Start with Who, Not Why: Dr. David Burkus on Leadership and Building Impactful Teams

Brian Tomlinson: Hey everyone, I am Brian Tomlinson, Head of Content here at Staffbase, and welcome to another episode of the Aspire to Inspire Podcast. Today’s guest is Dr. David Burkus, and he is one of the world’s leading business thinkers and a bestselling author, helping leaders build their best teams ever. His insights have been featured in outlets like The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and NPR. And he brings a unique perspective on leadership, on teamwork and creativity. His books, including “Best Team Ever,” “Friend of a Friend,” and “The Myth of Creativity,” all challenge our conventional wisdom on how to offer practical strategies to inspire change and drive results in our teams. In this episode, we’ll dive into actionable insights on his work including how to foster high performing teams, rethink management norms, and how to become a better networker, even on LinkedIn.

David Burkus: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Brian Tomlinson: So, actually, I want to jump in at a very interesting area. I know that you are a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, and also judo, right? If I’m not mistaken. What made you start with that? What made you get into that?

David Burkus: Yeah, okay. This is going to get a little weird for a second. I had actually always grown up in some form of martial arts. When I was younger, I did Taekwondo like a lot of people took. You’re 8, 9, 10 years old, you take karate classes from some strip mall karate studio, and you watch all of the crazy Hollywood action movies. And I did all of that, growing up throughout most of my childhood.

It was just sort of fun. It’s a cool — There are a lot of sports that are, you’re part of a team, but you’re also an individual, so it’s your own individual performance, et cetera. That was fun. Obviously, feeling super cool, like a great fighter, is great too, I guess, from a confidence standpoint. And then, when I was in college, I walked away from all of it. Just had too much time studying.

I was a double major. Didn’t have a car on campus, which made getting off campus to do any of those types of activities impossible. So I gave up on all of it, except that I was in university when this really weird esoteric competition called the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which everyone knows now, started going live. And at the time, it was like, the events were barely going on.

You basically — You had to go to Blockbuster Video. Yes, I’m dating myself here. You had to go to Blockbuster Video, and rent old VHS, or DVD versions of these things, which when you’re at that age, and you’re a college student, you’re like, “Yes, that’s the prescription for a perfect Friday night. Let’s go get pizza, two liters of Coke, and a UFC DVD and watch it.”

So I watched this guy named Royce Gracie, and these jujitsu people just destroy everybody else. Which to me was not only exciting, but also like I wasted 20 years of my life studying point fighting and strip mall karate, right. I clearly need to change this all out. Then, when I graduated out, got settled with a job, et cetera, had the disposable income to actually pay gym fees, and what have you.

I looked around in my city, and the only thing close at the time was judo. So I actually started in judo. Fun fact, actually, I trained at the judo academy that during UFC 4, the Gracies went to do their training leading up to that event, because that event was held in Tulsa where I currently was, which is just a fun fact, that I didn’t train with them at all, bears no reflection on me.

Brian Tomlinson: Six degrees of separation, right?

David Burkus: Exactly, right?

Brian Tomlinson: Which we’ll get into later.

David Burkus: And then, as jujitsu as a sport grew, one of those gyms opened up, and so, I started cross training for a long time. Eventually, after I got a black belt in judo, I stopped competing, stopped training in that, and focused entirely in jujitsu. Did that through my 20s, and 30s. In my 30s, it got a little bit harder. You start having kids, you’re married, you have kids, you have whatever. 

Now, I still go, I’m headed there actually after we record today. I still go train probably two or three times a week, but really, I’m much more focused on keeping myself a little tuned, and then working with a lot of the younger guys that are still competing, and that sort of stuff. It’s still a lot of fun, but I guess I should say, I’m nowhere near as dangerous as I used to be.

Brian Tomlinson: Tell me then what did you learn? What mental lessons, or frameworks did you learn from judo that leaders can take into their day-to-day?

David Burkus: Yes. From judo, especially, I think, Jigorō Kanō, the founder of judo was really — The story of judo is a really interesting one for those of you that don’t — We’ll go down this rabbit hole, because it’s a lot of fun.

At the time, over a hundred years ago, before Jigorō Kanō founded judo, there were all sorts of what they called jujitsus, which were individual, very master-centric on one person, and his collection of techniques. And a lot of them were very dangerous techniques. If you watch a lot of parody, comedy, karate videos on YouTube or whatever, it’s like block this, and then gouge their eye out, and just way too dangerous stuff that you could not practice on another opponent.

All Jigorō Kanō did was take all of those fighting elements of judo, remove the things that would cause injuries, the striking, especially striking vital areas, et cetera, and focus entirely on the grappling. The theory being, you could practice grappling at a hundred percent, and not injure your training partner. So the idea here is, because you can train at a hundred percent, and not slower, it’s more effective in a real life scenario, because your body is used to operating at that hundred percent.

Alongside that, in order to make that work, you have to get into what’s the first principle of training in judo, which is what he called mutual respect and benefit. The idea being, or sometimes mutual welfare and benefit, translates differently, but the idea being, that you take responsibility for the health and safety of your partner.

Yes, you are going at a hundred percent, and you’re even attempting to pin them down, to choke them out, to throw them with full force, being in control. At the same time, they’re your training partner. So you’re a hundred percent responsible for their safety and well-being. Candidly, when I go and work with really dysfunctional teams, that’s the first thing I see missing, is you have a team, especially, as you get higher up in an organization, you start to have a team that looks at each other as collaborators, but also as competitors.

