← Chief Change Officer™
Chief Change Officer™
#374 Nicole F. Roberts: Turning Science and Story into Impact—Part Two
00:37:25
Nicole F. Roberts co-wrote a business fable with real-life leaders, hosted a neuroscience summit at the Super Bowl, and built a career around generosity, grief, and grit. In Part Two, she proves you don’t need a playbook—just purpose.
Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:14]
Nicole Roberts
Hi everyone.
- [00:15]
Vince Chen
Welcome to our show. Chief Change Officer, I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change, for progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today we are diving into the no strict lines journey of Nicole Roberts. Nicole is a doctor of public health, co authoring a business book called Generosity Wins with a seasoned CEO, Monty Wood, who happens to be one of our guests on the show. Nicole once paused her PhD to start a human rights firm. Just to give you a sense of how things go in this two part series, we talk about what happens when you let purpose guide your work instead of a perfect plan. We get into the science behind generosity, how real human stories shaped her book and why the best leaders know when to ditch the rule book. And she also helps run a brain summit every year during the Super Bowl. So this conversation goes places. Let's jump in. Now going back to your book Generosity Wins, what brought you in the very first place to write something like this and with Monty as your co author.
- [02:20]
Nicole Roberts
So I had always wanted to write a book and not for the sake of writing a book. It's because I just, I had ideas. I've actually outlined, I think three books at this point, like full outlines and I took one of them. So I've written health care for forbes maybe like 14 years now. I feel like that really ages me. But well, I've written for Forbes for a very long time and it started with Forbes because they launched a book line and of course they started with some of their longest running writers who they had written columns and columns and so you know, would you be interested in writing a book? Here's our book line, here's what we're gonna do. And so I submitted my first big idea to them and they were very helpful, helped with my first outline. We started the process and I was told then no one buys healthcare books for them. And it's true, the data validates that people will buy books that are like longevity, right? Cause it's a bit more in the self help category, but books on actual like healthcare, how to fix the system, our social determinants of health. No, people are not interested. And so I had always wanted to do it, but I had, I won't say I got rejected because we now live in a space where you can self publish, you can pay to play, right? Like you can pay and someone will post for you. I could have pushed it forward, but I just thought if there's not an appetite for it, why spend time and money? I really especially cause I was in graduate school, didn't have to force something. It just didn't feel right. And then I had this wonderful experience where actually one of those people that I had known from the Forbes world was no longer there. They were working for a different publisher. And they reached out and said, there's someone I really want you to meet. He's writing a book, he's thinking about a co author because he wants someone who has a different perspective. And he said, I'm going to put a few people in front of him. And he probably said this to everybody, but he said, I'm going to put a few people in front of him that I know, but I think you're one. I think you two just would work so well together. And he said, I know you're deeply passionate about what he wants to do do. And that was it. He said, can I just make an introduction and set up a zoom call? And I said, okay. But I had no idea. I was like, what I want to do? What does that mean? And I met Monte Wood and Monty, he had me not at hello, but about five minutes in he had me and he had this premise for a book that he, he was calling Attract Success. I don't know if he told you this part. I actually intentionally, I was going to listen to his episode and then I thought, no, I don't want to because I don't want to be biased, but had this book idea, it was called Attract Success. But his premise was when you put good out into the world, when you are generous, particularly because he is a business expert, Monty is the go to guy and mentor for business. And, but that when you genuinely care about and give of yourself to your colleagues, to your teams, to your family, to people, they will give back to you. And what they will give back to you will propel your success, whether it's in the business or it's in your family life. And so he, the premise for him was to attract success. To be successful, you actually have to give. And that was the key to receive. You must give and you should give first and freely of yourself. It can't be transactional, otherwise it's not really giving. And so he had me right at the, at that premise. I'm like, absolutely. And I said, there's plenty of science to back this up. I said, what you're not going to be able to find, that I know of is real literature and data to show the ROI you can't show in data points. You can't show karma.
- [06:38]
Vince Chen
Yep.
