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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
614: David Yeager PhD - The Science of Motivating Young People: A Groundbreaking Approach To Leading The Next Generation (Author of 10 to 25)
00:54:36
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- [00:00]
David Yeager
If you're a leader, you're not just trying to walk around and be Gandhi and help everybody else. I wanted to make the case that when you are that kind of great coach, life changer kind of person, that you get a lot out of it too.
- [00:11]
Ryan Hawk
10 to 25 the science of Motivating Young People can you get into the parental nagging study and what the issue is and what we can do Instead?
- [00:21]
David Yeager
Spoiler is that 0% of kids are sitting there thinking, you know what mom, you have a point. They don't make a young person choose between a good behavior or their reputation. They make the good behavior consistent with a positive reputation. They can change the world. They're the R and D engine of our society and our culture.
- [00:39]
Ryan Hawk
Can you go more into the mentors dilemma?
- [00:40]
David Yeager
It's very hard to simultaneously criticize somebody's performance or work and motivate them Care Is this like key part of growth? Young people need to realize that because of the stereotype, your competitive advantage is just being super duper reliable. If that's all you do, you're the top 1% of people in your generation.
- [01:01]
Podcast Announcer
This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people or transform your business through talent or technical services. Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com learningleader today to learn more. That's insightglobal.com learningleader welcome to the learningleader show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Texthock 266866 to become part of Mindful Monday, you, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how our book the Score that Matters will help you become a more effective leader. Texthawk 266866 now on to tonight's featured leader. Dr. David Yeager is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas and the co founder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. He is best known for his research conducted with Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth on short but powerful interventions that influence behaviors such as motivation, engagement, stress, and more. He earned his PhD at Stanford his undergrad at Notre Dame and is the author of a great new book called 10 to 25 the Science of Motivating Young People. A groundbreaking approach to leading the next generation and making your own life easier. During this conversation we discussed why Jack Welch's rank and yank leadership style was bad for the long term success of his company. How to have deeper and more substantive conversations with your children, how to become a better mentor and mentee. And David describes Satya Nadella's model coach care philosophy at Microsoft and why it's so effective. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with David Yeager. To get us started, I wanted to.
- [03:45]
Ryan Hawk
Go a bit personal, but it also flows really well with your material and that is the Pete and Leona story. Can you talk to me more about who they are, what they have to do with high expectations and how they've impacted your life?
- [04:02]
David Yeager
Yeah. So I, as I was writing this book, the main idea is, or one of them was, who are these people? Just change your life. You know, they walk in your life at some point, they make some decision or have some conversation and your life's never been the same. And a surprisingly large amount of adults talk about a high school football coach, a baseball coach, or like Michael Lewis has a whole book about this idea. Coach Fitz, it's called Coach or your theater coach, drama, band, orchestra. And they're always like somebody who was really tough on you when you were trying to be a slacker, but made it clear that they love you and care about you, but they never let their love and care for you be a reason to lower their standards for what they expect. And you know, that's almost just a TRO phenomenon. You see it all the time in movies or whatever, but psychologically that's interesting. Like why does that happen? And so I wanted to write the book about. At some level, those people come to a book like this wanting to help themselves in some way. Right. If you're a leader, you're not just trying to walk around and be Gandhi and help everybody, everybody else. I mean, it's great to be, you know, a great pro social, self sacrificial leader, but that's not what everyone wants to do. So I wanted to make the case that when, when you are that great coach, life changer kind of person that you gets a lot out of it too. And for years I was thinking about this, not knowing if I was going to write the book, but this was a big problem. And then I went to my grandfather's funeral and is in Lufkin Texas. So East Texas is. If you've seen the movie Bernie by Jack Black, it's that takes place. Life, Life behind the pine curtain. It' and very kind of community oriented, traditional values. And my grandpa's funeral, he had run an air conditioning company for like 40 years, 50 years. And a woman came up to me and she said, you know, because of your grandpa. I never graduated from high school, but because of him, I got my first job. And by the time I retired, I was running his business. And I had sent my two sons to college. One is now a doctor, one is now a lawyer, and we live on a beach in North Carolina. And I won the grandma lottery. And I just want you to know that he changed my life. And I just saw all these employees who came up and told me that stuff. And I didn't know my grandpa. I just knew he smoked cigars and had a wood shop. I didn't know anything, you know, about him and his professional life. And I just started thinking about it. And that reminded me of a story of his mom in the 1930s. So his name is Pete Saunders. And in 1936, he graduated from high school and he was 16 years old, no, 1938, 16 years old. And went to Rice University, which is the only private school in that part of Texas. And so he drove from Conroe to downtown Houston and went to Rice. And he had always been the smartest and had straight A's and started bombing all of his classes. And at some point in the late fall, he piled into his old Ford car and drove back to Conroe to the. The farm where he was raised and thinking his mom was going to take pity on him as a 16 year old who had D's and F's at rice. And he got there really late one night and went to bed before his mom woke up. And his mom was sick and dying. She had this lung disease. And she woke up the next morning hoping that his mom would say, you know what, Pete? You're right, you're right. This is so hard. Just don't go back, stay home on the farm or whatever. And instead she just kicked him in the pants. She was like, what are you talking about? Like, you're plenty smart. You just got to figure out how to learn in college. Get out of here. And she made him drive back to college without letting him do his laundry. And we all laughed about that, that she. Her name was Leona and she was a real hard ass. But what we never really focused on was the fact that she called her best friend and in Houston and was like, can Pete just live with you and can you help him figure out how to get organized and like, how to eat and do his laundry and all these other things. And at some level, she knew she was dying. In fact, she did die within a year. And so she was this combo of very tough and very supportive. At a turning point in his life when he was a 16 year old, thinking life was too hard, I'm going to quit. And that decision to not be a pushover and say, move home, but also not to send him back without support allowed him to go to Rice. He graduated with an engineering degree, immediately enlisted in World War II. After Pearl harbor, by age 22 or 23, he was running an entire fleet of B29s on the island in the Pacific where the Enola Gay and all the other the B29s that dropped the bomb in Japan took off from. So it was a very important station. And then went on back to go to Lufkin and started this business that put air conditioning all over East Texas where it's very hot and sweaty, and then change the lives of all these employees over the next 50 years. And so what I want to say is, like, look, a lot of us want to be successful. We want to, like, be great at our jobs. We want to be recognized for it. But at some level, we also want to have the kind of funeral where people show up and tell story after story about how you changed their lives while you were being successful. And that's, to me, with that combination of high standards and high supports does, yes, you're more effective, but you also leave a legacy of these people whose lives you've changed. And I just had to start the book that way because that's really what I want to tap into, is that deeper motivation for significance that I think.