In other words, if I get an opportunity to step over you, and position myself for promotion, I’m going to take it. There’s not a sense of mutual welfare and benefit on a lot of those dysfunctional teams. We would, from a research standpoint, because I’m super nerdy, we would probably most correlate this to what we’d call psychological safety. For those out there who are listening are like, “Oh, that sounds a lot like psych safety.” It is.

This idea, again, that there’s a sense of trust and respect for the other individual, that you’re not going to do anything that is deliberately trying to put them down, because then they’re not going to bring their whole, and their best self to work, et cetera. So it’s funny to me that my first exposure, like when I was in graduate school, and really diving into the research on psych safety, my first exposure was like, “No. I learned this five or six years ago when we started training in judo.”

This is a hundred-year-old concept, that’s responsible for creating all sorts of champions, and for creating this martial art that spread across the world, et cetera. This was already something Jigorō Kanō found out a hundred years ago, where just now the data is matching up with it, which is always exciting.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. No, I mean, that’s an amazing story. I can only imagine that what a good fit that is for leaders, and particularly, for teams. All right. How do you see that? Because judo, when you look at judo, or any martial art, it looks like a very one person sport, right? How does that translate into creating a team, and a strong performing group of people?

David Burkus: Yes, ironically, I think those types of sports correlate better to most people’s experience of work, at least knowledge work, in that, you work with a team, but you’re still responsible for individual objectives. Now, I’ve actually been a huge proponent in the past of team-based incentives, team-based rewards, team-based incentive compensation, that sort of thing.

I’ll be honest with you. I’m losing that argument. The reality that we work in, in most of the times our bonuses, are incentive compensation, are prospects for promotion, they’re all still individual. On the other hand, you still work with a whole lot of people that influence your individual performance. And training in those individual sports is the same way, whether it’s martial arts, whether it’s something like track and field, whether it’s swimming, like you have a stable, you have a team of people who push you to be better, right?

And you still want them to succeed, and you need them to push you. You need that  a-team competitiveness, but you’re still ultimately responsible on an individual level. I think that actually speaks to people’s experience of work much more often. I’ve got like, if you look at Boris Groysberg’s research in particular in the finance industry, but across a lot of different industries, he suggested up to 60% of individual performance is not explained by the talent a person has, but it’s the team they’re on, the company they’re a part of, the resources they have access to, external factors, right?

Doesn’t mean talent’s not important, but all of those other external factors have a huge influence on whether or not you can turn the talent you have into high performance. And that’s the thing I like about, and have always sort of liked about judo, jujitsu, individual sports, like I said, like gymnastics, and lots of other things, is that idea. You’re part of a team. You feel that sense of belonging.

You’ve got those people pushing you, giving you constructive feedback, et cetera, but ultimately — And they’re going to push your individual performance, but at the same time, you’re still thinking individually about who you are. I think there’s a lot more leadership lessons there than anywhere else.

In fact, in my newest book, I get a little bit of tease for this. My newest book is all about high performing teams and there’s only three sports references in the entire book. One is gymnastics, one is curling, which is technically a team sport, but each individual slides the rock themselves. And the other is baseball, which of the major team sports in the United States, is probably still the most individualistic team sport. And I think there’s a specific reason for that, which is again, you’re part of a team, and you need the team to push you, but you’re still responsible for your individual aims as well.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, I’m happy that you jumped on sports, because I think that’s something that particularly, probably, leaders in HR, and people who are talent recruiting, probably, need to think about as well, right? Because I think you may have mentioned that before is, in sports, you see someone has a big trade, and you’re like, “Oh, yes,” like they’re on my team, but then they don’t perform.

David Burkus: Yeah.

Brian Tomlinson: Right? I think a lot of times in businesses, it’s probably very similar. Have you seen that before?

David Burkus: Oh, yes. No, so first of all, I see it from sports all the time, because I am at heart, a Philadelphia Eagles football fan. I was born in Philly, and I have seen us acquire so many talented players, who then fell apart because of culture. And then, the only Super Bowl we’ve ever won, we won with second stringers, because of an incredible culture. And I think you see the exact same thing in HR and recruiting, et cetera.

This is funny. I actually once asked this to a group of HR folks in the finance industry, which I always thought — I’m setting this up for this specific reason. I asked them, “Have you ever had a hire that you thought was going to perform really, really well.  And then, they get in, and they become a part of the team, and it just falls apart?” And almost everybody raises their hand.

Then I say, “Really?” Because everyone here is in finance or banking. And if ever there were people who knew that past performance is not indicative of future results, you’d think it would be the people in finance who have to promise that every time they talk about an investment fund or some other savings product, right? But we still do it. And in fact, there’s even some research that suggests that we look at people’s — We evaluate talent, not even based on past performance, but based on things we perceive to be their potential over their track record.

So we’re judging on, what did you do before? What do we think you could possibly do here? Which is just an educated guess. Remember, there’s no evidence that they’re actually going to achieve higher levels of performance in our firm. And then, we just ignore, “Hey, what team are we putting them on? What are we going to move in?” A bad culture will destroy a high performer every single time.

