Melinda French Gates on navigating change

0:00I think sometimes we get locked into our own ideas of where life is going or what we're supposed to do or who we're supposed to be. Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

0:29My guest today is Melinda French Gates, philanthropist, businesswoman, and advocate for women and girls. In her new book, The Next Day, she opens up about the major changes in her life, from getting divorced to leaving the Gates Foundation that she co-founded and co-chaired for decades. It's a poignant look at ending one chapter of our lives and starting another, which isn't always a choice we make deliberately. That's how life transitions are, right? They come sometimes whether you want them or not.

1:04Melinda French-Gates, welcome to Rethinking. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Adam. Well, there's so much I want to talk to you about. I think the place for me to begin is you have a brand new book, which is all about transition and change. Tell me why. I turned 60 this past year, and you don't get to be my age without going through a lot of transitions. And as I started to reflect on some of those, I was lucky enough to be asked to do this speech at Stanford's commencement last June. And when I talked to the class presidents long before the speech to think about themes, one of them said, you know, I feel like most of my peers feel like they're on one trajectory in life.

1:45And yet, if you could give us a little guidance about being willing to change your plans. And so I used that for the theme of my speech, and then I decided I wanted to write a book about it because we all go through transitions, some expected and some unexpected. And I felt like I had a few things that I learned during mine that I wanted to share. The one you start with is the idea of finding your small wave. Yeah, it's that, you know, when we're going through periods of transition, sometimes they can be exciting and fun, but often they're stressful, right? and you're not sure you're going to survive the transition or maybe you're changing careers or maybe you're deciding where to go for university.

2:24And having somebody who has the perspective on you and the perspective lens to say, no, no, no, you are going to be fine. And they help support and carry you through that transition. Having that small wave, at least for me, has been vital in my life. Tell me what that's looked like for you. It's looked like my father and mother, but really my dad, just because he was the one that had had the career, just absolutely knowing I could get any job in the tech sector I wanted to get. We were walking outside an IBM building in Dallas, Texas. I was walking with both of my parents. That's where I grew up.

3:03And he said, Melinda, I was in college, you should just paste your resume on the door because they should hire you. And, of course, I couldn't see that about myself. but he said, look, there aren't that many women in the tech sector. And do you know what? I not only got a job with IBM the next summer, it was literally in that building, which was uncanny because they had about 30 buildings all over Dallas. Melinda, one of the hardest things about change for many people is letting go. And you write about this. You talk about feeling the ease of letting go, which to me is a little bit counterintuitive.

3:36Letting go has always been hard for me. I don't want to say goodbye to people I've been close to. I don't want to walk away from projects I've loved. Can you help me find the ease in that? Because I am struggling with it. I remember a handout that one of my children received in middle school from a guidance counselor. And I thought it was so beautiful. They called it the parable of the trapeze. And, you know, if you're swinging on trapeze, you've got your hands on, but you've not only got to let go of one, you've got to let go of the other before you get to the next thing. And it is scary. And I will say, Adam, I don't know if you've experienced this, but for me, the more I've let go of some things in the past, the easier it is to practice doing that in the future.

4:15Even things that I sometimes don't want to let go of. I'm reminded of a tightrope walker I met once upon a time who had seen some people fall off a tightrope and get severely injured or worse because they didn't let go of their pole in time and trained to actually have a looser grip on the pole so that if he ever needed to let it go, he would be able to do that. And that seems like a metaphor for what you're describing. Well, or maybe not on a tightrope. Maybe you and I could do it like six inches off the ground on a balance beam. I was thinking about that when I was reading the book because the ease of letting go, it just immediately conjured up that image for me of I have to loosen my grip on the pole so that if I need to drop the very thing that I thought was keeping me balanced in order to save my life, I'm ready to do that.

5:04I have three adult children now who I'm very close to, but letting go of them to let them go to college, even though it is the right thing for them to have their wings and sprout those wings, not easy as a parent. But I think sometimes parenting, at least for me, was a great example of how to do other things in life. Well, I don't like that thought at all, knowing that our oldest is going to leave for college in a little over a year. How dare you leave us? Yeah. We don't want that to happen. But I guess it's coming whether I like it or not. Yep, that's exactly right. I know that you grew up thinking about marriage as a lifelong commitment.

5:42And the idea of ever leaving Bill, I don't think was something that you entertained for a long time. How did you wrestle with that and get to that point where you were able to say, this is something I'm ready to move on from? I write about this in the book. And the reason I even write about in the book is because many people unfortunately go through divorce in our country. And it is a painful process. And I felt like it was a major transition for me. And if I was going to be authentic, I needed to write some things about it. I definitely grew up thinking I would be married forever. The day I got married, I thought I would be in that marriage forever.