- [09:33]
Ryan Hawk
We all have high standard, high support. The book is an interesting title, 10 to 25, the Science of Motivating Young People. And so I initially saw it like, wait, what?
- [09:45]
Podcast Announcer
I need this, right?
- [09:46]
Ryan Hawk
Both for my own children, but also, I think so many of the people in my orbit, whether they're hiring young people out of college, whether they have their own kids, all of the above, that this is such a critical thing to get good at, yet probably especially parenting the hardest thing that we do. And so let's, let's zoom out for a bit. David, and you've talked about, you've touched on this briefly, but if you had to high level say this is. These are a few of the things that I learned to say the best way to motivate somebody in the 10 to 25 age range.
- [10:26]
David Yeager
Yeah, so we, we certainly do it wrong a lot. I mean, I, I hear all kinds of complaints from managers, for instance, who can't get young employees to be independent and proactive. I, I hear from parents like, I can't get my kid to launch or I can't get them to try hard in school. Coaches, they're like, I got this kid who has all the talent in the world, but I can't get him motivated to work hard. So it's clearly a source of frustration. And it's so frustrating, in fact, that a lot of people think there's nothing I can do, that this is just a bad age, we have to wait it out, or there's a tiny subset of good young people and all the rest of them are garbage. And the whole task is to find the good ones. That's another attitude. And, and I started from a different premise. I was like, all right, well, who are the adults who get it right and don't have this problem of, you know, lazy, short sighted, selfish, entitled young people who can't do anything right? And if I could find these exemplars, I would figure out what they're doing and then maybe I could do it too, because, you know, I'm a parent and a coach and I manage a large team and this is stuff I wanted to know the answer to. Also, what I found is that the great leaders and mentors of young people don't start from a position of what I call neurobiological incompetence. They don't say teenagers brains are just idiotic and dumb and we can't trust them. Instead, they have this belief that if you can find the right trigger for motivation, then young people are capable of kind of amazing stuff. They can change the world. They're the R and D engine of our society and our culture. And then so they just spend a long time figuring out what it is young people care about. But it's not at a superficial level. They're not saying, like, let's turn Math class into TikTok or let's, you know, make our football practice be World of Warcraft or whatever. It's more the deeper motives of meaning and significance and what I call status and respect in the book. And there's a lot of, there's a lot more to it. But the basic idea is the, if you look at the best high school physics teacher, the best manager at Microsoft, the best shooting coach in the NBA. They are all appealing to a young person's drive for a kind of status and respect in the eyes of people whose opinions they care about. And they don't make a young person choose between a good behavior or their reputation. They make the good behavior consistent with a positive reputation. And again, in the eyes of someone whose opinions they care about.
- [13:01]
Ryan Hawk
Gotcha. Okay, let's dig into to some of the parts of the book that I found really interesting. So how about the parental nagging study? And I'll tee one up and you can take it wherever you want, but Kevin's mom nagging him to take his medication or research shows that nagging triggers the emotional part of a teen's brain, shutting down their ability to think logically. All of us parents here, we've all nagged for sure. Some of us have done it within the last hour. And it makes sense though, right? Your child doesn't do what they're supposed to do. Their room's a mess, they didn't do their homework, whatever. There's plenty of reasons. And we nag. So can you get into the parental nagging study what the issue is and what we can do instead that will hopefully create better outcomes both for our relationships with our kids as well as then what they go on to do in the world?
