do you love your wife yes prove it like what's the metric give me the number that helps me know right because when you met her you didn't love her now you love her right tell me the day the love happened it's an impossible question but it's not that it doesn't exist it's that it's much easier to prove overtime right leadership is the same thing it's about transitions so if you were to if you were to go to the gym is it like exercise right if you go to the gym and you work out and you
come back and you look in the mirror you will see nothing and if you go to the gym the next day and you come back and you look in the mirror you will see nothing right so clearly there's no results can't be measured it must not be effective so we quit right or if you fundamentally believe that this is the right course of action and you stick with it like in a relationship I bought her flowers and I wished her happy birthday and she doesn't let me clearly I'll give up that's not what happens if
you if you believe there's something there you commit yourself to act an act of service you commit yourself to the regime the exercise you can't screw it up you can eat chocolate cake one day you can skip and skip a day or two you know it allows for that but if you stick with it consistently I'm not exactly sure what day but I know you'll start getting into shape I know and the same with the relationship it's not about the events it's not about intensity it's about consistency right you go to the dentist twice a
year your teeth will fall out you have to brush your teeth every day for two minutes what is brushing your day twice a day for two minutes do nothing unless you do it every day twice a day for two minutes right it's the consistency going to the gym for nine hours does not get you into shape working out every day for 20 minutes gets you into shape so the problem is we treat leadership with intensity we have a two-day off-site we would invite a bunch of speakers we give everybody certificate you're a leader right those
things are like going to the dentist they're very important they're good for reminding us or getting us back on track learning new lessons but it's the daily practice of all the monotonous little boring things like brushing your teeth that matter the most she didn't fall in love with you because you remembered her birthday and bought her flowers in Valentine's Day she fell in love with you because when you woke up in the morning you said good morning to her before you checked your phone she fell in love with you because when you went to the
fridge to get yourself a drink you got her one without even asking she fell in love with you because when you had an amazing day at work and she came home and she had a terrible day at work you didn't say yeah yeah yeah but let me tell you about my day you sat and listened to her awful day and you didn't say a thing about your amazing day this is why she fell in love with you I can't tell you exactly what day and it was no specular thing you did it was the accumulation
of all of those little things that she woke up one days and it's as if she pressed a button she goes I love him right leadership is exactly the same there's no event there's no thing I can tell you you have to do that your people will trust you it just doesn't work that way it's then it's an accumulation of lots and lots of little things that anyone by themselves is innocuous and useless literally pointless by themselves people will look at little things that are good leadership practice and say that won't work and you're absolutely
right but if you do it consistently and you do it in combination with lots of other little things like saying good morning to someone that looking in the eye my friend George who's a three-star general in the Marine Corps he says his test for leadership and I love this he goes his test really a good leaders if you ask somebody how their day is going you actually care about the answer the number of times we're walking to a meeting we're rushing we go how are you not good I gotta get to you later I got
him late for a meeting if you ask the question you were standing there and you're listening to the answer it's those little innocuous things that you do over and over and over and over that people will say I love my job but I like my job I like my job means yeah the challenge is great they pay me well I like the people I love my job means I don't want to work anywhere else I don't care how much somebody else was willing to pay me I'm devoted to the people here and I care desperately
about the people here as if they were my family in business we have colleagues and co-workers in the military they have brothers and sisters that's how they think of each other if you really have a strong corporate culture the people will think of each other like brothers and sisters like a family right no brothers and sisters deep love fight but the love doesn't go away bicker the love doesn't go away and I'll fight with my sister but if you threaten my sister you're gonna have to deal with me right we'll fight internally we'll bicker with
each other but nobody's gonna hurt each other and if anything from the outside shows up you got it you're looking at a unified front brothers and sisters now how do you create brothers and sisters out of strangers common beliefs common values you know parents in other words executives who care about their children's success who care to raise their children teach them skills discipline them when necessary help them build their self-confidence so that they couldn't go on and achieve something more than you could have ever imagined achieving for yourself that's leadership an absolute love and devotion
for the people who've committed their lives to this enterprise it's a human it's a human thing so just as you know how your body feels after a good workout you know how your body feels after a big greasy meal you know you know that one is good for you and one is not despite what it may taste like and that's the problem with short-term gains right they feel really good in the short term we're highly highly highly trained social animals were highly adapted social animals you know we can feel social awkwardness and we can feel
things are going well you know we can sense it you say you have this sense of laughter you know around the office like we don't walk around with blinders when we're like I said we're made to do this and that's why we can assess if somebody's trustworthy or not you know puts why we keep our walls and yeah yeah his results are great but I wouldn't trust him you know as opposed to letting on you but like I trusted for it anything I trusted my kids my money anything you know so we're highly attuned animals
and so we're good at sensing it but I will say there is a caveat to to your to your metric of laughter which is a decent one is that scale breaks things in human beings as I said before we're not made for populations bigger than about 150 ish it's called Dunbar's number Robin Dunbar professor from Cambridge University theorized that we cannot maintain more than a hundred and about about 150 close relationships and the way he defined a close relationship is if you're at a bar with a bunch of friends and somebody comes in would you
ask that person to join you or not it's about 150 that we would ask them to come join us and if you think about the reason that actually makes perfect sense which is there's two limiting factors one is time if you only gave two minutes to every person you know you can make no close friends and the other one is memory you just can't remember everybody and so this is where leadership leadership becomes very very interesting because if you have a company that has a lot of people five six seven eight hundred people a thousand
two thousand five thousand people clearly you can't know everyone and clearly as a CEO look I care about every single of my people you don't even know some of the people you work for a real but we work for your bastards you don't care about that right so the nuns it's a nonsense statement but what you can say is I desperately care about the people whose names I know and whose faces I recognize and I care desperately about my leadership and I instill in them every day that I will give them the tools and I
will take care of them with one purpose of one purpose only that they will take care of the people in their charge and I want those people to take care of the people and instill in them that they take care of the people in their charge and then by the time you get down to the masses where their actual thousand exist because of the seniors it's like 20 where the real thousand exist they feel about a hundred and a hundred and fifty of them can look to one of their direct leaders to one of their
direct manage and say that person cares about me hmm that's our boss that's my boss that's my leader not the leader it's the CEO that's my manager my boss my leader the one thing I am comfortable saying that all effective leaders must have is courage because it is hard it is hard to stand up against outside pressure it is hard to stand up to an external constituency who's pushing you to do something for their short-term gain to do the right thing for your people it is hard it is thankless it is lonely sometimes you get
fired sometimes you get in trouble sometimes you'll lose your job and the next guy will get all the credit it's all true and the courage to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming pressure only the best leaders that courage only the best leaders and here's the folly courage is not some deep internal fortitude you don't dig down deep and find the courage right it just doesn't exist courage is external our courage comes from the support we feel from others in other words when someone when you feel that someone has your back when you
you know that the day that you admit you can't do it someone will be there and say I got you you can do this that's what gives you the courage to do the difficult thing it's not going off to an ashram by yourself somewhere for four weeks and coming back and finding the car it's not what happens it's the relationships that we foster it's the people around us who love us and care about us and believe in us and when we have those relationships we will find the courage to do the right thing and when
you act with courage that in turn will inspire those in your organization to also act with courage in other words it's still an external thing that's what inspiration is right I'm inspired to follow your example but those relationships that we foster over the course of a lifetime will not only make us into the leaders we need to be able and hope we can be but they'll often save your life they'll save you from depression they'll save you from giving up they'll save you any matter of you know negative feelings about your own capabilities your own
future when someone just says I love you [Music] [Music]