- [06:39]
Nicole Roberts
Yep. And so I say this is a really tough thing to think about from a science perspective. And I slept on it, we talked. And then it hit me that I needed to stop thinking about all these different things. I was like, public health is what I know. And you know, neuroscience. And so I took this different lens and I said, someone we have to talk to is named Beth. And I told them all about Beth. And I said, she's the person I would go to ask a bunch of these neuroscience questions about. It's not just job, career, business. It hap. It starts in here. When we give, what happens. We know the dopamine, the oxytocin, you get like a runner's pie, like those sorts of things. But then that cascade event, because it actually improves your health. People who are truly generous have marriages that last longer. Like, they're literally healthier and happier. The Harvard study, it's almost 100 years old now. The happiness study, it shows consistently, right. People who are kind and give live longer. And so I said, okay, there's something here. Let me live in my space. And Monty and I each brought our parts of the equation together. And then something really cool happened. We worked on what does the outline look like? What does the book read? Is it a self help thing? Is it like a business? Be successful, Climb the mountain. The things felt exactly right. They all felt like they were circling around the answer, but none of them were like, that's it, we got it. And then it bends. And the idea was presented to us and we went, yeah, we get it. And it was, let's do something that I don't think has ever been done before, which is always scary, especially in the publishing world. They don't love the let's do.
- [08:37]
Vince Chen
They love paint?
- [08:38]
Nicole Roberts
Yes. Yeah. And it said, why don't we write a business fable? Who Moved my Cheese? Some of those classics. But you keep talking about all these people that you want to talk to and interview. So why don't we use the real people? And it's an easy read. In fact, I've had multiple people tell me they knocked it out in two days. Like they'd started on a plane and then they'd finish it. Because it's a story. It's a story about a woman named Emily. And she thinks things are great in her career. They're not going. She thought it's a hard lesson. But she's sent on this sort of work mission, and along the way she is tasked with interviewing people. And she then discovers what, like, her real purpose is. And anyway, I won't give Away at the ending, but so it's an easy read. But every person that Emily meets along the way is a real person. And what we did is we added a QR code at the end of each chapter so you can. It literally takes you to their LinkedIn page so you can actually meet, talk to all the people who are in our book. It's a little longer than 15 chapters, but 12 interviews. I had actually played around as well with the idea that there are 12 months in the year. Maybe we do like a curriculum. And each month is grounded in one person's. Because we have a neuroscientist, a behavioral scientist. We have an educator. We have. Right. A philanthropist. We like the people we interview. We chose them specifically because they are the most. I really can't underscore this. They are the most thoughtful, talented, generous individuals. Some we knew before, which is why we said, oh, I know, right? I know the neuroscientist we need to talk to. Monty said, I know the philanthropists we need to talk to. Others were brought to us. Others we went out seeking. Because I treated it, again, Monty and I approached it very differently. In the end, I treated it like my dissertation. I had a whiteboard, and I had spread a spreadsheet, and I had every chapter's name. And I had chosen one or two themes that I thought were so unique to that interview. Things that no one else said or did. And then I had things that everyone said or did. And so earlier I used the word karma. Every interview people used. I think only one or two people actually used the word karma, but they used a synonym of like, how things come back to you. The ripple effect of like people. And so that I knew we were really onto something there. And so that would then send me on the next sort of iteration of my quest, which is if every person. People who do not know each other, people who are all wildly successful in their very different definitions of success in lives, all say these same five things. I need to learn more about those five things. Let's dig into those things. And so for me, even laying out the interview process because we wanted Emily to grow and learn. And so it was that part I also found fun because we had sticky notes and we were moving them around that, well, she meets this person, wouldn't it be fun if she then got to take that lesson and go talk to so and so? And yeah, that part, even now, thinking about it, like, it brings a smile to my face, I really enjoyed that creative part of how do we tell this story through a Young woman's eyes as she's learning and growing and at times feeling really disappointed and let down. And that was. It was a very fun way to do the book, I think are very, very happy with the outcome. And the number of people who reach out, send emails. They've brought me to tears of someone saying, I want to start doing X every day, or Y every day, or one of them, a man emailed and he works in a hospital. And he said, I started saying thank you every day to someone different. And he was saying, the most impactful were especially the janitorial, the cleaning staff of the hospital. He would stop people he had never met. Like a woman one day was washing the windows, and he just said, thank you. And he stood and talked to her, and she was like, no one says thank you for that. And he said, people are scared. Many times they're nervous when they come to the hospital, especially in this hospital. And he said, you keep it clean. The light shines through these windows, like, by what you do. It makes their lives better. It makes what we have to do here better, easier. And he said they both ended up in tears because someone had noticed what might look like a menial task, but that it had a huge impact on the hospital, on the staff, on the patients, and for him to then learn about her and her family. And when. Anyway, it was just this whole email, I was just in tears. And he was like, it's because every day I've decided to just say thank you. It's a small act, but I just stop one person and say, thank you for doing this, thank you for doing that. And he said, it's led to some wonderful relationships, and he now feels like he knows everybody in the hospital, and he knows about them and their children. And it's just. He said his life is better.
