Adam Bryant on how to know if you're ready to become a leader

Adam Bryant:

There are three currencies of leadership. Tell me something that makes me feel smarter and maybe I've heard it before, but it's a good reminder. And the second thing is Tell me a story that brings that insight to life. How did you learn it? Because that makes it feel real, makes it feel sticky, it's memorable. And then the third currency is give me a framework, an approach, something I can take back to my day job and put that insight into action. Cut out all the platitudes, cut out all the cliches, cut out all the generalities, cut out all the theories of leadership, because I break out in hives when I hear the phrase leadership theory.

Damon Klotz:

How do you prepare for an interview with a guest that has spent a career interviewing more than a thousand CEO’s?

Well, I’d like to think that I already do a lot of research to make sure that each podcast episode is jam-packed with aha moments and takeaways, but for this episode, well you can say that I went above and beyond on the research front to help calm my nerves.

And at one point I thought it would be a good idea to risk my role as host of this podcast by going off the cuff and listing all of Culture Amp’s values, praying that I wouldn’t forget one due to nerves, and having my guest rate them… How do you think I went? Spoiler alert, I’m still hosting the show. And what do you think he had to say about our values at Culture Amp after asking more than 1000 CEO’s about theirs?!

My guest today is Adam Bryant. Adam is currently senior managing director at the Ex-Co Group, but you might know Adam for his work as a columnist on one of the most popular NY Times columns of all time.

That column was the the iconic Corner Office, where he interviewed CEO’s of the world’s top companies and notoriously never missed a single week of publication in 18 years.

In this conversation, despite my initial nerves ended up flowing brilliantly if I do say so myself, Adam Bryant powerfully distills all the cliches and platitudes we constantly hear about leadership.

I ask him to break down what he thinks makes for a great CEO-CHRO relationship? 


Adam tells me in no uncertain terms that “there are still too many bad bosses in the world” and we reflect on the damage these bad bosses are causing.

And we talk diversity - Adam’s not sure that we need any more studies that tell us about the importance of diversity. What he says we need as a path forward, and I agree with him, is a lived experience and connection with other people’s stories at an emotional level.

Luckily for us, Adam did not put the pen down after leaving the New York Times. His latest book, The Leap to Leader, contains practical strategies and tactics for building a loyal following, moving up quickly to broaden your impact, and making the subtle but crucial mindset shifts that are required to lead others effectively.

If your ambition is to be a leader who leads with empathy and humanity and you desire the ability to ground an organization's strategies in meaningful, mission-driven, and purposeful ways - then you’re going to want to take notes during this conversation with Adam Bryant.


I do have one favor to ask of you, and that is to not keep the learnings from this episode to yourself. If you have a leadership program at your work, if you have a slack or teams channel for managers, share this episode with those groups. Adam has interviewed arguably the most important business leaders of the 21st century and he’s distilled those learnings to help you become the leader that the world needs right now.

Damon Klotz

Today on the Culture First podcast, I'm going to be in conversation with Adam Bryant. Adam, thank you so much for joining me today.

Adam Bryant

Thank you, Damon.

Damon Klotz

I want to start this conversation by saying that I'm not a journalist. I love to ask questions and I feel really lucky to host this podcast, but I'm not academically trained as one. And despite all of that, due to this podcast being pretty well received, even though it's a podcast on the world of work and you know, I'm not in the true crime space, which is my biggest enemy when it comes to downloads. Due to its success, I do get about a dozen pictures a week from PR firms who would like me to interview someone. Typically because they have a book coming out.

When I got an email about your book and your work and to have the chance to sit down with you, I knew I had to reply because when it comes to interviewing company leaders, I'm not sure if I can think of anyone who has got as many runs on the board as you do. During your 18 years at the New York Times, you interviewed a company leader for your column corner office where you, I believe, didn't miss a week. Is that still true? Didn't miss a week. Amazing.

Adam Bryant

That's right. Yep, for more than a decade.

Damon Klotz

Yeah, you interviewed over 500 CEOs during that time period and since then have continued to write newsletters on LinkedIn which takes your total to well over a thousand leaders. So not only that, I also know that you're an avid index card user and you've been able to connect all the dots from those interviews. So I think it's fair to say our listeners are definitely in for a treat when it comes to how to create a better world of work. So with all that being said, shall we get started?

Adam Bryant

Looking forward to it.

Damon Klotz

So we have an opening tradition on this show, I'm going to paint a picture for you. Let's say that you're sitting in Central Park in New York, it's a warm fall evening and the sky has that beautiful shade of pink in it. A curious 10 year old walks past with their parents and stops to ask you, excuse me, what do you do for work? How do you answer?

Adam Bryant

I would tell them that I study leadership and try and figure out the infinite Rubik's Cube of leadership, which I think is one of the hardest things on the planet. And I take a journalistic approach to doing that. As you mentioned earlier, by now I've interviewed more than a thousand leaders, mostly CEOs, but also board directors, heads of HR. And

And so talking to people who lead on the front lines and gaining insights and stories and frameworks and approaches. So that's probably how I'd answer.

Damon Klotz

Like I said, the amount of back catalog that you've got in terms of stories, I think is gonna be incredible. So we've got a lot to dive into today. I'm in researching this when I was looking at, I guess your interview style, I sort of found it as both sort of serious and professional, but also very polished. And your goal is to always, I guess, establish a sense of rapport with these CEOs who you had a chance to interview to get the most out of them, but with a real focus on advice that others could learn from. And...

I think you've done this by being one of the few journalists out there who would ask about anything besides the company strategy. And I know that is a goal that is like very, that you're very passionate about and comes out in both your column and your book. So I know that I'm supposed to be asking the questions here, but we're all for breaking down stereotypes at Culture Am. Is there a classic question that you used in your interviews over the years that you would like to ask me right now so that we can establish some solid foundations for this conversation?

Adam Bryant

Sure. Tell me about the early influences of your life that really shaped who you are and your values today.

Damon Klotz

So I think the first one that comes to mind would be my grade five primary school teacher in Brisbane in Australia. I feel like that was the first time I saw an external influence who wasn't someone in my immediate family take a genuine interest in my success and felt like he cared about me and I'd only just moved to Brisbane the year earlier after I sort of lived in a couple different cities in Australia.

Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, then moved to Brisbane. So I think he was the first external person that I can remember who I'm like, this person I think genuinely wants me to succeed and be happy. And I feel like that was my core memory of like, what a great teacher. And when school for me was like the best.

Adam Bryant

wonderful.

Damon Klotz

What is it about those questions where you ask people to go back to the start that you think unlock something that allows you to have a great conversation?

Adam Bryant

Yeah.

And just to provide the context, I mean, when I launched the Corner Office series in the New York Times in 2009, it was based on a simple what if, which is what if I sat down with CEOs and never asked them a single question about their companies, right? Which is how most people tend to interview CEOs about their strategy, their products, how next quarter looks, the macroeconomic forces. So I said, what if we just set aside all those questions and I just interview you as a human being, as a leader, try and understand what you've learned, the key lessons.

And it was interesting, I mean, you do run an incredibly popular podcast, and you do this too, right? You're always trying to figure out what are the best questions to unlock the best insights, right? And so this kind of weekly interview series I had, early on, I was just this sort of test. It's like, well, what about this? I'll try this. And over time, I developed a pretty simple system where I would ask.

pretty much always the same three questions at the start of the interview, which is, tell me about when you were a kid, like what were you doing outside of class?

tell me about your parents or whoever raised you, and tell me about how your parents or whoever raised you influenced your leadership style today. And I generally found that when they answered those three questions, I just felt like, okay, I get you as a human being, right? Because I think the concrete start setting and who we are pretty early in life. And if I can understand you in those early years and your parents.