6:21I was very committed to it. But at some point, if you are being hurt so much and there's been a lot of work on the marriage and a lot of giving and a lot of forgiving over many, many times, you have to be true to yourself. And I felt like at some point I wasn't being true to myself. And so one of the things that I write about in the book is you have to be willing to listen to that tiny inner voice, even when you want to push it away and it's squeaky at first and you don't want to accept what it has to say, it is really important to listen. What was the inner voice saying to you that you had to hear?

6:58At the time that I just needed some space. I needed to separate just to get some space so that I could just get some clarity on the situation that I was in. I don't have much of an inner voice, so this is hard for me to imagine. Did you actually hear a voice? Was it a thought? Was it a feeling, an intuition? What was that experience like? Well, first of all, I'm going to disagree with you that you don't have an inner voice. I think you do. I think there are probably some people in your life that maybe over time, a friend or somebody wasn't true to you that you needed to separate from. So I think we can often do what maybe you were doing what I was doing, which was using my head over and over and over again to reinforce what I thought, what I needed to know.

7:41But for me, that inner voice can only be heard in quiet. I need stillness and quiet to be able to hear it and it's sometimes when I'm journaling it's sometimes when I'm in meditation it's sometimes when I'm talking to a very long-term friend and I'm even in a the squeakiest voice willing to whisper something about this doesn't feel right to me I've at least then put it in the world so that I can't completely turn away from it later I might turn away from it for years but it's out there and if it's a good friend a trusted friend, they may bring it back up to you too and remind you, oh, remember four years ago, you said X or, you know, you were in this situation.

8:22Did you have people reminding you that you had raised doubts or felt like maybe this wasn't right? I did. I definitely did. But most of all, only you, only you can know what's gone on in that relationship, the good and the bad, right? And there's both. And only you can make that decision. So for me, I definitely had a few trusted people I was turning to, but in the end, I had to listen to my own voice. It reminds me of something psychologists study called derailment, which in the research is the idea that when you have a plan and all of a sudden you're sort of pushed off course, you can feel this sense of disconnection and kind of end up lost.

9:05And yet, that if you study people who feel derailed over time, that actually does become in many cases an occasion for growth because moving away from the path that you were stuck on often opens up doors that you didn't see. I'd love to hear what that process has been like for you. Absolutely. Once I dropped the notion that I would be married forever and that I needed to move forward, there was a lot of healing that needed to take place. Lots. And that takes time. But I learned things about myself. I did call it, to my close friends, a relearning of who I was. Like I knew myself quite well in high school and college.

9:44Then you go out in society and things happen, barriers you come up against or things that happen maybe in your marriage that you don't expect or wasn't what you agreed to. And so it was a relearning and really stepping back into myself. There's another that you write about that I think is extremely poignant, which is letting go of your parental guilt. And this one really struck a chord with me. We've talked in the past about what an extreme perfectionist you are. I feel like I've watched you in certain moments try to ace overcoming perfectionism. Probably. I want to be perfect at being imperfect.

10:22Yeah. I call myself a recovering perfectionist. I think it's safe to say that you might still be in recovery occasionally. Okay, fair enough. I know a lot of people who are fully immersed in intensive parenting, where they think that they have to be perfect parents. They have to show up for their kids at everything. They have to make sure that their kids ace every test, that they're prepared for every athletic competition, that their friendships are all managed and their playdates are coordinated. And it's really hard to do all of that, even if you don't have other priorities in life. And I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience with the pressure to be a perfect parent.

11:03Yeah, I definitely had this notion of the perfect parent, right? And I didn't learn until, unfortunately, my kids were in their early teens about the good enough parent. I wish I had learned that when they were three. There is no such thing, first of all, as a perfect parent. And then different kids need different things. And we're at different stages in life. But what you really need to be is the good enough parent. You need to be there for them in the key times and the key moments. You may not always know when they are and you may get some of those wrong, but it's really being that steady hand for them.

11:40And then you have to let them fail. Like this thing of where we're managing everything for kids. And believe me, I saw a lot of that or I tried to do it at times. they needed to fail under my own roof. And we had to be able to have rupture and repair in our relationships. Like maybe I raised my voice and wished I hadn't, you know, in one moment. And the kid has to storm off and be mad at me and not want to talk to me for a while. But guess what? We learned rupture and repair. And guess what? That's going to teach them for their adult relationships rupture and repair. I've always loved that idea of the good enough parent from the psychologist Donald Winnicott.