- [14:15]
Vince Chen
Let me say this. When I interviewed Monty, he shared a lot from his business background, his work with some major players, real tech titans. And he said things like, Vince, I saw them literally do this, build that you could really feel impact through his stories. What stood out was how he bored the a business lens to everything. And now with you bringing in the science angle, I think the two of you really complement each other. Since Monty had that business focus, and I come from a business background, too, having studied at Chicago Booth, I naturally asked him about something really specific, the ROI of generosity.
- [15:12]
Nicole Roberts
Love it.
- [15:14]
Vince Chen
Ever since I first learned the term roi, it was in a finance class. Of course, we did all the usual calculations, but generosity, that isn't something you can pluck Into a formula. You can always measure it, or maybe you can somehow monitor it in a different way. That's why when Monty brought it up, this idea of generosity having a ripple effect, it really landed for me. Honestly, I buy that concept. I've seen it play out in my own life and career, doing things with no expectation, and then somehow more opportunities, more trust, more value come back around. So I definitely believe in it. But putting it into business context, trying to tie generosity to metrics, that's where it gets tricky. I asked Monty about it directly. If ROI is what we track in business, how do you track or even explain the ROI of generosity? You are not coming from the business world, but you know how strong this concept is in business. How do you think about measuring or recognizing the return on generosity?
- [16:50]
Nicole Roberts
That's a great question, by the way, and I love when people do ask us the same question, because this gets to what we started the conversation about, which is you'll never get the same answer. You did bring up something very quickly, and I'm answering your question, but you brought up something and thank you. Which is we. When we were looking at the definition of generosity so often, particularly here in the United States where we live, it was the definitions and examples were related to donor dollars, philanthropy, giving, writing of a check.
- [17:20]
Vince Chen
Yep.