Adam Bryant

and I felt like I was kinda 80% of the way there to understanding you. We'll talk about leadership lessons and how you hire and how you think about culture and teams and all those other things, but I want to understand you as a human being. And so to me, I just found those were three great, great questions. And I also found that the CEOs were so happy to have that conversation, because I think if you're a CEO, honestly, you're probably given some version

like 20 times a day, right, to investors and customers and employees and all those other things. And nobody ever asked them about themselves as human beings, as leaders, right? It's sort of like sports coaches. I mean, sports coaches are always asked basically, okay, how are you going to win on Sunday and why did you lose last Sunday, right? And nobody ever asks coaches, tell me about your leadership style. And I think it's similar in business. And so...

I was just really intrigued because I'd spent a lot of years as a business reporter interviewing CEOs and asking them those traditional questions. But the more time I spent with them, the more I just became really intrigued with them. They seemed super smart. They seemed to have a lot of wisdom, like a really fast chip in their brains. Some of them had great senses of humor. And I just like, I just want to understand you. So that's kind of where it all started.

Damon Klotz

Am I right in my research that your father was a journalist as well?

Adam Bryant

He was, yeah. He worked at Time Magazine and Reader's Digest as well.

Damon Klotz

How did that kind of shape your approach to journalism and storytelling? Do you feel like you are borrowing from the, you know, the same page in terms of how he approached it? Or was it more so just like a mindset in terms of being a journalist?

Adam Bryant

Yeah, the, you know, when I was a teenager, I was, I'm never going to become a journalist. I'm not going to follow my father's footsteps. And of course I did. And, you know, I spent 30 years in journalism, enjoyed every, pretty much every minute of it. And it's just a great field to give you sort of this infinite learning curve and let you meet people with this, you know, corner office was always a side project for me. These interviews that I did, my day job was at

mostly managing teams of reporters on different desks. But I think the thing that I got from my father was that

He was just a world-class listener. I remember vividly as a kid watching him talk to people, whether it was strangers or friends, and he was so present and so encouraging, and you could tell he just wanted the best for the person, and I saw him almost transform people in the moment to sort of get them really excited and sharing stuff, and he always thought sort of the best in people and saw the best in people,

they responded. So I think, you know, a core part of interviewing, as you know, is being a really good listener, being really present, not having any judgments, wanting to hear what the other person has to say. And so I that was a big influence as a kid for me.

Damon Klotz

is a huge difference when you're listening because you want to hear the other person versus listening because you want to reply to the other person, which I know sounds ironic for a podcast because it really is about listening and replying, but for the most part, when I hear you, I know how to reply.

Adam Bryant

Yeah, yeah, and I often think about that expression that most conversations are serial monologues, right? Like the other person is sort of saying, I can't wait for you to stop talking so I can tell you what I think. And I just feel like in our society, there's less and less real listening going on. Maybe it's because of our devices.

But, and I often talk about how, you know, you generally won't find a course on listening in MBA programs, but I really think that listening is sort of this underrated superpower of effective leaders and a lot of them aren't good at it and need to be.

Damon Klotz

You mentioned there was 525 corner office columns throughout your, you know, um, you know, I think 19 years at the New York times. Can, can you go back to like the day that you had to submit the very first one to your editor and like, who was that interview? How, like, what was the kind of, you know, do you have any idea about the journey you were about to go on?

Adam Bryant

Yeah, and when I first proposed the idea to my colleagues at the Times, I think they would acknowledge themselves there was a little bit of skepticism, right? Because back then it really was a bit of a departure. I mean, this was 2009 and CEOs were CEOs, they were business people and talked to them about the business and how it's going. And I suggested this what if, so again, there was a little bit of skepticism, but they said give it a shot. And so I reached out to a guy named Greg,

Brenneman who I had met years earlier when he was the president of then continental airlines, which got merged with United. But you know, I'd known him for a while. He was always super open, super thoughtful, like incredibly fast brain.

and he and I had done a couple of things together, had interviewed him, and I thought Greg would be a great launch customer, if you will, for this idea. And I remember quite vividly the feeling, I met him at his office in New York, and we did the interview, and I walked out of the building, and I said to myself, this is going to work.

And it did, I mean, shortly after, I mean, you mentioned you get pitched all day long for people to be on your podcast. And shortly after I started Corner Ops, and again, did it every week, I quickly started feeling like a bouncer at a club, right? Because I was getting pitched like, you know, eight to 10 times every single day saying, please interview our CEO. And I was just in the fortunate position of being very picky. And I would often, the pitch would come in

Adam Bryant

I was always looking for clues that suggested this person was thoughtful about leadership because just because somebody's a successful businessman doesn't mean they are a successful leader in my books, right? Because there's a lot of successful business people who are phone throwers and I don't wanna interview phone throwers. And so I was always looking for those clues and often ask the PR people to do more work for me that.

that just gave me a sense that, yeah, this person has thought a lot about leadership. And it's just one example. I got a pitch once about a CEO who would, at a sort of annual company event, would make new managers participate in a hula hoop contest on stage.

And I just, I was so intrigued by that. And the reason she did it, she said, look, most people look like an idiot when they're doing hula hoops. Right. And she said, so you.

To be able to do that, you cannot take yourself seriously, right? You just have to have that personality of being able to laugh at yourself and do that kind of thing. And she just said like it was a really important test because she wanted people at her company who didn't take themselves too seriously. And I just I saw that and it's like it's like a little detective clue. It's like that person has thought about leadership. And so it was a great conversation.

Damon Klotz

like the quicker you can get someone to failure, the quicker you can get someone to breaking down any sort of patterns that they think they have to kind of uphold in order to do well or to, you know, have that whole facade of what it means to be a leader. You know, the quicker we can realize that we're all humans and we're trying to work it out the better. So I totally understand why something like that would be useful. I'm wondering about maybe your first perception of leadership and then what has led to passion, you know.

Are there particular leaders that you worked with who have shaped your understanding of it?

Adam Bryant

I, it actually started much earlier in life. So I played a ton of sports when I was a kid. And I was always intrigued by the different coaching styles. And, you know, I also remember watching football, like.

NFL football on a Sunday and I found myself watching the coaches as much as the players. I was just so intrigued by the different styles. Like some of them would just sit, stand there stone faced on the sidelines and others were like, you know, waving their arms and yelling at the players. And it's just like, this is interesting. And I...

I never wanted to be a manager or leader myself when I was a young reporter, because when you're a reporter, it's like a great job. You're basically a lone agent and as long as you're on top of your game, you're basically left alone. And when I was, I think I was about 27, I was working in a medium size newspaper and my boss, who was the business editor, called me over to his house one night and he said,

you're gonna be the next business editor because I'm becoming the managing editor. I said, no, I'm not. And he said, yes, you are. And I said, no, I'm not. And he said, no, yes, you are. And I didn't wanna do it because I was having a lot of fun and I think the department was probably about seven people. There was a couple of people on the staff who were old enough to be my father and wanted the job that he was gonna give me. But I did it and.

I was horrible. I mean, I feel like I made every single mistake in the book and then some. I wasn't a phone thrower, but I just, I look back on those times and it's just like, wow, like that's a YouTube highlight reel of how not to be a manager. And I think because of that experience, it really...

Adam Bryant

Remind me it's like wow, this is hard right like this is really hard And everybody goes into management roles over the first time where they've got a theory it's like yeah, you just tell people what to do and they do it and like

It's like, no, it's like 100x harder than you think it's going to be. And I think because of that, it sort of sensitized me to the fact that, wow, this is really hard. And there's not really great playbooks. Like, there's lots of books out there with sort of theories of management, and they'll give you Venn diagrams and, you know, colored tiered pyramids with theories about how to manage people. But it's like, man.