Starting in, probably, 2016, I became a huge advocate of bringing the whole team into hiring decisions as much as you can. This plays out in a couple of different ways. I talk a lot about how, in places like Whole Foods, even at the corporate level, you have the team, actually, individual hires on probation for 60 to 90 days. And then, the team actually has to take a vote on whether or not they’re a fit.

But I even love organizations from whether it’s knowledge work, or I’ve even seen it in factory work, that will actually train individual contributors who are going to be a part of that person’s team in interviewing skills, so that they can sit on the interview. That doesn’t mean you still need people from HR in there, right? Because you can’t have them ask illegal questions, and that sort of stuff.

But the idea that, hey, bringing new talent into the organization is everyone’s business because how they fit is going to be a huge factor in whether or not they make us better, or we make them worse, and so, training everybody to be a part of that, and to look for that, I think is a huge solution. I think if somebody’s performance rests on the team that they’re a part of, and then that team should probably have a say, maybe not the majority say, but should have a say in who actually gets to join the team.

Brian Tomlinson: We actually do that. When we hire someone, at least for my team, it might come across a little bit intimidating, but we try to make a really nice environment and bring people in, have them do like a presentation. But in that round, they meet the team. Because we want to make sure that, that person fits to our culture, to our values.  And that way, they also feel comfortable with the people they’re going to work with, right?

David Burkus: Oh, I love that. No, I love that. Unfortunately, you have to agree, it’s still not the norm for a lot of organizations, right? A lot of organizations follow the same process. Honestly, a lot of hiring looks a lot like modern dating, right? Okay, you have all of these applicants, and you have some HR generalist, 20-something-year-old person whose job it is to screen, or you have AI just screening people out, and doing the initial interview.

Brian Tomlinson: Swipe right.

David Burkus: Right. You have them doing the initial interview, which is actually just as a phone screen. I mean, that to me feels equivalent to swipe right or swipe left, you’re just trying to filter as many people out. When you have people that have promise, they mostly just interview with the manager, the person that’s going to be their boss.  And then, as you whittle it down to maybe one or two people, what do you do?

You go meet the parents. In other words, you go interview with the boss’s boss. And then, if there’s a fit there, and they have your blessing and approval, we make a hire. All the while, the rest of the extended family never gets to meet you, right? Which is no surprise why Thanksgiving is always such a disastrous holiday in the United States. And also, why hiring doesn’t seem to work out a lot of times.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes.

David Burkus: Is that — We’ve never brought all of these other people who the success of the relationship depends on. We never brought them into the decision. It boggles my mind. You know I hear more and more examples of that. I love what you all are doing. It boggles my mind that we’re still taking a very individualistic approach to who gets to join our organization. All the while paying lip service to these words like “teams”, and what have you. And then, again, not thinking about that team fit.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. No, absolutely. That comes back to the culture topic, right? And I think one of the things that we talk about, and you mentioned quite often in your book as well, is psychological safety, right? Creating that safe space for someone. It’s something we — Just like you said, we talk about it a lot, but it’s kind of hard to achieve, or it makes it seem as if it’s hard to achieve.

What do you think are some of the easiest things that leaders could do to create a safer space that builds that trust that someone needs within the team, and within an organization?

David Burkus: Yes. Well, you know I think a couple of things. I was just reading some interesting research on this maybe a month or so ago. I think, there’s two big barriers the way I see it. And the one is, one I hadn’t seen until this research revealed it. The first barrier, I think, is a misunderstanding of what psych safety means. And even when we use that term sort of a safe space, I think a lot of people — I think that term is great in the corporate setting, but then a lot of people think back to these headline-grabbing stories of safe spaces in college, where there’s like cookies and milk, in case you feel triggered, and all of this.

They’re just like, “Okay, that seems a little bit too much coddling. Is that where we’re going?” And then, you end up with a lot of leaders who just reject the concept entirely, which is again, not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about blanket amnesty for underperformance. You’re never going to be challenged or pushed. We’re not even talking about, you’re never going to hear an idea that makes you uncomfortable.

What we are talking about is, when you see something you disagree with, or that makes you uncomfortable that you see as a problem, you feel respected enough to speak up, and point it out, and in doing so, slightly change the culture, and to have that conversation. And that word “respect” is probably the other thing I think we get wrong. The way I see psychological safety, if you look at Amy Edmondson’s original research, and her definition, she calls it this climate of mutual trust and respect. And I think those two things are reciprocal. In other words, you can build as much trust on a team as you want. You could do the trust falls. You could take a personality test. You could do whatever it takes to bring somebody together. You do all of that in the service of getting someone to take an interpersonal risk like speaking up, because they see something they disagree with, or that they find uncomfortable, right? But it could also be just sharing a new idea that seems out of the box. It could be talking about a failure. It could be all of these different things that are interpersonally risky, that might risk judgment, or atmosphere in a dysfunctional environment, that maybe people have past trauma, and past baggage for, might make them feel uncomfortable.

You build trust to get people to take that risk. If you don’t know how to respect people on the other side of that risk, then their trust is going to diminish. We’ve all had this situation in our career. We spoke up to point out some great idea that we were really proud of, or to point to something that we saw as wrong, and we got shut down immediately. What happened right after we get shut down? We don’t trust that person or that team as much anymore.