- [13:53]
David Yeager
Yeah, it. So this is a beautiful study run by Jennifer Silk and Ron Dahl and their collaborators. These are all neuroscientists and this is very simple idea what happens in the teenage brain when your parent is nagging you? And this was a study of daughters and teenage, teenage daughters and their moms, but it could have been dads and sons. And so they bring the daughters in and they're in the FMRI machine. So there's a huge magnet whirring around their head detecting blood flow in their brains. And then before they start any other tasks, they listen on audio to a pre recorded segment of their mom completing the sentence. What bothers me about you is. And so it's like bothers me about you, is it? You know, you get in these fights with your peers or with your, with your siblings. I tell you to bring your shoes down, you won't do it. You never clean your room, yada yada yada. And so what, what does it look like in the brain spoiler is that 0% of kids are sitting there thinking, you know what, mom, you have a point. This is a great feedback. I'm really glad we had this chat. I've got a list of things to fix now, so I'll get back to you and thanks again. So, like that never happened. Instead, what you see is a dramatic increase in anger regions of the brain and a dramatic decrease in the prefrontal cortex. So this is the region related to planning, goal setting, really basically, are they thinking about how to change their behavior in light of the feedback? And then you also see a decrease in the tpj, the temporal parietal junction, which is the social cognitive network of the brain. So this is the kind of mind reading functions. And that's important because a lot of times adults talking to young people are implying that certain behaviors need to change. So like when I was a parent of really young, like a five year old, my ADHD son would play with Legos in the middle of the room and it'd be a huge mess. And I would say, don't you want to pick up those Legos? And he would say, no, I don't want to pick up these Legos, because the literal answer is no. So I had to learn to be explicit. And kids are like that too, even when they're teenagers that we say one thing and they hear another and then there's a fight over the misinterpretation. So we're never going to avoid that conflict if we're communicating in a way that's shutting down the very regions of the brain that would best help them to listen to what we're asking them to do. And what works better instead, interestingly, is relatively subtle shifts in language that can influence whether a young person feels a sense of respect or alternatively feels deeply disrespected. And we did an experiment to follow up on the nagging study where we asked kids to take their medicine. It was a very unpleasant medicine that had plausible health benefits, but they didn't like. And we either asked them respectfully. So we'd say things like, look, you're a smart kid, I think you can understand the real reason for this. I'm going to explain it to you. I'd really like you to consider taking this medicine even if it's unpleasant. That's you doing your part to help this scientific experiment and also other people's health. And so it's a very noble thing to do, you know, thank you for considering this request. So it, it implies the young person has competence, agency, you know, it views them as a person. The disrespectful condition was, I'm going to tell you why this is important. You need to listen to me right now. You should do this based on my expertise. If it's unpleasant, just ignore that who cares? Do what I say, and then thank you in advance for your compliance. So that's the disrespectful condition. And what we find is that young people were about twice as likely to take the medicine if they were asked respectfully, even though the health benefits were the same in the two conditions.
- [17:44]
Ryan Hawk
Really.
- [17:45]
Podcast Announcer
So I'm a little surprised by that.
- [17:48]
Ryan Hawk
Because it feels like those are opposite ends of the spectrum, and maybe something more towards the middle would be better, Because I'll give you, for example, Dave, and this is a very small sample size, but I want to. I speak at high schools every once in a while. It's not my favorite thing to do because I don't know if I'm that good at it. But anyway, we'll talk to teachers, and I'm like, hey, what have you noticed is the biggest changes in kids in high school today versus maybe 10 years ago or 20 years ago, whatever. And inevitably a few teachers will say, kids use to be fearful of their parents. In today's kids, almost none of them are scared of their parents anymore. And I think that's a very bad thing. Teachers saying, I think it's a bad thing that. That kids are no longer scared of their parents. And I was like, oh, okay, didn't think of that. But these are what teachers are saying to me. What. What do you think when you hear that?
- [18:44]
David Yeager
I mean, that's super interesting. I've heard that too. Part of me is like, I remember being as a kid hearing about the, you know, Christian virtues and fear of God was one of them. I was like, really? Fear of God? Like, that's interesting. Supposed to be afraid, but I get it. It's like there are consequences in the world. And part of what it means to be a good person is that you are afraid of doing something wrong or bad because it's going to harm yourself or others. And having a healthy fear of negative consequences is part of what it means to be mature. And so. So of being afraid of your parents is one version of growing up with a. With a fear of negative consequences that causes you to make wiser, healthier choices or more moral choices. What I found is that the. The kind of adult who makes that their number one issue is that they have a style of leadership that I call an enforcer mindset, where their goal is to enforce laws and rules and kind of prepare you for a harsh reality. Like there's an unforgiving world out there that's gonna gobble you up, and you need to be afraid right now of Me, the leader. So that way you're prepared to not be harmed by that and, or you are a problem that is, that's about to get out of control. And if you're not afraid right now of consequences, then you're gonna harm others and you're gonna make the world a worse place. And so adults feel like it's their responsibility either for the well being of the kid or to enforce these rules, or for the well being of our community and our society to be an enforcer. And I get that. Like, I don't think that's necessarily a bad instinct. The problem is you end up focusing on just enforcing, but not supporting people to actually live up to a high standard. And a lot of times young people have reasons for a potentially unwise choice that makes sense from their perspective. It just doesn't make sense from the perspective of the adults. And when your main job is to make them so afraid of disappointing or, or being threatened by the adults that they comply no matter what, then you never get curious about the reasons that make sense from their perspective. So, for instance, in the book, there's a lot of examples of this in the book, but one is a story I tell about a mom who had a kid who went out at a party and drank too much and then came home and the kid's drunk and the mom and dad have to confront the kid. Now in the old world, the idea is if you were afraid of your parents, you would never in, you know, cause a problem because you're afraid of the consequences of violating a house rule. Now, do I really think that no kids snuck out to drink in the 1950s in the Glory days when everyone is afraid of their parents getting whipped by a belt? No, of course not. Like I talked to baby boomers, like, oh yeah, we snuck out to drink all the time. So the idea that like back in the old days we were afraid of our parents and now they're not, I think is a little overblown. And Dan Gilbert, a famous social psychologist at Harvard, talks about what he calls the illusion of moral decline, which is this idea that every generation thinks the next generation is less moral than them. And that's been true for 80 years. So when the baby boomers, right now, the ones complaining when they were teenagers while their parents were like, look at these long haired hippies listening to the Beatles and doing smoking dope and all these other things they're doing, right? So again, I think a lot of that's overblown. But still the kid comes home to the house mom's you know, upset. And with their, the first time through, they take the fear approach. It's like we're going to yell and tell blame and shame, grounded, punished. You need to fear violating the rules of the house and fear my wrath, basically, as a parent. And what did that kid do? The kid got really, really good at hiding, drinking. That's what happened. And then the kid went to college, drank too much and failed out and moved back home and doesn't have a job. And I actually talked to this person recently and on my book tour.