There's nothing more complicated on the planet than people. And there's 10x more colleagues managing those complicated people. So I think that sensitized me. And then I left that paper, went back to reporting at the New York Times for about a decade. And in those years, because I had sat on the other side of the table as an editor, I was much more sensitized to how good the editor was that I was working for.

right, and just sort of appreciating their different styles. I mean, the good ones, like, and I, a lot of it was just sort of asking myself questions and just like, why is this person, like, what are they doing that really makes me inspired and wanna work for them? And why is this editor sort of driving me crazy and feels like kryptonite who's sapping all the energy out of me, right? And so I did that for about a decade and then came to this other sort of crucible moment. I left The Times to go to Newsweek Magazine

and I was a senior writer there and the business editor left. And I'd been working on the book for a long time.

Adam Bryant

They asked me if I wanted to be the business editor. Again, I said no. But it was just one of those moments. I got really tired of working for bad editors. And all my colleagues were coming to me anyways as one of their peers to talk about their stories and things like that. So it was just one of those moments like, you need to move down the hall and get into that office. So I did that. And again, sort of through all those experiences, I just, I was just always.

watching leaders, good ones, bad ones, why are the good ones good? Why are the bad ones bad? And my only skill in life is sort of pattern matching. So I'm always watching for patterns and things like that. And I from those patterns, I try and develop frameworks. And because I think leadership is so hard, I mean, part of.

you know, the reason I get out of bed in the morning is that if I can, through my books and the interviews and sharing insights, if I can help people become better managers and leaders, even a little bit, then that to me is a good day. Cause the fact of the matter is there are still too many bad bosses in the world, right? It's just, you know, I, I always feel like, um,

Sometimes I run things through the filter of if aliens came down to our planet and walked around and you know, sort of with a notebook and I think if they spent six months in the planet, like one of the things they would ask us like, so we have a question for you. Like you've got a problem here. There are like way too many bad bosses, right? Like there's you got this weird thing around racism. Like what's that all about? You got like huge inequality problems. Like that's a big thing we should talk about, but we should talk about these bad bosses because they're creating a lot of toxic stress for a lot of people.

and destroying a lot of organizations. And why haven't you guys solved that yet? And so to me, that's like a big challenge.

Damon Klotz

Yeah, it's, you know, I think it's the reason that even though this is not a true crime podcast, people do listen to it because there's this desire to, you know, have a better world of work and, you know, to work under better leaders and also to be a better leader yourself and to understand what are their behaviors that we should be trying to codify and understand like what are the, like, like you said, like that curious mindset of like, what does it feel like to work under a good editor and what does it feel like when I'm not and what, you know, how do I look for those things and how do we do some work with that? And.

You know, obviously that's also a large part of the modern CHROs world, which is this whole idea of like, what are the, you know, the culture, the behaviors and the norms that we're trying to, you know, both write down, but then also measure, demonstrate, and be able to kind of make sure that there's scalable systems around that. And I was interested because your, you know, your series at the times was this really clear focus on not asking CEOs about strategy. And then your LinkedIn series is called strategic CHRO.

So what was it about the strategic CHR row as a function that you found really interesting that you wanted to dedicate a whole series to it?

Adam Bryant

Sure, and we launched the series before the pandemic, just because in my work, I left the time six years ago, I work for a company that does executive mentoring at the C-suite level, and we work with leadership teams, and really it's about mentoring. And so we engage with a lot of CHROs, and I, you know, my CEO, David Reimer, and I just felt like that is a really tough job.

Right, it's as one CHRO said to us, a woman named Rhonda Morris, who's the CHRO Chevron has become a friend of mine. She says, it's almost like a job without a job description. Right, at some level you're kind of responsible for everything maybe except like, you know, the obvious functions of CFO and maybe setting strategy and the general counsel's job, but almost everything, at some level, like culture and talent and hiring and all these things become the CHRO's responsibility. And then the pandemic hits and I feel like the job instantly got 10X harder, right? As one CHRO said to us, anytime there's a jump ball on the leadership team, the CHRO always comes down with it now, right? All these new problems that have happened in the last few years, it's like, people look down the table, it's like, hey, isn't that, that's yours, right?

You've got this, right? And so to me, it's become all these brand new challenges. I think it requires a certain wiring and mindset in the 100 plus interviews we've done with Heads of HR. One of our favorite questions is, what is it about your background and your wiring, those early influences that prepared you for these years, this moment where

it's like there's this infinite pile of Rubik's cubes outside your door, right? Like everything's a new problem. Oh, you solved that great. Because you know what? There's about a hundred lined up behind them that you've never had before. And I think a lot of people are excited about that. It's like what an amazing time to be in a leadership position and really influencing and impacting the future of work. And then there's other people that's just like, I'm out. Like this is not what I signed up for. And so...

Adam Bryant

I've been so intrigued and just inspired by all the insights we've heard from them, but I do think the CHRO has the hardest job. Like yeah, you could say the CEO has the hardest job too, but boy oh boy, like every all the soft stuff, all the tricky things, like what is, you know, all the incredible sort of tectonic shifts that we've seen in work, right? Like you just run down the list. I mean, the nature of leadership is changing, remote work, all these sort of questions that keep piling up that people are trying to figure out anew, and there's no playbook for them. And so, I don't know, I just find these conversations endlessly fascinating.

Damon Klotz

I think you'd have a unique perspective on given the amount of CEOs that you've both interviewed as well as worked with, but then also recognizing this huge focus on the modern CHRO and Chief People Officer being one of the most critical linchpin roles in a company in terms of how things actually work. What do you think makes for a great CEO CHRO relationship?

Adam Bryant

It's it first of all, it's based on trust, right? Everything starts there. And I think the CHRO has to feel like they can walk into the CEO's office, close the door and say, look, I need to tell you something like the that I, I get what you're trying to accomplish, but what you're saying is not landing the way you want, right? To be that trusted confidant and coach, like that's essential to the relationship. I also think CHROs play a somewhat unique role on the leadership team that they are both a part of it, but they are also a part.

They are a peer, but they are also at some level responsible for the functioning of the leadership team and the culture and how well they're working together. So to me, everything starts with trust, with the CEO, with their peers, and just going into the job where, look, you have, you have the best interests of the organization at heart. I've always been intrigued by some CHROs have told us like, I have made clear to the CEO that I don't want any other job than this. I'm not aspiring to take your job. So this is what I wanna do, I'm here to help, and I don't have any side agendas, right? Because you get up in those sort of leadership teams and a lot of people have side agendas, right? I often joke that the reason HBO ran Game of Thrones was to get people ready for work on Monday, right? Because I think that's how a lot of leadership teams operate. Like it's a zero sum game. I've got to take you down if I'm going to win. Right. And because of that, I think.

Damon Klotz

Yeah. There's only one person who's going to get on this throne.

Adam Bryant

And because that as the CEO is, everybody's approaching the CEO with side agendas. And if as the CHRO, you say to the CEO, I have no other side agenda other than the success of you and this organization and our leadership team, I think that gives you a lot of credibility and gives you that trust.

Damon Klotz

Yeah, definitely with my work in the HR space and sort of the, you know, CPOs and CHROs who I know the ability to walk into that room, knowing that you will have the hardest conversations potentially with the CEO on any given day. Like, of course, if the numbers aren't going well, that's a hard conversation. Of course, if the product isn't shipping, that's a hard conversation, but to sit down and go to the very core of what it means to be human and all of the complexities of what's going on.

with the amount of humans who've agreed that they're willing to put their shoulder to the wheel to work for this company and do this work and then to talk about how those things are working or not working. That's about as hard as it gets.

Adam Bryant

Yeah, I agree.

Damon Klotz

There's probably three words that we're going to say the most in this episode and I thought it might be good to get your definition on them just so we're really clear. Those words are manager, leader and culture. So first up, do you see a difference between manager and leader? And I asked that because, you know, I've had Simon Sinek on the show and he's got a very strong opinion on this topic. So I wanted to see whether you've got any difference between the two.

Adam Bryant

Sure, my distinction, we could talk about this for hours, but my simple distinction is that when you're a manager, they're usually somebody is giving you this idea of expected outcomes, right? We want you to accomplish X, we're giving you resources, time, people, money, resources, but we want you to do this, and then it's your job to do that well and manage the people, get the best work out of them, come in on budget, on time, all those other things. So in that context, somebody is basically saying, here is the expected outcome with.