- [17:22]
Nicole Roberts
And that is not. You can be very generous with your treasure, but your time is certainly the most valuable thing that you have. Talent, your skills, mentorship. What we found is those are much more rewarding in terms of being generous. But you said you do it with no expectation. And so I just wanted to quickly say, when we wrote the book, we redefined generosity. And the definition that we had is any act of kindness or support that given with no expectation of exchange or return from the recipient. It truly is a gift. If you give it, it is then out of your hands. If you give expecting something, one, you're probably gonna be disappointed. Two, you've now made it transactional. And as humans, we know when something is transactional. Our BS meter can. Can be hit and miss sometimes, but for the most part, we inherently know when someone is being authentic or genuine. And we know when someone is listening because they care about us versus I'm going to listen to you for a minute, and then I need you to do this for me. I'm only doing this because I want something from you. We know when people aren't being authentic and we don't engage in the same way. We don't build trust. You have to trust and relationships come from being generous. Even if it's as simple as listening, giving someone your time, giving them your energy. And so I just wanted to bring up that definition. But it also brings me to that roi. What I have found is, and we heard this from a lot of people that we interviewed, and I've heard it from a lot of people since. But again, in different ways, everyone has different examples. But when you truly invest in others, their successes become your successes, their work ethic, their relationships, the relationship you have with them, all these things grow. I can tell you, in my experience, there is work. There's one particular example that comes to mind immediately, but I won't use names, but I knew someone very not well at all. And it was a husband and wife, and they were older, and there were things that I did and volunteered and said yes to that were a giant pain in the butt. But I felt like it was the right thing to do. And I worked well past what I should have. And I really thought, like, nothing came of it. And I was like, that's okay, it's fine. I want to say that five or six years later, one of them reached out and said, hey, there's an opportunity. And we recall not only the way that you stepped up and gave of yourself when you were needed and it wasn't expected, but we've also, through LinkedIn or what, like, we've monitored your career, we've been so impressed by this and this. And when someone told us about this opportunity, you were the first person we thought of to recommend, would you be open to. And it led to the next thing. It opened this door that I didn't even know existed. But it was because I put good out and it was honest and I didn't expect anything. Thought it was a complete waste of time. Not a waste of time, but you know what I'm saying? Like, in terms of there was no tangible roi. There was no, I did this, I got this in return. I was compensated in this way. I was. But what it did is it put. Put what we call a spirit, like a spirit of generosity. And I tried to live that way before we even defined it in the book. And I have found that it does come back. It comes back in ways you don't expect. You cannot measure it with. I gave $5, so I expect 10 back. It may look like volunteering for something and a job opportunity comes out of it or a recommendation or I met this person and you two need to meet. And it may become the person you marry, you build a business with, you just become friends with. I Don't know. I think network and introductions are some of the greatest forms of roi.
- [21:46]
Vince Chen
Speaking from my own experience, there are so many stories like that. One great example is actually this show. I've never asked any guest to refer someone else, not once. Every guest who comes on, either I invited them or they rushed out to me. My only focus is creating the best possible experience for them, making sure the episode is meaningful, smooth and enjoyable. What happened? More and more guests have told me they genuinely enjoyed the experience. Afterwards they'll say, hey, Vince, I actually know someone who would be a great fit for your show. One guest even referred five new guests, completely unfronted, no commission, no referral fee, no expectations. It's not transactional. It's just the natural return, if I can use this word, that comes from being a generous, thoughtful host. That's the ripple effect you were talking about.
- [23:07]
Nicole Roberts
You put forth yourself, you ask thoughtful questions, you give, I can now say 50 minutes in a fun, great experience that speaks volumes and people naturally. And Monty did it. He chatted with you and he said I had the most delightful conversation and told me all about it from his perspective. And so that's why again, as you said, when you reached out, I was like, heck yeah, I want to talk. Cool, great. I heard such wonderful things about you. It's absolutely. I think that's a good point to make because it can be hard to say I did this and then they gave back. That doesn't make it transactional. It genuinely came from a place of interest and passion and that person received it and they gave it to someone else. It really is just a series then of generous acts.
- [23:53]
Vince Chen
The approach you talk with the book is unusual for business Book interview real people, experts from different areas. But then you built the story around a fictional character, Emily, why that choice? Why bring in a fictional element in a non fiction business setting? And I'm also curious why Emily? Why a female character, not a male wand? Was there a particular reason behind that decision?
- [24:32]
Nicole Roberts
Her boss, who becomes like her mentor isn't real either. And the hotel chain isn't real. We chose Emily, works in hotels, very high end hotels. And the reason for that was we thought hospitality was the place to set this because it is about giving and meeting people's needs and doing it selflessly. And so we chose hospitality.
- [24:55]
Vince Chen
Anyway, I don't, I.