- [22:55]
Ryan Hawk
So that's a real person. This is Kate, right? A mom of two who lives in Chicago, right? Yeah. Yeah, you're right. He came home one night drunk and stoned and she responded with a combination of yelling and prosecuting. And you write she instigated an interrogation instead of a two way conversation.
- [23:14]
David Yeager
Yeah.
- [23:15]
Ryan Hawk
Okay, so go ahead, go ahead.
- [23:18]
David Yeager
Yeah. And. Well, and, and then. But she had two sons and so the next son two years later did the same thing. And then they were like, we've, they're like licking their chops. They're ready for this. This is. They've been prepared. And in the second time through, they let the kids sleep it off. They talk in the morning and they figure out like what. Why was the kid so motivated to break the house rules and get really drunk at the party? And rather than prosecute, they were just genuinely curious. And it turns out that the kid normally would sneak out like just two seltzers in his pockets, but then this time had a bunch of friends who wanted him to bring drinks. And so he brought a whole backpack full and then he ended up splitting it with like two friends. And so he drank way too much. And that was useful information because the reason why he brought extra and drank too much was because he was a social kid who was trying to be a good friend to his friends. Now that's maybe not the best way to be a good friend, but from his perspective, he was trying to be social. And it turns out that another time, there was a time where he went to a party and a girl was suicidal and he talked her out of committing suicide. And so his parents started from the perspective of, you know, you're a social kid and that's good, that means you care about others, that means you want to belong, and that means you're part of a community. And so the motivation behind binge drinking this night is not evil. It, but it was, it was dumb choice that can never happen again in our house. But like it mattered to them. Why he was getting it wrong. And they didn't punish in the sense of grounded. Instead, his quote, punishment was anytime before he went out, he had to talk through a very detailed plan for like 45 minutes with his parents about what he was going to do at the party and how he's going to get home and whether he was going to drink and who was he going to say this or that to. And his parents were relentless and forcing him to make a plan. And he, he wished he was grounded because it's like getting a 16 year old boy to talk about feelings for that long is really hard. And he then turns out became the most sensible moderate drinker in his high school and then went to college and had no issues and was more mature than a lot of adults in terms of alcohol. And that was really the goal. The goal was to launch a young person into the world where they can be independent and make wise choices that are healthy for them and the community. And the fear approach wasn't the solution, but the collaborative troubleshooting approach was.
- [25:52]
Ryan Hawk
So because I think this is going to be hard for a lot of parents, it was hard for me as I was reading this because envisioning this exact thing, if it happened in our home, I would probably respond the same way Kate did the first time right now. And I completely understand why she did. And most parents probably do as well. You're telling me that the research shows this? The evidence suggests we need to let them sleep it off, wake up and get curious, ask questions. Is that like, like role play this with me. Is that, is that, is that what you do? Like, is this what you'll do if this happens in your house? Is that the right approach? We're choosing this example because you wrote about it, but there are others of people, of young people making poor choices. But that's what you're saying, is what specifically we should do.