To be a leader, I think, is to, first of all, you have to nail the manager part of your job, right? Deliver on the expected outcomes. But then to go beyond and say, okay, how can I transform this in ways that people haven't seen? How can I not only take the current job I'm doing, but completely transform it? And then to look around and say, what other opportunities? What are the things I can take off my boss's plate? What are the things that the team, the department needs that they are not seeing? What are the things that the organization needs that they are not seeing? And then having the courage, having the courage to put yourself out there and say, look, we should be doing X, we need to be doing Y. Again, just to sort of see beyond the sort of job description and in effect, the box that you've been handed. To me, that's the biggest distinction.

Damon Klotz

When you use those words like have the courage, a reminder of one of the values at Culture Amp is have the courage to be vulnerable and when you think about that at its core, it is to create no matter what level you are at the company, whether you've been here for one day, one week or 10 years, it's like how do you even get into that mindset of leading and having that courage to know that you might not be ready for the opportunity or you don't know if this is the right thing to do or say, but to know that like this is a place where we do encourage that.

Adam Bryant

Yeah, exactly. And it is hard for a lot of people because I think a lot of people are much more comfortable doing, in effect, doing what they are told or what is asked of them. But it is just a whole other level to say, you know what? I know you told me to do this, but this is what I think we should be doing.

Damon Klotz

So this show is called Culture First, and we sort of have a definition of Culture First at Culture Amp, which is being intentional about our culture, which is the how we work, to deliver performance in order to achieve a greater mission. And we sort of see that through line about, it's the intention, so actually really articulating what it means to be part of this, in order to deliver a goal, which is the performance side of things that was not culture for culture's sake, it's intentional in order to achieve something, and also tied into a greater mission and I'm sure you've probably heard a thousand definitions from all the people you've interviewed when it comes to culture. So I would love to maybe think about how you're currently sort of shaping that definition.

Adam Bryant

Sure, and again, we could talk for hours about this and I've probably got about four different thoughts on this. So I love your definition. It makes a lot of sense to me, but I also...

And I also think there are other ways to come at the conversation to sort of illuminate some of the issues. So with that, sort of one thought is, I'm gonna borrow a phrase that I heard from my co-author, a guy named Kevin Scherer, my last most recent book before it leaped to leader called The CEO Test. He was the former CEO of Amgen. And he uses this phrase called social architecture. And what that means in the context of companies is, how do all the pieces fit together? Because I think the way companies used to operate is that they would have a lot of separate conversations. So like, let's have the strategy conversation. Okay, good, done. Then let's have an offsite where we figure out mission and purpose. Okay, good, that's done. Let's go play golf. That conversation is finished. And then, you know, to separate offsite, well, we need to come up with our values, right? Okay, done, let's go play golf. And all these were sort of separate conversations. And I think what… in this moment we're living in now, that all those pieces have to fit together. They cannot feel separate. They all have to make up this kind of organic hole where there's not like seams and gaps between them. Because I often feel like we're living in what I like to call the double click era of leadership, which is, it used to be you could sort of say something to the troops and they go, okay, got it. But now you have to be prepared for people to start double clicking. It's like, well, what does that mean in practice? And can you show me proof that we're actually doing that? And so I think there is much more pressure on all these pieces to make sure that they fit together. Because if they don't, people are gonna call them out.

Adam Bryant

Right, if companies aren't walking their talk, if they're not doing what they're saying, you can't have it's like, well, that's our purpose and mission and these are values, but what about this thing that we just did over here? People are gonna call that out. So that's why it's almost like Lego pieces. They have to like snap tight together. So that's one way that I think about culture and the traditional ideas of culture like norms and behaviors and sort of how we roll here.

All that's of a piece. It's not sort of this sort of standalone exercise. So that's one insight. One of my favorite definitions of culture is from one CEO I interviewed. He said, you know, if whatever you say about your culture actually doesn't matter. He said the most powerful signals to employees about what your culture is are a few of them. One is who gets promoted, how you drive compensation, particularly incentive compensation, and who gets fired.

Those are the most powerful signals. And i've thought about that a lot and it really resonates for me because if you think of companies just as like tribes, right? You know, you want to be a part of the tribe you want to succeed in the tribe? What are the signals that you're going to pick up? It's like wow, they got elevated in the tribe What did they do? I'm going to do that too. I want to get elevated Um, wow, that person just got kicked out of the tribe. Why I don't want to get kicked out of the tribe Right, and then you look at the incentive compensation and what behaviors are they encouraging, right?

Adam Bryant

behavior or do they encourage team behavior? Right. And so you can look at a lot at how incentive compensation is structured. So I think about that a lot. Um, and I think it's very powerful. I had a conversation recently with a CEO who, uh, he was pretty blunt about his feeling about culture where he basically tells employees, like, if you don't like the culture here, it's your fault.

Adam Bryant

If you're having a bad day in culture, it's your fault. Look in the mirror. I get the impulse up to a point. The impulse is you own the culture too, right? It's not, you're not jumping in an Uber in the back seat and complaining, well, this is like a three-star culture, right? Like his point is that the culture is set by you and the interactions that you have with your colleagues every day and the care and respect that you have for each other. So I really like the impulse because I do find that often people, You know, they think about their companies and culture the way they like would a movie or restaurant. They're sort of like critics You know like three stars or two or I don't like this. It's like you're on the team, right when I was an editor And a manager myself. I would often talk about it's like put on the jersey like you're on the team So put on the jersey don't be standing on the sidelines so Again, I like the impulse up to a point and where I think it starts to break down is that the leadership does set the culture because of what I said earlier, like the leader decides, the leaders decide who gets promoted, who gets fired, and the structure of the incentive comp. And so if you promote a high performing jerk into a leadership position and everybody knows they're a jerk, you are going to have a jerky culture, right? Because people are going to say, oh, so that's how you get ahead of here?

Damon Klotz

Mm-hmm.

Adam Bryant

You suck up to the boss and treat your team really badly and ignore them and throw your colleagues under, that's how you get promoted? I got that, I picked up that signal loud and clear. So leadership does set the tone in terms of the culture. And the final thing I'll say, is i'm sure you've heard that famous quote about how culture eats strategy for breakfast and sometimes it's culture eats strategy for lunch and Almost every conference you go to there somebody puts up a slide with that expression. It's always attributed Always attributed to peter drucker, right? um, and look you're probably three steps ahead of me on this but you You dig into like the history. There's no proof that he ever said it

Damon Klotz

And what always does, yep, there's always one.

Adam Bryant

Right? So every bit and what I've found, like this happens a lot in business. People are always saying, yeah, there's this famous quote and this it's like, no, that's not what they said. Or they never said that. Right. And this is one of those. Um, so there's no, and again, all your listeners, please send me the, if you find the written proof that Peter Drucker said this, I would love to have it to settle this debate. Cause if you start Googling it, you can see like there's a pretty lively debate and nobody's found the proof. So I bring that up because I think people actually have it backwards. Because when people say culture eats strategy for breakfast, what they're basically saying is culture is more important than strategy. And I've now been a dozen years in this space and thought a lot about this. And

And I think strategy is the cornerstone of the foundation of every organization and strategy drives culture. It's not the only thing, right? The other things are the things that I just talked about. But I think if you have a very clear strategy for winning and everybody at the organization can feel like they are contributing.

And are clear they have a line of sight to out what i'm doing is contributing to that key lever We're going to pull to win in the marketplace I think that does a lot for culture because if you don't have a clear strategy But you got like a lot of ping pong tables and beer kegs like It's just it's not going to be a great culture because I think people like to feel like they're part of a winning team and that they're contributing. So again, I've been rambling, but when you ask me about culture, I'd like to come at it from those four different vantage points.