So there’s a reciprocal thing at play and I think a lot of leaders don’t pay enough attention to the respect side. And I get it, because it’s hard. It’s hard to demonstrate active listening, and respect and consideration when someone’s disagreeing with your idea. It’s hard, I get it. But the reward is worth it, because what you see, is you get to see a lot more of what reality looks like.

You have a lot fewer blind spots when you have people on your team who are willing to speak up. In fact, the question, I don’t ask questions about trust when I am working with individual leaders. The first question I ask to gauge psychological safety, is when was the last time someone on your team disagreed with you, and how did it go? If they can’t remember a time, we’ve got a huge problem.

But if they can, I want to know, what did you do? What was your response? Did you immediately go to defend your idea, or did you hear them out, and listen to them? You don’t have to agree with them in the end, but you do have to give them, to use your word, you do have to give them a safe space to get that idea out there without that risk of judgment, if you want to keep your team honest, and sharing the beautiful diversity of all of their opinions. So you have to pair that sense of trust with that sense of respect.

Brian Tomlinson: Awesome. What are two quick actionable things that leaders could do to be able to build that safe space though? I know you mentioned active listening. That’s the start, listen, and then what’s next?

David Burkus: Okay, let’s not actually make that the start. You asked for two, so we’ll go trust, and we’ll go respect, because of the reciprocal nature. On the trust side, I think the best thing leaders can do is be willing to be vulnerable themselves. And when I say, vulnerability here, I don’t mean deep Brené Brown levels of vulnerability. That’s great if you can get there. For most people, that’s way too much information.

You don’t have to, when you’re done listening to this episode, you don’t have to go tell your whole team that you feel like your parents never loved you. You don’t need that level of vulnerability, but talking about your own mistakes, talking about your own oversights. Even just, for leaders, one of the most powerful things you can say is, “I don’t know. What do you think?” Because you’re a leader, you’re supposed to have all the answers. But when you are actually willing to say, “Okay, I’m at a loss here. Who can help me figure this out?” What you’re doing is demonstrating that you’re willing to talk about your own weaknesses, your own knowledge gaps, et cetera, and invite that team in.

And that’s an act of trust in and of itself. You’re telling the team that you trust them by being willing to be that vulnerable, so that’s the vulnerability side. And then, we’ll go to the active listening side, but again, I think it’s important to talk about this from a respect standpoint. Active listening doesn’t necessarily just mean — We all took that Comm 101 class, or that initial training, and we’re active listening. That means eye contact.

First of all, how do I do eye contact when all of my employees are on Zoom? How do I do that? What active listening really means, is that you’ve convinced the person you’re there to hear what they have to say, and not just think about what you’re going to say in response, right? So okay, eye contact, and nods, and non-verbals are a part of that. But the far more important thing is to make sure that when they’re done speaking, you don’t just jump into their advice.

You take a second and circle back for understanding to make sure we’re actually aligned. “Hey, what I hear you saying in all of that is this,” or, “It sounds like the crux of the issue is this. Did I get that right?” And then, after you’ve checked for understanding, explore the idea even more. “Tell me more about that. What have you tried? What do you think is the cause of this? What are your ideas about why this is happening?”

Because here’s the other thing. If you don’t already have a lot of psych safety on your team, then most of the time when people are coming to you with problems, for example, or with any of these interpersonal risks, they’re not coming to you with the real problem. They’re coming to you with a sanitized, minimized version of the problem that they would feel comfortable admitting, because they’re still worried about your reaction.

If you just jump right into advice, “Great. Here’s what we’re going to do.” You’re giving advice on the wrong problem, and you’re still not helping them see that they can trust you to share the reality of what’s really going on. So when you check for understanding, and you ask those followup questions, you get more of the story, and you also get that person feeling truly heard and considered, feeling respected. And so their level of trust goes up.

Then, you can get into your advice. I’m not saying don’t ever offer your take on what they should do. People do come to you with problems, and want ideas for solutions. That’s part of being a leader, but make sure they’re actually coming to you with the real problem, and that they feel heard when they come to you, before you jump into that advice.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. No, absolutely. I think, that makes me think a lot about Mark Fields from Ford and that story, because a lot of times, it takes that courage also to be able to be that first person to say, “Well, hey, everything’s not okay.” Especially, if it’s in an environment where that in the past, has not been accepted.

David Burkus: Yes. No, I agree. It’s probably one of my favorite case studies ever. I’ve had the opportunity to spend hours of time on multiple occasions with Alan Mulally, who’s my pick because he’s still alive, my pick for the greatest living CEO, even though he’s not a CEO. He’s still around, and he’s still amazing. 2006, Alan took over the turnaround at Ford. Ford was in a world of hurt back then.

They were — Their strategic plan for that year, the annual estimates that they put out to shareholders was that, they were going to lose $17 billion in fiscal year 2006. You think your company has problems, here’s a company that admitted that, if everything goes right, we’re still going to lose $17 billion. Their stock price was trading at a dollar a share, and in comes Alan to try and take over.

And the first thing he noticed is this level — Everything we’ve been talking about with the dysfunction, that’s happening at the senior leadership team at Ford. People see the other members of the team as their competition for promotion. Everybody’s trying to cover their own butts, and nobody’s trying to admit any weaknesses. Nobody’s coming to anybody with problems, because problems are an admission of weakness.