- [26:44]
David Yeager
I think the idea is anytime somebody screws up, whether it's an employee or a child or player, they had a reason why that choice made sense from their perspective. And the main thing you want them to do is to have in a similar scenario in the future reach a different conclusion. Right? So their flow of logic led to, in this case, I'm going to drink too much, right? Or I don't know, I have like a four year old and sometimes he'll just pile a chair on top of a chair and then stand on top of it to get like a cookie or something like that. And you walk in the room and your instinct is a yell and Say, get down. And I forget which parenting expert I heard this from, but what I do now is I say, what's your plan? And they haven't really thought it through. And, like, what's your plan if it gets unbalanced and it starts falling? You know? And, like, is there another way to get this thing that you want? And it turns out that, like, a few questions cause them to own the thinking, and then you want them to. Not the next time you're taking a nap or whatever. You want them to not be styling, stacking chairs on top of chairs and about to fall over and crack their head open. Right. You don't want them to only fear making the bad choice when you're there to yell and punish. And the similar thing is true for a player in a sport. Like, you don't want them to play in fear of being yelled at and then only make the right play when the coach is monitoring and yelling. You want them to know how to make the right play because they're playing the game in their heads and they're playing soccer. Player playing three passes ahead. Similarly, in this case of the. Of the kid coming home drunk, you know, like, if parents tend to make it about themselves, why does my kid think I'm the kind of parent who has such weak enforcement of the rules that they can blatantly violate my rules and then throw it in my face? Like, that's a. That's the story parents tell themselves in their heads. They make it about us, but that's not what they're thinking about. They're thinking, like, two friends who I really want to impress wanted me to bring some extra hard seltzers, and they're going to like me and invite me to stuff, and this might be an epic night. Who knows what will happen. That it might be a night that's so fun that we remember it 20 years from now at our high school reunion. And if I miss out on that just because my parents said so, because I'm worried about yelling, like, my parents yell at me all the time. Why am I worried about them yelling at me one more time? You know? And so, like, the calculation makes total sense from a kid's perspective. What you want is for them to be making an entirely different calculation besides the fear of punishment. You want it to be like, what is my goal for my life and my future and the kind of person I am? And that has to be in their minds when we're not there telling them what to do? And there's, as far as I know, there's no other way to do it than to force them to actually have that conversation with themselves and think carefully about it in debrief after a poor decision, but also in anticipation of future scenarios.
- [29:49]
Ryan Hawk
Okay, I've tried to implement some of this stuff, and let's say this is real life. You are getting curious. Your voice is composed. You're not raising it at all. I think about this before some of these conversations. You never raise it, no matter what. You're asking questions and you're getting nothing. You know, one word at best. Sometimes just like, I don't know, you know, like you get some of that. You just keep going. You just keep hammer. I mean, what do you do when you're getting nothing? You're getting no response, you're getting a shrugging shoulders, that type of thing. How do you get to the point where you can actually have a real conversation instead of just a one person or a mom and a dad asking questions and not getting much in response?
- [30:35]
David Yeager
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it depends on the scenario and there's some subtlety to the questions that are asked. You know, you, you could ask a bunch of questions and come across like a prosecutor.
- [30:45]
Ryan Hawk
Yes.
- [30:46]
David Yeager
And then like, they're not into that, you know?
- [30:48]
Ryan Hawk
Yes.
- [30:48]
David Yeager
On a recent vacation, my son didn't want to go to ski school. And I'm like, in my mind, I'm thinking like an enforcer. I'm like, we paid so much money to come on this vacation and it costs so much to send you, and you live a privileged life. Do you know how many kids never get to ski, let alone don't have private. It's not private, but it's three or four kids, semi private lessons on this gorgeous mountain. And you're trying to complain about that. And like, I, I was offended that it's a, it's disrespectful of the amount of money I spent on it and disrespectful of the plan I have for this vacation where we don't have that many days where I could ski with my wife and stuff like that. So that's my internal narrative. And. But the alternative is maybe he has some reason for being reluctant for going, and he's just masking that real reason by saying, I don't want to go. And so I was like, look, skiing is objectively awesome and fun, so it's, it's baffling to me why you don't want to go. But I don't want to be frustrated. I want to be honest and actually care about Your perspective, and it's not about me. So can you please just explain why from your perspective it's making sense for you to say no to go to this? Because I'm not going to give up on this. Like, I have to understand, because the alternative is I force you to go. But I would really like to understand. So I'm not being a pushover there, right? You still can be demanding, but you are curious. And turns out that especially once his meds wear off in the afternoon, he does stuff that's a little annoying. Other kids make fun of him, and he has Tourette's. And his sense of humor doesn't land with other kids his age. It comes across as a little immature. And so he doesn't want to go be made fun of by strangers who are the cool kids at a ski school. And that's a reasonable thing. You know, like, I would. I would maybe not want to go, and I would never have known that if not for him. But I'm. But then I'm like, now we can troubleshoot. Now it's like, all right, well, number one, these people are making so much money on this. This counselor has to be on top of it. So they need to know what's going to happen later on in the day, and they need to be proactive. And if they don't, you know, the teacher's going to be in trouble, so it's not on you. And so we can have a whole plan about going, and then we can have a compromise that if someone makes fun of you, I won't make you go the next day. And so, you know, then he was like, all right, fine, I'll go. And that's the example where, like, you, you could get a. You could win the fight as an enforcer in the short term, but then you're dumber about how to help your kids. And. And again, the same thing is going to be true for employees and, and. And coaches and teachers. If you're a physics teacher, it matters why the kid got the force or momentum problem wrong. Right? If it's just a calculation error, that's carelessness of the last step, but it means they got 95% of it right. A lot of times, though, kids just misread the word problem. And so everything after they wrote the words down into numbers, they got right. They did the calculations right, but they rushed when they read the word problem or they weren't an English speaker and they didn't understand the logic of the word problem. And so those are two. If I'm a teacher. If I'm trying to fix that problem, those are very different assignments I would give. One would be helping you read the question. The other is just making you pay attention on your calculations. And I could just yell at you. I could say, we've already covered this 30 times. I gave you 20 worksheets like, you weren't paying attention. You were goofing off, talking to your girlfriend. You don't care about school, and you need to learn how to be a grownup. And about 50% of American public school teachers, that's what they say to kids when they make a mistake, right. They turn into a character lesson and just never works. It's way better to be like, all right, well, what was the source of the problem? Okay, what were you thinking there? All right, what would happen if you change that? Then the kid owns the thinking, they can actually fix it, and then they're going to not make the same mistake later.