Damon Klotz

No, it's amazing. And I'm sitting here trying to connect all the dots myself and what I'm really hearing, which I think a lot of the true line for all of the stories is like, you know, be intentional. Like write things down, codify, like, you know, put things into place, whether it's like the strategy saying, this is actually what we're going towards. And then saying, and this is how we're gonna get there. And whether it's strategy first or culture first or whatever, it's just like, whatever you do, whatever comes first, you need to write it down and you need to communicate that. And then I think the other thing was also this whole idea, you know, that story that you shared, the third story about like, you know, if you're part of a bad culture, it's your fault. Like I get the bluntness in a way because they're trying to tell a story that invokes something. But I think what it gets to is this kind of terminology that we actually use here at Culture Amp, which is this whole idea of helping companies move their employees from culture consumers to culture creators. And it's what you were kind of saying that, you know, people are maybe have expected for a long time that this just gets delivered to them. Like you just get delivered a good culture. You get delivered all the things and you get delivered a great experience. It's just, it's not how it works. Like people are complex. Things change depending on what team you're in, where you're based, the type of work you're doing. And what we kind of see with the use of our platform is kind of the more moments people are giving feedback and actioning data in surveys and like setting really clear goals and like giving praise and shout outs and things like that all of those are like little behaviors that lead to the culture. It's how you kind of bring all these things together. So I think that was one of the other big shifts that I really heard you talk about there.

Adam Bryant

Yeah, and on that point specifically, I mean, this was brought into sharp relief for me by a CEO I interviewed named Marcus Ryu, who was with a company called Guidewire in Silicon Valley. And he told me this story about how he went on to Glassdoor and noticed that there was a lot of, not a lot, but some negative comments about the company culture. And look, he's got a thick skin, he's CEO, he said, but he… Because of that, he wrote a letter to all the employees in the company. And he said, part of his letter was like, look, being part of a company is not like being a critic, where like a restaurant or a movie where you're just sitting and saying, okay, like this is my rating on the culture. And the metaphor he used is like, you are a citizen here. You are a citizen of this company. And that comes with, you know, responsibilities to contribute to that. You don't, if you're American or Australian, you're not, you don't just like three stars on this country that I'm a member of, right? Like that's not how you roll. Like you're a participant in it. And look, you can take issue with that. I mean, it's, I think it'd make a good, you know, debating point, but again, I like the impulse, like put on the jersey, you are contributing to this. And the debating point is like being a citizen is not like being an employee, right? Because you can hold on to your passport for life, but companies have layoffs and all those other things. But again, I like the impulse because just the way I'm wired is like, if I'm on a team, I'm gonna help the team. And that's why as a manager, I was at a problem, it's like, wait a minute, you're on the team, yet you're criticizing the place that's giving you a paycheck, so why don't you put on the jersey and help instead of complaining?

Damon Klotz

I think one of the tension points inside of a company, especially, you know, probably people sort of in their mid to late stage of their career is typically in order to kind of get ahead, they kind of feel like they have to become a manager and a leader in order to kind of get the roles, promotion and compensation that they think is, you know, where they should go. And, you know, my opinion is that not a lot of organizations have really clear paths for how individual contributors can also, you know, rise up the ranks without going into that.

I know you've spoken a lot about it, you know, about this sort of X factor of leaders and I guess what, you know, what are the sort of behaviors or things you look out for in terms of knowing that someone's going to have a great future as a leader based on sort of the way that they've sort of, you know, grown up as well as, you know, the way that they've sort of demonstrated themselves. So if there is someone who's listening, who's like, I don't like, do I have what it takes? Do I actually want to make the leap to leader or am I okay? And I see other, some of those clues that you can help listeners kind of look out for.

Adam Bryant

Yeah.

Adam Bryant

Sure, and to me it starts with a simple question of like, do you really want to lead, right? Which is the name of the first section of my book, The Leap to Leader, because like, I'm just echoing what you just said, that I think a lot of people feel like, well, I gotta move up, and there's this kind of momentum that just carries people along. It's like, well, I'm ambitious, and I wanna move up, and I want a bigger title, and I wanna get more money. And so like, of course, that's how I'm gonna do it. And...

I think on the organization side, when they're looking at leadership development and succession planning, there's just this built-in assumption that like, okay, everybody who's in the pipeline wants these top jobs, right, or to move up. And so what I always encourage people is just to really spend some time reflecting on if they do think they want to do it, be clear about your why.

And also be incredibly clear-eyed as much as you can about what these jobs entail. Because they are really hard jobs, right? Managing people, managing a team of five, of ten, and then you keep going up bigger and bigger, the problems get harder, the people problems get harder, there's less data for making difficult decisions. The decisions you are going to make are going to anger some people. And so… I always ask people whether it's reading books and trying to get a sense of them, talking to people who are in these roles that you might be stepping into, do your own research. People do so much research about which college they're gonna go to, is this gonna be the right fit? Do the same amount of research about some job that you think you want. Because… Look, you don't know what a job is really like until you actually start doing it, but you should put in the effort to minimize the amount of surprise that there's gonna be once you actually step into the job. So be clear about your why. And I would also submit that if your why is you want more money and power, that those aren't really gonna be, that's not gonna carry you through long-term because there's always that initial psychological bump and the lifestyle bump of getting a little more money.

Adam Bryant

but that wears off pretty quickly and power doesn't really play anymore. Right. I mean, it does in some companies, but less and less so. And so you've got to be clear on your why. And I it's not like I'm here to dictate the answer, but I think a good answer sounds like something that comes from a more selfless place that you like coaching and developing people, that you like having an impact, that you believe in the organization and you want to help the organization succeed. Like all these things like that are gonna help you get through the tough times. So again, completely agree with your point that like people just kind of get carried along. It's like with the tide or something like that. It's like, well, here we go. I'm getting this bigger promotion. It's like, boy, you just, you don't wanna have that moment where you're saying to yourself like, why did I do this?

Damon Klotz

Yeah.

Damon Klotz

I think there's certainly a lot of people who like through accidental momentum at times they found themselves go down this path and then they like have to maybe check themselves on the other side of it. I think there's a different type of person though. There's a type of person who might not be putting themselves up to make that leap to leader because they're getting trapped by the stories that they tell themselves. And I remember one of the stories that really stood out when I was going through all of your articles was Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft talking about. He played a lot of cricket growing up, but he shared a story with you about sort of playing cricket and how he just couldn't get a wicket and how the captain took him off and then the captain got a wicket and then he put him back in to kind of show I still believe in you but just we needed to make a change here and how that sort of shaped his belief. So these stories do shape us and there's probably people listening who are like, I am getting trapped by my own stories. Do you pick up any, I guess, common stories or themes about the stories that really hold us back in the workplace?

Adam Bryant

Yeah, and to your point, I mean, I share this in the book, but I interviewed a young CEO. I think she was in her mid-30s, and she tragically died a couple of years ago from cancer. But when I was interviewing her and asking about her early years, she was a young woman. She's had a horrible childhood. I mean, just really rough, like really difficult relationship with her parents. I think she actually went through the legal process of kind of divorcing herself from her own family, moved around a ton, didn't have a lot of money, was bullied at school. I mean, just sort of went on and on. And yet when I was talking to her, she just had this incredibly positive attitude. And so I asked her, I said, where does this positive attitude come from and she said five words that were sort of burned in the back of my brain which is that reality is just source material and you just sort of think about that. It's like we go through life and having our experiences and we sort of tell ourselves, well, that's reality. And it's like, that's not reality. Reality is how we are editing the films and the voiceover and the narrative that we are applying to our experiences. And I thought that was really powerful because as much as we can, we need to create some distance from our, we need to be able to stand outside ourselves. I mean, it's great to have a coach or a mentor to sort of point out to you where the logical flaws in your thinking are, but we should also try and do that with ourselves. And a good way to do it is to start there. It's like, okay, my, whatever talk track I have in my brain, it's, it's just the story I'm telling myself. It's not reality. So

Adam Bryant

Are there any, you know, logic flaws in what I'm saying? And so then you ask us like, well, what are the what are the traps that people fall into? One is imposter syndrome, which is pretty universal feeling. Right. Like on the every three months, I have the same dream where I'm about to get on stage and sing and play guitar. And I don't know how to sing and I don't know how to play guitar. Right. And I always wake up just be and it's like.