It’s this very, very — I always want to call it a toxic culture, but I have to pause there, because when I wrote about Alan and this Ford story in the book, I sent him the whole chapter for context. And the only notes that he gave me were not on his quotes, or anything like that. Just the two times I wrote the word “toxic” to describe the initial culture, he crossed them out and he said, “That’s a little harsh,” which is trademark Alan Mulally, right?

So Alan comes in, and one of the first things he realizes is, we need to tell it like it is. We need to talk about what’s really going on, and we need to talk about these problems, and to do that, we have to build a culture of psychological safety, a culture of trust and respect. And I think what gets missed in this story a lot of times, is before Mark is willing to summon that courage, what actually has to happen, is several cultural shifts that demonstrate that respect piece.

So Alan had several rules for interactions. There’s several different rules for when we’re in meetings, here’s how they’re going to go. One of the rules I think that stands out the most, is because it seems so trivial, but it turned out to be one of the most important ones, is he said, “We never make a joke at someone else’s expense.” Now, this is a company based in Detroit, Michigan.

I don’t know if you’ve been to Detroit, Michigan, but it’s a very sarcastic — I grew up in Philadelphia, and then lived in Boston, similar culture. We’re a very dry, sarcastic, bust people’s chops type culture. My wife, it took five years for my wife to realize that my family didn’t hate each other. Because, well, every time we got together, all we did was rag on each other. That’s just the culture we were in.

What Alan recognized was that, you can’t build, if there’s those little acts of disrespect, because a joke made at someone else’s expense, is never funny to them. It’s funny to everybody else, but it’s not funny to them. And those little acts of disrespect were undermining that sense of trust. And this took time. It was eight weeks of meeting together, and everyone denying their problems before Mark Fields took that initial risk.

But eventually, as you change the climate on the team, you get someone who’s willing to speak up and say, “Hey, here’s a problem that we’re having. We’re not going to be able to launch the Ford Edge in time. I need help figuring out what the new timeline is going to be? How we’re going to announce it? I need help.” It took a huge amount of courage to get there, to that point where he said, “I need help.”

Little known fact, Mark’s team actually tried to talk him out of giving that report. Team meetings, senior leadership team meetings happened every Thursday morning. Every Wednesday afternoon, most of the senior leaders would meet with their direct reports to prepare for the Thursday morning meeting. And on that Wednesday, Mark’s team underneath him was like, “Mark, you can’t tell anybody. We’re all fired if you tell anybody.”

They were all worried about what was going to happen, but he did it. And Alan’s response, Alan met Mark’s trust, his risks with respect again. Everybody assumed that, old leadership would have torn Mark’s head off, would have escorted him out, would have called security on the guy and said, “You’re fired immediately.” And instead, Alan started clapping, “Hey, Mark, that’s great visibility. All right. What can we do for him?”

And they didn’t solve the problem in a day, but the climate of the team changed, because they saw, “Wait a minute, I can actually share what’s really going on. I’m not going to be fired, or berated, or any of those other acts of disrespect if I step out and trust in this leader and in this team.” So over time, Alan was the CEO, and led the senior leadership team for eight years.

And over time, they shifted from trading at a $1 a share to $17 a share, because they went from losing $17 billion to a $6.6 billion profit. I think the coolest thing is, when Alan announced his resignation on the heels of that, posting that $6.6 billion profit, he also made a recommendation for who should succeed him as the CEO and he recommended Mark Fields.

Now, I think that’s a really cool story, and it’d be great if we stopped there, but time doesn’t stop. Here’s what’s happened afterwards. Mark made it about 18 months. And then, ever since then, there’s been an ongoing succession of CEOs at Ford. New one’s not doing so hot. I bet they wish they could have Alan back, because what Alan understood is that trust isn’t a one and done thing.

We need to be constantly monitoring each other’s behavior to make sure that we’re matching respect with those acts of risks that come out of trust. And I don’t know that any leaders who followed Alan really truly understood that this is a constant thing, not a one and done thing.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. No, I love that. I think, looking and having that vision, that long-term vision of what is this culture going to be like, and what values are we going to have? I think that’s also critical, especially, in such a short term world that we operate in, right?

David Burkus: Yeah. I think the thing that always boggles my mind on this story is, again, it took eight weeks from the time Alan took over and said, “Here’s what the culture is going to look like,” for Mark to step up in — Can you imagine being a leader and saying, “Hey, here’s the standard that we’re going to adhere to.” And then, watch your team fall short of that standard for eight straight weeks, and not get frustrated. Just be patient with them, recognize that culture change takes time, et cetera.

I mean I think it’s absolutely amazing to think about that you can withstand that for two straight months of watching people fall short of the standard before the first opportunity to demonstrate what the new standard is pops up. It’s just incredible to think about.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. No, absolutely. Let’s touch on one other topic for high performing teams, this is the concept of being pro-social. I really love what you’ve talked about, because I think Simon Sinek has always told us to start with why, and we believe it, we know it’s important. But I think your take on that is more like start with who?

David Burkus: Yes. No, it’s exactly  — And in fact, there were several times where that’s the phrase we wanted to use, and then we kept people thinking like, “Well, there’s no reason to like poke him in the eye over the whole thing.” Because I don’t think he’s wrong, right? I think Simon popularized the conversation that organizational psychologists and leadership scholars were having at the same time, which was that, whether it’s this new generation, or whether it’s where we are as a society, and in our own cultural value, people want to know their work matters.