12:21And the hard part for me has been trying to figure out, well, what is good enough? And then when you didn't meet your standard of good enough, what do you do about that? So tell me two things. Number one, how do you decide what counts as good enough? And then number two, what do you say to your kids when you feel like you have fallen short? When I feel like I have fallen short, I say I'm sorry. I'm really deeply sorry. And they know that to be true. I recently asked at the Thanksgiving dinner table, I had all three of my kids there, what was mom's biggest mistake? You asked your kids that? Yes.

12:58And very different for each child and very different than I thought. But humbling too, right? But I think for me, knowing that I loved them deeply and I was going to do my best to be there in the tough moments. There were times I got it wrong. There was a time on a foundation trip with my oldest daughter. She was young and she was trying to reach me and couldn't get a hold of me. Cell phones didn't work where I was. The sat phone didn't work. And she was, for good reason, deeply upset. And it took me a while to repair that with her, right? And to know you're secure, I'm secure, but yeah, I'm gonna do a better job here.

13:32What did you say to her, that conversation? I said, that must have really hurt. I can see why you really wanted me and needed me in that moment. And yes, it was a bad cell phone connection, but I should have called home sooner than I did just to check in. And I am really, really deeply sorry. And next time I will be there. And it took me a while, had to demonstrate to her over time that I could be there, even when I was on the road. It sounds like all three of your kids gave you a biggest mistake. Like, is there one that you're willing to share or that you've been working on? I was trying to teach consequences to one of my children at the time who was still in high school.

14:15And I thought I had set up the parameters very clearly about I'm not going to be the one to wake you up every morning. You're old enough now to do this on your own. And, you know, some kids have deep sleep issues and they oversleep. And I set that limit and that child didn't hear me clearly enough. And I did let them sleep in on a day that was actually really key for them at school. And I didn't realize how key it was. And that felt really, really hurtful to that child. And I didn't even realize until they said it at the Thanksgiving table that it was so hurtful and why it was so hurtful to them.

14:53Right? I wanted to ask you about another concept that I found powerful in the book, which is the idea of pausing in the clearing. Tell me about that. Yeah, that is really, for me, what this entire book is about. I've watched a lot of people go through career changes. I'm 60, right? I would see people leave something, leave their career, and then immediately jump to the next career. And what I learned, though, was, no, no, no. if you pause in this in-between time while you're not sure what's going to come next, or maybe you've accepted the next role, but hopefully you've asked for a bit of time off, that there are so many lessons when you pause in that clearing.

15:31And lessons that you learn about yourself, it gives you time to think about, take the old job and what you learned, what was good about it, what you didn't like. Because if you jump to the next thing, you're more likely to repeat the pattern from your previous, whether it's relationship or job or situation, right? And repeating that pattern isn't always a good thing. Ideally, you want to take the best things forward, but you want to learn some things about yourself and make some different choices sometimes.

16:01One of the things that we talked about not long ago was the more power and status you gain, the more compromised your judgment of other people's character gets. And it's not because you're becoming less intelligent. It's because they have a stronger incentive to try to impress you. And the worst takers become the best fakers when they're trying to get ahead. And I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about how do you decide whether you want to let somebody into your orbit? I have been burned several times, actually, where I couldn't see the other person's motivation. Some people come towards you and the motivation is just so obvious, right?

16:41Those are the easy ones that go, mm-mm. But it's the ones where they're more subtle about it. And yet on the flip side, I don't want to be so cynical that I don't let anyone new in, right? Or have new friends. If I can get glimpses of, you know, how do they really treat people when I'm not around? No, I think the idea of looking at how they treat other people who are not in your shoes is especially important. I've seen so many people get duped or fooled by saying, but they were so nice to me. yes because they wanted something from you the question is how do they treat someone who can't do them any good exactly exactly and i think you and i also talked about who are their true role models in life sometimes i even see people using somebody that has good values and that is known in public to make themselves look good and it's really disingenuous that user what i call using or usury.

17:41And so I really kind of watch for that too. And I watch for who's really around those people when they're in private. And that helps me kind of see things more clearly. Yeah. I think there's a lot to be learned from finding out who other people's role models are. And I think the first step is often to look to, are they just admiring people for their money, power, beauty, or fame? If so, they might be a little bit superficial, or that might be a clue that they're more extrinsically than intrinsically motivated. But then sometimes they admire the right people for the wrong reasons. And I realize I have to ask the extra question of, why do you look up to this person?