Damon Klotz

I've had that exact dream.

Adam Bryant

I once had a version of this dream with my CEO and where I'm looking at him, it's like, do you know how to play guitar? And do you know that he's gonna know, do you? And then I wake up. So I think we all feel it at some degree and some of it's, I think some of it's healthy, right? Like you have some kind of respect for the magnitude of the job you're doing and taking on, but some other things are just like the victim narrative, like why is this happening to me? This is not fair narrative. And so just as much as you can try and step outside yourself and say, okay, what are the stories you're telling yourself and are they productive? Because I think a lot of like the victim narratives and the unfairness narratives. It's ultimately it's wasted time, right? Because they don't get you anywhere

Damon Klotz

I think that is the power of having both a coach as well as, you know, in my life, I have worked with a therapist cause I just find it so powerful to have like one hour a month to unlock some of the stories I'm telling myself. I'm going, where is that story coming from? Like what was I five? Was I 10? Was I 20? Was I 25? Where is this idea that I'm constantly getting stuck in this, you know, like this source material reality right now. And then

It kind of ties to my personal mantra, which is we're all one conversation away from changing the rest of our life. So then I'm like, what is a different conversation I need to be having either with myself or with someone else that's going to change this source material?

Adam Bryant

Yeah, no, I love that approach.

Damon Klotz

I think one of the ways that your work has really cut through is because you have really clear actionable ways to sort of, you know, you know, like, like we said, humans are complex and messy, leadership is complex and messy, companies, especially right now, are complex and messy. You have some of these little great sort of lines around, you know, how to perfect the do to say ratio, you know, tactics to make yourself heard and make better decisions, compartmentalization. Are there any of those ones that you kind of think of that you think leaders like is there one that you're like if I could just get everyone to know this one companies would get better

Adam Bryant

Yeah, I would go to this idea of simplifying complexity because I just think it is such a necessary skill, not only for leaders, but frankly for everybody. I mean, the world is so complicated. Things are changing so quickly. It's just like a core skill. It is a necessary precursor skill to being a good communicator, right? Because you have to be able to say, okay, from all this complexity, we need to come up with just like a simple plan for what we're going to do. And to me, it's just one of those leadership moments where you're standing on the stage and all teams meeting or sitting at the head of the table with your team of five people. But you have to be able to say, this is where we're going. This is how we're gonna win. This is how we're gonna get there. And this is when we're gonna get there and this is how we're gonna keep score.

To me, that is such a fundamental skill of leadership, of succeeding in the world, succeeding personally. And I think it's one of those skills that everybody can work on all the time and you can watch people who do it well and try and understand them. You can see people who don't do it well. I once was chatting with CEO, I was writing a profile about them and they went to this, just this massive, sales meeting was a huge company and there are thousands of people in the room and they got up on stage and they said, you know, I'm thinking about 11 things recently. And honestly, Damon, like the energy just drained out of the room, right? Like 11 things, really? Like you got to be three things, right? Because most people can only remember three to four things day to day. And you need to know that. And you need to be constantly sort of refining and simplifying. And you can oversimplify, which isn't helpful either, but just this simple skill, it's not simple, simple is hard, right? But simplifying complexity, I would put that in listening, like if you can simplify complexity and work on that all day long and be a better listener and work on that all day long, I think that it's gonna make you a better leader, it's gonna make you a better colleague, whatever your title is, and it's gonna make you a better human being.

Damon Klotz

I had a mentor who had a similar kind of equation about how many things that we can remember and I think it was tied to company values and he said, if you have up to three, I will remember them. If you give me four, I will spend most of my time trying to remember the one that I've already forgotten. And if you give me any more than four, all I'm gonna know is that you've told me a lot of things.

Adam Bryant

Yeah. And look, I had my own little sort of data set on that as well, because in all my hundreds of interviews with CEOs, I would often ask them about culture. And they said, oh yeah, we've got our values. And I said, I'd love to hear what they are. And literally, I could make a $20 bet with myself and win it every time that if they had more than five, the same thing would always happen. They'd get to the first three right away, right? They'd probably work to remember the fourth, but then the fifth and through the eighth and things like that, they would say, look, I'll email them to you, right? Adam, like, I can't remember them all. It's like, wow, you're the CEO and you can't remember your own values. And so I was, I have to say, I was pretty adamant about this, that I don't think your list of company values should be longer than three or four, right? Because, and when I wrote the book with Kevin Scherer, the former CEO of Amgen, my book, The CEO Test, we just had literally hours of debates about this. He said, I don't think that's that important. And I finally gave up a little bit and I've seen enough examples of companies that do have longer lists, but it's the quality of the values that makes them relevant. Because there's a lot of like fridge magnet poetry and values and leadership, right? Like all the words that sort of sound good. And I think the best values to me feel like really just they're part of the DNA of the company, that they're unique to it. And the example I always like to draw on this company called Twilio in Silicon Valley and one of their values is draw the owl. And where that comes from, there's an internet meme years ago that became really popular. It's basically two panels on how to draw an owl. The first one is draw a couple of circles in the rough shape. And then the second panel is draw the rest of the owl.

Adam Bryant

often in there as well. But you know the point of that is like just figure it out right just do it. And this meme went viral within the company and they adopted it as one of their values and the owl is now their mascot and stuff and you know I love the specificity of that you can you can. Another key test for me around culture and values is can you imagine somebody saying it in everyday? Conversation in the company right in a meeting like you can imagine somebody at Twilio saying it's like yeah I know this is like but let's just draw the out right like let's just figure it out, you know, whereas some of the language that you see in values is really sort of elevated and really formal and it's hard to, you know, are we, you know, showing sufficient integrity and respect for our customer and are we being customer centric at this moment? It's like if it doesn't feel conversational and natural and real, then you're not going to invoke it in everyday conversations.

Damon Klotz

I'm so glad you mentioned Twilio, because they've done, I think, a really great example of not only, I guess, having things that people remember, but also demonstrating behaviors that back it up. And I moved to San Francisco in 2015 to open up the culture amp office out there. And I was, in my first month there, I was staying in an Airbnb in the Mission District. And I remember looking over at the window at the, like a house next to me and there was a guy in a Twilio jersey, like working from home, like not jersey, a Twilio hoodie. And he was like, you know, on his laptop and whatnot. And then I learned like, you know, 12 months later, you know, Twilio is a Culture Amp customer. And I was like, oh, like, you know, what's that hoodie and why is it different from that one? And then I said, like, you have to ship a product, you have to build something on our SMS framework and you need to demonstrate it into the entire company. And when you ship a product, you get this hoodie.

And it's kind of the whole idea of like, get in there and do it. Like it might be shit. It might not work. Like, but like, this is what we do here. And, um, so I was just very like reminded that like my first Silicon Valley experience was seeing that hoodie and that story. I'm like, yep, this is why I'm here. Like, this is what I want to learn about.

Adam Bryant

Yeah, and just that simple story too. It's like, if you're gonna work here, you gotta do this and that sends a signal like we are creators here, we are builders, you're not just passengers in the Uber.

Damon Klotz

This might be a risky segment, but you just said four values. How about I list Culture Amp’s four and maybe you can give a little bit of an assessment on them.

Adam Bryant

Please. And I'm going to assume you remember them all too.

