 appearances
4 recordings
3 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Adam Galinsky’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's not just thinking about the choice. Like one of my favorite movies is a movie called Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh. And it's got George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez and so many amazing actors, but there's One point where Vin Rains says to George Clooney, they put a gun on you, you're going to prison.
He's like, they put a gun on you, you still have a choice, right? And this idea that sometimes we don't see choices and options. And part of that sometimes is just the routines that we follow through. And so part of it is how can we see the bigger picture? This is where visionary comes in. I'll give you one example, which I really love from my kids. So I take my kids to school every morning.
My wife picks them up in the afternoon. This is a special time we have together. And my one son was in a kindergarten. He was in the second floor, and my first grader was on the third floor. So naturally, we'd walk up to the second floor, drop off the kindergartner, and then walk up to the third floor, drop off the first grader. But there is a big problem.
The problem is my kindergartner, the second born, is more relaxed. He likes to take his time. He liked having a big goodbye ritual with me. And my older son, older son, first born, type A, he hates the possibility of being even late. Even if he still had 10 minutes to get to his classroom, he'd be like, Aiden, hurry up. He would get so incensed and I would get so frustrated.
I'd be like, Asher, just be patient. And then he would storm up to his classroom. So after about, I don't know, a few weeks of this, I was just thinking about how could I make this go more smoothly today? And then I realized we actually have a choice. And I said to the boys, I said, hey, I have an idea. Why don't we try something different today? I'll drop Asher off first.
So I'll walk up to the third floor, drop Asher off first, then walk and do Aiden on the second floor. And it solved everything. So Asher was now happy. He got to class without stress on time. He'd give me a hug goodbye. Now he just gives me a high five. And then we walked downstairs. Aiden got to take as much time as he wanted. Big hugs. And to me, I was in my own world.
I didn't even recognize that, like, like the teacher was observing Asher's behavior in the dynamic. And so about day three of our new routine, she said to me, she's like, wow, it's really an amazing success dropping Asher off first. And I was like, oh my God, you noticed all that? But even she noticed what a difference it made. And that's, I think, a great example of every time we're in a
John C. Difficult situation, we can ask, we want to take a step back and ask yourself what's going on here. John C. Right, how can we meet the needs of both people without a huge dramatic shift sometimes you need a dramatic shift, but in this case, all we had to do.
John C. was get the younger one to walk up an extra flight of stairs and then come back down, but like it just but it changed everything.
That's a great question. I love the metaphor. It's such a great example. I think there are a couple of things that I think are really matter. One of the benefits of being visionary, of having a vision and sharing that vision, that's really important. It's not just to have it, but share it and repeat it so that people really understand it, is it gives context for people's work.
And you talked about earlier about wanting to be seen, be valued. People want to know how their individual effort is contributing to the larger whole. So part of that really big vision really matters. If you go back, a great example of that is John F. Kennedy says, by the end of this decade, we will walk on the moon.
And so then people always, even, and it took a lot of little steps for NASA to get to the point where they were capable of doing that. But it was always in the context of, we know why we're doing this because it's in the service of this larger one. And one thing that you're bringing up is the difference.
Sometimes people contrast between the CEO, the chief executive officer, and the COO, the chief operating officer, right? Where that person is really tasked with the daily execution and operation of in kind of some ways, mini visions that build up to the larger vision that someone has.
And so I think that, yeah, we need to find, to be visionary means you have to find ways to implement your vision, right? And help people take those individual steps towards achieving that goal. But I think the larger goal is still really critical for helping people make sense of those individual steps that they're taking part of.
Yeah, I think that's right. I think people, Generally, not everyone wants to achieve their full potential, right? And they want to be challenged to do that. And there's something that they really value, but there's a, there's this balance between challenging people. right? And let's say crippling their self-esteem, right?
And so how do you challenge people, but also encourage them at the same time? And there's actually, there's a famous study that I don't cite in this paper because I didn't make this connection until right now in my book, but Jeff Cohen did this research, a guy at Stanford with David Yeager also, and they just wanted to understand
What's a type of, and Jeff Cohen's in the School of Education, he's a social psychologist with the School of Education at Stanford. How can teachers give the best feedback to students? And especially ones that can transcend different genders, different races, et cetera. And so part of it is that it's this three-step process is the leader sets the standard that they expect of people.
They highlight the ways that people have met the standard, but also ways they haven't, but also they show encouragement and belief in the other person. I know you can reach that standard. Right. And they help them maybe with a little coaching.
So it's really this idea of setting high standards, documenting where people have and have not reached that standard, but also believing in that they can reach that standard and expressing that encouragement to them. And so I think that is really the key.
Yeah, let me just say one thing about the leader. So this is a phrase that I coined, the leader amplification effect. It really captures the idea that when we're leaders, we're on stage and everyone's looking at us. And so that's the big thing is that psychology tells us something really important.
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