- [24:57]
Nicole Roberts
When we created Emily, there wasn't a discussion about gender or anything like that. I think, I wonder how much was subconscious in a sense because Monty's a little older than I am and I now Certainly think of him as not only a friend and colleague, but a mentor. And I think there was maybe an inherent bias in both of us of that dynamic of someone older and someone younger learning. We did have a couple of discussions about her age and that I think again, I don't think gender had anything to do with it. I think it was more of we want someone who is at a place in their career where they are respectable, they're believable, they, they've worked hard, they're ready to advance so they have enough experience that they want to, they're eager to learn and still do, but they're not so far along in their career that it doesn't make sense to go on this learning journey. And so we decided it needed to be someone about 30, late 20s to early 30s, so that she had gone to hospitality school. She had worked for five or six years in this company and then took. So we actually, we spent I think more time thinking about where she would be in that trajectory of her life and what made sense of how long would she have been working here. Because you can't give someone like an SVP title and they've been out of school for four years. No, we didn't. But she is a, we'll say ballpark, 30. 30, 30 year old woman and her mentor is an older gentleman. We don't, I don't think we gave him an age per se, but he def, he's president of a major hotel experience and very wise and is in a position to give thoughtful people opportunities but also to tell her where she's misstepped and where she didn't put people first. In our interviewees we made sure were all over the place in terms of, like I said, even how they measure success is very different. In the end there I saw two gaps and those are two people we went in search of and we, I think we found the right two people, but one was, and I know we are short on time, but the two areas that I saw that we needed to hear from someone was in education. And the reason I say education is because one question that we asked everyone and I didn't feel like we had gotten a really good answer was about can you teach someone to be generous? Especially people who have not grown up in an environment that was generous to them and they lived in families or households or communities where people aren't working from a place of generosity. Can you teach that? And so it was wonderful to find. We told people what we were looking for and it took over going, I know Exactly. And it's someone who had built schools for boys. And most of these boys come from cities and neighborhoods where generosity was not a way of life for them or the people that were raising them. And the remarkable stories about the unity and the brotherhood and the kindness and the generosity that these boys exhibited really showed us that you can teach people, but they have to see it. You have to demonstrate, and you have to give them grace and be generous with them to help foster that. And so that one and then one in that came from a place of grief. And I'd say it's easy for people who haven't lost everything to talk about being able to give. And I said, I really want to sit with someone who. Who the well was just dry. And how did you find? Because to me, that's when you really have a spirit of generosity. If you can find a place in you to be truly genuine and generous with people when you are tapped out, then it's natural to you. It's not something you can use when you've got it. And so we did talk to a woman who I just adore, who had suffered great loss, and her story was so touching. And in fact, her story is the one, I think it was the very last interview we did, and it is the one I've gotten the most outreach and feedback on.
- [29:35]
Vince Chen
Let's come full circle. To end our conversation, you mentioned that your longtime interest has been neuroscience, and every year you produce a summit focused on brain health. I'll admit I don't know much about this event, so I'd love for you to walk us through it. It's called Brain Summit. It happens around the super bowl weekend, which is interesting. And yes, athletes deal with serious brain health issues due to the nature of the sport, but it's not just about them. Brain health is something that matters to everyone. So tell us more. What's your role in this event? What are you hoping to achieve, not just with this summit, but overall? What's the bigger mission behind your work in this space?
- [30:33]
Nicole Roberts
Yeah, I do this annual event that is, for me, it fit perfectly under the umbrella of things, but it is a little off the wall. So I, 12 years ago, along with Lee Steinberg, and I'll tell you briefly about Lee, but started the Brain Health Summit at the Super Bowl. So every year in the host city, I get to live there for a week and host the day before the super bowl, this Brain Health Summit. So essentially speaking of generosity. So Lee Steinberg is an agent, and he is. People call him the real Jerry Maguire basis for the movie Jerry Maguire.
- [31:05]
Vince Chen
Yep.
- [31:06]
Nicole Roberts
I think at one point he had half the starting quarterbacks in the NFL. So it was basically just like his team's playing his team or his clients playing his clients. Anyway, Lee is one of the literally the most generous human beings on this earth, and he and I met at the UN Many years ago, and I didn't know who he was. And of all silly things, we found out we had the same birthday.
- [31:28]
Vince Chen
Oh.