- [34:43]
Ryan Hawk
I was curious reading about Steph Okamoto at. I don't know if that's you pronounce her name at service now and the mentor's dilemma. Can you go more into the mentor's dilemma as well as the mentor mindset, and maybe even share the story of Steph Okamoto at ServiceNow?
- [34:57]
David Yeager
Yeah. So the mentors dilemma, coined by Jeff Cohen, is a Stanford professor, a mentor of mine. I want to give him credit in his dissertation almost 25 years ago. And it's this idea that it's very hard to simultaneously criticize somebody's performance or work and motivate them. And a good example is at Microsoft, when they would do performance evaluations, you would list what people get right and what they get wrong. And in the Ballmer, Steve Ballmer era In the early 2000s, those performance reviews would go into a system called stack ranking, which is an old Jack Welch GE system. And in your stack, everyone would be. Would be ranked. And if you're in the top, let's say 5%, you get a huge incentive for the bottom, you know, 5 or 15%, you're either fired or threatened to be fired. If you're in the middle, you're treated like you're mediocre and not given a great incentive. And so that's a tough setting to get critical feedback in, because if you're told and you're in that bottom 15%, like, you don't want to hear that. Right. And it's a very evaluative setting. But Steph had to do this every, I don't know, six months or so, and she had to figure out how to have that conversation. And the conventional way is to either just be brutal, right, and you know, you're a 15 percentile person, so you're done, or if you care about them, withhold the feedback like, everything's going great. You know, I believe in you, you can turn it around. And neither of those are good because the brutal version crushes motivation. And then the withholding feedback version, what I call a protector mindset, ends up coming back to bite them because at some point they're ranked and their incentives and their, their bonuses are tied to this performance evaluation. So her employees would get basically threatened to be fired or get low incentives if she withheld the feedback. So she had to learn to be honest and direct while also being supportive. And that's what I call the mentor mindset. And that's what solves the mentor's dilemma. And it's this idea that you're, you're going to be honest about someone's limitations or flaws, but you're going to surround them with support so that they can meet those high expectations. And an example is she would talk to a person and say, all right, what can we do now? So that by the next evaluation, you're an over performer who has high promotional velocity. And they would troubleshoot. They'd be like, all right, do you want to do this cross team project? And then the employee would be like, yeah, I want to go talk to engineering, I want to build a data dashboard or whatever. And then Steph would be like, all right, well, the engineers are very selfish with their engineering time. They're not going to let someone from HR do that. So why don't I go talk to your engineering manager and make sure that you can get that time from the engineers. So Steph would go run interference at the other division and then her direct report could then go recruit the resources she needed to create this above and beyond overperforming, cross team collaboration. And then they'd be back on track with high promotional velocity. But Steph never did the work for them. So it's not mentor mindset. Doesn't mean I'm going to baby you. And it also doesn't mean necessarily I'm telling you what to do. It's, I'm helping you earn a reputation as being high status and prestigious through hard stuff that no one else can do. But I'm going to run interference and unblock you and provide support so that way you can meet that high standard.
- [38:26]
Ryan Hawk
Okay. Makes a lot of sense. I also read about Satya Nadella and how he shifted Microsoft and this thing about Theory X and Theory Y, what changes did he make for the better when he took over at Microsoft?
- [38:41]
David Yeager
Yeah. So when Satya took over at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer was, was the CEO and obviously Ballmer is a brilliant person who you know lots of visionary things. But the company culture was embedded in this old idea of Theory X. McGregor calls it goes back to the 1950s that really kind of Jack Welch was the, at GE was the embodiment of and it's this idea of when companies are bloated, you fire tons of people and you have performance evaluations every three months or six months or 12 months to fire the, the worst people cut the fat. And you know that did temporarily boost GE stock price but also shipped lots of jobs overseas and like eventually dismantled the company in a lot of ways. But it, when Ballmer took over that was the, that was the dominant idea for large companies at least. And so that was his approach. And then Nadella realized that approach caused people to fear innovation. And that's because innovation comes with mistakes and you take a bunch of bets and some don't work out and you can't have to. You can't fear your job because you were on a project for six months at some advanced tech at the frontiers of the field and you didn't have product market fit because you were too early and you then didn't contribute any to sales in your division and now you're the bottom 5%. Like that's a dumb way to run a tech company because then you do safe things and you're behind everybody and you would only create a new product once your competitors had already created it. And so that bomber mentality is why we have the Zune and Bing and other failed products from although Bing's making a comeback. But the certainly a lot of products where by the time Satya took over one product at Apple, right. The iPhone made more money than all of Microsoft. And so Nadella said we need to shift from a culture of know it alls to a culture of learn it alls. And other people contributed. Kathleen Hogan is a well known HR person and Steph Okamoto eventually worked on under Hogan on that team and they got rid of stack ranking. They still have very tough performance reviews but they call them a connect and it's a time to connect with your manager about your successes, your growth areas, et cetera. And it's more of a conversation about your growth and development. Again still demanding, still outcome focused, still high stakes. But It's a, it's formative, it's designed to help you improve as an employee. And they adopted a slogan, model coach care. And so you model the great performance you want, you coach people to do it and you care about the people you're coaching. Now the care part was controversial initially. People are like, that sounds like a bunch of self esteem feelings nonsense, like it doesn't belong in a top technology company. But the new philosophy under Nadella and Hogan and others was, look, if we're going to ask you to go above and beyond and surpass any benchmark that's ever been had before and therefore make us be the most valuable company in the world, that's going to take personal sacrifice. That's going to take you thinking above and beyond what your manager's telling you to do. You're going to need to be proactive and that at the frontiers of your abilities and that's going to be exhausting. If at the end of the day you think your manager does not care whether you live or die, it's very hard to believe that that employee is going to go above and beyond and innovate and change the field. So care, is this like key part of growth? It's not just we're sending you a card or whatever. It's like I care about you so much that I want you to become a top performer with high promotional velocity who then gets incentives for having grown our company. That's how much I care. And I care about you too much to have low expectations for you is another way to say it. And that version of care is easy to get behind even if your instinct is to be more of an enforcer.