You could call it Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you could call it whatever. But we got to a point where most people wanted to know why what they do matters. And so out came Simon with this idea that you need to start with why. He’s not wrong. What we found since then in another decade of research is that, most people’s most compelling way to answer why, is with a who.

So why not start with “who”? And when I say, “Who” here, I specifically mean who is served by the work that we’re doing? This doesn’t mean you have to change, that you have to have a company that’s changing the world, or this doesn’t mean you have to immediately talk about the way that we’re fighting climate change, or we’re restoring this neighborhood, or this isn’t your CSR campaigns, you don’t have to change your whole company to a nonprofit.

You just have to make sure you’re having a conversation about, “Hey, the reason we do this is that this group of stakeholders lives, or work is made better by it.” Oftentimes, too, that’s the end user of our product, the end user of our service, et cetera. But for a lot of people, especially in a large organization, it’s actually internal. In other words, if we do this, this is what happens.

I was working with probably one of the weirdest teams I’ve ever worked with. Not weird in this — They’re all great people, but weird, in terms of like, I didn’t even realize this function existed until they reached out to me. They were the senior — They were what’s called the escalation desk at a customer support agency. In other words, a lot of times when you reach out for products not working, and you reach out for customer support, you’re not actually talking to employees of the company, you’re talking to another service that provides customer support for that company.

And essentially, they were, if the problem sticks, it gets escalated, they were the top of the top, and so, because they were the top of the top, they not only solve users’ biggest problems, but they also had a direct line to the senior leadership team of the company that had hired them, because what senior leader doesn’t want to know what the biggest problems with their product is.

They began to see their own role again, not as necessarily solving the customers’ problems, but as being the bridge, the liaison. Their “who” was twofold, and their purpose was that we connect these two people. We are the people who keep this company on track, because the senior leaders know what the problems are. And yeah, we solve the customer problems too.

And that’s what I mean. A lot of times, your “who” can be internal. If you do great work, it helps this other team inside the company. You think about HR. HR is probably the foremost example of this. Your job fundamentally is to help everybody else in the organization do their best work. Your role is not necessarily about the company workforce, end users, and product. Your “who” is going to be internal, right?
And that’s why I think, that’s the other reason I think we start with who, and not why. The why is the big organizational mission. And that’s not invalid. We need that. No one wants to work for a purposeless organization. Our own individual — We were designed, we were evolved to judge our impact based on who we can see impacted.

And for a lot of us in large organizations, this is someone else internal. Again, like I said, HR is a great example of that, where your “who” is not going to be how you fulfill the company mission. It’s going to be how you equip people to do their best work, so that they can fulfill the company mission.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. I love that explanation. Particularly, if anyone from HR is listening, that’s a really great overview of why you exist, right?

David Burkus: Yes. I do a lot of work in employee engagement and employee experience, and that sort of thing. And it’s one of the ones where everybody struggles with like, “Well, who’s our ‘who’? Because it’s not the customer.” I’m like, “No, it’s everyone you interact with.” Because you shape the whole thing that allows everybody else to perform.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes. Who do you serve, right?

David Burkus: Yes.

Brian Tomlinson: Let’s shift over. Because I love— There’s something else that you have written about in your book, “Friend of a Friend,” of a Friend of a Friend, right?

David Burkus: I had nothing to do with the book cover, but it’s my favorite cover out there, because it just keeps going and going and going, but that’s how networks work.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah I love it. Yes, that’s exactly it. And what I really like is that, you have said that networking is actually a science, right? So it’s not this thing that a lot of people — I love that you say like, it makes you feel a little bit dirty, right? But it’s actually a science about it. Could you tell the listeners what really makes it a science, and why is it so important?

David Burkus: Yes. First on the, first on the dirty concept, fundamentally, the whole reason I wrote the book is, I became fascinated with organizational networks, and organizational network analysis. And then, I noticed every time I started talking about it, people rejected the premise, because that word “network” made them feel weird. They thought networking was like all of the spammy connection requests they get on LinkedIn, or having to go to that mixer, and perfect their introduction.

It’s amazing to me how widespread there is, books and articles and TED Talks, whatever, on how to properly introduce yourself. Like I’m sorry, what? Right? But fundamentally, one of the reasons for that is that, they were absorbing all of this, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” or “Never Eat Alone” advice, and then trying to implement it.

And it wasn’t that, any of that advice is wrong. It’s just, if I’m asking you, “Hey, how did you make such and such connection?” You’re telling me inside the context of your personality, your knowledge, skills, and abilities, your existing connections. So if I go try and take your advice, and apply it to my life, I’m going to feel inauthentic, because I’m not being myself in that moment. I’m trying to be you.

And so what’s the opposite of that? Well, it’s the realization, we get this from organizational network analysis, but from other things that there are fundamental universal principles to how networks form and collaborate. We can study them as a science. It’s a whole discipline. It’s called network science. And what we find is, there are several principles that are at play. We already joked about one, this idea of six degrees of separation earlier.

There are all these different phenomenon at play in every single human network, computer network, electrical grid, any type of thing where there are connections between individual components, they follow certain universal principles. So the grand theory I think is, okay, the only way to develop and grow in your own professional network that still feels authentic to you, is not to apply someone else’s advice. It’s to understand what are the universal truths of networks.