- [31:29]
Nicole Roberts
Which in our book, we were like, oh, so we're friends. Birthday twins. What we ended up doing is he did, again, the most generous thing, especially to someone younger in their career, not in sports. He said, I used to do these concussion summits, and I'd bring my athletes. And he called it his crisis of conscience. He said, I have guys who have won the super bowl and don't remember being in the host city, and we. These are our clients, our friends, like our colleagues, and we have to have honest and hard conversations because we love the sport of football. It's not going away. So how do we make it safer for the people we love? It came from such a genuine place and concern for the people he loves. And he gave me. Literally gave. He gave me the opening hour of his annual super bowl party and said, do good. He challenged me to do good. And so I created the Brain Health System Summit is what I call. It's vague enough that every year in the host city, we can lean into the city and, yeah, what's going on in the world? And so every year, the theme changes. The city changes. This year, the Super Bowl's in New Orleans. And so our entire party, the Brain Summit and the broader Steinberg super bowl party theme is music and the mind. We have rented out the New Orleans Jazz Museum.
- [32:47]
Vince Chen
Wow.
- [32:48]
Nicole Roberts
And so everyone who comes to the party not only gets to be in a very haunted, by the Way museum in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, but they also get to do a full array of programming from super cool, like, touchy, like, exhibits and activations of neuroscience and music and the power of music to literally change your brain to party. It is a party. And then so the red carpet, the celebrity, all this stuff. And we do humanitarian awards and recognize people who are truly having an impact in the world. And this year, obviously, we'll be honoring people in sport, but people in music. And what it does is, to me, it essentially is the ultimate culmination of my dissertation, honestly, going back to. I wrote a dissertation on how to. How to build public private partnerships. And we have, to me that is what this is. We get to bring people together, as I see it, that would otherwise never have an opportunity to be together, to talk, to, mingle, to ask questions. And so you have retired NFL players showing up to ask these neuroscientist questions, to try out new technologies. We have cool startup companies with big ideas that may get in front of somebody who says, we want to fund that clinical trial, or we love the work you're doing. We'd love to see X or Y. And it gets a lot of these people with big ideas in front of media, which, for better or worse, it makes a difference because you can have all the big ideas in the world. If you can't explain it, if you can't get the message out, it doesn't go anywhere. And so the power of what Lee and his platform can do for people in healthcare and science and philanthropy is just. Just. It's undeniable. And I still, 12 years in, have a hard time wrapping my head around it. But it's fun, It's a pain, it's hard. As Lee Sundays, we have 5,000 of our closest friends come. It's a big lift, but we have a wonderful production team. Lee knocks it out of the park every year. It's invitation only, but you can find me. You can find me next year, San Francisco. And we are going to use the power of sport in neuroscience. And next year's theme is going to be around the environment.
- [35:12]
Vince Chen
Great. Then I need to start planning for this trip this year.
- [35:17]
Nicole Roberts
The good news is the NFL has a very predictable schedule. Second week of February.
- [35:22]
Vince Chen
That would be, by the way, that would be my birthday, because my birthday is the middle of February.
- [35:27]
Nicole Roberts
Then that's a birthday treat for you.
- [35:31]
Vince Chen
Absolutely. Next year. I'll muck it down. And thank you again, Nicole. Both you and Monty have been incredibly generous with your time, your energy, your honesty. It really means a lot. And I genuinely appreciate how open and thoughtful you've been throughout this entire conversation. And yes, we overran a bit, but it was totally worth it. This was such a fun and inspiring conversation.
- [36:05]
Nicole Roberts
And anything else you need, just ask how to reach me.
- [36:15]
Vince Chen
And that brings us to the end of this series. Nicole's journey is proof that you don't need a perfect plan to make a real impact. You just need purpose, a little courage, and a lot of listening. Whether it's neuroscience, generosity, or hospitality, her work reminds us that generosity isn't fluff, is the talk and the work in life and career. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard. Don't forget, subscribe to our show. Leave us top rated reviews. Check out our website and follow me on social media. I'm this Chen, your ambitious human homage host. Until next time, take care.
- [37:26]
Nicole Roberts
Packages by Expedia. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights, hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia made to travel.