- [42:40]
Ryan Hawk
What I found from the care perspective, like actually doing this leading teams is there's like multiple versions of coaching. There's the coaching in the moment where maybe they said something or did something that wasn't right for whatever reason and you talk through and figure out how to fix that specific thing moving forward to get better. Right? Coaching in the moment and then the care element. And I think there's an aversion of care there for sure because you're trying to help them get better. But then there's this coaching for long term development where I think the leader needs to genuinely care and understand the long term goals of each person that works for them and finds a way to help them get there. And that usually includes them leaving your team. And I said to the leaders that I eventually led, let's be known as a place where people go to get promoted and yes, that means they're going to leave us because at a mid level manager job they're going to leave us, whether it's our company or they're going to go to another company. But isn't that an amazing thing to be known for? And yes, it hurts like crazy in the short term when a stud leaves, but it's an awesome feeling and it's a great reputation and it becomes a place where everybody wants to work, especially top performers that are ambitious and it's a longer game play. But I think that is, that is a certainly something to strive for and it doesn't happen if you don't genuinely care for people. But doing that I think is the right way to build a team that sustains excellence over time. What do you think?
- [44:21]
David Yeager
Totally. I mean, there's a great example of staff mentoring someone named Saloni Shaw and she did that data dashboard project I described and she was always a top performer in that case. But because she went above and beyond and got promoted early. And a lot of steps, people get promoted early because she subtly gets them to do the job at the next level of either individual performance or management before they know it. And so she'll have these conversations three to six months before they thought they were going to get promoted and be like, look at this checklist. You're already one level up, so we're going to promote you early. And so that's just constantly happening on Steph's teams. So then the best people want to work on Steph's teams and they want to go above and beyond. And no one complains if Steph says, hey, your normal 40 hour a week job is going to keep you bored. Let's do this other thing. That's awesome. They don't view Steph as a taskmaster who's exploiting them. They're like, they want to have that promotional velocity. Anyway, Saloni was stolen away by educational platform company because of that cross project, cross team project she did. But then a couple years later she came back and now she's the chief of staff for Kathleen Hogan. So she's basically running all of HR at Microsoft as a 29 year old. And so sometimes when your studs get stolen, they feel that sense of loyalty and they're like, you know, the best I ever felt was when I was doing super hard work that was acknowledged. Like, it wasn't hard work, that people were like, well, of course you did, we paid you. It's like hard work where they're like, that was impressive. And that was awesome. And Steph makes sure that her reports do the presentation to the senior VPs. Steph won't present on her direct reports work because A, she wants them to take it seriously enough that their reputation's on the line, but B, she wants them to get the credit. And some managers think Steph's crazy for giving the credit to her direct reports, but that's not her philosophy. And then you, you find that area under the curve over a long career you have over performers who are also deeply loyal both to you and to the company. And so it's like a Pete and Leona story. Seth's When Steph retires, it's going to be like Pete's funeral. People are going to come out of the woodworks and talk about the lives that she changed. For sure.
- [46:44]
Ryan Hawk
So cool. Before we run, David, I'm curious. Let's say you're meeting and you regularly do this, I'm sure, with somebody who's a recent college graduate who is ambitious. They care about themselves and others and they want to leave a positive dent in the world. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them?