And then, based on that, shape a strategy that works really, really well for you. And that strategy is going to be different for every person. But it’s going to work, because it’s in line with those universal principles.

Brian Tomlinson: Cool. How do you, because you mentioned LinkedIn. I’m a big LinkedIn user. How should networking really operate on LinkedIn from your perspective?

David Burkus: Okay. Well, this is hard for me to answer, because I am — Full disclosure, I’m a contractor inside of, I have several LinkedIn learning courses, and that sort of stuff. So I don’t want to be seen on a podcast trashing them about their product. But I think the biggest mistake they probably made in the last couple of years, is they really downplayed the role of groups.

LinkedIn Groups used to be awesome. You could be in a certain profession, and you could dive in and find — It was essentially like, it was a 365-day long professional association conference, right? That was perfect, again, for all sorts of different types of networkers, because one of the things we noticed in, that’s universally true about human psychology, but also about network science, is what Brian Uzzi, the researcher would refer to as the shared activities principle.

People make deeper and more authentic connections, not when they’re just trying to connect over coffee talks or random, they do it when they’re focused on something else, participating in an activity together, doing a sport together, or talking about their profession with each other. They’re not there to connect. They’re there to get answers, share feedback, et cetera.

But in doing that shared activity, they make those connections. You can still do this on LinkedIn now, but you have to really be much more deliberate about who you’re following, who you’re commenting on, what hashtags you’re— It used to be a whole lot easier in the world of groups, but that’d still be where I would be.

Do you remember back in the day, this was 10 years ago, people used to put the word “lion” in their profile. It stood for LinkedIn Open Networking. In other words, I’ll just accept any connection requests. Nobody cares, nobody cares. Because of course, when I say, “Oh, you and I have this mutual friend in common, how do you know them?” They would always say, “Oh, I don’t, we’re just connected on LinkedIn.” Okay, well, then what’s the point?

The way to use a tool like this is not to just send out all of these connection requests, or chase down who’s a second degree connection of who, whatever. It’s just to jump into the conversation. Again, I wish that conversation was still happening in very active groups, but the conversation is still happening. It’s just moved into your main feed.

And so you just got to go be very deliberate about who you’re unfollowing, who you’re choosing to follow, et cetera, and what conversations you’re engaging in. And again, treat LinkedIn like a 365-day long professional association conference, and you’re going to get a lot more benefit out of it, than if you’re just trying to send random connection requests.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, I love LinkedIn as well. Definitely, but that’s such, such a great take, because groups are so powerful. Because the funny thing is, you see so many community-based tools blowing up right now. You have tools like circle, tools like school. So people are looking to build communities, right? LinkedIn is obviously not leveraging what they have. You can hardly even find your LinkedIn groups anymore. 

David Burkus: Yes, that’s by minimizers. They’re like often you have to click. Even it’s mind boggling why you would sort of— I’m sure there’s a profit and loss reason for it. I get it. I don’t have access to any of that information. I’m sure there’s data behind the decision. It’s just as a former power groups user, it’s just sad to see, and you’re exactly right. And by the way, maybe that’s the strategy.

Now, people are looking for community. If you get out there, and you can’t find one, go start it, start posting content about that specific topic, and start moving people over to a group you run in circle, or in school, or what have you. A lot of the thing we find about modern day super connectors, is that they’re just the ones who took responsibility for the community.

And then, in doing so, they happen to be the central node of the community. But that wasn’t their aim. Their aim was, “Hey, there isn’t a current community for this group of people. I’m going to start one.”

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah I love that advice, because it’s necessary and it’s definitely something as critical. Maybe let’s talk about then Jon Levy.

David Burkus: Yes.

Brian Tomlinson: First off, I need to know, have you been to a dinner?

David Burkus: Yeah. No, Jon — Actually, I was just in New York a couple weeks ago, on a very long walk and talk with Jon, as he’s writing his next book. Jon’s fantastic. I’ve been —

Brian Tomlinson: Tell people who he is.

David Burkus: Yeah.

Brian Tomlinson: Tell people who he is, and why he’s important, because I found that to be such a fascinating story in the book. Why? Because it brings the humanity out, and why you do networking, so maybe just give a quick backstory on that.

David Burkus: So Jon is such an interesting character. Jon started this — It is a great example of that shared activities principle we were talking about, actually. Jon started this recurring dinner that eventually grew into what he started to refer to as the Influencers Dinner, because the goal was to get people who are influential, maybe not well-known, but influential in a variety of different fields together.

But there are very specific rules for how Jon’s dinner works. First of all, if you’re invited, you go, you don’t get to send somebody else, the invitation is not transferable, et cetera. You go. When you arrive, you find out that, number one, dinner isn’t going to be served, dinner is going to be cooked, we’re all going to be working together to cook this dinner collaboratively a lot of times, and you’re going to be paired with somebody. And there’s a couple rules there. One of the biggest rules is, you don’t tell them your name, or what they do, which is funny, because those are the first two questions we normally ask when we’re meeting someone, “Who are you?” and “What do you do?” No, can’t use those. You can use your first name, but not in — If your full name would identify who you are, or I suppose, if you’re one of those crazy people who only has one name, because you’re that identifiable, then don’t say a name at all, make one up.