Damon Klotz

So we have, we started, yeah, if I don't, I might not be hosting the podcast much longer. Um, so I have been at the company for eight years, so I'm one of the longest tenured employees in the company. So if I don't, then something's gone wrong. So we started with three and then we added a fourth and don't worry, there is not a fifth, but we started with have the courage to be vulnerable, trust others to own decisions. Learn faster through feedback. And then the one that we added, which was more of a way that we wanted to both go to market as well as the behaviors we were looking for inside of the company was amplify others.

Adam Bryant

And one of the things I'm admiring about them is that it is, what you guys have accomplished is kind of sneaky math, right? Because you've packed about six, roughly six separate signals into four things, right? Because, remind me of the first one again.

Damon Klotz

Have the courage to be vulnerable.

Adam Bryant

Right, so in there you hit both be courageous and be vulnerable. Right? Again, I'm saying this out of admiration. The second one was.

Damon Klotz

We have then had trust others to own decisions.

Adam Bryant

Right, again, you've got two things packed in one. It's like trust, right? But own decisions, you're sending a signal here of like accountability. The third one.

Damon Klotz

Learn faster through feedback.

Adam Bryant

Right, so growth mindset, it's your job to learn and then be open to feedback because we have a feedback culture. So again, and I'm kidding, but I'm also admiring the fact that you've done some sneaky math in there. And I also like the things that, I like the fact that they are very specific behaviors, right? It's not like, you know, you see the word like integrity or excellence on a lot of values. It's like, okay, like integrity, Like isn't that sort of a given? I mean, what does that mean? And and you can't be and i'm sorry You can't be excellent in everything you do because if excellence you're not going to innovate, right? Like you're not going to try something and it'd be bad and then like fail fast and learn from it and so um Yeah, I just think the more that you can make them specific behaviors that you can you can imagine people saying it to others in meetings, in performance reviews, and there's a level of specificity to them that it's not, it minimizes the possibility of interpretation, right? Because that's a trap that I see a lot of organizations fall into, they'll have, you know, a value about like, we share our truths or something, well,

Wow, like whose truth is it, right? You know, if this is my truth and you got your truth, then it's like, that's just setting us up for an argument, right? And so again, I'm a fan of what you guys have done.

Damon Klotz

All right.

Damon Klotz

Yeah.

Damon Klotz

Well, I'll be sure to make sure that our founders and our internal people and culture team hear that because I do remember in I think 2017, your final article, how to be a CEO. I actually found the Slack thread of us talking about that article inside a culture amp and what our, one of our employees asking our CEO, like, what do you think about this? And Didier was like, yep, that's definitely spot on. They're the things I'm thinking about. And the whole idea of like, you know, do the job well that you're currently doing and like really focus on like what's in control and how do you do this.

Damon Klotz

So I will do the full circle moment for the Culture Amp employees to go. That article that we're chatting about in 2017, well, the author of it just gave us a full rundown on our values, which I think is pretty neat.

Adam Bryant

Alright.

Adam Bryant

Great, well, you just made my day, so I appreciate it.

Damon Klotz

So one of the topics that I think has been rightly very much elevated over the past decade inside of workplaces is diversity, equity, inclusion, moving from something that many organizations I would argue probably weren't speaking about enough, some probably not at all a decade ago, and now looking at whole roles and functions really dedicated and resource groups around being the type of company that we want to be. And I think you've probably witnessed a lot of shifts in terms of not only how the companies think about this, but also, I guess, maybe shifts inside, you know, CEOs thinking about this. I would love to maybe get your take on what you've seen shift and where are we heading with that conversation.

Adam Bryant

Yeah, and to me the headline is like, I gotta say I'm a little concerned, right? Because I think after the murder of George Floyd, there was a real moment of, you know, sort of like mirror held up society and said like, wow, this is not who we want to be. We really need to do something. And employees expected it and, you know, so many companies sort of join the parade of commitments and pledges and statements. And I think there was a lot of hiring and promoting of DE&I officers. I interviewed a CEO who made chief diversity officer part of his title in addition to CEO because he said, look, if I'm not the chief diversity officer, who's going to do it?

Adam Bryant

I thought this was going to be a long-term, a signal of sort of long-term change, right? Like that was an inflection point of our society. And I'm an optimist at heart, and I hope that is still true, but I feel like, I feel like it's just not quite as important as it used to be. I feel like people aren't talking about it as much. I think other concerns are coming up. I was at a conference at Columbia University about diversity. And it's probably 60 people in the audience. And I think I was one of six white people in the audience. And a lot of people in the DEI space. And the message wasn't positive, right? So I am concerned that it's just, like it's been a long new cycle in effect of like a few years of this, but I feel like other things are coming up. Um, but. You know, I think it's important for all the obvious reasons. Um, and, the way I think about it is that I think The leadership has to It has to be something for them that they feel in their heart Not just in their head like there's intellectual arguments for why diversity is important Here's a study that shows that companies with diverse acts are outperformed by why right? Like that's the head part of it. There's the wallet part of it, which is kind of the same thing It's like well diverse companies perform better, right? Okay, but like..

Adam Bryant

…you got to feel it in the heart. You have to believe about what is the right thing to do. I've always been struck by leaders who have there's like some personal connection to deep personal connection to the challenge of diversity. And, you know, like an executive who had a white child and adopted Asian child and they sort of grew up watching how their two children were treated differently. And because of that, like they become really committed to doing something about it. And so, to me that, that has to happen. And I'm doing this interview series on LinkedIn called Leading in the B Suite with Rhonda Morris who again is the head of HR at Chevron and we've interviewed more than 50 black leaders about the challenges and how they've navigated some of the problems and are they optimistic or pessimistic? And I just keep coming back to the simple idea that it all starts with like empathy and compassion. If through conversation, through interviews, you can understand somebody's lived experience and that empathy and compassion will then ideally lead to action because you've connected with somebody's story at an emotional level. To me, that's the path forward. I'm not sure we need more studies that tell us about the importance of diversity.

Damon Klotz

I think especially for people listening who, you know, in five, 10, 15 years time, do maybe want to be a CEO of a company and your, your behaviors and what you can do today will be indicators on the type of leader and company that you want to necessarily, you know, that you want to lead in the future. And I say that reflecting on something that I saw someone ask you and, you know, a question about like, I'm hiring for a CEO right now, you know, how do I look for a really good CEO and what should I be looking for? And I think your answer was, you know, look, if they say this word, look for their track record. You know, if they say this, go back and look at all the organizations they've worked at and go, you know, what were their previous leadership teams? What do they look like? Were they diverse? When they, if they're talking about innovation, what, where was that in their products that they worked at a previous companies? And I think that is like something that every single, you know, leader or aspiring leader can do right now is going, what are the behaviors? What power do we currently have? What decisions am I making right now?

So in five or 10 or 15 years time, when you look at the legacy of your work, that not only can you be proud of maybe the company that you can build one day and be part of and go, we built a diverse company, but also your path to it was full of actionable ways that you were really trying to create the better world of work that we all wanna be part of.

Adam Bryant

Yeah, and to me that's what you just said is another example of how the walk has to match the talk, right, because there's a lot of people making pledges and commitments and, you know, I've thought a lot just about the last few years, so many more companies have been much more vocal about purpose, right? Having the purpose conversation. And again, I feel like that's dying down a little bit, but those purpose statements are fine, but I think what one of the reasons why the world of business is special is because there is this sort of accountability that comes in business, right? Like what you say can matter in politics, right? And more than what you do. But in business, it's about like what you do that matters most. And my little crystal ball is that the purpose conversation is ultimately going to start shifting to the impact conversation because purpose is about intent. And you can tell me what your intent is as a leader, as an organization, but show me done and ultimately like that's where I think that's the best sandbox for business it's like look we say what we're gonna do and you can hold us accountable and here's the transparency and that's what you're looking for leader for from leaders and that's what you're looking for from organizations.