- [47:06]
David Yeager
Yeah, I, I, well, I mean, as a professor, I do this, you know, every day. I write 40 letters of recommendation a year. I mean, the, the most common thing I say is like, don't, don't accept the kind of received wisdom of certain paths. Like, usually the highest achieving kids are also the ones who like following the rules the most. Like, that's how they got A's, was listening to the teachers and turning their homework in on time. And so they're like, I need this class, this degree, this graduate school. And then I have this kind of path. And I'm always like, yeah, you know, a lot of stuff, nonsense, you don't have to do that. So that's kind of one thing I always say. But the other thing is, you know, there's this complaint from employers that this new generation doesn't want to work, that there will be a job posting. There's 200 applicants. One person gets the job, and the second they get the job, they ask for vacation time to go to Aruba or they want to go work remotely from Alaska. And the employer is like, what the hell? Like, you just got this job. And I've heard this story so many times. And, you know, I think the conventional advice is to tell young people to basically pretend like they don't want that stuff until you've been promoted a few times. Like don't, don't show your short sighted self until you're 29 or 33 or something like that. And like, I get that. But to be honest, like, I mean, if you or I were offered a job right now and we knew you could work remotely from a vacation on Alaska for months, we would have totally done that. That would have been amazing. Like, I, I did like it. It's incredible to be young right now. So they're not crazy for asking to do this stuff, especially not when most CEOs, the minute the pandemic hit went to like Costa Rica or Arizona or Tahoe and they ran their companies out of like a, you know, ski hut. And like, of course they want to do that because that's the goal. So I don't think they're entitled necessarily for asking for that kind of flexibility. They just realize that it's a possibility. At the same time, I think young people need to realize that because of the stereotype, your competitive advantage is just being super duper reliable. Like if you show up and do what you said in advance and then you ask for clarification at the right time, and then ask for more work, if that's all you do, you're the top 1% of people in your generation right now. And you know, fair or not, that is what the millennials want to hire. And so I think, like, you know, you're not being exploited necessarily for a lot of these things, but you can. If you are reliable and proactive and follow through, then you're rewarded. And then you get all kinds of flexibility because you're so good that your employer will not want to lose you. Like, I have people where I'm like, I don't want to lose you. And so like, tell me what you need, I will give it to you because you're so great and I can count on you.
- [50:07]
Ryan Hawk
Add surplus value. Whatever they're paying you, find a way to add 5x more than that of value to your company. And you could, you could do whatever you want if that's what you do. Show up, be consistent, be reliable, ask for more work, add surplus value. You can do whatever you want. They'll beg to keep you. Right. And I think that's, that's how you earn it. Right? That's how you are. And that goes for anybody, by the way, it doesn't. Regardless of age. That goes for anybody. I think if you're, if we're regularly, I try to do this with every client. How can I add surplus value for whatever they're giving me? They should get a much greater return on that investment. And if I consistently do that, my business is great and if I don't, I'm out of business. And that's kind of the mentality I think anybody approaches their career that way, especially if you're starting out new, you're going to be, you're going to set yourself up for a lot of good stuff. David, this is awesome book is called 10 to 25 the Science of Motivating Young People. A groundbreaking approach to leading the next generation and making your own life easier. Extremely well written, great stories, the science and the practical application. Perfect dude. So huge props on that. Thank you for writing it and I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.
- [51:22]
David Yeager
Yeah, totally. And I'll say that what I'm probably most interested in now is working with teams like sports teams and businesses on both product features that are building on the insights of my book and HR approaches and management approaches. And so if there anybody who reads the book, you're like we gotta, we're training not 900 retail employees a year. Like we gotta do it differently. We have a drive through. We want to make it 10 faster and make a million dollars more per branch at Arby's or whatever it is. I'm super interested in those puzzles and the more I work on it, the more I'll have to share when I come back and tell you success stories.
- [52:00]
Ryan Hawk
I love it.
- [52:01]
Podcast Announcer
Awesome.
- [52:01]
Ryan Hawk
Well, thank you man. I look forward to the next one.
- [52:03]
David Yeager
All right, thanks. Watching for Ryan. See you.
- [52:08]
Podcast Announcer
It is the end of the Podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note ryan learningleader.com and let me know what you learned from this great conversation with David Yeager. A few takeaways from my notes. Satya Nadella's Model Coach care philosophy at Microsoft. This is the opposite of what Jack Welch did at GE and his rank and yank style. That rank and yank style and the stack ranking methodology limited innovation and stopped people from taking any type of risk for fear of being fired. We want to model the right behavior, coach others and ensure they know we care for them so they feel the support they need to take risk, sometimes fail, get back up and work to innovate. Then it's life. Career advice don't accept some perceived path. Be reliable, show up, do the work and ask for more work. Add surplus value. Whatever you are being paid. Find a way to deliver 10x the value of what they are paying you. If you do that, your employer will beg you to stay, give you a raise, and look for ways to promote you. Add surplus value and then the Parental Nagging Study One particular interesting point in the book is about nagging in the common tactic adults use to get people to, quote, pay attention. Research shows that nagging triggers the emotional part of a teen's brain, shutting down their ability to think logically. They're not ignoring you on purpose, they're simply wired to tune out a better way, speak calmly and neutrally, to engage the part of their brain that handles planning and and decision making. This opens the door to a real conversation.
- [53:57]
Ryan Hawk
And yes, I know that is easier said than done.
- [54:01]
Podcast Announcer
Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader show with David Yeager. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and you subscribe to the show and you rate it hopefully five stars and write a thoughtful reunion. By doing all of that, you are.
- [54:22]
Ryan Hawk
Giving me the opportunity to do what.
- [54:24]
Podcast Announcer
I love on a daily basis. And for that I will forever be grateful.
- [54:28]
Ryan Hawk
Thank you so, so much.
- [54:29]
Podcast Announcer
Talk to you soon.
- [54:30]
Ryan Hawk
Can't wait.