18:20And what really matters is when they say, hey, I value that person or I hold that person in high esteem because of their character, because they're generous, they're humble, they're wise, they're curious, they're creative, they have integrity, they care about justice. I do think that what people prize in others is what they aspire to themselves. I think also as people get older, you can see their values over the course of their lifetime and whether they've changed or not. I guess the ones that come to mind are Rosalind and Jimmy Carter. Like, I didn't know him at all during his presidency. And you can think his presidency was good or not good, whatever.

18:57But boy, did he and did they live their values over the course of their lifetime, both when they were in the White House, but when they went back to Plains, Georgia, you know, and it was just unbelievably consistent over the course of their life. In psychology, there's a common finding that there are two ways you can see money in power. One is to see them as an opportunity, and the other is to treat them as a responsibility. And you live so firmly in the latter camp. When you're trying to get someone to sign the giving pledge or when you're trying to get someone to become more philanthropic, what's the conversation like and how do you motivate them to make that shift?

19:36Well, first of all, you definitely do it in private. You approach people who do see society and realize that they are unbelievably lucky. Like if you're wealthy, if you have, I don't know, pick your number, a hundred million dollars, My gosh, are you privileged and lucky, right? And getting them to see that maybe that privilege or that wealth came from somewhere, that somebody helped them along the way, that they were lucky enough to get into that college or university, getting them to have those touch points in their life to say, okay, well, given that you're in this situation, wouldn't it be great to help someone else in the same way?

20:20When you get enough people doing that together, you are role modeling for society and you are saying this is the right thing for wealthy people to do. I think you captured something that some colleagues and I studied a few years ago. This was with Dan Feiler and Lee Toast when they were at Duke. We were studying how to get people to give on a much smaller scale. So we took non-donors who had never given a cent to their alma mater. And we sent out various mailings and randomly assigned people to different messages. And we were interested in comparing the selfish versus the more altruistic motive.

20:53So doing good versus looking or feeling good. And we found that either message worked. But when we combine them, people are actually less likely to give. Oh, interesting when you combine them. Yeah, it was counterproductive to say, hey, let's think about all the people you're going to help and also how good you're going to feel. And it turned out when we did some follow-up studies that when you gave people multiple reasons that seemed somewhat contradictory or at least competing, they were more aware that someone was trying to persuade them. And they put their guard up a little bit. And that actually made the argument less persuasive.

21:29And you were really capturing this when you said, hey, wouldn't it be great if? Or you could also just say to them, hey, you're going to feel really good about this. I'm really struck by the simplicity of those messages. I think people are motivated for pretty, some for very different reasons. Some want the status of my name is on the museum or the building. That's fine. Like, I don't judge that. You're benefiting the museum, you know, and those things do good things for society. And then there are other people who give more because their heart is into something. Especially, let's just take the example of somebody in your family's had cancer.

22:06And so after that, you're much more, you're like, whoa, I really want to fund cancer research in this area or support the American Cancer Society, right? Either one can be good reasons. And I don't feel like we should judge either one, right? I go to bed at night feeling like every day I could have done more for others and I could have helped more people. And I can only imagine what that looks like in your life, that every single person you meet, you could change their life fundamentally, alter the course of it. How do you decide what's enough? Warren Buffett was really helpful on this question very early on.

22:43And he said, you know, define your bullseye. Define what you all are about and what the issues are you're going to go after. And you're going to feel better than when you let go of some things that are on the edges of the bullseye. For instance, we were getting lots of requests for childhood cancers. And my God, they are tragic. but we could say to ourselves, you know, the children that we are really trying to help are the ones in these low-income countries who are getting malaria year after year or malnourished. And so once we knew our bullseye, we could say to ourselves, okay, we're going to let other people do the pieces out on the edges.

23:22I did go to somebody early on. It was actually a Buddhist monk who I just really admired. He was doing a lot of teaching in the Seattle area. And I was struggling myself personally a little bit about where we give money. And he finally said, Melinda, if somebody writes me and says, you know, give$50 or something to our hundred, he says, I don't give with my brain. I give with my heart. He said, it's okay to give with your heart. Because we were struggling with, you know, do we put all the money, for instance, in upstream science research? Or do we help and relieve some of the pain and suffering today?

23:56That was a constant sort of back and forth and healthy tension at the foundation. And I thought, yeah, that's right. You give really where your heart is. And I find if you give where your heart is, anybody, whether you're giving$2 or$100 or$1 ,000, you're more likely to stick with that cause and go back to it again. When I first started studying generosity, I thought that you should prioritize what the world needs, not what feels good to you. And lo and behold, empirically, what you said turns out to be right, which is that people continue giving when they enjoy it, when it energizes them as opposed to draining them.