Damon Klotz

I think a nice way to land the plane of this conversation, which I think has been just thoroughly enjoyable. And there's like so many great things that I've, we don't want to spend more time thinking about, but in preparation for this conversation, you know, I love reading, watching, and listening to as much as possible that every guest I really try to show up as a really generous host with my research so that it allows us to have a good conversation. And I think one of the things that I reflected upon in all of the work that I was kind of looking at from your legacy, you know,

so much of it was not only about your expertise as a communicator, but also the importance of communication inside of a company. So I thought we could end with a few actionable takeaways on that importance. So I want to share with the audience that I did read that for every corner office column that you take a 7,000 word interview and condense it down to about 1500 key words. And this is in part, you know, for the reader experience to make it easier to digest, but also because it provided real value back to these CEOs to see what part of this interview was really standing out to you as being remarkable. So the power of summation isn't easy for a lot of people. I think leaders really like you said, really do need to get better at it. So from all of your work taking these 7,000 word things down to 1500, what can you teach us about the power of summation?

Adam Bryant

Sure, and to me it's to be, you have to start with a framework for yourself that is going to guide your condensation, your simplifying. And I, early on I sort of developed this simple framework and I always welcome debate about it, but I think there are three currencies of leadership and, or what I would argue are the best currencies of leadership and the first one is tell me an insight, right? Something that makes me feel smarter about the world, about human behavior, about organizations. Tell me something that makes me feel smarter and maybe I've heard it before, but it's a good reminder. It's like, oh yeah, that's a really good insight.

And the second thing is tell me a story, right? Tell me a story that brings that insight to life. How did you learn it? Because that makes it feel real, makes it feel sticky, it's memorable. And then the third currency is give me a framework, an approach, a tip, a tool, a tactic, something I can take back to my day job and put that insight into action. And once I figured out, okay, these are the three currencies of leadership, which means cut out all the platitudes, cut out all the cliches, cut out all the generalities, cut out all the theories of leadership, because I break out in hives when I hear the phrase leadership theory.

That became my very clear sorting tool. So when I would condense a transcript, and sometimes there were 10,000 words or 7,000 words down to 1,000 or 1,500, my first pass was sort of with a machete, right? Like I could just take out big chunks because they were platitudes or generalizations or whatever. And I was always, what I wanted to deliver in every single interview is those three things.

Adam Bryant

I learned this, this is how I learned it, and this is what I did with it. And to me, again, I spent a lot of time in the sort of leadership sandbox thinking about this stuff. And to me, again, I welcome debate about this, and you could add, well, research and data is really important. It's like, yeah, but sometimes that data proves a theory that is useful in one context, but not another. So I keep coming back to, it's like,

Be clear about what you're after. And so when I was condensing, I was clear like there's these three currencies and anything that doesn't fit with them is going in the first pass. And then the second pass, I'm just like tightening.

Damon Klotz

I love that and having that kind of that system and just knowing like this is what makes not only a great experience in terms of reading it, but also it helps us learn how to share these things more effectively. And you mentioned earlier this whole idea of, your comms are so important because when you get your simple plan right, that it doesn't allow any of that void to come in, which employees naturally will just fill with assumptions. They're gonna be like, I heard this, I didn't hear that so I think it means that. If you can really get it down to just having some really powerful frameworks for telling these stories and getting that simple plan, I think that's, you know, to me, that is what every person who wants to make the leap to leadership really think about is how to communicate that vision and take everyone on that journey with them.

Adam Bryant

Exactly, yeah. And ultimately, again, I'll borrow a phrase from my former co-author, Kevin, but he said, you have to know what good looks like, right? And so you have to decide for yourself what does good look like. It might be the framework. So I had to develop a framework for myself. Like, what does a good leadership interview look like? And what are the currencies? And so in all those things, it's before you start simplifying complexity, you have to be clear in your head, and like, what does a good outcome look like?

Voice over Damon here with a quick bit of context about what you’re about to hear. At the start of the episode, I said I was a bit nervous interviewing someone who’s arguably one of the best business interviewers in the world. Well, at the end of this interview, Adam wanted to provide me with some feedback. In Australia, we have a saying called the tall poppy syndrome, where we diminish or poke fun at anyone who’s being too vocal about their success. So because of my conditioning to not want to feel like I was doing exactly that, my default reaction was to cut this part out. But given Culture Amp’s value, of learning faster from feedback, I thought I’d keep it in, and maybe I’ll even add it to Culture Amp’s performance product for my next development conversation. So here’s Adam’s take on my interview style and podcast structure.

Damon Klotz

Well, Adam, I want to thank you so much for your time. I think, you know, from your legacy of interviews and the way that you've really put an important lens on the world of work and by really looking at some of the key personas within it, from the CEO to the CHRO to all the other people that you're interviewing, I want to thank you for that work. And, you know, for the way that, you know, you tell stories about what's possible at work, I've felt a lot of privilege in having this conversation.

A little bit of intimidation also someone who's interviewed so many incredible leaders to interview you, but I've certainly enjoyed it. And I'm sure listeners will be walking away with a lot of really amazing takeaways as well.

Adam Bryant

Okay, well, and it allowed me to talk for a minute and I do a lot of podcasting on, but, and I never say the following things, but like you are very good at this. And I appreciate all the research that you do because a lot of people who are in the podcast space don't do that. So I wanna give you a shout out and appreciation for that. You are an incredible listener. Like you have this, you are very present.

And again, I do a lot of podcasts and a lot of podcast interviews. I can almost sort of see the machinery in their head of like, I'm actually not listening to you, Adam. I'm just figuring out the next question, would you stop? But you're very present and...

you know, you've got a good track record of drawing people out. So I just want to give you a shout out on that because, you know, the art of interviewing is an art and you are pretty high practitioner of the art.

Damon Klotz

I really appreciate that. Like I said, I really do try to turn up as a generous host and a generous listener. And I borrow a lot from Krista Tippett from on being in the way that she holds space for someone to tell their story at its core. And I believe that stories about the world of work are just as important. You know, like, we all work and we can all have a better relationship with our associations with work. So I feel like I'd be doing the listeners a disservice if I didn't do everything I could in order to, you know, run a great interview.

I really appreciate that feedback especially, given the amount of people you've interviewed. So that means a lot.

Adam Bryant

Yeah, and just the space you created, you were the only person I've told my imposter syndrome dreams to about going on stage to play guitar and sing when I don't know how to play guitar or sing, so.

Damon Klotz:

A huge thank you Adam Bryant for his generosity of time and energy and for his incredibly kind feedback about our podcast.

This episode was full of actionable takeaways when it comes to the mindsets, tactics and stories we need to tell ourselves when it comes to modern leadership.

We heard Adam speak about the three currencies of leadership, which I want to repeat for you. 

Share an insight - tell a story about the insight - put a framework/tool around the two that allows someone to take it and do something with it. 

I love the simplicity of focusing on insights, stories and actions. When leading a group of people, using that approach can help cut the day-to-day noise of the modern workplace and help your team come together to understand the vision you’re trying to bring to life.

There are also some ways that I think can make you at least 10% better in your role starting today based on Adam’s research.

Perfect the do-to-say ratio and close the gap between perception and reality.

The first one is a great way to increase trust within your team, look at all the things you say to your team in a week, and ask how many of them ended up getting done. 
Because that helps with the gap between perception and reality. When a team is not in a meeting, or having a 1:1 with their boss, they are operating in the messy middle. Where they’re trying to look at all the signals and noise from the modern workplace. Ambiguity lives between perception and reality, so whatever you can do as a leader to help reduce that gap can lead to not only greater trust in your role as a leader but also a team that knows what’s required to do great work.

Please let us know how you plan on making the leap to leader by sharing your actions on social media or via a review.

I’ve been your host Damon Klotz and the Culture First Podcast is brought to you by the team here at Culture Amp, the world’s leading employee experience platform. Learn more about Culture Amp by heading to www.cultureamp.com

We believe in creating a better world of work, If that’s important to you too, please subscribe and leave us a review to make sure you don’t miss an episode as we build a community together where we share stories to inspire us all to create a better world of work.