But the idea is, you’re going to spend a set amount of time prepping, preparing this dinner, and everybody’s got a different set of tasks in all of these groups, you’re going to start prepping that, and having this conversation. And since you can’t talk about who you are, and what do you do, you got to find other things to talk about. So you end up talking about hobbies and habits, and things that are outside of your normal scripted responses.

And then, you sit down to dinner, and you learn who everybody else is. Which is a ton of fun, because you often find out you got it tremendously wrong, like, “Oh, actually, this person is the chief marketing officer at Nike,” or, “This person is Scandinavian royalty,” or this person, you may have never heard of her, but she’s actually who picks the dresses at the Met Gala, so she’s incredibly influential. You learn all of these crazy stories about people that you never would have guessed.

But the more important thing is, because you dropped your script, and because you started exploring, first of all, because you engage in a shared activity, you had a more authentic conversation, but you also couldn’t use your normal script that we all hide behind. You had to talk about other stuff. And in doing so, you found what, in psychology, we call these uncommon commonalities, you found things in common with that person that are usually outside of what’s your script, and outside of what’s their script.

And now, even though you find out that person is Scandinavian royalty, like yeah, but we still also love cricket. We just have that in common for some reason, I’m making it up. Although I do have a cricket bat behind me in the video, which is funny. You just find those things in common, and because you have those non work things in common, you end up interacting with that person much more frequently post dinner, because you have other things to talk about than just work related stuff.

We often approach this whole concept of networking, based on who is going to be beneficial to our professional life. And the truth is, you have no way of knowing that, because the world is just such an interconnected place, where people take all sorts of career detours, and pivots, and what have you, that you have no way of being able to predict who’s going to be most influential in your career five years down the road.

So the better strategy is, just to develop as many deep and authentic connections with a diversity of people as you can. And just put that into the network as a whole, and trust that it’ll come back to you beneficially. And that’s what those Influencers Dinners do. Jon’s leveled up the approach. During COVID, you obviously couldn’t have an Influencers Dinner together, and Zoom cooking sessions together is a little weird.

He mirrored them into — He’s got these dinners that then lead into salons. So in essence, now the dinner is like your entry point into this broader community, you have to have that experience. And then, you have these bigger events where you have 50, 70, sometimes 100 people together to discuss a specific idea. Again, that’s what he refers to as the salon, but the principle is still the same, like the way you get connected into this network, that he’s put himself at the center of speaking of building communities, that’s been super beneficial to him, the way that you do all of that, is through a shared activity, where you’re not — Where you’re ditching your traditional script, and just focusing on connecting with that person, and trusting that it’ll be beneficial in the end.

Brian Tomlinson: Yes, that’s such an amazing story. I really love that. Looking at the time, I have one last question for you. Jim Rohn used to always say that you are, basically, the aggregate of the five people you spend the most time with. Do you believe that?

David Burkus: No. It’s a bit like what we were talking about earlier with Simon Sinek. He’s not wrong. He’s just shortsighted. If you look at the network science research, there’s this phenomenon called the three degrees of influence, you Google that, or Google Nick Christakis, or James Fowler, and you find this three degrees of influence. Basically, they took this large scale network model and they found out that, yes, the people your primary connect, you use LinkedIn terms, your first order connections are influential in your life. And yeah, the people you interact with the most are going to have that biggest influence. But the thing a lot of us don’t realize, is that your second order connections, and even your third order connections, people you don’t know, but have a friend of a friend of a friend, still have some influence on you, because there’s like a cascade of influence.

The reason I think this is so important, and so much better than Jim Rohn’s, is that you don’t — If you’re thinking about who you need to be better connected to? If you’re trying to change a habit in your life, you’re trying to change something, it’s not just like, “Oh, pick new friends,” which is, candidly, is also how cults get started, right? Ditch all of your old associations, and only hang out with these people.

It’s that you want to pay attention to that whole network, you want to move slightly closer to the people who maybe you aspire to be like one day, but you also want to pay attention to who’s influencing them, because you never know what’s going to happen again down the road. And so it’s not about being connected to five people. It’s about what is the community that I’m a part of, where the second and third order connections are going to happen and the way those have a subtle social influence on me as well. That’s a far more important question, is this broader — Again, to just berate a dead term to broader network analysis, to look at this broader community, this network that I want to be a part of. It’s a way bigger deal than just, “Oh, I need to spend more time with this person, and less time with this person.” It’s what is that broader community, that section of the network that I need to deliberately move myself to.

Brian Tomlinson: Amazing. That’s something new to think about. David, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Maybe tell people where they can find you online. Where would you like people to learn more?

David Burkus: Yes. Well, if you’ve gotten this far, I’m going to assume that you liked what you listened to. You weren’t just like hate-listening to everything. You probably already know that the easiest place to find me is show notes, and on this page, et cetera. If you go there, they’re going to link to davidburkus.com. B-U-R-K-U-S. I’m really lucky. That’s a very odd, rare name so all the domains were still open.

You type that as a dot com, you can search into Google, and find me on whatever network you want to be a part of. We at least post content there. I can’t promise that we respond quickly there. I can if you do it on LinkedIn. But anywhere else will find however you want to keep the conversation going. We’re there. I hope we do, because none of the things we talked about today, we solved today, right? These are ongoing conversations. And so I hope we connect, and keep that conversation going.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely. We’ll need to do a part two. So thanks so much and thanks, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Aspire to Inspire Podcast. Have a great one, and see you on the next show.