24:35And over time, you end up giving more in the long run if you're doing it from the heart. I've had to walk that one back big time. I always thought that you should start by working on the problem where there was the biggest need. And I've become increasingly convinced that instead you should focus where you can make the most unique contribution. where you can have the biggest impact, right? Like I hope that with the money that passes through my hands in my lifetime, that I can have a big impact. The other thing is I look for other leaders. Like I am 60 now. That's part of what the book is about, transitions.

25:08I am looking to the next generation of leaders and how do we fund them? How do we lift them up? How do we give them the platforms? Because they have, again, a different lens on society. They're younger, they see today's problems and they may even lead in a different way. And I think that's actually good for the world.

25:29Are you ready for some rapid fire questions? What's the worst advice you've ever gotten? Don't tell stories, give data. Ah, I hate that one. I hate that one because I want the data to win the day every day. I used to too, but it's the stories that tug people's heart and it's the mix of the stories and data that actually move people. I can get behind that. What about best advice? you've gotten. From my mom. Set your own agenda or someone else will. Something you've rethought lately. The parenting teenagers isn't fun. We all talk about how hard the teenage years are, and they are hard, but they're also fun.

26:08And it's an opening for parents. You learn all these new ideas that teenagers are taking in and where they're going. So I had to rethink that one, even while my youngest was in high school. Is there a Melinda Hot take, an uncommon or unpopular opinion that you're happy to defend? Well, that's the one I'm happiest to defend, is that parenting can't also be fun and joyful. When they're little, it's laborious, right? And it's sweet. And then it gets to be really fun. And then I think people think, oh, you get to your teen years, and oh, it's a drag. And it's just not. It's hard, but it's fun. We talked about who people admire earlier.

26:47Is there a leader you admire most? Kofi Annan. When he was leading the UN, I was so lucky to get to travel with him. And talk about somebody that we went out in the field who treated everyone the same as he treated world leaders when we went to the convention center. It was just mind-blowing. What's a question you have for me? What is something that's making you hopeful in 2025? I think the biggest thing that's making me hopeful in 2025 is how many people are searching for hope, which generally speaking, if you're not looking for hope, it's very hard to find it. And the fact that so many people are eager to discover it is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

27:29That's beautiful. That's beautiful. And if we can knit all that hope together in our communities, I mean, that's where the beauty is sometimes. On that note, I think your work is giving me hope. It's giving a lot of people hope. You've pioneered a completely different approach to philanthropy. And I'd love to hear as we wrap up, what does your next day look like? What's your vision for how you're going to have an impact? My vision is to keep doing the work that I'm doing, to support women and girls so that we really can get equality in society. And I've always believed in making sure we bring boys and men along on that journey and that they'll help us, right?

28:12But all the more now, I feel like one of the things I've had to rethink is we need to invest in the men and boys piece because we need to make sure that men are thriving in our society, that they can graduate from college if that's their dream at the same rates as women. I'm going to save hopefully both of us a lot of time with this question, which is people ask me constantly, how do I get Melinda French Gates to invest in me? What is it that gets you fired up about a person who's reaching out? Somebody who's a leader and maybe who sometimes is trying something in a different way. I'll give you an example.

28:45There was a young woman during COVID. She was in college. She took the year off during COVID because she didn't want to just be studying online. And she created a young women's group in the tech sector to mentor other young women in the tech sector and going through these difficult times of college. I was so impressed with what she did. and so that was a group that unexpectedly I decided to fund, right? It was just such an innovative idea that she was doing. I didn't know where she would go with her own career eventually, but it just made sense to me. Love it. Well, Melinda, you are such a force for good and I'm thrilled that you were able to come on Rethinking and can't wait for lots of people to read your book.

29:26Oh, thanks for having me, Adam. I always learn something in our conversations and that is true of today too. So thanks for having me.

29:37My biggest takeaway from Melinda is that it's easy to be overwhelmed by all the problems in the world. But you don't have to give where you see the biggest need. It's actually more effective to give where you can make the biggest dent. That's where you get to harness your distinctive skills, where you find a sense of meaning, and ultimately, where you end up contributing the most.

30:00Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is part of the TED Audio Collective, and this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah Kingsley-Ma and Asia Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact-checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Leighton-Brown. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Samaya Adams, Roxanne Hylash, Van Van Cheng, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sungmanivong, and Whitney Pennington Rogers.

30:34If you, Adam, choose to put your name on a building, okay, great. Good for you. I will not be doing that, just for the record. Okay. Thanks for the approval.